Meetings with a Dhama Master : หน้า 88/164

Meetings with a Dhama Master Meeting #15 08 March 2010 - Saphaa Upasika Kaew Training is one of the most remarkable experiences in which I have participated at the Wat. Here we are, all 8,000 of us women sharing the same space. In the closing ceremony, there will be 100,000 of us and that is a pretty amazing thought — getting 100,000 women together. We have gathered in the Saphaa -8,000 women from Bangkok — in order to do the week long nun-like training. The nuns here are called “Upasika” although they do not shave their heads, nor do they wear all white. Their uniforms consist of white shirts and long navy blue skirts. In the training, however, we are wearing white shirts and big white skirts that wrap around the waist, the tops of which are then folded over and knotted, or a belt is used to hold everything together. At any rate, there is plenty of material in which to sit comfortably in meditation. The Saphaa, of course, is huge: like several airplane hangars all strung together but instead of airplanes, it holds about 500,000 people at any given time. The floor is concrete, some of which is covered with green plastic mats sewn together to stretch endlessly across this huge open space. There are booths set up for a variety of displays, and when I get to my area (Section 7), there are hundreds of individual tents, and mosquito netted areas, already set up. So here I am at the Saphaa on Monday afternoon and I see several monks I know who are English speakers. Unfortunately, they are soon to leave, and I find myself standing here with five other lone English speakers in a sea of 7,994 Thai speakers… but who’s counting. There is me; Anita, a 29 year old South African; Sam, a 40 year old Australian; Choi, an 18 year old Mongolian; and two college students from Germany who mistakenly thinks that this is going to be a meditation retreat. Oh, ha, ha, ha on them. We are assigned individual tents and immediately put all of our belongings into these tents for safe keeping. A strict listing of everything we will need during the week has been given to us, and I have adhered to this list by only bringing those items listed on the sheet. When I look around, however, women have brought their hair dryers, and fans, and cosmetics … so I’m thinking, ummm, so much for the lists. Anyway, our schedule runs from 4AM until 10PM and it is filled with such things as