A Vipassana retreat in Chiang Mai

I recently went on a six-day Vipassana retreat in a Buddhist monastery in Northern Thailand.

The experience was a good one, if rather different from what I was expecting. Vipassana retreats have a reputation for being extremely strict environments, where you wake up at the crack of dawn, meditate for hours a day and aren't allowed to speak, read or use digital devices. 

The particular monastery I went to, Wat Sopharam, takes a far more relaxed approach. The monastery and temple have existed for 250 years, but the "International Vipassana Meditation Centre" was only established in 2018. Outsiders can come and stay for as long as they wish, as long as they ask in advance and there are rooms available. The stay is free, as is the case with most Vipassana retreats in Thai monasteries. You can leave a donation, but there is no pressure to do so. 

The monastery is located in a rural area on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. I took a taxi there from the city, which took about an hour. The taxi dropped me off next to the monastery's living quarters, at the bottom of a hill. On my arrival, a young man who seemed to be in charge of the logistics came and greeted me. He showed me to my room, which was fairly basic, including just a bed with a thin mattress, a plastic chair and a mat for meditation. It was, however, equipped with an air conditioning unit. There appeared to be no concern about leaving the room unlocked, although I eventually requested and received a key.

After leaving my things in the room, I was taken to meet a monk in saffron robes. The monk didn't look at all Thai, and he turned out to be Russian. The monastery houses at least two foreign monks, this Russian and an Iranian, as well as dozens of Thai monks. It is apparently possible for foreigners who choose so to stay and become monks without too much difficulty. The Russian monk led me up the hill, on the two-minute walk from the dorms to the monastery proper. The area at the top of the hill contained a temple, a chedi (the Thai word for a stupa) and a pavilion where monks gather to chant and perform ceremonies. 

I was taken to the room used to teach the "international meditators", as foreign guests are called. I noticed that the room had a DIY air purifier, the only one I saw anywhere in Chiang Mai. This was welcome, because the air quality was quite poor the whole time I was there. Unfortunately January to April is the "burning season" in Northern Thailand, when farmers burn their crops, and it is also the dry season so there is no precipitation to clean up the air. The AQI on most days hovered close to 200, like a polluted day in Beijing.

The monk then gave me an initial introduction to Vipassana meditation, during which he told me about the distinction between Samatha and Vipassana. While Vipassana is an ancient concept, the modern Vipassana movement started among Buddhists in Burma in the 19th century as an attempt to modernise Buddhism. In Vipassana retreats you generally practice two forms of meditation, one walking and one sitting, during which you respectively focus on your steps and on your breath. The walking meditation also ensures that people get some form of exercise, rather than sitting still all day. The monk lead me through five minutes of each kind of meditation.

While most Vipassana retreats include hours of group meditation a day, in this particular monastery everything is quite lax. There is normally group meditation at 4 pm, but the person who leads it was not around while I was there, so it did not take place. The only scheduled activity while I was there was a class on meditation at 10.30 am every day, which usually started around 15-20 minutes late. The first day I missed the class, because I arrived exactly on time and found no one there, so I supposed it had been cancelled. 

The monastery was very Thai in this way: things tended to start late, and everything was unpredictable and subject to unannounced changes. The Russian monk had warned me of this on the first day. He said visitors from certain nationalities find it hard to get used to the chaos, but eventually people learn to live with the uncertainty and go with the flow.

The classes were all given in English by the monastery's abbot, a youthful man of about 40. While his English was not incredibly fluent, he always managed to get his point across. Given that the international meditators kept coming and going, there was always a mix of new students and ones who had already sat through many of the abbot's classes. Somehow the abbot managed to give a different class every day, covering exactly the same content but from a different angle each time.  

I could see why the man was the abbot; he was witty, personable, and exuded an air of authority. He appeared to be highly revered by everyone at the monastery. He encouraged us to seek him and ask him any questions we had at any time. I approached him one day during lunch, telling him that I still had some trouble understanding the principles of Vipassana meditation. He beckoned me to sit at his table, and did his best to answer my questions while the other monks listened.

Unlike what you might expect at a Vipassana retreat, there was no prohibition on talking at the monastery. We had badges in our rooms saying "silent" in English and Thai, which we could wear if we wanted to let people know that we didn't want to be spoken to, but I only ever saw one person wear one. The orientation guide encouraged us not to enter each other's rooms and reminded us that we weren't here to socialise, but there were no strictly enforced prohibitions.

In practice, I only really talked to people at mealtimes. In the canteen, the "international meditators" all sat at one table. The food was not vegetarian, as those who have spent time in temples in India might assume. It was simple Thai food, nutritious and appetising enough. The monks only ate at breakfast and lunch, since they follow the Buddhist injunction not to eat from noon until dawn of the next day. The rest of us ate in the evenings too. Some tables were reserved for the monks, and some of the best food was also set aside for them. The rest went to us and to the monastery's children, who often come from troubled families and have been sent there to study as monks. Only some of them actually go on to become monks, apparently, while many return to the lay world when they get older.

The other international meditators were an interesting bunch. They came and went, some only staying a handful of days and some staying for weeks or longer. Among others, I met an older French man who's spent ten years in Thailand and speaks good Thai, an American girl who was volunteering at the monastery teaching English to the kids, a slightly neurotic Ukrainian young man, a friendly Australian hippy who believed Covid to be a conspiracy and told me that the hardest thing about being in the monastery was not being able to smoke hash, and a guy from Novosibirsk who had heard about the monastery from the Russian monk and spoke virtually no English or Thai. There were travellers from Brazil, Israel and Europe spending short spells at the monastery while they took a break from their globetrotting. There were also a few Thais retreating there.

Outside of mealtimes, there was little to do but meditate, read and go to class in the mornings. I tried to increase the amount of time I meditated by the day, but as a beginner I could not manage more than a couple of hours without break. I did go for a few walks in the local area, but the presence of unfriendly dogs made this seem rather risky. Electronic devices were not prohibited, like they are in stricter Vipassana retreats; in fact the monastery had wi-fi, although it did not reach my room. But in any case I did not open my laptop or read the news while I was there, which I found quite liberating. I did use my phone, but I made a rule of not initiating conversations with anyone and only replying to messages in the morning after waking up, and I generally stuck to it. 

Photos of the living quarters

Life in the monastery was fairly spartan, but not uncomfortable once you got used to it. The bathrooms were in outdoor sheds, and there was no hot water in the showers (in Thailand this is considered a luxury), but I found that taking cold showers in the heat of the afternoon was quite bearable.

At night I went to bed no later than 10, since there was nothing to do, and getting up in time for breakfast at 7.30 was never a problem. The monastery's bells ring at 4.45 am every morning, and the monks meet at 5 to chant, but fortunately we were not expected to join. At 6.30 the monks go on their morning alms round, walking around the local area and receiving donations of food from the residents. On my first day at the monastery I joined them, beckoned by the friendly Iranian monk.

The alms round I joined worked like this: three monks walked around with little metallic bowls to collect the donations. In front of them walked a layperson, in this case a child, banging a drum to alert people that the monks are coming. At the back there walked another layperson, in this case me, wheeling a big basket in which the monks place their donations when their bowls fill up. 

We walked around for about an hour, and by the end my basket had become pretty heavy. At every house we stopped, the residents gave the monks their donations and then got on their knees and placed their hands in prayer as the monks chanted their blessings. Not knowing Thai and not being a Buddhist I did not join in the chants, but I tried to stand respectfully at the back.

The monastery is clearly a focal point of community life in the area. On one of the days I was there I had the chance to see a ceremony for the full moon, an important part of Thai and Buddhist culture. A lot of local people came to the monastery to join in the evening chants, and then seek the abbot's blessing. After the chanting was over there was a dance performance held by local women in front of the monastery's chedi, as a Buddhist stupa is known in Thailand.

After the performance everyone, monks and lay people alike, circled the chedi clockwise, holding lanterns and chanting. Finally, dozens of Thailand's characteristic sky lanterns were released into the night sky, quite a sight to behold. The lanterns floated up until you could barely see them anymore. Apparently there is a concern in Thailand that they could be dangerous for airplanes, although no sky lantern has yet brought down a plane.

I had to leave the monastery after only six days, due to work-related obligations. On my final morning I left a donation. No one pressured me to do so, or even mentioned it. I asked the kitchen staff what I should do, and they gave me an envelope and said I could simply slip it into the donations box in the canteen with some money inside. No one knew how much I donated, or seemed to care. I then went and said goodbye to the abbot and the other meditators. 

While I am not a Buddhist or a follower of any organised religion, I found the willingness of the monks to allow people from all over the world to stay in their monastery for little apparent material reward, simply for the sake of spreading the Dharma as they see it, rather admirable. I have certainly never spent such a lot of time meditating, or alone with my thoughts, as I did in the six days I spent in Wat Sopharam. It was refreshing, and the effect lasted long after I had left the monastery and Chiang Mai for bustling Bangkok. 

A road in the surroundings of the temple