Mental Mountains

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a meditation retreat planned for Easter weekend in Mnichovo Hradiště. On Friday, Dita, Miša and I took a bus from Prague to the little town in Bohemian Paradise (Český ráj, which I wrote about in several posts last year). I knew that the retreat was going to be held in an old monastery, but I didn't have any idea what the monastery would be like. From the bus stop we followed our small printed-off map, weaving our way through the streets toward a large group of buildings on a hill that looked promising. We walked along the walls of the huge complex, past several locked gates. I was beginning to wonder whether we were in the right place.

A church on the way to the monastery

Approaching the monastery on Friday

St. Anne's Chapel

Finally, we came to the end of the walls and saw a picturesque chapel with some buildings behind it. My first reaction was "it doesn't look inhabited"! It almost seemed like it was too old and cool to be the place we were headed for. Lo and behold, we made our way to the back of the chapel and found an open gate with a few cars. We walked up some stairs under an arch with the building's date, 1830, carved above it. There was a creepy man-ish thing made of papier-mâché there to greet us. Later I learned it was Vodník - an evil water spirit from Czech fairy tales. Miša told us a crazy story where he kidnaps a woman, impregnates her and later kills their baby. Very Czech.

Vodník

The monastery is so - I don't really like the word quaint, but it's the only one I know to describe it. It has running water, showers and electricity, but in many ways the place seems untouched by the past one and a half centuries. The floors and ceilings are built from heavy planks and beams of dark wood and the walls from brick and plaster. All the hardware is old and rustic. It's really a beautiful place, perfect for quiet contemplation. And we would have plenty of quiet - the standard for these meditation retreats is to maintain "noble silence" - meaning that from Friday after the opening talk, we weren't to speak to each other (or anyone else) until after the closing talk on Monday. The teacher could speak, of course, but we remained silent.

The monastery

Chateau Mnichovo Hradiště

It's really a different experience, being totally silent for several days. You get a chance to really see how your mind works, how quickly it jumps from one thing to the next and chases after stories. This is the point, of course. What was really interesting for me was being silently aware of the whole process of my mind turning a small problem I had into an elaborately complicated debacle which was bound to have me deported from the country. I observed this happening, realizing the whole time that it was pretty insane and paranoid and totally self-created, but still almost believing it.

Let me explain. I transfer money from my bank account in the Czech Republic to my bank account in Ohio each month, for which I have been using a website called XE trade. I make an international payment  in Czech Koruna to XE trade's bank account in the UK, and they EFT the money to my US bank account in US dollars. Up until last month it had worked perfectly. Usually I would make the payment with my online banking, and about four days later it would be in my US bank account. This time, however, I waited for about four days, and I still hadn't gotten the confirmation email that XE trade had received my payment. This was strange, as I usually received the email in one to two days. I called XE trade, and they confirmed that they hadn't received the money. I had a statement from my bank showing that it had been taken from my account, but that didn't change the fact that they hadn't received it. It was a problem. So Friday before we left for the retreat, I went to my bank and explained the problem. They said they had to initiate an "investigation" with the banking department to trace the funds. Now I had three days to wait - and three (silent, uninterrupted) days to think - about what the explanation might be.

Now, the most plausible answer, the one which I logically assumed to be true, was that there was some mistake or misinformation somewhere along the line. The funds would eventually be located, and everything would be resolved. This was, in fact, exactly what happened in the end. HOWEVER, the story that I fabricated while I sat and walked through hours of silent meditation, was that the foreign police had discovered that:

A). I don't actually live at the address listed on my identity card (I never changed my address after moving in September because it's not really necessary, would cost me $125, and I don't know if I could obtain the necessary document from the owner of my building) 

and 

B). I receive money for working for companies and/or individuals in addition to the one I have legal permission to work for (which pretty much every foreigner I know does)

As a consequence of the resultant investigation into my finances and movements, the police had blocked my international payment. Subsequently, there would be a seizure of the funds in my bank account, and I would be brought in for questioning and summarily deported. 

Yes, I know this sounds paranoid. It is. I could even acknowledge this to myself at the time. Still, part of me believed it. Part of me is still a little nervous it might be true even though I have already sorted out the problem, which was a mistake on the part of a correspondent bank between my Czech bank and XE trade's bank in the UK. I have every rational reason to believe that the foreign police don't much care where I am or what I'm doing right now. Most likely they have other, more important problems to think about. It's really interesting what my brain does sometimes. 

This is an extreme example of a basic thought pattern I've had since childhood, which goes like this: "I wonder what [he/she/they] think about me. They probably think I'm [great/pathetic/pretty/ugly/dumb/a genius]". This initial thought is followed by an extended period of agonizing analysis of what [he/she/they] think, the reasons why [he/she/they] think this, and whether such opinion is [justified/unjustified/positive/negative/changeable/permanent]. You get the idea. We all know the common sense answer: [He/she/they] probably aren't thinking about me at all. At least not one iota as often as I'm thinking about me. Whoever [he/she/they] are, they're probably not thinking about me because they spend most of their time thinking about themselves, much like I do. This is the human condition. Recognizing thought patterns like this and starting to train the mind, through practice, to behave differently is one of the goals of meditation. Meditating is not necessarily fun, but it has real, meaningful results.

That is how I spent my Easter weekend. 

And it was beautiful and good. 

I spent hours in walking meditation up and down these rows of trees

We had hoped St. Anne's Chapel would be open on Monday so we could go inside. 

It wasn't, but I did notice a hole in the old wooden door and bent down to peek through it.

It was the most exciting hole I have ever looked through.

On the bus ride back to Prague Dita was looking through some of the pictures she'd taken of the area and our walk back through town to the bus stop. She had taken several pictures of Miša and I walking ahead with our packs (mostly filled with blankets and pillows), which I will include here.

"It looks like we were going mountain climbing or something," she said.

"We were climbing mental mountains," I replied. 

Pretty cheesy, but sometimes we need a little cheese - especially when we haven't spoken for a few days.