Terminal chatter

Just as I was steeling myself for the last standing hour of meditation with bargain making like if you get through it and you really are tired you can bunk the last walking. I didn't actually ever bunk any sessions (oh no there was one, day 6 laxative disturbed night unable to make first meditation - the bowels require more than meditation and food to keep moving you know!). So standing meditation headed into the hall for it and learned that WHOPPEEE it was off and SHOCK we were going to talk for 3 hours instead. I sat in stunned silence, differing slightly from the usual meditative silence only by the puzzled expression on the face. What the hell was I meant to say?

I didn't take long to get back into the swing of it of course and soon was chatting nineteen to dozen which was when the conversation with the cougher occurred - waste of good talking time. We talked and talked all the way to the end of dinner - pah dinner waste of good talking time. I was able to talk to Sonja and we both exchanged the views that we had assumed that the other had become and completely devoted Buddhist nun during the period due to outward apparent devotion. Utter relief to discover that we were both desperate to get out of there and beer was the first thing on the agenda.

Talking time swiftly ended and it was a surprise just how much those conversation then governed the mind when you tried to go back to silence. I thought my monkey mind had been getting louder and louder and it surely had, but it was just because the external conversations which invade the mind had been gradually fading away. I didn't get back to the kind of meditation I had had before but I didn't mind because I knew that Sonja and I were going to drink beer soon. Oh and that I had learned some very important lessons that were bound to change much of my behaviours and ways of thinking from here on. I say that like it is sarcastic but it is true - the beer and the behaviour.

all the meditators, nuns and teachers

So the next day when it did all end there were lots more fab conversations, photos and donations. A posse was organised into a pickup taxi to Tong Sala and beer was ordered. Myself and the English lad particularly keen on the ice cold large singha NOW kap punk kaaaaaa. We drank and chatted and made plans to reconvene to celebrate Loeki's birthday on the other side of the island at a particularly nice beach.