12: From Hsipaw, Myanmar
Beloved friends,
It turns out a few days of sun and sea works wonders on this Brazilian boy. Between the healing of body, the natural incorporation of meditation practice into lazy beach days, and the reading of good books, being in Dawei was life-giving. I would wake up around sunrise, meditate, and then clamber out of my tent to watch the golden tendrils of the morn worm their way into the silver of the sky, move a little, and jump into the water. I’d laze about and read, and go on walks, and take naps on hammocks. I shared meals with new friends, talked travels and travails, and went on a lovely boat ride to a beach featuring an unexpected hot spring. And through most of that time, I was deeply interested in my internal experiences. As you know, dear readers, I’m not one to ignore my inner life, but coming from Shwe Oo Min (the monastery) and reading Shinzen Young’s Science of Enlightenment, I developed a totally new commitment to meditation.
When people ask me why I stopped doing theater, I often say I was frustrated by the fact that the luminosity and fullness of life I experienced onstage was restricted to the metaphorical proscenium. Insight (Vipassana) Meditation is a practice that promises to bring just that wholesomeness and light, backed up by millennia of practice, a growing body of research, and, most importantly, my own experience. The general expert consensus seems to be that the practice is at its best when it’s continuous. So as I lazed about and read and ate and talked, I tried to give myself wholly to what I was doing, to notice micro- (or macro-)tensions arising in my body and relax them, to not get frustrated when I found myself a mile down the beach with no recollection of what had happened. It was not easy, but I guess if you want your whole life to glow, you’ve got to put in the work.
And then I left the beach and somehow all this commitment and budding equanimity nearly evaporated. The first night bus was OK — when the minibus I’d taken from Dawei stopped at 1:30AM in a dark lot filled with empty, beat-up buses, and driver yelled at me in very broken English to get off and wait for the bus to Hpa-An (I thought it was direct?!), I took it as an opportunity to practice my equanimity, explore my unknowing mind, and surrender my body to the hard bench I lay on. In Hpa-An, I quickly shifted mindsets, turning in emphasis from my internal journey to the external one I had embarked on. I wanted to see all the sights and do all the things, a restlessness which propelled me away from the quaint town of Hpa-An and towards Inle Lake on my second night bus experience, this one a comparatively lovely VIP ride that lasted 13 instead of the expected 16 hours. After a couple of nights in Inle Lake, a strange but pleasant anthropological curio selected and developed for tourists, the spirit moved me again. Despite my initial decision to spend an extra night in the great hostel I’d found and slow down a little, I booked a ticket on yet another night bus, this time to the mountain village of Hsipaw, drawn by the promise of hiking and nature that didn’t smell like smoke.
Between Hpa-An and Hsipaw, I met a number of delightful characters, but at some point distinctions seem to disappear. Much as in NYC the only question people seem to ask is “So, what do you do?”, backpackers ask “How long have you been traveling?” and “Where have you been? Where are you going?” And then we list places like chores we’ve crossed off from our to-do lists, and everything starts to blur together: the places, the names, faces, stories, travel plans past and future turn to tasteless mush.
Which brings me back to my night bus to Hsipaw, where a combination of Burmese metal music (Iron Cross, for hours) motion sickness and another round of food poisoning led to the expulsion of some not-so-tasteless, rather-gross bilious fluid from my mouth. I felt like crap. So much for optimization-inspired aspirations to go hiking straight from the bus. And then we arrived and I napped for four hours and still felt like crap. So much for hiking with my friends from Inle Lake. And then I slept a wonderfully large number of hours and it was today.
Today I sat for a long meditation session and then a leisurely breakfast (I ate solid food AND kept it down!). I read a little. I rented a bike and made my way slowly to the hot springs. I spent a couple of hours there, watching locals bathe (fully clothed, always) and wash clothes, listening to the trickle of the river, feeling the warmth of the water. I spent twenty minutes watching a farmer bathe his oxen, then stopped further down the road to gaze at the white cranes flying in loose formation. I sat down for lunch in a garden restaurant (a find! owned by one Mrs. Popcorn) and stayed there for 3 hours. Forced by my body, I slowed down. And what a blessing that has been.
I don’t quite feel physically 100% yet, but it feels like my spirits have shifted back to a healthier place, a more wholesome, less-manically-controlled pace of travel, with more room for wandering and getting lost (it takes time, this business of getting lost, and the courage to surrender). With one week to go in Myanmar, I feel like I might have made it past the “4-month slump” that is apparently a common experience of long-term travelers. All I had to do was slow down and surrender, gently. Unsurprisingly, it’s in that place of slowing down that I’ve made meaningful connections on the journey — not in the moments of planning or hectically trying to make it to the next thing, but the ambling bicycle rides, the all-day tours, the lunches that inadvertently take hours. It is in the moments of surrender, of being present and content, that I connect with others, and also with myself.
May you take the time to surrender to this moment, and may it help you connect with yourself and with those around you. May you be free from long bus rides and bilious fluids expelled improperly, and if you can’t be free from that, may you be free from any suffering such a state might cause.
With abundant love,
Rafa
