Clidão
Small bumps slowly woke me up. As I opened my eyes and regained consciousness, I saw that the nice air stewardess left me a lunch tray.
Guess this must be the beginning of my luck changing, I thought to myself. My head still felt kinda groggy, I still hadn’t fully
recovered from this Vietnamese bender. Two nights ago my celluloid wings came too close to the club’s lights and I went burning down.
The harsh sun woke me up a few hours later as I found myself laying on the sidewalk by the entrance of the venue. No phone, no wallet,
no dignity. I started making my way back to the hotel, stumbly asking for directions by showing the keychain of my room's key that had
something written on it. A kind person placed me on the back of their moped and gave me a ride. Spent the rest of the day packing and trying to
sleep. The flight was at 15 past 2 AM, afraid of missing it, I managed to get to the airport early and then the chairs started to feel real cozy,
almost slept through boarding. My travelers experience allowed me to make it and there I was, inside the plane. I lowered my noise cancelling headphones to my neck so I could give my
head and ears some rest and as I started to unwrap the foils from the food containers, I made myself remember who am I and what I was doing on that trip.
I’m a South American guy that on good days thinks of himself as a corporate ronin and on bad days, I see myself as an administrative gigolo.
This job of mine made me go around and travel a lot. From the governor’s palace to a specialty meat factory in Europe up to 2 kilometers underground
a mountain in Central America. When I was younger, the perspective of traveling really excited me and it was a mix of escaping from my hometown reality
and going in the search of something, something that I was not sure I knew what it was. Now, as I sat on that plane, I wasn’t traveling for work anymore.
I was spending a second sabbatical semester in less than 2 years. This time I was looking not to just overcome a burnout, I was actually looking for something more,
something spiritual that would fill me with kindness and compassion and that would somehow give me the vision and courage to make changes in my life. I wanted to
be able to leave this vicious cycle I was set, of working, burning out and not being able to find something else and ending up on the same thing again. I was raised
catholic but always felt there could be something more out there other than the priest's Sunday sermon. In my travels I was able to see the hard working protestant
North Americans, participated in afro spiritual rituals in my home country, shared halal meals and got hinduism lessons in the West Indies. Now, I was going
to experience first hand, a buddhist monastery. No western filter, I intended to get an introduction to meditation and buddhism course and had high hopes of
starting to shape my new future with this wisdom.
Arriving at the airport, everything went as expected, the immigration’s officer did ask me a lot if I knew Ronaldo, but I hope this was just him trying to be
funny. From my original 100 US dollars backup bank note, I had left about 70 and some change. Went and changed 20 in the local currency and tucked away my last
backup 50. The distance from the airport to the monastery wasn’t too big, I’m informed by a local, although it did have a steep hill to climb. What the hell,
guess I’ll just grab a cab. The taxis seemed to have a lot of character, so did their drivers, without perceiving if there was a line or not, I’m waved through,
until I ended up inside a small yellow squared 4x4 with a smiling inquisitive guy. “Hello my friend, where are you from? What are you looking for? Drugs? Girls?
What do you like, my friend?” “Hey bud, I just want to go to the uphill monastery, how much would that be?” “Very nice my friend, you’re visiting there, good tourism,
good views.” “Yeah, actually, I’m going to take some meditation courses you know..” “Wow, that's great my friend! The wise lama always says that the wildest drug
one can take is meditation!” That was the tone of my ride up to the monastery, it cost me almost half of my local currency, guess I don’t have much to spend if I
want to get a ride back to the airport when I’m done. It didn't take too long until we arrived at a big reddish ochre metal gate, the driver helped me to get my
backpacks and I knocked on the door to be let in. Promptly I’m pointed to the direction of the checkin office, where I wait for my turn to speak with the clerk monk.
“Hello Euclides, we were not expecting you up until next week” “What do you mean Mr. Monk, I’m here for the courses, signed up, paid the deposits, came here.”
“Due to unforeseen circumstances with the instructor, the course has been postponed, we sent an email letting everybody know.” “I lost my phone 2 days ago, must
have missed this e-mail.” “Mr. Euclides, we sent the email over 2 weeks ago.” “All Righty, then I must have reeaaally missed it.” I didn’t know that, even if I knew
about this before, I would be able to change my travel plans, I had no more airline miles to spare and had booked a flight to New Zealand, to visit a cousin, right
after this retreat. My crisis contingency plan was just to rest for today and figure something out tomorrow. There was no benefit in being angry or anything. The
clerk monk showed me the buildings, the garden, the library, the temples and the dining hall. After some time getting to know the place, I was inside my room.
It had a single bed, a small bathroom, a dresser and a study desk facing a window with a nice half green, half concrete view of the city.
The next morning, I concluded with myself that the best thing I had to do was still try to learn some meditation, probably by finding a book at the library and
maybe have a talk with the monks about buddhism and life and such. I was curious about what words of wisdom this crimson robe wearing people have to relay.
Arrived 7 minutes before what the brochure said the time the library would be open, was greeted by a not so joyful monk. “Library is closed, come back later.” “OK.”
I said. “Guess I’m just going to stand here outside and practice a bit of patience.” “Yes, you need to do that.” He angrily muttered. This is great, seems that
I already started to make friends. Come the open hour, I mimically confirm with the guy if I’m allowed and let myself into this dark stands of books. First looked for
the western language section and then tried to find one with the subjects I’m interested in. Soon enough my eyes locked in a 40 or 50 years old looking book with the perfect
title, Meditation Guidelines for Beginners. Swept the book and got myself a little rustic recycled paper notebook from the gift shop. The plan became transcribing the book
to my mother language and practice the meditations as much as I could.
Satisfied with my findings, I rushed back to my room in order to begin my studies, crossing the monastery and experiencing its life. Passed by a lot of playful little
children monks, gazed the views from the top of the hill and watched from a distance some other children, without robes, play in unfinished buildings. As I sat on my room's
desk and started the transcription, I found the book very interesting. It says that basically we are a mind that pilots a flesh and bone spaceship and that the objective of
the book is to make us understand that. Mainly through meditation and other actions like not enjoying food and other humanly low pleasures. Talking about food, it was almost
noon and time for me to go to the dining hall, grab something to eat and see if I find some like minded people to talk about our experiences, buddhism and all that. The food
was rice, a variety of fried and steamed vegetables and some nice dumplings, everything could be topped with a spicy orange curry sauce. I felt a little guilty for enjoying it
so much after what I read in the book. The place was big and looked even bigger being empty, I did manage to sit beside a friendly Japanese guy and strike a conversation. He
seemed open and nice, but struggled to speak English and our conversation was a bit disappointing when he told me that the samurai culture died in Japan, after the second
world war. This perspective left me pensive.
Days went by with studies, meditation and the occasional talk during meals time. I gathered some knowledge on the concept of Dukkha, which is the word for the inherent
suffering that comes with being alive. One of the ways out of it is through meditation. I was studying and practicing two methods, Samatha and Vipassana. The book also has an
intriguing warning regarding the different levels of meditative states and its consequences, they’re called Thanas. The first level delivers strong joy and the arise of pleasure,
it evolves to states where you might have visions or senses of smell or sounds up until the nothingness and the border of consciousness, where you might even get psychic powers.
The Samantha teaching may be summarized by the term One Point Concentration and it aims at reducing the arising of mental impurities. We can practice Samantha by focusing our
thoughts solely in one word, a smell, a feeling, breathing and any other things that we can focus our mind on. I practiced it, seated on my room chair facing the desk
and window, usually thinking about colors. Vipassana can be understood as an awareness regarding the actual nature of things, it’s practice gets you analytical knowledge to see
things how they really are. I was practicing it through the mindfulness of walking and did it usually in the garden, which had some nice spaces to be.
It was time for my Vipassana practice, I tied my long curly hair up in a bun, like the statues of the young Siddhartha, rolled down the legs of my self cut jeans shorts, as
so I could comply with the required dress code and went out. While I followed the path to the garden, a white headed western monk asks me if I speak English and then asks if
I could follow him. My mind started to wander, what is this? Maybe one of those techniques used for social integration? Am I going to have the opportunity to talk about Jhanas
and Anatta with a real monk? Or even better, are we going to talk about a refund? As I followed him inside the main temple, we are stared by a group of Westerners in lotus position,
as we went up the stairs, behind a no trespassing sign, the western monk looked at them and told me. “I don’t know why these fools want to meditate inside the gompa.” I started to
feel a slight sense of importance. The second floor was a big open space with rooms by the sides which seemed pretty much like an office. The place was crowded with monks, seated
by computers. The western monk led me to an empty computer station and finally told me my required servitude. He had found an old Mercedes convertible car in the Philippines and
needed some help in attaching its pictures to an email. He wanted to see if he could send it to people in order to raise funds to seize this opportunity that has appeared. That
was it. I mustered my patience and calmest voice and helped him through, while thinking about what lessons could I learn regarding his eagerness and the concept of unattachment
of material things.
Decided to go to my room and grab some water. While walking back, I had an unfortunate realization. The robeless kids that were playing by the unfinished buildings weren't actually
playing, they were the ones building what seemed like another complex of rooms next to the one I was in. All of the sudden, I got deeply sad. The thought of having children doing
construction work in a place that I understood by sacred bothered me so much. I guess they got some other kind of compassion around here. Disappointed in my search and reflecting over
the philosophical concepts of naturalism, I took the notebook and started to write cathartic pages.
What a surprise, that in my quest to find divinity, I’m presented only with human beings! The irrational life does not care about feelings or what is right or wrong, it simply
has evolved and programmed in its genetic code, the necessary actions to survive and replicate itself. What am I to believe in? Single cells evolved and replicated so much to the point
where conscious monkeys were able to define notions of right and wrong, love and hate and diversely grew to that? Do mind only beings are already tainted with cravings and feelings
of vanity, hate and indifference? Or does the divine blow that gave us consciousness wasn’t really interested in a fair society and lusts on our struggles and suffering?
There was no more Samantha or Vipassana that day. Woke up the next morning with the feeling I had to talk with somebody about this. Wasn’t sure I could talk to any of the monks,
despite my interaction yesterday, the rest of the crimson robes always seemed so busy and to get annoyed if you talked to them. Maybe they get tired from the harassment of tourists
or something. I ate breakfast with my Japanese bud, but I didn’t have the heart to speak about this to him. His English wasn’t good and I had no way to translate my or his words.
No success over breakfast, tomorrow is my last day and when I went to see if I could book a cab, I saw a red haired elegant lady having some tea by the stone tables outside the main
temple. We had nodded each other hello at the dining hall before, but hadn't talked or anything. I waited for her to finish what it seemed to be a video call and made my approach.
“Hello, how are you today?” “Hey, one sec, just let me post this little video to my followers.” After finishing her taps on the phone, we exchange names and life situations. She
tells me she’s the new English teacher for the monastery, I tell her what I’m doing and where I’m from. She jokingly remembers how difficult it was for her to be a vegetarian in
my country, because we’re always hiding some type of meat in our foods. Cool, enough with the pleasantries, let me get to my point. “What do you think about the children doing
construction work at the monastery?” “Oh, poor you, does it affect you so much? Did you or your dad have to work when you were children?” I wasn’t expecting that answer and I felt
bothered, we talked a bit more and I said my goodbyes. “Why don’t you give me your socials? Instagram? LinkedIn?” She asked. “Sorry, I don’t have any of those.” “So, how could we
keep in touch?” “I lost my phone as well, guess that's it.”
I managed to book a cab for tomorrow and I’m back in my room, determined to keep with the meditations training. Still held inside me a strong feeling of anger and resignation about
what had happened. Decided to use it as my focal point, in the Samantha, one point concentration meditation. I sat on the chair facing the window, placed my hands on my thighs and
started to focus on this strong emotion. Every other thought, feeling or sense that would come to my mind, was acknowledged and allowed to pass by. After an unrecognized amount of
time, I came back to my senses, the anger and resignation were replaced by a feeling of serenity and lightness, time feels slow and the color of things felt stronger. My senses felt
amplified and my head seemed to be floating on a haze of pleasure.
I was able to zoom out and contemplate my situation under new perspectives. My catholic upbringing defined what I was supposed to expect being in a monastery. The situation I
went through made me exacerbate the written words of values and morals. These same morals and values that were violently
forced down the throat and westernized the peoples that formed my South American heritage. Now my reflections change to think about this selectiveness regarding the adoption of these
morals and values. The anger I was feeling due to external circumstances gave place to a deep reflection on my own hypocrisy.
It was my last day. I packed my bags and put aside some clothes that I didn’t need at the next phase of my journey, the monastery takes donations. I went to the clerk monk’s office and
made some small talk about how bigger the monkeys are here than in my home region. He replies that where he’s from they’re even bigger. I handed him the clothes and said my goodbyes.
“Thank you by everything Mr. Monk, I know it’s not a very buddhist thing to say, but I really enjoyed the food here.”
(painting by: Maurício Castro, Pernambuco, 1979)