Meditation at Matathat

Wat Matathat

On my way back from Lampung Park I decided to take a detour to see Wat Matathat. I always wished I had taken a religion course in college, and have been looking forward to doing a bit of independent study during my time here. I had read that Wat Matathat offered courses in meditation and my curiosity led me to a quiet respite from the Bangkok traffic. Immediately a smiling man approached and initiated a conversation in fluent English. He was happy to show me to the meditation school, where I soon found myself barefoot and sitting across a table from an elderly monk. Smiling in his saffron robes, he remarked that he rarely saw Farang visitors and seemed genuinely interested in teaching me about meditation. A beaming nun brought us each a hot mug of warm sweetened milk. I received a crash course (a 45-minute lecture) on the theory and philosophy behind meditation as a room full of monks chanted at an altar nearby. Over the next two hours, I learned the basics of two types of meditation: walking and sitting. I had always thought of meditation as a contemplative or thinking process, when in fact it is quite the opposite. Since Buddhism is a living religion, the goal is to clear the mind and acknowledge the immediate present. During meditation, the mind should put aside thoughts of the past, and of the future. The focus is on breathing, acknowledging thoughts without acting on them or actively thinking about them. (Easier said than done, especially for a hypo-hypo with an overactive everything like myself.) The end goal is a heightened sense of mindfulness, both of one’s self and of the surrounding world.

The monk padded across the tiled floor ahead of me and I soon found myself in a side room of the building. Together we practiced meditative walking for an hour. This is a method of walking very slowly, partitioning each movement into its own isolated action while clearing the mind of all thoughts. The monk had me repeat a simple mantra as we walked back and forth in this slow, controlled way. “Staaaanding. Lifting. Moving. Dropping. Lifting. Moving. Dropping, Lifting. Moving. Dropping….. Tuuuuurning. Staaaanding.” Though I tried to focus on clearing my thoughts, my inner dialogue initially went more like this:

“Staaaanding. Ooooh, my arm is itchy, DO NOT scratch it. Liiiifting. I think I put these fisherman pants on backwards today. Mooooving. They feel kind of baggy in front, that can’t be right. Dropppping. Yep, definitely backwards. Tuuuuuurning. Well that’s embarrassing. The only farang in here with her pants on backwards. Staaaaanding. Arm is itchy again. DOH! Liffffting….”

Eventually the monk helped correct my tendency to wander mentally and make quick, clumsy movements. This disconnects the mind and body, decreasing self awareness. I began to step as though the floor were peppered with glass, every step a painfully slow exercise in concentration.
Next I tried sitting meditation. Seated straight-backed and cross-legged on a mat, I folded one hand in the other on my lap. With eyes closed, I tried to turn all my attention to the act of breathing. Within ten minutes, my legs began to feel numb. I tried to acknowledge this sensation while remaining motionless. I also had to fight from nodding off, as my sleepless night on the bus was beginning by this point to hit pretty hard. It was difficult but eventually I found myself slipping into a deeper state of consciousness. I no longer felt any desire to move my hands, legs or feet. I could hear the noises and voices in the room around me, but the temptation to let my mind wander and process had dimmed. It was a struggle to stay in this state. At times my brain would spring to life and I had to fight to suppress the onslaught of thoughts. Then I would fade back into the rhythm of my breathing again. After an eternity I heard the sound of bells, a happy twinkling directly ahead. I opened my eyes to see the monk, crouching down to study me with his little weathered face. “Hellloooo…. How are you doing? Did you stay motionless the whole time?” Dazed, I nodded to indicate an affirmative answer. “Good work! You stay still for thirty minutes. Very good job!” I was surprised I had managed to attempt meditation without opening my eyes or moving for that long. For all I knew it could’ve been ten minutes, though my aching hips told me otherwise. The monk’s positive response was encouraging. Up until this point, he had been rather stern and serious, showing little emotion. I purchased a small, thin book on Buddhism, made a donation to the Wat, and vowed to return to practice meditating the following day.

I didn’t return at 6am for a five hour follow-up as the monk had suggested. I did however return after an entire day of visiting Wats around Bankok. I am grateful for my short introduction to Buddhism and meditation, as it helped me to understand some of the philosophy behind these architectural wonders. I returned to Matathat at 6pm, after a day of sightseeing, walking, and wandering. With all the audiovisual sensory stimulation my mind had fragmented into a thousand thoughts and thoughtlets. One thought seemed to spur two more, and so on, so that my brain had become a gnarly tree of tangled thought branches. Inside the coolness of the Wat the monk smiled serenely and led me to an open space of the floor, where a class practiced walking meditation. I joined in and attempted to clear my mind. Gradually I found peace in the repetition, focusing on each individual movement. Nearly two hours later, when I rose from another thirty minutes of sitting meditation, the thought tree had been replaced by a vast calm sea. My breaths were waves, rolling in and out, sustaining, refreshing, renewing.

I am nowhere close to shaving my head and donning white robes to become a Buddhist nun. But I think I learned quite a bit about Buddhist philosophy and meditation at Wat Matathat. Just before stepping out of the peaceful, verdant Wat grounds and into the dirty chaos of the Bangkok streets, I made a resolution: to be more mindful of myself – my thoughts and actions, and of others around me. I’ve carried some burdens on this trip: bad memories, negative thoughts… Within the walls of Matathat I allowed myself to drop these burdens and carry instead a valuable lesson. The world is unpredictable except for the fact that each moment marches on to the next and will continue to do so indefinitely. My past reminds me who I am, my future hovers and motivates. But fixating too much on either belies the value of true mindfulness.

I didn't get any pictures of the monk from Matathat, but he looked a little like this one (from Wat Pho)