Discovering Vipassana Meditation in Myanmar
Three years ago, I set foot at the Pa-Auk Monastery in Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar. I stayed there for ten days to discover Vipassana meditation. This was my experience.
The journey
I took a bus from Mandalay around noon, heading for the hilly region behind the city. In the middle of the dry season, temperatures were rising to 45 degrees Celcius during the day time. The city was hot, and I heard that it was much cooler a few kilometers away. I didn’t want to believe it then.
After an hour-long drive, a taxi that I shared with a few strangers, dropped me off on the roadside. The monastery was supposedly located nearby. I checked in with google maps, it didn’t seem too far of a walk.
When I got to the first gate, there wasn’t a face to be seen. I went around the few lined up huts looking for a kind soul to help me out. The name on the gate seemed to match, but the place I had arrived at appeared deserted. A few shy faces quickly disappeared behind doors. What was a foreigner doing here?
After a few minutes, someone speaking surprisingly good English approached me, and asked what I was looking for. I mentioned my intention to come to meditate at the Pa-Auk monastery. I told him about the email I had sent a week before my arrival to make a reservation. The kind person scratched his head and asked if I was sure to be at the right place. I started to doubt myself and showed him a photo of the monastery. His face lit up.
I had gone to the wrong location, but the one I was looking for was only about two kilometers away. With my large backpack, I headed up the main road, to take a right turn shortly after, up the hills and over a dirt road. I passed a few small villages, greeting a bunch of surprised Burmese kids along the way.
With sweat dripping from my forehead, my travel backpack behind, daypack in the front, temperatures didn’t feel as cool as promised. I must have been a funny sight to them.
After following the road for a while, I finally arrived. “Reception”, read a sign in front of a small building. Behind, I could see the many kutis that were on the photos I had seen before. I knocked. An elderly man came out to greet me. He wasn’t a monk but worked the administrative side of things at the monastery. He invited me in. As it is custom in Myanmar, I took off my shoes, socks, and walked barefoot on the white tiles.
Arrival
They hadn’t received my email and weren’t aware of my coming. Luckily, they had a free kuti that I could use. I could only stay ten days, which is the bare minimum for a Vipassana retreat. They swiftly got me through some administrative formalities, gave me my keys, and a map of the monastery together with the daily schedule. It was already late afternoon by then, and there would be no more meal served until the next morning.
A kuti is the house where a monk resides and can meditate in a monastery. Sometimes they are shared, sometimes they are individual. I walked along the many kutis to look for mine. When I finally got there, my neighbor was on the porch of his hut, washing his monk’s robe. A friendly face. It only took him a few seconds to take out a smartphone and ask to take a selfie with me. I couldn’t have been more surprised. A monk with a smartphone? That didn’t make any sense to me.
It is only much later that I was told that a group of monks staying at the monastery came from a Buddhist university of the capital. They had to complete a mandatory retreat to graduate, and most of them would renounce monastic life after obtaining their diploma. This was a novelty for me.
The fact that it was possible to become a monk, by taking the 227 vows, to renounce them any time one desires, was a complete surprise. I read some articles on the topic after my stay. According to those, some people, often politicians, would become monks for one day. That would usually happen for a specific religious celebration. It would be considered a good deed, and help them earn some good karma. It seemed strange to me.
Inside my room, there were only the bare necessities. A bed with some fresh linen, a desk with a chair, and a bathroom. After all, I wasn’t supposed to do anything else but meditate during my retreat. That same evening, I got to meet the Abbot. He asked me about my reasons for coming and invited me to take the eight basic precepts of Theravada Buddhism, and so I did.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life of any living creature.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from any kind of sexual activity.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from false and harmful speech.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from consuming intoxicating drink and drugs which lead to carelessness.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from eating at inappropriate times.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from entertainment, beautification and adornment.
- I undertake the precept to refrain from lying on a high or luxurious sleeping place.
He then went on the explain the basics of Vipassana meditation, or, as they also call it, breathing meditation.
The goal is to reach Nirvana, to see the truth beyond life, and break free from the cycle of rebirth. To achieve this, one should focus on the point entry of air by the nostril. Always keeping the focus on that very same point. Not following the air in, nor out, just that one point of contact where it comes to brush against your nostril. I tried to keep that in mind. Before parting, he offered me to come to visit him every two days to discuss my progress in meditation.
That first evening, I laid awake in my bed and was thinking about the journey that got me here. A few years of ups and downs, fighting off depression, uncertain about where I was in my life, and without a clue of where to go.
Meditation
The following day, I woke up wrapped in my small blanket. The night got surprisingly cold. As it turned out, the hills were much cooler than the city.
I had to be by the meditation hall at around 5 am. That’s when the first-morning mediation started. It was a rather spacious building, and one by one, the monks streamed in and took place on their little cushions. All dressed with orange and red robes, they sat in silence and started their meditation. One is not supposed to talk in a Vipassana meditation retreat. However, they were not too strict about that outside of meditation hours. Later during my stay, I got the opportunity to briefly exchange with some monks and question them, but I will talk about it further down.
As I sat in the hall, the first challenge was to find a comfortable position. I would be I that room for about an hour before we head over to eat breakfast. Focusing on my nostril, as the Abbot had explained to me, proved to be much more of a challenge than I had thought.
My mind kept on drifting away, thinking about travels, family, friends, or problems. That was meant to occur, and I reminded myself of his words, to keep bringing the attention back to that point of focus.
After one hour, I felt exhausted. Slowly following the monks, we went to the refectory, where we would queue in line to get their food in their alms bowl in order of seniority. As a layman, someone who has not made the 227 vows, and is not a monk, I would be getting my food last.
Sitting down on the floor at my little table, I started to eat a mix of fresh vegetables, tofu, and rice. The food was very tasty, and it wasn’t an issue for me to be eating vegetarian for the next ten days.
All the food that was being served, came from donations to the monastery. Sometimes from people in other countries, sometimes from people nearby. There was no limit on portion size, but we would eat only twice during the day. At 6 am, and then at around 10 to 10.30 am. Monks are not supposed to be eating after noon.
The nuns, who lived on the other side of the hill, joined us for breakfast and lunch but sat at their table. I had the chance to meet one of them due to unfortunate circumstances on my last day. I suffered from a bacterial infection, from before coming to the monastery. It decided to manifest itself a few hours before my departure.
Luckily, one of the nuns was a doctor in China before deciding to dedicate herself to meditation. She had a stack of medicine and was able to provide me with what I needed to make the 12-hour bus journey back to Yangon. It got me wondering, what did all these monks and nuns do before decided to let go of it all?
After breakfast, we had a little bit of time for ourselves. Most monks would use that opportunity to clean one of their three robes, and swipe through their kuti.
Walking around a little bit, I noticed I wasn’t the only foreigner here for a retreat. One American, and one Portuguese, as well as a few Chinese students, were staying at the monastery. Each and every one for different reasons, but most of them for a longer period of at least three months.
In my experience, I would say that ten days is great to discover what this is all about, but three months much better to learn and see some progress.
The rest of the day followed a series of walking meditation and going to the hall for longer sitting meditation sessions of up to three hours. I didn’t seem to be making the slightest progress, and that evening, I passed out early.
Routine
The next morning, the exact same routine started at around 4 am. I was by the meditation in the hall at 5 am, breakfast at 6 am, another session at the hall from 8 to 10 am. Then would come lunch, and what I liked to call a lunch break until 13 pm. From then, until 16 pm would be the longest meditation session.
Between those, we would have the possibility to either meditate in our kuti or do a walking meditation. The latter became one of my favorite activities at the monastery. It consists of applying the same meditation method, while walking. In all honesty, I didn’t keep up with it, but walking around the hill where the monastery was built, was a very relaxing process for me.
This is what my next ten days were going to look like. I was pleased. I managed to stay away from my phone, and not turn on my laptop either. I had some brief exchanges with the other laymen whot like me, were looking for something in that place. And I talked to a few monks, some of them being westerners, from Italy, Ukraine, or even from Brazil. They all seemed to be very dedicated to their practice, and this way of life. They truly believed that the only way forward, was through breathing meditation.
When I talked to them about everyday life issues that I was facing, it seemed as if they would look at everything through this breathing spectrum. This was the solution to everything.
It felt strange for me to talk to someone who had grown up in Europe, influenced by similar things that I had been, and was now completely separated from it. Or at least, behaving as if this past didn’t exist anymore. For them, there was only the now, the breathing to reach nirvana.
Some of the local Burmese monks claimed to have already reached it. I couldn’t tell. Another monk from Taiwan was very kind to me, we exchanged a few words after a meditation session. He asked me how it was going, and I said I don’t know. Sometimes I felt things, but I didn’t know if they were real, or the product of my imagination. He answered, does it matter? And walked away smiling.
The Abbot, whom I went to visit every two days, kept on repeating the same advice to me. Focus on your breath, forget the rest. Breathe. I didn’t feel like I made much progress over there. Yet, I learned many things.
There was another person I got the chance to talk to. She had been going through several meditation retreats, and explained to me that there are many ways to go on about it. Every retreat has a different method, and system. She recommended me to try another one for my next stay, to see what suits me most.
Departure
When I left the place, it felt strange. I turned on my phone, and notifications from the last ten days poured in. Messages, emails, news updates. If the world had entered a new catastrophe during that time, let alone a pandemic, I wouldn’t have known. I was completely cut off from society. A monastery like this is a microcosm on its own.
I was able to get a glimpse into Theravada Buddhism, which is what they practice there. It seems to be a rather complex belief system, that I am not able to describe here. I don’t know enough about it.
Meditating is difficult and requires regular practice to improve. Maybe that type of breathing meditation didn’t suit me. It was a good experience nonetheless, and if I get the chance, I would like to try another retreat in the future. This time for a longer period, with a different method.
Taking a break like that from my busy life was very positive for me. It wasn’t life-changing, but it gave me time to reflect upon things that I couldn’t process before.
If not for meditation itself, being silent most of the day, not having any input besides the sound of the birds in the woods, helped to clear some clutter in my mind.
For a while at least, I regained a little bit of confidence in my decisions. I felt more certain about possible futures. And most importantly, I learned that I shouldn’t forget to breathe.
