Introduction
It was already well past midnight. I sat on top of the wall and looked down. The tall pine trees from inside the grounds gave me plenty of cover in the darkness, yet I couldn’t resist the urge to look back one last time to see if I’d been followed. How had it come to this? I looked down again. It was just over 12 feet to the pavement. It may not sound that high but, crouching in a flimsy pair of sandals and my night clothes, the thought of jumping made me wince. What was I thinking wearing sandals? I’d tucked them into my trouser bottoms as I crept through the monastery, trying not to wake any of the other monks. I’d gone to the monastery to contemplate life, and yet here I was scaling its walls and contemplating my sandals as I prepared to jump back into the world.
It was never meant to be this way. I’d trained as a Buddhist monk before, and in much more challenging environments. But other monasteries had exuded a warmth, a kind and caring approach to what can only be described as a challenging, yet very fulfilling, way of life. This one had felt different though. It was a Buddhist monastery like no other. Locked in, day and night, surrounded by high stone walls and with no way of contacting anyone on the outside, at times it had felt more like a prison. I had no one to blame but myself of course, after all I’d gone there of my own free will. It’s just that traditionally monasticism is a little different from the Mafia. It’s not usually the case that once you become a monk, that’s it, for life, with no way out. In fact on the contrary, Buddhist monasteries are known and respected for their tolerance and compassion. So how I’d ended up doing a bunk over a 12-foot wall to get away from one was a mystery really.
It had all started a few years earlier, when I made the decision to pack up and head off to Asia to become a monk. I was at university at the time, studying Sports Science. It may sound like a dramatic change in lifestyle, but it felt like one of the easiest decisions I’d ever made. Understandably, my friends and family were slightly more apprehensive than I was, perhaps wondering if I’d finally lost my mind, but all of them were none the less supportive. It was a different story at university, however. On hearing the news, my head of year suggested that a trip to see the doctor for some Prozac might be a more sensible option. As well meaning as he might have been, I couldn’t help thinking he was missing the point. Did he really think I was going to find the type of happiness and fulfilment I was after in a bottle of prescription medicine? As I walked out the door of his office he said, ‘Andy, you’ll regret this decision for the rest of your life.’ As it turns out, it happens to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Now you may be wondering what kind of person suddenly decides one day to head off to Asia and become a Buddhist monk. Perhaps you’re imagining a ‘self-medicating’ student who’d lost his way, or a ‘creative type’ with the desire to rebel against a consumerist society. But the reality was actually far more mundane. At the time I just really struggled with my mind. Not in a straightjacket kind of way you understand, but I struggled with the endless thinking. It felt as if my mind was permanently switched on, going round and round like a washing machine. Some of the thoughts I liked. A lot of the thoughts I didn’t like. The same was true of the emotions. As if a ‘busy head’ wasn’t enough, I felt as though I was always drifting into unnecessary worry, frustration and sadness. They were quite ordinary levels of emotion, but they had a tendency to spin off out of control every now and then. And when they did, there was nothing I could do about it. It felt as though I was at the mercy of these feelings and would get blown around by them. On a good day, everything was fine. But on a bad day, it felt like my head would explode.
Given the strength of feeling, the desire to train the mind was never far from my thoughts. I had no idea how to do it properly, but I’d come into contact with meditation at a very early age and knew that it offered a potential solution. Now I wouldn’t want you to think that I was some kind of child prodigy, and spent my teenage years sitting cross-legged on the floor, because that’s most definitely not the case. I didn’t take up the full-time study of meditation until I was twenty-two, but my first moment of headspace that I experienced at the age of eleven most definitely became a marker for what was possible. I’d love to say that it was a yearning to understand the meaning of life that motivated me to sign up for that first meditation class, but the truth is I went because I didn’t want to feel left out. My parents had just separated and, looking for a way to cope, Mum had signed up for a six-week course. Seeing as my sister was going, I asked if I could go along too.
I guess I just got lucky the first time I tried it. I didn’t have any expectations, so couldn’t project any hopes or fears on the experience. Even at that age it’s hard to ignore the change in the quality of mind that meditation can bring about. I’m not sure I’d ever experienced a quiet mind before then. I’d certainly never sat still in one place for such a long period of time. The problem of course was when I didn’t get the same experience the next time I tried, or the time after that, I started to get very frustrated. In fact, it was as if the harder I tried to relax, the further I moved away from a place of relaxation. So this was how my meditation began, battling with my mind and getting increasingly frustrated.
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