How often do you see a headless God?

At the Wat Umong forest Monestary in Northern Thailand, I came across a large collection of beheaded Buddha statues displayed outside a shrine. When I asked why, I was told "what else would we do with them?"

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_What follows is an excerpt from Meditating in the Forest Monastery of Wat Umong
http://www.adventuresofagoodman.com/meditating-in-the-forest/_


Our day began with an hour long intro to meditation by an older monk who seemed to have no patience for his job and didn’t let me ask a single question. The main idea behind the practice is to be consciously thinking of whatever you are doing and stating it to itself.

First we learned walking meditation, which involves walking in a straight line thinking about every move. For each step there is “lifting, moving, placing.” Then, after a few meters, it’s time to turn around slowly saying “turning, turning, turning.”

If a noise interrupts the meditation, the brain should not focus on the noise itself but rather the fact that there is a noise by saying “noisy, noisy, noisy.” Similarly, if a thought pops into the mind it should become “thinking, thinking, thinking.”

No attention should be paid to the thought itself, just to the concept that a thought is happening. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time saying “lifting, moving, thinking, thinking, thinking, noisy, thinking, noisy, placing, thinking, turning.”

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