by Kelsey Stauffenberg
Thammasat University, Thailand
Around two weeks into my trip and I already am dreading the end. But, I still have three weeks left and hopefully two additional weeks if I can change my flight, fingers crossed. Man, this experience has changed me as a person SO much. If you have ever been to church camp and analogy would be that moment when you "come to Jesus" and your whole perspective on life changes and then you start to plan out how you will live differently when you get home. That is happening to me here except its not Jesus that is changing me, it is the connectivity of this world, the spiritual force behind all of our lives and the life force of the world. And instead of coming home after church camp and forgetting all the plans you had made to change your life, I will change, I will be the person I am working towards here. I eat better, I am more active, I am happier. I am amazed at how this place has effected my emotions. At home I was in depression, not every day but here and there and I have always struggled with bouts of it but here not one feeling of sadness, not one inkling of loneliness or hopelessness. I want to capture this feeling, this enthusiasm for life and share it with the world. It is possible to love everything, to feel at peace with the world, to feel just all around right with the world and yourself. Not every one here studying with me feels this way and it makes me sad and it makes me ever sadder that I cannot convey to them that there is a better way to see the world than "lens" they are stuck looking through. Some of my fellow students have traveled across the world just to sleep in class, how sad for them. I could not imagine missing the profound knowledge I have gained from the lectures we have had. Today we did meditation in class. Our professor studied for four months in a monastery and taught us the type of mediation he had learned, it was called dynamic meditation. When he taught it, it just took him away, you could tell he was at peace and his peacefulness transfer onto us. The pride he had to show us something that meant so much to him was just overwhelming and the feeling it gave me to learn what he was so excited about was just unlike any other. You can study a religion till you can recite the liturgy and you can study a culture till you can repeat every historical happening but you can never truly know or respect a religion or a culture without going to see a religion in practice and see the people living of a culture living their lives. You know I never really had much interest in sociology but after this trip I feel like I am much more interested in group mentalities and dynamics. I understand its allure now. Speaking of cultural practice. We all went on an over night trip to Ampawa. I felt so spoiled. We stayed in a nice resort where I enjoyed a real shower with glass doors and everything! I wish we could have stayed longer. The grounds of the resort were beautiful. The nature was abundant and the greenery was lush and vibrant. At night we took a boat ride to see the fire flies. Now, in TN I see fire flies every year and I love them. The fact that their bioluminescent light is one of the only ones in the world that creates light without heat is astounding to me. But anyways a lot of the students had never seen a fire fly so I was super excited for them to get to see such beautiful and unique creatures. The fire flies were, more white light instead of yellow which I am used to in TN. They seemed smaller and they all gathered in trees along the river. They blink at the same time in large groups in certain trees. This is fascinating because in TN they are all over, not just in trees and they are more sparse and blink at random times. The resort also facilitated a really cool experience for us in the morning that we were there. At 5:30 am we got up and went down to the dock on the river. We sat on the dock with trays of food and offering. It included a bag of hot food, a plate of rice, a dessert, a flower formed from banana leaves, an incense and candle used for merit (the act of a good deed done through giving that acquires you good karma), and water. Monks from the surrounding temples came by boat to accept these items from us to take back and share with the monks in the temple. The name of this ritual is alms giving. This can be done by way of boat or more commonly by walking down the streets of the mornings with a bowl in hand. As the monk came to us we were to place a scoop of rice in their pot, then put the other items on a tray they held up for us (carefully as to not touch the monk because female contact is not allowed between a male monk and a female, same for a Buddhist nun and a male), the last thing done was to pour water in their jug at the head of the boat or canoe you could call it. This was so amazing to get to participate in this tradition. It feels so good to provide for such honorable and humble peoples. The favorite part of the trip for me was going to the monastery of the Buddhist Nun and leader of a female oriented movement in Thailand in this present day, Bhikkhuni Dhammananda. We got to hear from her an her thoughts on female nuns in Buddhism. What struck me was the way she talked to us; she got down on our level and spoke in a way that was so easy to understand. That she was able to explain such a complicated subject and such a traditional religion in a way that made complete since to me and my life in this day and age was amazing to me. It really shows her knowledge and ability to bring light to all people. We then went to see the only medicine Buddha in all of Thailand. This was really cool to me because I plan to study alternative medicine used in therapy and so this was something I was really interested in. The medicine Buddha is not used in Theravada Buddhism but the image of the medicine Buddha came to Bhikkuni in meditation twice and she felt that she was meant to bring the image to Thailand through a replication in statue form. It was really beautiful to see this image of something that means so much to me in the form of hope for our health crisis and so much to Bhikkuni in the form of religious practice and protection. I just feel like I really know what I want to do now. It has come up so much here. The use of alternative medicine to solve health problems in place of harsh medication. I want to learn these techniques and bring them to my people in America who no longer want to subject themselves to medications and to those who do not know there is another option. And switching subjects, I have to find a subject for my end of the semester paper on culture in Thailand. I went to the book store today and bought some books to read to give me some ideas. I love falling in love with the pursuit of knowledge. I have never been to thirsty to learn more and expand my mind. This trip has opened my mind and if you know me, that might be surprising considering I was pretty open minded to begin with. Now I will go read my books and hopefully my post tomorrow will be filled with knew knowledge and ideas.
Thammasat University, Thailand
Around two weeks into my trip and I already am dreading the end. But, I still have three weeks left and hopefully two additional weeks if I can change my flight, fingers crossed. Man, this experience has changed me as a person SO much. If you have ever been to church camp and analogy would be that moment when you "come to Jesus" and your whole perspective on life changes and then you start to plan out how you will live differently when you get home. That is happening to me here except its not Jesus that is changing me, it is the connectivity of this world, the spiritual force behind all of our lives and the life force of the world. And instead of coming home after church camp and forgetting all the plans you had made to change your life, I will change, I will be the person I am working towards here. I eat better, I am more active, I am happier. I am amazed at how this place has effected my emotions. At home I was in depression, not every day but here and there and I have always struggled with bouts of it but here not one feeling of sadness, not one inkling of loneliness or hopelessness. I want to capture this feeling, this enthusiasm for life and share it with the world. It is possible to love everything, to feel at peace with the world, to feel just all around right with the world and yourself. Not every one here studying with me feels this way and it makes me sad and it makes me ever sadder that I cannot convey to them that there is a better way to see the world than "lens" they are stuck looking through. Some of my fellow students have traveled across the world just to sleep in class, how sad for them. I could not imagine missing the profound knowledge I have gained from the lectures we have had. Today we did meditation in class. Our professor studied for four months in a monastery and taught us the type of mediation he had learned, it was called dynamic meditation. When he taught it, it just took him away, you could tell he was at peace and his peacefulness transfer onto us. The pride he had to show us something that meant so much to him was just overwhelming and the feeling it gave me to learn what he was so excited about was just unlike any other. You can study a religion till you can recite the liturgy and you can study a culture till you can repeat every historical happening but you can never truly know or respect a religion or a culture without going to see a religion in practice and see the people living of a culture living their lives. You know I never really had much interest in sociology but after this trip I feel like I am much more interested in group mentalities and dynamics. I understand its allure now. Speaking of cultural practice. We all went on an over night trip to Ampawa. I felt so spoiled. We stayed in a nice resort where I enjoyed a real shower with glass doors and everything! I wish we could have stayed longer. The grounds of the resort were beautiful. The nature was abundant and the greenery was lush and vibrant. At night we took a boat ride to see the fire flies. Now, in TN I see fire flies every year and I love them. The fact that their bioluminescent light is one of the only ones in the world that creates light without heat is astounding to me. But anyways a lot of the students had never seen a fire fly so I was super excited for them to get to see such beautiful and unique creatures. The fire flies were, more white light instead of yellow which I am used to in TN. They seemed smaller and they all gathered in trees along the river. They blink at the same time in large groups in certain trees. This is fascinating because in TN they are all over, not just in trees and they are more sparse and blink at random times. The resort also facilitated a really cool experience for us in the morning that we were there. At 5:30 am we got up and went down to the dock on the river. We sat on the dock with trays of food and offering. It included a bag of hot food, a plate of rice, a dessert, a flower formed from banana leaves, an incense and candle used for merit (the act of a good deed done through giving that acquires you good karma), and water. Monks from the surrounding temples came by boat to accept these items from us to take back and share with the monks in the temple. The name of this ritual is alms giving. This can be done by way of boat or more commonly by walking down the streets of the mornings with a bowl in hand. As the monk came to us we were to place a scoop of rice in their pot, then put the other items on a tray they held up for us (carefully as to not touch the monk because female contact is not allowed between a male monk and a female, same for a Buddhist nun and a male), the last thing done was to pour water in their jug at the head of the boat or canoe you could call it. This was so amazing to get to participate in this tradition. It feels so good to provide for such honorable and humble peoples. The favorite part of the trip for me was going to the monastery of the Buddhist Nun and leader of a female oriented movement in Thailand in this present day, Bhikkhuni Dhammananda. We got to hear from her an her thoughts on female nuns in Buddhism. What struck me was the way she talked to us; she got down on our level and spoke in a way that was so easy to understand. That she was able to explain such a complicated subject and such a traditional religion in a way that made complete since to me and my life in this day and age was amazing to me. It really shows her knowledge and ability to bring light to all people. We then went to see the only medicine Buddha in all of Thailand. This was really cool to me because I plan to study alternative medicine used in therapy and so this was something I was really interested in. The medicine Buddha is not used in Theravada Buddhism but the image of the medicine Buddha came to Bhikkuni in meditation twice and she felt that she was meant to bring the image to Thailand through a replication in statue form. It was really beautiful to see this image of something that means so much to me in the form of hope for our health crisis and so much to Bhikkuni in the form of religious practice and protection. I just feel like I really know what I want to do now. It has come up so much here. The use of alternative medicine to solve health problems in place of harsh medication. I want to learn these techniques and bring them to my people in America who no longer want to subject themselves to medications and to those who do not know there is another option. And switching subjects, I have to find a subject for my end of the semester paper on culture in Thailand. I went to the book store today and bought some books to read to give me some ideas. I love falling in love with the pursuit of knowledge. I have never been to thirsty to learn more and expand my mind. This trip has opened my mind and if you know me, that might be surprising considering I was pretty open minded to begin with. Now I will go read my books and hopefully my post tomorrow will be filled with knew knowledge and ideas.