Spiritual Epiphanies

Since I love tallies, here is one for my meditation retreat:
Days spent living like a monk at a "forest" monastery- 10
Hours spent not talking- 250
Hours spent sitting in some sort of meditative posture- 71.75
Hours spent meditating- 59.25
Meals eaten each day- 2
Words spoken to Paco- zero
Glances we exchanges- occasional
British monks we fell in love with- 1
Times I spaced out while meditating- countless
Spiritual epiphanies- 1

We spent ten days at the "forest" monastery Suan Mok International at a silent meditation retreat. By forest, I mean some banana trees and a few coconut groves, but don't try to meditate under a coconut tree because coconuts fall and they are HEAVY. Every so often, the silence would be broken by the loud thunk of a coconut hitting the ground. Paco had a few thoughts of If a coconut landed on my head right now, would I be happy with how I have spent the past few days... Of course, the answer is yes.
Ten days were spent learning about Buddhism, meditation and ourselves; all without speaking a word. To be honest, I did say "It's only 2 o'clock" to an old woman on day six when she didn't understand my hand-waving elicitation of the information. The strain of those four words on my vocal cords made them ache for about two hours. On day ten, I think I whispered "Hey there, what are you doing?" to a spider that was jumping on me, but I am not sure if that was out load or in my head. Overall, I consider that to be not speaking for ten days.
Just imagine us, 180 people living in close proximity, walking around in a zombie-like state, trying to pretend that no one else is around them. The zombie-like state is called "mindfulness," but I just think of it as moving in slow motion. Since I am pretty bad at being mindful (easily observed by my general clumsiness, which by the way, is not good when you are trying not to disturb the silence and you keep knocking over chairs), I just pretended by moving in slow motion. If you move in slow motion, it appears as if you are paying careful attention to your actions. This is "mindfulness."
I did get some insight into Buddhism; it's connectedness to nature and constant reminders of dukkha, or suffering. Good karma and meditation are the answers to all of this dukkha, and I tried to be mindful of good karma by not killing the mosquitoes that were biting me. I also tried to meditate, but I am not very good at it. Meditation is supposed to be calming, but I found it to be a rollercoaster. By 10 a.m. on the first day, I gave up meditating, but by that afternoon I was bored enough to give it another go. I spent a lot of time spacing out and giving people nicknames. There goes shrooms girl- named for the "mindful" way that she examined each piece of lettuce before taking a bite, which made her appear as if she were on drugs. Sometimes I would look over at Paco, and she would be sitting there, ever-so still, looking ever-so enlightened, but I knew she was just as bored as I was.
Des (British friend from Laos) said that he thought that the most difficult part would be thinking of clever things to say but not being able to share them with anyone. That part didn't bother me so much. I got used to the running dialog in my head. The difficult part for me was not being able to tell Paco when something happened. Not a lot happens when you are meditating, and when something does, you want to tell someone. Like when I was attacked by ants. Every morning, Paco and I would "rake" a pathway as our chore. The term "rake" is used loosely because it was done with thai brooms, which are most ineffective. On day one, I was happily "raking," when I noticed that my feet were a little itchy. I looked down, and to my surprise, my feet were black. I wasn't wearing contacts or glasses, and couldn't see very well so I leaned closer. I discovered that the itchiness was from my feet being completely covered in ants. I jumped around, trying to brush them off without killing them (bad karma), and then looked over at Paco, wishing that I could tell her what just happened. I had stepped on ant super-freeway and been swarmed. I was so paranoid about being sprayed with some sort of ant-attacking-pheromone that I went and covered myself in DEET. The next day, I was mindful of ant super-freeway and avoided it when raking. Unfortunately, my feet started itching again, and again I was swarmed. This time I had stepped into ants that were carrying off some larger insect. As I watched the ants carrying a considerably large object off, I had visions of the ants doing the same to me-like a scene from Gulliver's Travels. Ants can be scary. I saw that Disney movie when they took on the grasshoppers. The swarming ants became an almost daily experience, and it kind of freaked me out. So here is my spiritual epiphany, Jefe: ants are taking over the world. Just you wait, they are plotting things. I can tell. I tried to get a picture of ant super-freeway, but it wouldn't turn out. Ants. Watch out for them. Ok, maybe that's not a spiritual epiphany, but I didn't really have any so I had to make one up.
The pictures are of our meditation hall, the British monk we loved, my "cell," and my view in the meditation hall. They really do call your room a cell, and it comes with a wooden pillow- a block of wood for you to rest your head on. Seriously. So that is my meditation for you. Now that I am enlightened, we are off to climb for a week.