The Monastery

To start - I didn't become a Monk, just a Layman. But there were Laymen from Canada, Germany, USA, Malaysia, Australia, Estonia, Brasil and France. Some came for a week, a month or more. Some came with the ambition to become a monk. IT would take a year and a half to become a monk and before that you are a novice. There were 4 novice and around 25 Monks. We had to follow the routines as laymen and I will go thru that. There is a strong hierarcy in the Monastry and when you arrived and how long you've stayed gave you the rank!
Most Laymen had shaved their heads, but I didn't have to do it!!!!! So My hair is stil there!
The Monastry was beatifully located in a forrest and the buildings were perfectly embedded. We were sleeping in dorms and on a blanket on a wooden floor with a moscito net. That was hard, but suffering is one of the things a monk must endure. The other hard thing was that we had to sit on the floor, sometimes on a carpet, but never on a chair, so my knees hurted. The Meal was also eaten sitting on the hard floor. But, all this was bearable!
It has been a great experience - a lot of meditation in the big SALA! Unfortunatly for me there is a great event tomorrow on Monday so a lot of normal activities this week was cancelled, but we had both normal meditation and walking meditation, and I feel like it has made a great change for me!
The normal day was getting up at 3am for a chanting and so it was the first days, but they cancelled it becauce of the event. So, we went up at 4 am and did a Meditation until 5 am. After that the Monks were cleaning the big Sala and we were sweeping the foot paths and parking etc until 6 am about.

After that we had a short rest - the Monks went out to the villages for alms-ronds to get the food, and one morning I had the priviledge to follow them. They walked bare-foot on asfalt roads for about 45 minutes every day, and in the villages the men, women and sometimes children were sitting on their knees giving each Monk the same amount of rice, eggs, cake, vegetables, etc. It was very nice to see this and help the Monks. It was dark when we left but under the walk the dawn came with the sun.

At 7 we started to sort out the food with help from local people. It was a lot of food, especially on Sundays! When we were ready with the food a novice gave the plate to a Monk, who placed in on the long table in a surtain order. At 8 am, 4 hour after getting up, the bell was ringing for the morning chanting and everybody was sitting in the big hall in a surtain order!
After that the Monks took their bowls and walked out, followed by the novices and then us laymen (in order as we had arrived here) The Monks were eating in the big Sala with the Buddha and we had to sit in a special area in the kitchen. This was the only meal we got!
After this we had some free time to do meditation, rest or walking in the forrest! Walking in the beatiful forrest was very relaxing and so was the meditation! We normally had some other tasks during the day and at 4.30 we had drinks together with the Monks. It was soft drinks, coke, tea, hot chocolate and other drinks. Some evenings a Monks made a speach and especially one evening he was talking about happiness! Very interesting! The long term goal for a buddhist is the Nirvana and to reach it with a long lasting happiness was one of the goals!

Buddhism is one of few spiritual "religions" that never used war to expand their thoughts!!!!