A Meditation on No-Self in relation to the Forest Walk Experience

By Jeanne Matthews Sommer

Click here for information on Phra Paisal

After our group had some time to recuperate from our home stays with villagers in the north of Thailand, we traveled by overnight coach (12 hours) to Chaiyaphum Province where Phra Paisal and some of his friends from the local Buddhist Youth Conservation program would meet us and take us to his forest temple. Our time with Phra Paisal was one of the highlights of our time in Thailand. We had the opportunity to explore the forest with young Buddhist men and women who are intent on understanding themselves in relation to the wildlife, in particular the birds, who inhabit that region and are increasingly threatened by deforestation and other forms of environmental destruction. We shared our meals and evening laughter by the fire with the mae chi and two forest monks who share this commitment to compassion for all sentient beings and who are committed to preserving the mountain where the forest temple is located. They build fire walls and fight regular forest fires--begun in part by hunters who seek to scare out the wild boar who live in the mountain's center. We slept in primitive structures whose openness to the elements helped break down the barriers that are created in our daily lives, so filled with numerous and ever ingenious ways to make ourselves think that we are not a part of nature. Most importantly, we hiked for eight hours one day, on Pu Lon Mountain (Lost Mountain), the only mountain in the region that had not been logged. We carried our backpacks, our clothes and other necessities until we came to our camp site, just one hour away from where we began.

Before we began the forest walk, we were told that it was not the destination that matters, but that we should be present to the journey itself. While we walk we should be aware of our breath and contemplate compassion for ourselves, for the forest and all who made their homes there, and for all sentient beings. We walked and we fell, as we followed a young monk and a Buddhist youth who were bushwhacking our way through the tangle of vines, over discarded snail shells. We laughed and cried, yelled for one another when we could not see nor hear each other through the tangle. We felt like giving up. We breathed sighs of relief and amazement as we traversed one precipice after another and would rest there on top from the struggle of climbing. We looked after each other and we developed ever more clear windows into compassion for ourselves and other living beings. The walk became for many of us, if not all, a metaphor for life itself.

We were told not to worry about the destination, yet, like all of us who are given only a finite number of days in this lifetime, we only had eight hours to reach our destination. At times we had no idea where we were going. We saw ourselves pass by trails that were already prepared as we chose instead to take the ways that were less trodden. At the beginning the pain of climbing was intense, but soon it passed as our muscles relaxed and we began, mentally and physically, to accept the day's task. After we climbed the first precipice-- sweating, faltering, hungry-- we caught a glimpse of why it mattered: a gorgeous overlook across the Chaiyaphum river valley. We kept on. We stopped and ate. We climbed some more. I fell and sprained my ankle as it was caught in a vine.

At first, I wanted to tear down all the trees that were in my way as I found within myself a great deal of compassion for the developers who probably were just as bothered as was I by the "inconvenience" of the forest. But then I found some calm and began to listen to the sound of my footsteps, to try to make as little noise as possible when I walked. I thought about the students in my group and what they might be experiencing, thought about how life, though it is important to me, is not only about me, perhaps not at all about ME.

I saw trees that were growing around other trees, strangling them, embracing them, leaving the trees inside to die, showing only the form of the relationship that had existed through all those years by the nature of the emptiness that was left behind. I climbed some more. We found the headwaters of the river and some of us washed our hands and faces in the cool waters. We walked through grasses that were higher than our heads, so that we could not see each other at all, but only followed the marks that had been left for us by the ones who walked before us. We emerged into an open space, burned by forest fire, by desire, by sport.

When I turned what I thought was the last corner, I looked up and saw that, contrary to what I had thought, there was yet one more peak to climb. The students were all there already. My co-leader, Carolyn. and the translator, Kaeng, were behind me. It was then that I thought I could go no further. "O Shit. I can't do this" But I had to. There was no way I was going to be left alone on this Lost Mountain, lose myself to all that I love, to all that I think that I am. I had to go forward, but on this peak, eroded by the recent forest fires, there was nothing on which to hold as I climbed upward. There was only the dirt, slipping and sliding with me as I crawled upward. No clinging. "There is nothing to cling to." I made it to the top.

For some reason I could not fathom at the moment, all I could do was cry. It was not that I wanted to cry. Nor could I stop myself. I was just a tear, just crying, and I wasn't even sure why. I turned around as I sat myself upon the rock at the top of the climb and looked over the valley to the lands that had been clear cut by logging and I let myself weap. I weaped for myself. I weaped for my children. I weaped because my husband was not sharing this with me. I weaped for the students. I weaped for the trees. I weaped for the human race, the species that is supposed to be so special but the one who seems more than any other species to have no clue as to its purpose and even to negate its instinctual need to survive by destroying its own habitat and those who live within it and even those who might come after us. I weaped because I was happy? I weaped because I was sad? I could not understand. But now, as I look back at that moment, I think I weaped because I was not. All the things that I had been prone to use to define myself have been, gradually slipping away in these last months. In that moment, when I was feeling physical and mental fatigue to a degree I had not experienced since I labored to birth my first child, I began to realize, much later than I am proud to admit, that I am not the center of the universe, that I am NOT, that life is not about me, that I can live my life fully and passionately but not live it for myself. I've had glimpses of this as I've mothered my two children these last two years. But on this lost mountain, I lost myself only to realize that my life is not about me choosing to live for something other than self; it's just the way it is. Life is not about me at all.

I am just called to live, only in the moment, and in that moment on the mountain, I saw myself surrounded by strangers whose lives emit simplicity and loving kindness. I saw myself cared for by students who loved me like a mother, a teacher, a friend, as if I were anyone and no one, all at the same time. I saw myself sitting on a mountain in the infinite expanse of space and time, and I just WAS. My whole life I have wanted to be something. To be special. To make a difference. On that mountain I saw more clearly that I am nothing and that this realization is not a source of sadness, but a source of liberation. I glimpsed the truth that I don't have to cling anymore, can throw away my baggage of all the labels and possessions that have defined me. Can breathe.

I could see myself living on this mountain or some other when I'm old, maybe even sooner. I could see myself returning home and learning to love the mountains of North Carolina in the same kind of intimate manner. I could see myself creating community and calling people to heal, to lose themselves, as this mountain is lost, as I am lost on this mountain. To not be afraid of being lost, for that presumes that there is some p lace to be, some THING to be, and there is not.