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.
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| 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. |
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| The light ceremony where we broke our silence. |
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| The view of a nearby monastery from the cafeteria patio. |
