June 21 to July 1 - 10 day Buddhism/Meditation retreat at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu

10 day retreat - June 21 to July 1

Here's or schedule and rules:

Kopan Monastery – A Center for Buddhist Studies

10 day Course Schedule

First day

3.00 pm                Check in

5.00 pm                Tea in dining room

5.30 pm                                Introductory session

6.30 pm                                Dinner

7.30 pm                                Meditation

Subsequent 7 days

6.15 am                                Morning bell

6.45 am                                Meditation

7.30 am                                Breakfast

9.15 am                                Teachings

11.30 am             Lunch

2. 00 pm              Discussion Groups

3.00 pm                                Break

3.30 pm                                Teachings

5.00 pm                                Tea

5.45 pm                                Meditation

6.30 pm                                Dinner

7.30 pm                                Q&A and Meditation

2 Day Silent Retreat

Last day

6.30 am                Meditation

7.30am                 Breakfast

10.00 am             Last teaching

11.30am               Lunch

12.30 pm             Check-out from Kopan if you are leaving.

Please ensure you attend all sessions. Be there at least five minutes early. 

If you are sick you must inform the course leader, either in person or by note.  If you leave a note, give your name and room number so we can check on you.  There is a clinic available, ask in the office. 

Please remember you are in a monastery and dress appropriately – long shorts only, no tank tops, no see through blouses or dresses (see our Dress Code).

All electronic gadgets, including mobile phones connect to the internet have to be checked in at the reception at the start of the course.

No smoking, no alcohol inside the monastery grounds. Please note that you will be asked to leave if you are found to break this rule

For problems with your accommodation, check with the reception after lunch. 

By participating in this course you have agreed to NOT engage in:  killing, stealing, lying, intoxicants, sexual conduct and playing music. 

We thank you for your co-operation.

         We decided to go to Kopan after being interested in an introduction to Buddhism course at Tushita, where I had been taking advantage of free meditation classes.  They had a waiting list and Meg heard that it could be long and it wasn't for sure that we could get in.  The same person said that Kopan in Kathmandu was part of teh same organization as Tushita but was larger and more likely to have space.  She was right and we knew we loved Kathmandu so we booked everything.

         Arrival was laid back and all of our electronics and non-dharma reading materials were placed in a safe along with our passports and other valuables.  A side effect of having everyone hand in their phones was that I became a very useful commodity with my wristwatch when people wondered what time it was.  From throwback to guru! 

         Our rooms were basic but clean and we were surprised to find that Meg and I were beside each other.  On the website they said that couples should stay apart, dine with other and be in different discussion groups but here we were, side by side.  Meg was worried about the quiet periods and was already formulating a complex set of miming signals to bypass their rules, but it turned out that the staff were not interested in heavy enforcement, it doesn't seem to be part of the Buddhist way.

         There were about 80 of us in a facility that could hold more than twice that number so dinners and teaching sessions were not crowded.  Silence was to be observed from 10 pm until after lunch and for the final two days.  Some people opted to stay silent the entire time and wore yellow badges so that others would avoid chatting with them.  Almost all of the participants were foreigners, the Dutch were heavily represented ( but 6 Canadians were there) females outnumbered males and the age curve skewed young.  We weren't the oldest ones there but we were close.

         We had three leaders: Tony, an Australian guy was the main teacher, Katy, another Australian, was our meditation leader and Tsering was a Tibetan monk who did afternoon teachings most days.  Most people sat on cushions on the floor but there were chairs available which became more and more popular as the week wore on.  The main hall was elaborately decorated with bright colours and golden Buddhas all over the place. It could get hot and stuffy and the windows were open to mosquitoes, which were well represented at Kopan.

         The food was quite good with lunch generally being the largest meal.  It was laid out buffet style and was really heavy on the carbs.  One meal was potato curry with rice and bread.  Fresh fruit was served about every other day and people pounced on it as it was less than what most of us were used to.  The breakfast usually was a hot cereal but i was able to eat it as it didn't have the wallpaper paste texture that I don't like in most porridge.  Another hit was their homemade peanut butter which often had a crowd around it and was truly excellent, they should sell the stuff.  The milk tea at breakfast and at break was equally delicious.  After losing weight for much of the trip, we both felt we packed on some extra pounds at Kopan due to tasty food in buffet style and a lack of physical activity.

         On site were a store for supplies (toilet paper was not provided), a cafe, a book store and library, well-tended gardens, many small temples and lots of residence space for monks.  Apparently the women and girls were further down the hill and the school on our part of tehe site were for males only.  There was a monk on our floor of the residence and I was worried when he was up late one night chanting loudly but he turned out to be friendly and gave me encouragement when I was getting a frog out of the shower for Meg.  They had exams while we were there and so were very busy but the kids on site were running and playing all over the place until 9:30, presumably their bedtime, when the activity suddenly stopped.

         On a normal day one student in our group would go around at 6:15 ringing the wake up bell.  The monk kids got up at 5:15 so we were often well awake by the time the bell got there.  We had a meditation session at 6:45.  These would vary from concentration meditations where you focused on your breath and clearing your mind, to guided meditations where you would be led through visualization and thinking concepts through, to teachings where we had our eyes closed.  Katy was very precise and consistent, coached us through the obvious difficulties we were having and would heartily congratulate us on our progress.

         The morning teachings were led by Tony, who was more rambling than Katy and often mumbled while he went on tangents.  At first he was hard to follow but the anecdotes from his life were interesting and often illustrated points on Buddhist philosophy when they were just entertaining in a rambling way.  He was also the one to really explore the philosophy and theology with us.  We figured that they had two foreigners to work with us because they would be more attuned to the beginner mindset.  At one point Tony described the process of identifying the current Dalai Lama and then said that the whole story might be a complete crock if you chose not to believe it.  They all acknowledged the difficulty many of us had with samsara and reincarnation but plugged away at the concepts as the philosophy and theology are ultimately intertwined.

         Tsering was very likable and we laughed quite hard during his sessions.  He was very self-conscious about his English abilities so we felt that he oversimplified what he was discussing.  When he spoke about his experiences and feelings we could see that he had done lots of thinking about how people live their lives.  When he felt the need to cover the curriculum he would often just read lists out of our coursebook and agree with the ideas and call them important.  He was a super nice guy but I can't say that I learned a whole lot from him.

         The course covered a lot of the basics of Buddhism, if you're interested the Dalai Lama's book Ancient Wisdom, Modern World was a good introduction for me, straightforward and almost aimed at atheists.  In my discussion group everyone was skeptical about reincarnation but had different levels of spirituality.  One was an American with roots in native culture and most other had taken other courses and felt benefits from the teachings and meditation.  It was interesting to openly discuss Buddhist concepts and spirituality as they're subjects that aren't easily brought up in most groups and are often talked about in superficial and flaky terms.  These were smart people who had done a lot of thinking and action about life.  Also, it was refreshing to discuss a religion that was fine with having its fundamentals questions, where belief as a black and white dichotomy but a continuum where everyone was seeking to find their place on.

         One issue that came up was a bunch of the younger participants went up on top of a hill and had a bull session well after midnight and were asked nicely to stop.  After a second night of this, the stern course coordinator came in and gave the whole group a talking to.  This whole thing felt very high school and it was interesting that a group of supposed adults needed this to be dealt with.  It made us feel young to be included with such stuff (though we weren't on the hill).

         Another issue that came up was that one participant's ex-girlfriend had fallen 9 stories in China and miraculously survived.  She was there without insurance, however, and wasn't coming out of hospital anytime soon.  The Chilean community had rallied support but we were asked to help both financially and in our prayers.  When the help link was posted the temple keeper took it down, supposedly because he thought her picture was just posted because she was pretty.  The issue became a bit of a focal point for our group, although I remain dubious that focusing our meditation energy in her direction helped much.  At least it didn't hurt her.

         The people there were really interesting and we tried to sit with different people for tea and dinner, when we could speak.  Age, nationality and background were no impediment and we didn't get a chance to speak to everyone in the group of 70.  The people on the hill were kind of cliqued up but everyone else would welcome you at there table and conversations would go on well after the food was finished.

         The quiet meals were nice as well.  At breakfast I would put my food on a railing and eat and drink while watching the village and school below, with the fields and mountains in the distance. It allowed you to slow down and appreciate your surroundings and get lots of reading done.  I got into good habits of doing all of my stretches, flossing etc. with the extra time that you spent in silence.  Needless to say, these habits have fallen apart since leaving Kopan.

         One night we saw a movie about a revered monk who died and the search for his reincarnation.  It was interesting enough and definitely shown to get us to take reincarnation seriously.  The boy was currently at Kopan and the monastery was featured in the film.  Seeing a family give up their son was a little wrenching and they had another boy who was a reincarnation.  Mom has had 6 other kids so I guess she's busy enough with visiting privileges on the two monk boys.

         An interesting part of the film was watching the monks sift through the ashes of the cremated monk and find pearl-shaped relics.  These are explained by being formed in the heart by virtuous monks but other body parts are involved too.

         Towards the end of our stay we went up to a reliquary room which had all of the bits recovered from the monk in the movie and another.  There weer the pearl bits and other things that looked like molten metal.  Bits of tongue and hair that survived the burning were displayed and little bowls full of bits filled the room.  Some were apparently still growing after death and we were told that this stuff was just a sample and other bits were in various other places.  i don't know if there is any scientific explanation, my understanding is that ash and bone fragments are what's  left after cremation.  It was as creepy and weird as a Catholic reliquary, just in a different way.

         The two silent days were going to be the toughest and the second one was on our anniversary!  On those days all of he sessions were listed as being meditation but several of them were teachings where we were asked to keep our eyes closed.  My meditation got much better by the end of it but late in each day my brain was telling me how tired it was.  Katie kept coming back to the same visualization of Buddha in a forest nook and so I just worked on my concentration when that one came up.  We noticed that the teachings became more dogmatic about the reincarnation thing as if they felt the need to do a hard-sell on it.  In the end, about a dozen participants decided to take refuge by becoming Buddhist and attended a closed ceremony on the final day.  Meg and I passed on the opportunity.

         The grounds on the site weer a real plus.  They had well-tended gardens around the stupas which were always a pleasure to walk through.  Flower beds dotted the ground and you could see that a large group of locals were hired to keep them looking good.  There was lots to notice when you were trying to clear your mind of worldly annoyances.  On one of the last days the garden was full of clouds of dragonflies, which gave the place a magical feel.

         One day I was in a gazebo enjoying the view when I became part of a strange game involving a bunch of young monks.  They were telling me in English how bad the other members of their group were because they were always fighting and being bad in class.  They wee enjoying acting out the bad deeds they were accusing their cohorts of and were laughing in the spirit of the absurd game.  Even when they're wearing monks' robes, kids are still kids.

         As with any set of rules, the ones that we were given did not go unbroken.  They told us not to be rule cops and just ignore our classmates when they broke them and we were not heavily policed ourselves.  Eye contact was hard to avoid and speaking made sense during quiet times rather than absurd miming that would be more distracting than your voice.  I mentioned the group on the hill and some of that crew seemed to be paired up and we wouldn't have been surprised if conjugal visits occurred.  One violation that I was guilty of was the killing one as the site was awash with nature and if a mosquito is buzzing me at 2 am I'm going to take care of it.  I never said I wasn't a lousy Buddhist.

         On the last night as we broke our silence we had a nice candle ceremony where everyone shared candles purchased from the shop, lit them and placed them in a circle around a fountain in the garden.  e then were led in a few chants and just enjoyed the moment, our first real chance to speak in two days.

         The last day felt added on as the instructors saught closure and Tony addressed topics requested by the group that he hadn't had time to fit  in yet (still not 100% sure that I get emptiness).  Lunch was spent trying to touch base with everyone we had befriended over the time and promising to keep in touch, the usual.  Unfortunately, the notebook I had been scribbling in the whole time was left and forgotten outside the lunch room and no one found it, so these notes are just from memory.  The world is certainly a poorer place by having my insights misplaced.

         Overall it was an intriguing experience that I think we're still processing.  We've been trying to squeeze meditation in but I think once we get back into a routine we'll keep it going because we've gotten better at it and it does give benefits.  Neither of us are keen believers i n the theology but I admire the elegance with which it meshes with the philosophy.  Since then, there have been many stressful times where we refer back to Kopan to reframe our reactions to what it happening, and its a useful process.  It also really helps that we did it together so that we can each nag the other and we know some of the terms and moments we are referring to.  The program costs next to nothing for a westerner, exposes you to experiences and ideas, attracts really interesting people, is in a beautiful location and is not a hard sell of religion.  Check out https://kopanmonastery.com/ if you are least bit interested.

A poster of one of the reliquary monks.  On the poster in circles are the bits that survived burning and the small picture to the left is of the boy who was chosen as his reincarnation.

The light ceremony where we broke our silence.

The view of a nearby monastery from the cafeteria patio.