Blog Post #28: Vietnam Vipassana Adventures

Dear Readers,

Hello from Malaysia! I just arrived a ~~couple of nights ago~~ a couple weeks ago (lols. got busy) and am staying with a fellow meditator in a beautiful city North of Kuala Lumpur called Ipoh. My friends are two huge foodies so they’ve been showing me different incredible restaurants – I swear there has not been a bad meal I’ve had in Malaysia. People ask which is my favourite country and, while it’s challenging to choose one, Malaysia is definitely on the higher end of the list simply for the flavour of their food.

Background:

For those who don’t know, I’m just continuing on the vipassana travel adventure until I return home to Vancouver in July later this year. I’ve been practicing this technique for a little over a year now, took a small break at home to visit friends and family and then came back out to finish off my 2 years away.

The first stop was to Vietnam as the flight was incredibly inexpensive (only $650 CAD!). Why Vietnam again? Well, I loved the city and the hostel I stayed at. Plus, I was looking for a Vipassana Satipatthana course and the one in Ho Chi Minh city perfectly fit my itinerary.

My Vietnam schedule?

~1 week: Relax and get over jetlag
8 days: Vipassana Course (Satipatthana)
2 days: Rest
10 days: Serve a Vipassana Course
2 days: Rest then fly out to Malaysia

1st Week: Getting Over Jetlag

If you come to Ho Chi Minh city, go stay at Aloha Saigon Hostel. I promise you that the staff will treat you like family. It’s located in District 3 and is a 5 minute walk from one of the best vegetarian restaurants (Chay Khai Tam) as well as a local market. If you’re a meditator, the centre is only a 30 minute taxi ride or 1 hour bus ride. 15 minutes from the airport too!

First stop was to go see Trang. She and her mom own Chay Khai Tam and ironically, she’s also another meditator. I met her on the first night of my last stop in Vietnam. I guess Dhamma brought us together? Impossible to visit Ho Chi Minh without meeting her.

New Friends and More Fooding:

I made friends with Julie – one of my roomies. She was staying on Ho Chi Minh for a longer period and she introduced me to Bánh Xèo…Vietnamese savoury pancake. OMG! How did I not find this on the Chay Khai Tam menu before? It’s like a savoury crepe made with no eggs. You can eat it with rice paper, put herbs on top, fish sauce (or vegetarian version), then the crepe and eat it. My new favourite meal….

Haha looking at these photos, it seems that Julie and I did a lot of eating. She brought me to a secret tofu lady in the back alley, ate vegetarian banh mis and she introduced me to star apple. Now this fruit is weird and also requires a bit of knowledge to eat it. OMG DO NOT EAT THE SKIN +~1 CM. What happens? Well…your mouth/throat will become itchy and swollen. Lol…happened to me when I was in Vipassana a couple weeks later. Swollen fish lips for ~12 hours. On the other hand, the edible part is mighty delicious and tastes kind of like longan or lychee.

Vipassana! Satipatthana Sutta in Thu Duc!

In Vietnam, all of the Vipassana courses are held in temples which makes it ultra convenient – the one in Ho Chi Minh is only a 30 minute Grab ride (~$8 CAD on the back of a scooter).

This course was fascinating and only contains old students i.e. those who have taken three 10 day vipassana courses. It’s much quieter than the others and I’d highly recommend it to any vipassana student. The structure is almost identical with anapana for 1/3rd and vipassana for 2/3rds of the time. Only the discourses change where you learn more about the technique. You can even take notes! They gave us the sutta in book form along with a pen and highlighter.

What can I say? It helped me understand more of how I was to work properly – notice body sensations and also how to deal more with my mind better as thoughts appear.

Not many photos as we don’t have access to our phones until the end of the course

Related:

A Short Break Between Courses…

Guess what…I found Vy! We met last time I came to Ho Chi Minh to serve (volunteer) at the vipassana centre. She was serving the Sati course and afterward we met up and she showed me the local area

Vy is pretty amazing and also super strict when serving in Vipassana courses. She aims for total silence in the kitchen to help us increase our concentration. A tough aim for sure.

She challenged me to try silence (i.e. avoiding random chatter) during my next 10 day serving so I thought I’d give it a try and see how I felt…

Serving 10 Days in Quiet…Attempting Noble Speech

Noble speech is one thing that is recommended by our teacher S.N. Goenka. Firstly, what is it? Noble speech is refraining from idle chatter, only speaking what is necessary and helpful. Now, why would we do this? Sila is one of the 3 factors that are important in the development of concentration (samadi) and wisdom (panna) and one of the 5 parts of sila is proper speech. I.e. do not tell lies, gossip etc.

While easy to say, it’s incredibly hard to do. It’s so easy to exaggerate, accidentally speak about another person etc. in most day to day life. For me, it’s because my mind is quite chattery and there’s an urge to tell information or engage in small talk. Here’s the thing though. While trying noble speech for 10 days, I realized a few important things:

Most of the things we speak about are unimportant
I save way more energy if I just focus on my work
My meditation became way stronger
I was able to understand better how to bring more of vipassana into my day to day life because I had more time to reflect.

I am a person who is typically the chatty one in the room, but after this experience, I realized the joy in being quieter. I ate my meals in quiet with little conversation with others while observing changing sensations and tried to only speak when it was pertaining to my work in the kitchen or if I needed to speak to the teacher. Other times, if someone tried to ask me question about my travels or where I came from, I’d give a short answer and then mention I was trying to maintain noble speech until the course was over. Everyone was incredibly supportive and it allowed me to try to put more metta (loving-kindness) around and develop my concentration.

It also made me realize that my ego gets inflated a lot from chatting and there are so many risks of wrong speech when we open our mouths…

My Inflating Ego:

Through this increased awareness by not talking, I noticed that the few times I spoke about my travels or where I came from, I’d get this pleasant sensation and thoughts of “look at me, I’m so cool…look how many courses I’ve done”. I’d get…Puffed up!

Lol! This was such a hilarious discovery. On the other hand, it also made me realize that “oh dear…this isn’t good”. I spoke with the teacher who had a great response:

Me: “My ego gets inflated when I tell people how many courses I’ve sit/served”

Teacher: “you don’t need to grow your ego. Serving and sitting more just means you’ve been to the mental hospital for treatment more often.”

Excellent. Ego managed.

Risks of Wrong Speech and Consequences:

If one has served a course, one knows how easily things change…especially in the kitchen. We come here to develop compassion, learn how to give selflessly and to bring vipassana into our everyday lives, but…we’re also at the vipassana hospital. We’re in a supportive environment, but our sankaras (past reactions) can cause explosions and people can get upset at small things.

This has happened to me before. During my second serving, I was made chef and was told I couldn’t adjust the dish. I remember feeling so irritable toward that individual. At my third serving, someone spoke slightly harsh words to me which triggered my anger so much I had to walk away.

These things are normal at the centre and even a wrong glance can cause the atmosphere to change. As I learned early on, serving is an excellent training ground…it’s the middle step between meditating in a perfect environment and the harsh, outside world.

Luckily the teachers are there to help and mediate challenges (which are normal to arise).

Rambling aside, I learned that it’s really easy to conduct wrong speech – even with a one word answer. Better to stay quiet, develop my concentration and be able to hold myself back. This skill will help me a lot in life especially in the outside world. Plus, more sankaras are eliminated while keeping sila and samadi so why not!

(This is what I say, but let’s see how I do when I eventually serve in a place where people primarily speak English…)

Back to the Outside World

Now even though I tried my best to keep quiet during the service, it didn’t mean I had a lonely time. Instead, it was a time filled with many smiles, cooperation and joy. After the course, some of us servers went out for lunch and spent the day together.

Ha, one of the servers, and I, also went for a scavenger hunt to find things for the kitchen to dana (aka donate) to the centre. This was a fun adventures and involved many stops at markets. We got these huge veggie peelers, some pineapple eye removers (didn’t know those existed until Vietnam) and some other things that we found were in short supply.

Vipassana Youtube Video???

Hahaha random things happen. One of the other servers asked if I would talk about vipassana on video so here’s a pic of that. It was a great experience to finally talk on video about something that has been so fundamental in changing my life. Thanks Sam! Hope you’re still enjoying Vietnam to the fullest! (Will share the video when Sam’s uploaded it)

Final Thoughts:

Loved Vietnam and what I learned from my last courses were nothing short of an excellent experience! Next update will be Malaysia – another foodie paradise…especially where Poh Cheng and Siew Lan are concerned!

Wishing you all the best!

Tracy

Blog Post #28: Vietnam Vipassana Adventures

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