First Day in a Buddhist Monastery

Travel Day 638 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL

It was my first full day at the Buddhist monastery and in the evening my 10 day introductory meditation course would start. When I had signed up for this Discovering Buddhism class, I thought it would be a good idea to arrive a day earlier to settle-in before the class would actually kick-off. Well, I certainly did use the day to settle-in, but I had a little bit of a bumpy start…

Main Gompa at Buddhist Monastery

Last night I was staying in one of the dormitories and when I got this morning to use the toilet, my roommate apparently decided to get up as well and have some breakfast. For me it meant that when I returned from the toilet, I found to my great surprise the dorm door locked. I had unfortunately left my keys inside the room and my roommate was having his breakfast in the cafeteria. So after debating what to do, I saw no other choice but walk across the whole monastery campus and into the cafeteria in my underwear in order to get the key for the room. What a great first day at the Buddhist monastery… : )

Luckily most of the people who were in the cafeteria in the morning left the monastery because of the upcoming class and by the late afternoon pretty much everyone who laughed at me during breakfast was gone by the evening. When the course finally started, we really only had a meet and greet with a short introduction as well as a quick walk-through of our daily schedule for the next 10 days in the monastery:

• 5.45   morning bell
• 6.00   morning tea
• 6.30   morning meditation
• 7.30   breakfast
• 9.15   teachings
• 11.30   lunch
• 14.00   discussion group
• 15.00   break
• 15.30   teachings
• 17.00   tea
• 18.00   guided meditation
• 18.45   dinner
• 19.45   meditation or questions
• 21.00   quiet time

Dorm Building at Kopan Monastery

Additionally we were not allowed to use any electronics, and especially no phone or the internet. It was also forbidden to leave the monastery grounds and we were required to attend all the classes. The goal was to have as little distraction as possible and to totally focus on the Buddhist teachings. To enforce that even more, a complete silence was required from the end of the last class at 21.00 up to the next day until after lunch at 12 noon…

By the time I was quietly going to bed, I was really not sure what I was getting myself into, but everything sounded like quite an interesting adventure. After I managed to survive the morning in my underwear in the cafeteria, I thought this whole class shouldn’t really be a such a big deal for me… : )

Find all Kopan Monastery 2011 Photos here.