Okay, I lost my wallet once too, which probably accounts for my compulsive patting of the pocket to touch my wallet.  Or maybe I just like to know that bad boy is still there.  I didn't lose it while I was traveling, but still.  We were living in Saipan at the time, I was teaching 4th grade.  One day, my wallet grew legs and then up and walked away.  I looked everywhere, but it was gone, gone, gone.  Probably a few hundred dollars gone, credit cards replaced, new insurance cards ordered, new driver's license, forms to fill out explaining how I lost my wallet (I don't know, it's gone, if I knew how and where I lost it, I would go back and find it...)  It was no fun.  Smack dab in the middle of the rainy season, two and a half weeks later, I wandered past my pick up truck parked inside the school grounds.  Hundreds of urchins passed by my truck every day, hundreds, I tell you, hundreds!  The black bed liner of my truck happened to be the same color as my wallet.  And there my wallet sat, cleverly camouflaged, at the bottom of a pool of water in the bed of my truck.  Those darn urchins never peeked in the bed of my truck and found if for me.  I had probably thrown my wallet there after taking my windsurfing gear out to rig to get on the water for a quick sail.  I clearly didn't remember to take it out.  But that's just another notch in my belt to cinch in as I get underway whatever uptight journey I'm on.

And because this blog is about medical tourism in Thailand, here's a story from a monastery in the south of Thailand back in the day for the tourism side of the house.  Pictures to follow...

The Vipassana Romance

When I was just a young man, I spent four months in a Buddhist monastery in Southern Thailand, but not consecutively.  For the first 10 days of each month, participation in an intensive Vipassana (Thai for awareness of the breath) meditation retreat is mandatory.  How intensive, you ask?   It includes the optional early sitting meditation 4:30 - 5:30, 5:30 - 6:30 yoga session, 6:30 - 7:30 sitting meditation, 7:30 - 8:30 breakfast, 8:30 - 9:30 sitting meditation, 9:30 - 10:30 walking meditation, 10:30 - 11:30 sitting meditation, 11:30 - 12:30 walking meditation, 1:30 - 2:30 sitting meditation, 2:30 - 3:30 walking meditation, 3:30 - 4:30 sitting meditation, 4:30 - 5:30, tea and a very, very, very light snack, 5:30 - 6:30, a talk given by a monk on Dharma, or Buddhist philosophy and teachings, then 6:30 - 7:30 walking meditation and finally, a 7:30 - 8:30 sitting meditation.  Whew!  In my older age, it exhausts me just thinking about it.  When you add it all up, it is a minimum of 10 hours of meditation a day.

     Just to add a little bit of background, at these retreats, there is one meal a day (in the morning, prepared and served by an older lady that everyone called the Dragon Lady - if she liked you, you might get an extra dollop of curry on your rice) and seconds, if she would allow it, were highly recommended.  Talking is not allowed, and of course, there is no smoking or drinking or killing any living thing, including the clouds of mosquitoes that dive bomb you as you meditate, or do anything.  The monastery (Wat Suan Moke) is set in the jungle and the mosquitoes are as big as flies and as plentiful as Mitt Romney supporters in Utah.  The mosquitoes?  You're supposed to brush them off with 'loving kindness.'  And yes, I exercised a little less than 'loving kindness' on more than few of those blood sucking bastards.   Essentially, it's just you and your precious little thoughts for 10 days.  Now there can be a couple of funny things about meditation retreats.  I like what an American monk referred to as 'the Vipassana romance."  The whole point of meditation is focus your mind on one thing, whether it is your breath, a candle, your entire body; the trick is not to let your mind wander and think of other things, for example, finances, the itch on your nose, how the curry was too hot this morning or the hot girl meditating next to you, breathing in and out, in and out.  Quite a trick.  Like anything else, you get better with practice.  And hey, it's not my fault the curry was to hot that morning, or a mosquito just bit me on the nose (which, although I wanted to squash, I brushed off with loving kindness) or the girl meditating right next to me is well, meditating right next to me, breathing in, breathing out, in and out...whoooooo hooooooo!   Oh, did I forget to mention that any kind of sexual activity was not allowed?  Ahh, this is where the notion of a Vipassana romance comes in.  The monk told a story about when he was doing a Zen retreat in Japan and was facing a wall and to his back, another woman was facing a wall in the opposite direction, meditating for obscene amounts of hours in a day.  Obscene, I tell you, obscene!  It seems as if their minds weren't always focused on what they were supposed to be focused on, which I guess is the essence of a Vipassana romance - letting the mind wander to the thoughts of the girl meditating next to you, or even all the way across the room, if you're a really good meditator.  After the retreat, he approached her, told her he had deep loving thoughts about them being together, getting married, meditating together, having little meditating children (I think he was a bit of a naughty meditator, personally) and she said, "Oh my God, I had the exact same thoughts...about the guy sitting next to me!"  It crushed him.  Maybe that was the turning point for him that led to him ordaining as a Buddhist monk in Thailand.  My point is that it's quite hard to focus  your mind on just one thing for such a long time.  With the exception of your Vipassana romance.  It seems pretty easy to focus on that.

     And it is a long time.  At least 10 hours a day.  How do you know when it's time for yoga in the morning?  When it's time to switch to a walking meditation?  The bell rings - softly - to let you know it's time to switch things up.  One participant in the retreat is assigned to be the bell ringer for the duration of the 10 days and has to gently hit the oxygen bottle hanging from the tree with a piece of wood.   We wouldn't want to jar anyone's thoughts away from the girl meditating next to  him now, would we?  After 3 retreats, the monks had approached me to be the bell ringer for the 4th retreat.  I had been there for a while and learned quite a bit, so I agreed.  Clearly, they thought, I could have a Vipassana romance, I mean focus with the best of them for 55 minutes and then gently ring the bell.  

     As I said before, meditation is hard.  It is difficult to focus the mind on one thing for extended periods of time.  Where does the mind wander?   What do you think of?  Aside from fixating on your Vipassana romance, let me tell you  what one absolutely universal mind wandering thought is at retreats:  "When the hell is that damn bell going to ring?"  Yes, we're all making progress, learning about ourselves, concentrating, discovering things like, "Oh, so THAT'S why I compulsively pat my pocket to see if my wallet is still there.  It's all clear now!"  But make no mistake, everyone, at some point during the retreat, wonders when the bell is going to be rung.  In the 55th minute, if your thoughts are not totally consumed by your Vipassana romance and thoughts of where you and your hot meditating wife and little children will live, you may perhaps start directing your thoughts at the bell ringer, quietly at first...ring the bell...ring the bell...look at your watch...loooook at your watch...it must be past time now...RING THAT DAMN BELL  you finally scream in your mind.  I'm sure that the really silly folks must have had the song Ring my bell, ring my bell ohh hooo ding a ling a ling going through their heads, but not a serious guy like me, oh no.

     Well, as the bell ringer, now I was sitting on the other side of the fence, so to speak.  And yes, you can feel the thoughts being directed at you.  Your friends peek, look at you pleadingly, you can almost hear them, "Please ring the bell Alan.   Ring that damn bell.  I'll buy you a beer after the retreat if you ring it now."  I can swear I heard that precise thought a few times.  You look at your watch, look at them and shake your head once, almost imperceptibly, perhaps wiping your face with two fingers showing, indicating that they have two more minutes to go before the glorious release:  the gentle sound of wood against the oxygen cylinder.  Ding.  Ding.  Ding.  And here's the dirty secret I've been carrying around for so long:  I once rang the bell 5 minutes early.  I guess the sound of ring my bell  was running through someone else's head so long and hard that I caved in and rung it baby.  Ding!