Hard Shit
When Elizabeth Gilbert went to meditate herself out of divorce in her memoir, Eat Pray Love, all she could think about was how to decorate her hypothetical meditation room at home in New York. When I went to meditate myself out of an existential crisis, all I could think about was turning the meditation hall toilet into a smoking sulphuric crater.
Never before had I been so attuned to my bowel movements. Three days into my Vipassana course and not once had I received the call of nature. I looked six months pregnant with bloat, and my stomach groans echoed through the meditation hall. A backlog of rice sitting in my intestines wanted out... ASAP.
"Open your mind, clear our the negativity, let the light in," our monk would sing to the group every morning during Dharma talk. I tried to pay attention, honest to Sangha I did. I also tried desperately to shift my mind away from the sweet relief I was craving, but have you ever tried to sit on a cold, hard floor deciphering a monk's mysterious analogy in broken English, while waiting for a yule log to simmer its way through your intestinal tract? That shit is hard. Literally.
In case you were wondering, a Buddhist temple is a recipe for poop disaster. There are only two meals per day (a literal fucking kilogram of rice with a garnish of green beans) and there is no coffee (my usual go-to laxative). Carbs are life, but not when it comes hand in hand with constipation. I had no choice but to pile on the chilli. I am not here for that mild burn, I'm here for the so-hot-it-will-melt-your-face-and-then-colon experience. I want lava spurting from Mount Vesuvius. I want a 5 star Tripadvisor review from my intestines with the headline, 'The service was so fast I didn't have time to react.'
I became so desperate one afternoon that I found myself bowing to Buddha in the temple and offering the only snack I was permitted to have on my person after 12pm: breath mints. I lit a stick of incense and parked my butt on a cushion praying for the urge to vacate my bowels. I don't believe in miracles, but after about five minutes of manifesting my bowel into submission (and chugging 2L of water from my Hydroflask) it was as though the enlightened one had heard my prayers for salvation. My heart suddenly dropped into my stomach, nausea flooded my body, I let out a fart that killed practically every ant within a two-metre radius of my person, and I began running for the closest toilet... inside the meditation hall.
I guess it could be worse. This could have happened during dharma talk with everyone staring at me (including the monk) as I ran out of the room frantic and frenzied about faeces. Still, the meditation hall wasn't really up there on my list of favourite toilets at the temple. There was no privacy, especially when it came to noise. As one can expect, a silent meditation course means that I can hear my neighbour two doors down yawn louder in the morning that I can hear my own iPhone alarm - and I have that annoying blaring horn sound. No snooze allowed.
You better believe though, that everyone could hear the sloppy, watery mess coming out of my rear end as it echoed around the room. Don't kid yourself with their vacant expressions and straight backs, they can still hear you gassing up the place, they're just choosing to ignore it.