By Matt C

Two years ago I went to the Sagaing Hills of Burma for the retreat with Sayadaw U Lakkhana and Michele McDonald-Smith. I practiced walking meditation as the sun rose red over the Irrawaddy River, and drew inspiration from immersion in a Buddhist culture steeped in the teachings of generosity. I learned to live with the ants and mosquitoes and heat, and after the retreat was over, I decided to continue on to another monastery and to ordain as a monk. I felt blessed to receive an inside view of Burmese culture, with its astonishing contrasts of poverty and generosity, political repression and freedom of heart. I walked on alms rounds through Burmese villages, my feet bare, receiving rice in my bowl from those who could never comprehend the material wealth of the culture from which I had come. It seemed that the less people had, the more they gave. And it has been this way for many hundreds of years in Burma, this practice of selfless giving to support those cultivating peace and understanding. No wonder so many Burmese people seem so joyful and generous.

Practicing meditation in Burma was not easy for me. I experienced worsening pain in my knees and after three months, I decided that I needed to leave to recover my physical balance and to get some perspective. It was not only difficult physically, but also psychologically, practicing an intensive meditation technique that stripped away external comforts and often felt narrow and constraining.

One of the most helpful activities for me upon my return to the United States was running. I had been a runner for almost twenty years, but when I first returned from Burma I had trouble running two miles because of my knees. I was afraid my running days were over. Then I watched my sister, who had given birth to her third child a few months before, run a relay leg of the Vermont Marathon, and I was so moved that I vowed to run the whole marathon the next year. Gradually my knees recovered and my body strengthened. I started running longer distances and was soon racing again.

In May of 2000, I ran the Vermont Marathon and finished well enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2001. Running had once again become a major part of my life. It has been deeply beneficial not only to my body but to my psyche, to see that it is possible to overcome difficulties if one is determined. Running is itself a spiritual practice for me, a discipline that helps me to be more fully present and awake. Feeling the life of one's body, its aches and pains and tremendous energy, can teach one a great deal about the nature of life.
In one sense, running, exercising one's body each day after sitting in an office in the materialistic West, is a world away from the selfless renunciation of dharma practice taught in Eastern monasteries. Yet though they may take place in very different contexts, both are disciplines of mind and body. Of course, most westerners don't generally view running as a mindfulness practice. In America, marathon running itself has become big business for the medical organizations that use it for fund raising. I was struck by the possibility of using my own marathon to raise funds for the efforts of the MettaDana Project in Burma, thereby joining two aspects of my life, running and meditation, if only in a symbolic way.

As you may know, Steven Smith and Michele McDonald-Smith have been instrumental in setting up and teaching retreats in Burma in the Sagaing Hills, and they have initiated the MettaDana Project to help the villagers in the surrounding area to confront problems of disease and lack of education. When I was there on retreat in 1999, Michele had just lugged a suitcase containing a lead vest (for x-rays) all the way from Hawai'i. It struck me that just a few resources in a country such as Burma can go a very long way toward improving the lives of those in poverty, and that this is one way we can begin to repay the generosity of the Burmese people.

And so, before the Boston Marathon in April 2001, I wrote letters to everyone I knew, asking them to sponsor my race for the benefit of the MettaDana Project. I received a tremendous response, with many people pledging money, both with set donations and with amounts based on a finishing-time formula--the faster I ran, the more money I would bring in for the cause.

In the week leading up to the marathon I had a cold, and it was an unavoidable opportunity to confront the fears that I would not be well enough to run, or that the illness would affect my race. I had been planning and training for the Boston Marathon for more than six months, so to have it all go out the window because of a cold would have been extremely disappointing. At the same time, it seemed appropriate to be reminded of the unreliability of bodily life as I prepared to push my well-conditioned body to the limit. By Sunday the congestion from the cold was gone. I was still completely neurotic about every ache and pain in my body, but I no longer had any doubt that I would run.

On race day I woke early, primed to run. The starting line in Hopkinton was jammed with runners, race volunteers, and police directing shuttle buses and crowds, a very different world from the hill monasteries of Burma. I felt somewhat overwhelmed by it all, so I began to recite a line from the Satipatthana Sutta, which I had been studying in a Pali class. "Na ca kinchi loke upadiyami," I murmured to myself: "I do not cling to anything in this world."

At 12:00 the starting gun went off, but there was a considerable pause before the two thousand runners in front of me accordioned out and we all began to shuffle, then jog, forward. It would take 15 minutes for all 16,000 runners to cross the starting line.

The first miles passed smoothly, mostly downhill. My body felt good; the aches and pains of previous days had disappeared. Even out in the small towns there were crowds lining the road, and the spaces between the groups of spectators became smaller and smaller as the miles passed by. By Framingham, the crowds were huge and the cheering was constant.

In the middle of the race, perhaps between ten and fourteen miles, I experienced my first pangs of doubt, the first waves of pain and fatigue and the fear that perhaps I would not be able to maintain my pace. But this phase of doubt passed, and by the Newton Hills at mile 17 I felt strong and determined again. My mile paces slowed but my rhythm stayed strong, and even on Heartbreak Hill, though it seemed incredibly long, I didn't break my stride. It wasn't until two miles later that I felt my energy reserves starting to ebb, and my pace slowed. I was hitting the dreaded wall, otherwise known as "bonking."

The last four miles seemed to be fueled only by some internal stubbornness not to give in to the exhaustion and pain, the almost deafening roar of the crowds, and the knowledge that the money raised by merely finishing would help to make conditions better in one small but beautiful part of the world. I knew that a number of people at the Insight Meditation Society were sitting in meditation during the marathon and sending metta, or lovingkindness, the very practice that is so deeply rooted in Burma, particularly in the Sagaing Hills, where the MettaDana Project operates. So even though I desperately wanted to stop and walk, I somehow managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Coming around the corner onto Boylston Street, I could see the finish arch in the distance, and I managed to dig down and pour on a last surge to carry me across the line in under three hours, meeting my goal and setting a new personal best.

Through the generosity of my sponsors I had raised well over $2,000 for the MettaDana Project, funds that will support people's basic health and education in a Burmese community that has selflessly given of its spiritual riches.

This article appeared originally in the Vipassana Hawai'i News, Spring 2002