2008 7 Day Chan Retreat — Day 1

As last time, we gathered at the Taipei Main Station at 12:30pm and were waiting for the tour buses to take us to Dharma Drum Mountain (法鼓山) for 2008 7 Day Chan Retreat. Taipei had been wet and cold due to a cold front, and one could only expect DDM to be wetter and colder… Hopefully my Marmot down jacket would be able to shield me from the cold during meditation, but I was a little worried…

When we arrived, my first nightmare immediately appeared: I was No. 11 in my dorm room! No. 11! Why was this such a bad thing? Because the order to the bathroom was always from No. 1 to No. 12. Being No. 11 meant that I would be at the mercy of the other 10 girls, and Taiwanese girls were not known for their efficiency at bathroom utilization… (And it turned out that my intuition was correct: Girls from our room were were even much slower than the average Taiwanese girls… The line for bathrooms was always so long during our precious breaks that girls from other rooms mistook our room was the public bathroom. )

When we settled down in the Chan Hall for the first time, my second nightmare unveiled itself to me: No. 12 had a serious cold! My bed was the only one right next to hers, and her Zafu (蒲團) was right behind mine… So she would cough around me 24 hours a day for the whole time…

Not having a heater, the Chan Hall had to leave windows open to keep the fresh air going. It was plenty cold already, and plus the wind kept on finding its way in… I got a feeling that the 7 days would be a very long week…