This review is only about meditation in the Temple.
While attending a conference on The Strip, i chose to attend Chaiya's 9AM meditation. I sit for Vipassana style meditation every morning, and thought it might be nice to join others at this authentic temple.
The temple is beautiful, filled with many-colored Buddha statues and about 50 folks on mats, mostly women and entirely Asian - I was the only white American sitting. The setting seemed conducive to a lovely meditation...except for one thing; noise.
The entire hour, women in an adjoining room were talking very loud. No one seemed to mind or find it necessary to ask them for silence during the meditation hour. Several "meditators" also continued walking through the hall, sometimes ruffling noisy plastic bags. But the clincher was that the monks thought nothing odd about having the main phone & answering machine right there in the room, bell ringing loudly while 3 calls came in, complete with the audible outgoing message and loud response from whomever was leaving incoming messages.
I know some meditation tradititions encourage meditating with eyes partially open & allowing lifes natural noises to be heard, but a ringing phone and answering machine right there in the meditation room?
Is that really a wise choice in a place where the object is to turn inward and experience a quiet mind??