My stay with a monk

Amongst my travels, the 4-day stay with a monk in Malaysia must count as one of the most memorable. I intended to spend the time blissing out and meditating but it was not to be. The initial telephone call to establish contact with the monk promises a place high on a mountain where I will awake to the smell of fresh air.

The first surprise came when my cab reached the place - a small knob of a hill. I asked the cab driver whether he has made a mistake. He shook his head, no. At this point in time, the monk, all smiles, came forward to greet me.

He ushered me to his house where a TV was blaring aloud the latest entertainment. I thought a monk is supposed to take a precept not to indulge in entertainment. Apparently not this monk. The monk would give the excuse "Let's relax by watching some news, we must always be well-informed", when it was always the latest cook show or hosting program that we ended up watching.

Then we fasted for one whole day, or more precisely, 35 hours. I was painfully keeping count. We ended the fast with a huge breakfast of fruits and a big bowl of lime water, hoping to flush out the toxins. It worked its magic wonderfully. I dashed to the toilet seven times in all. At the end of it all, I glanced up at the mirror to admire the shine of my skin from the detoxification... or was that... just sweat?

There was also this time that we recited 8000 times of "om pu long sa". I have no idea what it means, except that it is a mantra of some sort. At the end of 8000 times, he finally told me that I have recited it wrongly and corrected me. But after the subconscious mind have taken 8000 blows of the same message, I kept reverting back to the wrong pronunciation.

Exasperated, he looked at me and said that all the meditation seemed to have made me more stupid. He cited a study with the theory that if you mingled around with stupid people, you will start to take on some of the same characteristics. At this point, I egged him on by saying that I have indeed spent some time earlier working with the intellectually disabled to which he nodded vigorously that it must be that then. At least he kept a distance from me for a while after that.

I told him that I was jobless and he took that to imply that I was there for a free lunch, with breakfast and dinner thrown in for good measure. Intending to make me work for it, I would get called in the midst of my meditation to sweep and mop the floor, mow the grass, clean up the dung of his dogs. To his credit, he worked hard too, just not the part about cleaning the dung. That is for my privilege.

Then there will be pointed remarks about how much the food cost or how much the insect repellent that I was applying cost. On the last day, I finally handed him a red packet, which I have intended to give him from the start. Receiving it with a look of incredulity, he stammered: "But... I thought... you are jobless?"

I have never seen such a sea change in attitude. We were supposed to work later that day, but he said it was fine if I did not have enough time to finish it, they will always be someone else later who can do the job. When the mosquitoes started assaulting us, he generously offered me all the insect repellent and insisted that I used it. And he even cooked my dinner before I left for Singapore. I was slated to go there for six days but cooked up an excuse to leave by four after assessing the situation on the first day.