Today (6/4) we spent the day at Dhuram Drum Mountain. If I was saying this day wasn’t tiring, I would be lying. I think today has been one of the most exhausting days I have had so far on this trip. We started the day by getting on the bus and driving almost 1.5 hours to the monastery. When we arrived we were quickly ushered into the classroom where we learned a little background and components of this school before then heading outside to engage in some meditation.
We started with walking meditation where we walked around in a circle. I found this to be interesting but also not the most relaxing form of meditation since I was focused on not getting too close to the person in front of me. It was also hard to keep myself engaged in this meditation because it was raining and I was holding an umbrella so I was focused on making sure that I wasn’t going to swing it and accidentally hit someone. We then moved onto standing mediation and while this was nice and relaxing, I have been having difficulties standing on one of my knees (due to swimming related issues) so I found myself growing uncomfortable the longer my knee remained straight under me. Besides this, I found the meditation relaxing but a little less so when we started singing. I understood the reason why we were doing this but also did not as I found it a little unusual. Nevertheless, I participated and made sure to follow along with what was being presented.
After lunch we continued to another lecture but this time it was about Buddhism. I found some of the information a little repetitive as we have already learned a lot of it in the couple classes we have had. Although, I found the passion behind our teacher to be inspiring. After this wrapped up we talked to some Nuns and a Monk about their lives before and during being a Monastic.
I found this visit very informative but I was hoping to see the more monastic side to this organization which we were unable to. A part of this religion that interested me the most was understanding how these monastics lived so I was disappointed that this would not be the case.