Buddhist Meditation and The Rain

So, right now in Cambodia it is supposedly the dry season, but the past few afternoons it has clouded over a 3 o’clock on the dot, and has rained at least two evenings now. I was fine with it, until the other night when I went with three other volunteers to Wat Lang Ka for free meditation in the beautiful temple.

We hopped in a tuk tuk (a little carriage pulled by a motorbike) because it is kind of far away from our apartment, and the sky was looking a little iffy. When we got to the door of the temple, I stopped short. There were a few people already meditating, sitting on little, round, deep purple cushions in the center of these saffron and orange mats in front of a towering, serene Buddha . To be honest, it looked like something straight out of National Geographic and for a second I was speechless. I had no idea what to do, and none of my cohorts were moving either. I guess we stopped just long enough, because a monk noticed us and came over, asking if we had ever meditated in the Buddhist style before. Since none of us had, he asked us to get mats and cushions, and meet him on the balcony just outside the temple for a preliminary lesson. We tiptoed into the temple, chose rich colored mats and cushions, and sat down outside. In the distance, we could see a storm coming in, and as the monk was explaining how to practice meditation, the sky was flashing with bolts of lighting behind his head. It was so surreal to be learning how to meditate, from an honest to goodness Buddhist monk, in the middle of Cambodia, while there the sky was full of lightening – it just seemed to be straight out of a novel.

Once we knew the basics, he let us practice on our own for about a half an hour. Personally, I had a really hard time: my entire right leg, from hip to tips of the toes fell completely asleep, so I didn’t give it much of a chance. (But I am going to go back!) We had to go a little before the hour ended or we would be late for dinner, but by the time we were leaving, the storm had reached us and it was pouring. The Independence Monument is all lit up at night, and there was so much water coming from the sky that if you looked at the monument lights you could see waves of water in the air when the wind blew. It was crazy: within five seconds of stepping out from under the overhang of the temple we were all soaked to the bone. We ran to where we had entered the temple grounds, but found that the gate had been shut and locked while we were inside, so we then proceeded to splash our way around the entire temple looking for an open gate. When we finally found one, we hoped there would be a tuk tuk right there, because usually they are everywhere, but because it was raining so hard, all of the tuk tuk drivers were hidden away. By the time we found our way out of the temple compound and found a tuk tuk driver, we litterally could not have been any wetter if we had just jumped into a lake with all of our clothes on.

The whole thing was quite an adventure, to say the least.