becoming buddhist monks

Today we learned a few techniques of meditation from a monk at the mountain-top temple in Chiang Mai. The room was also full of reading materials about Buddhism, the 4 Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, meditation, the relief of suffering, that sort of thing. It was an enlightening afternoon, and I became teary-eyed at one quotation about there being nowhere near enough time in life to spend any of it on hate.

When doing a sitting meditation, when your back begins to ache, you don't move, you just bring awareness to the pain. You say over and over in your head, aching, aching, aching. You ride the experience.

We did a walking meditation too. Everything in threes, and every intention thought out loud so to speak. You begin by closing your eyes and scanning up and down your body three times with your hand, then think-saying standing, standing, standing, and then intention to walk, intention to walk, intention to walk. Then as you start walking you say right foot first, left foot first, right foot first, left foot first, and so on. Then when you get to the end of where you're walking, you say stopping, stopping, stopping, and then turning, turning, turning until you're back facing the way you came. Then all over again! If you accidentally start thinking, you simply bring awareness to it. Thinking, thinking, thinking, oops!

Before that we had wandered the glittering golden colorful gleaming palace of the temple itself (after mounting its 400 steps) and found a little fortune-telling shrine. Some girls finally taught us how to properly perform the kneeling triple bow thing, and we did that, then shook the fortune sticks and received a key to our destinies. We both got the same number, 14, which is nice because I like 4s and Kyle likes 5s (1+4=5!). So, both of us need to carefully heed this advice from the Buddha above:

The 14th number tells that you should be patient and don't be in hasty. Everything will be all right. Don't think about the lover.

Monks it is!