I'm off to see the wizard

Brandon a buddhist nun?!?!?!

Good morning, I woke up nice and early so I could come and write about the Jazz festival before I head off to the zoo for the day. First the line up for those of you who care. Sat night: C.U. Band, Minaswing, Koh Saxman and All Stars, James Taylor Quartet, David Sanborn and Al Jarreau. Now they were all amazing but Al Jarreu stood out above the rest, he was great and really kept the crowd going even after being there for 6 hours. On Sun night: Mahidol Jazz Ensemble, URB, Infinity and all stars, Sadao Watanabe, Mindi Abair. The music was also great all night long and The Crusaders closed off the festival with the Ghostbusters theme song. Now back to what I did yesterday during the day. Well after sleeping in until 11 I got up and came online to write my blog for the previous day then ran into 711 to grab some breakfast. I jumped into a tuk tuk and headed over to Wat Mahadhatu to the Vipaddana Meditation centre, when I got to the Wat I walked in the first gate and had no idea where I was going and there were no signs in english so I asked someone and they pointed me down the street to the third gate. I went in and found the right building and went in, there was two other westerners there and I sat down on the floor with no idea what was going on. This girl from BC came and sat down beside me and we talked a bit before the class started. One of the nuns came up to me and handed me a book then pointed to a mat on the floor so I went and sat at the back behind the monks and tried to follow along with the Pali chanting. I was a little confused about what was going on but I went along with it b/c it was an interesting experence seeing buddhism in practice. After 5 minutes of chanting and bowing we got up and before handing the book back to the nun I saw what it said on the cover, it was the book for ordaining a buddhist nun. Later I found out that inorder to take place in the meditation classes everyone must take the precipt of a nun for the day. Then the three of us were led over to another section of the wat with the nun and we sat on some mats while she talked about meditaion for a bit. Then we practiced walking meditation for 30 mins and then sitting meditation for what felt like forever but I have no idea how long it really was. It was a very interesting experence to say the least but I definatly the last time I'm going to go to any meditation classes. Its such a waste of time when there are so many amazing things to do and see here. After that I stopped in a small market to get some lunch before heading over to the Jazz festival.

posted by Brandon Share @ 9:19 AM