Meditating with the Monks

This morning we had a special session meditating and chanting with Cambodian monks. A group of four of them came to our hotel and took us through the steps of meditation and breathing. We all sat there meditating with them for almost a half-hour. As the time elapsed, you could hear each of us twitching and moving a little. A half-hour is a long time to be still! I peeked at the monks and they weren’t moving a muscle or restless at all. We were all a little relieved when they told us we could relax and quit meditating. They discussed the five tenets of Buddhism with us. They are:
1. Do not kill another living thing.
2. Do not take what is not yours.
3. Do not cheat on your spouse or loved one.
4. Do not lie.
5. Do not take intoxicants or drink alcohol. (Ooops!)

Well, I guess four out of five of the tenets isn’t too bad. ( Although, I will also admit to killing a mosquito or two that I have found in our hotel room.)

When we asked how long we should meditate each day, they said that five or ten minutes first thing in the morning and five-ten minutes before we went to bed would give us a happy, peaceful life. More food for thought!

As we leave Cambodia, we are struck with the differences with life here from life back home. The people are very friendly and polite but they have all been through so much and are continuing to have struggles. All of the people we met talked about the corruption in the country and the lack of education and health care. 75% of the people living in the country-side are illiterate and school is not mandatory. The country is young; 50% of the people are under 15. Young children surround you begging you to buy trinkets from them when you walk around the temples and it is hard to witness.

And, yet, when we visited the floating village the people all seemed so content. The kids were all playing in the water and running around their homes laughing and smiling. There were even two teenage boys showing off hot-rodding around with their boats proving that boys will always be boys no matter what culture they are in. It reminded me of the stories of the African Village People in the documentary, “Happy”. Happiness is truly relative to your situation. These people would be miserable if they were transplanted to the United State and we could never survive a day on the village without our technology and need to be constantly busy and challenged. Can you imagine Brad not being able to watch sports or get on twitter?

One other fact of life here that we haven’t mentioned is the heat in Cambodia. It is about 90 degrees here with 100% humidity. Add to the equation that you need to cover up because of the requirements of keeping your knees and shoulders covered and the fact that you want to protect yourself from mosquitoes and you get a feel for why the group always looks like we are glistening in all of the pictures!

We are leaving Cambodia soon and are heading to Saigon. We only have two more days on our trip which is hard to believe and is making us a little sad. We have made friends with a great group of people on our tour and it will be hard to say good-bye to everyone. Although Brad and I have never blogged before, we have enjoyed reviewing our day and putting our thoughts down into this blog. We are feeling a lot of responsibility now that everyone in our group here is following us and all of you have made so many great comments back to us! Chris told me that we would find the statistics from the blog to be interesting. We have had almost 1000 visits to our blog but most interesting is that we have quite a large contingent from Singapore following us as well as people from Laos, the UK, Switzerland, and Australia! Brad’s photos were even put into an on-line publication about Cambodia. I think that maybe I should talk Brad out of following his dream about opening a pet supply store and maybe we could become professional travel bloggers and photographers. Sure sounds a lot more fun than schlepping dog food!!

Here are some final pictures of our experiences in Cambodia.