A Vipassana Honeymoon in Burma
While many couples choose to spend their honeymoon at an exotic beach getaway or at some luxurious resort, Steve Jarand and Kati Schweitzer elected to spend part of theirs fulfilling an aspiration they both shared: meditating in Myanmar. Coming from the Goenka tradition, they ended spending extended time in the Golden Land, and shared their impressions of the country and culture in our recent podcast discussion.
“I thought it was really nice to be in a country where the practice is so naturally woven into the culture, while in Western countries, it’s still a bit more exotic in a way.”
Kati Schweitzer: I thought it was, in a way, a relief to be in a country where the practice is so much a part of everyday life. Because after having traveled in other countries, we had sometimes had problems finding a place where we could meditate during the day, or like, "Okay, where can we go and sit?” I mean, no problem in Myanmar, pagodas everywhere. You can sit and meditate wherever you want. And then also, you can use some of the terms we know from the practice, from meditation, like metta or anicca or dukkha, and there's words we know from the practice that we could use with the Myanmar people because they know the words as well. So we could communicate using that language, using Pali basically. And I thought it was really nice to have that kind of common understanding with people, or even if they meditate in another tradition, that we would sometimes just sit with people who were meditating in their practice! And then later, they would come and we would try to communicate what we were doing and what they were doing. I thought it was really nice to be in a country where the practice is so naturally woven into the culture, while in Western countries, it's still a bit more exotic in a way.
Steve Jarand: Even on the buses, they would play Buddhist chantings instead of popular music. Sometimes, we would hear monks chanting, and we could recognize some elements that we had heard before, but it was always in a different timbre and speed. So, sometimes, we couldn't always pick it out. But it was cool to see it integrated and woven into just normal life, like sitting on a bus or in your hotel room and hearing speakers or the sounds coming from a nearby temple.