Meditating with Monks

On Friday the kids and I headed to Wat Suan Dok to learn about Buddhism and meditation. There are many meditation retreats in Thailand, most lasting from 10 days to a month. Since none of us want to meditate for days (or perhaps at all), we opted for the one day course for beginners.

Wat Suan Dok

Phra KK taught us about Buddhism in general, and answered questions about living as a monk in Thailand.

He showed us the multiple ways to put on the Thai monk robe. It differs according to activity, and the Thai method is much more complicated than in Laos.

Our day at the Wat happened to be on the day of a large “monk competition”. Monks from all over Thailand came to compete in many categories. We met a 12 year old monk who won his public speaking contest, and seemed appropriately terrified to talk to a room full of adult foreigners.

This appeared to be a sculpting competition. I asked the kids if they thought it was okay to take pictures as I didn’t want to interrupt their sculpting to ask. As I turned to take the photos, a monk ripped out a camera and snapped a photo of Ethan and Logan. Apparently, pale foreign children are as interesting to them as they are to us.

We didn’t actually meditate that long. Phra KK talked a lot about meditating twice a day to calm our “monkey mind”. We meditated about 4 times and the longest was for just over 20 minutes. Many of the sessions were dynamic meditation (moving your hand slowly in patterns and focusing on the movements). It was interesting, but it doesn’t look like the kids (or I) will be picking it up as a regular practice.