2-3 Day Meditation at Mountain Top Temple in Thailand

I was eating today and realized that now would be a good time to do what I’ve thought about doing over the last couple years here in Thailand.

If all goes as planned over the next day or so I’ll climb about 1237 steep steps leading to a Chedi and Buddha on the top of a mountain at a Buddhist temple close to where I am here in Thailand. I’ll meditate there for a couple/few days to see if all the levels of jhana return and if they do - to what degree - and see if it’s an experience that’s worth doing anymore.

I sat on the floor of the shower on a folded up towel two nights ago and meditated like I used to roughly 10 years ago. The peace and tranquility came quickly and I was in that state hovering around jhana… and some water poured out of the shower nozzle above me and to the left and when it hit the floor and bounced it splashed my folded left leg and arm.

When the water touched the body there was no feeling that the body was “me” or what the me usually thinks of as “me”. Sometimes it’s a dog’s bark that sends me into jhana quickly, other times a mosquito bite… Usually jhana just comes when it comes. The water splashing the body brought jhana and it was a nice half-hour meditation with jhana present and the feeling of “no body, no mind, no Vern”.

I’ve sat like this off and on over the past 10 years - maybe 20 times? Jhana usually comes easily, within minutes and stays as long as the body sits there, sometimes lasting for a while after I’m up and moving about too.

I came to Thailand to find out what the experiences were that came to me during meditation. The experiences were so radically different from anything my “regular” conscious had ever seen. When the experiences started to happen all throughout the day whether I was sitting down to meditate or not - it was quite overwhelming.

The ego was dissolving and it was happening very fast. I had to make a choice to either continue and go the distance so to speak… or, to stop and not meditate again in the hopes that the process would stop too.

I stopped meditating and the process gradually, over years, slowed down to the point it’s at now. I feel the process come over me maybe once per month or a couple times, that’s all. Contrast that with every few minutes or hours when I first decided to stop and it’s quite an improvement.

You might wonder, why would someone run away from what Buddhists call Nirvana? What is there to be afraid of?

Well for me - there was nobody telling me what was going on exactly. I had asked a few monks at temples in Florida where I was when all this happened and they didn’t really understand English as well as what I needed. They couldn’t give me the answers I needed to hear, most of all - was this a safe thing to do without guidance? I mean, there was a very distinct possibility that I was losing my mind, not just my ego!

To me - having “Vern” go away with the possibility never to return was a scary thought. Not that “Vern” was such a great thing, but I was totally unsure of what would come next. I didn’t know WHAT Nirvana was. I STILL don’t understand what it is. I have a hard time believing that Jiddu Krishnamurti, Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and others were enlightened. I think not in fact. I am not sure the Buddha was enlightened because I’ve not met him.

I’ve not met anyone I consider enlightened at ALL with the possible exception of the Abbot at Wat Pah Nanachat, a Temple in Warin Chamrap near the city of Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand’s Northeast. It was with him that I related the meditative experiences of the past and it was he who said, “it sounds like jhana…” His face was beaming - his whole countenance was beaming when he told me that jhana is what all the monks at the temple are hoping to enter.

He told me that I was welcome to stay at the Wat and continue the process for as long as I wished…

I stayed overnight there. It was a full-moon weekend and there were many people that came from outlying villages and cities to spend the night at Wat Pah chanting and meditating. Every full moon they have this type of thing.

It was during some chanting in one of the halls that it hit me again why I didn’t seek out Buddhism first before starting my meditation practice.

BuddhISM is just like every other ISM. There is so much extra added to the religous experience - to the eternal… that it doesn’t feel “right” to me anymore. Me chanting words that I couldn’t understand wasn’t bringing me any closer to a mind free of thought and reaction. It was an “extra” that man had created that helps the religion and those associated with it - to feel better about themselves and their group. It fosters a group cohesiveness type feeling that I don’t really believe in, nor have the need for.

When I meditated I sought out the very basics and I skipped over as much of the ISM associated with it as possible. To this day I don’t know the proper terms Thai Buddhists call “mindfulness” or “Vipassana”. I don’t know because I don’t care.

I care about the experience of the Buddha - what did he DO? The HOW is interesting to me - as I can use that as a base, but I don’t believe for one second that I need to follow EXACTLY everything he did to get where he supposedly got. I am open to the idea that he may have found “one” way to get there. But likely NOT the only way.

There are many other experiences I’ve read about since stopping meditation that sound similar to the state that Vipassana helped me find. I don’t believe that Vipassana offers the only tools to reach the state and start the process.

So anyway, I left Wat Pah Nanachat after spending just one night. I skipped the walking around town in the morning to collect food and walked about 6km until someone picked me up and asked if I wanted a ride into Ubon Ratchathani.

If you’re interested in meditation without all the fluff - I’ve created a 22-day meditation without religion course in Adobe PDF format as a free download in the “Pages” section on this Aim for Awesome site. Download it and have a look. Let me know what you think with a comment or at my email address on the “Contact” page.

Tomorrow I will head up the mountain about 10 am my time and see how it goes. I may be asked to leave at sunset, though I think that it’s such a long climb that the monks don’t go up there daily. If they did find me sitting there, would they ask me to leave? Not sure. If they ask me while I’m deep in Jhana would I hear them?

I’ll take enough food and water up and bring the phone so I can talk into the voice recorder about anything that occurs worth talking about.

OK, I will update you when I return, I’m thinking it will be 2 or 3 days, but I can see me going for a week or so if I take a trip down the mountain for food and then go back up.

You know something that just came to mind… I think the phone works up there on the mountain, as I’ve been there before and I think I remember that. If that’s true, I could take photos and send them to a blogger-blog or send videos to YouTube if the site has been unblocked in Thailand (Youtube has been blocked for months now over a disrespectful video of Thailand’s King). I just checked Youtube and still blocked.

Maybe I’ll delay the trip until the following day if I can get some form of daily blogging going, even if it’s only a brief text comment written from the phone to this blog. I’ll work on it and post again here before I go.

Best of Life!

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