Four Hours in Burma
Four Hours of Meditation

No, I didn't spend all four hours of my time in Burma meditating, but the trip was very meditative. I crossed the border early with my new haircut and lack of sunscreen and couldn't shake the man who wanted to show me around town. Through the scorched earth of a border cleared of trees "to stop the drug traffickers" (what? governments use the roads) I took the guide up on his offer to show me some pagodas.

Smack in the center of the clearcut Thai-Burmese joint venture mango and orange plantations and government bamboo housing projects were three brand new shimmering temple monasteries. (Pagodas cancel out the evil and greed of the living rich in Burma, ensuring that they'll at least be reincarnated as something as good as human form--ie, avoid the lower levels of hell. These pagodas were funded by the goverment, an institution with enough blood on its hands to send even its immigration officers into the realm of hungry ghosts).

The guide and I paid homage to the abbot of the monastery and visited the second in command. He asked me about my circumstances and offered me the key to a meditation room built into the hill under the main pagoda. I stooped into the room and got under the bird cage of a mosquito net for a good hour of meditation where the only sense contacts I made beyond my body were the smells of fresh concrete and the buzzing of thwarted paper wasps and mosquitos.

After meditation, I found my guide sleeping under the pagoda and we went back to the gathering hall to share in an ordination feast. I was not aware of meeting the newly robed monks, but I sure enjoyed the vegetarian spoils of their celebration--and the betel nut stained smiles of their superiors.

Arms red from the mean hot season sun, I say goodbye to my friends in this dusty border town and put possessions in my backpack. One step follows the other. Again and again.