Ydob On was the victim of a violent crime and suffering from severe PTSD when he entered the monastery to become a Buddhist monk.

He wanted complete transformation, to penetrate precisely what the word ‘love’ meant.

He wanted to shed his whole personality and become someone new. He served his Buddhist master with complete devotion and selflessness. This practice is meant to break the ego. Much bowing is involved, with the elbows, hands and forehead to the ground. Ydob On had no difficulties doing this. He sometimes called himself a monk and, at other times, a nun. This is because he wanted to shed his gender.

One of the practices in the monastery was mindfulness. All tasks should be done with full concentration and in silence, be it working in the garden, in the kitchen or cleaning the hallways. Ydob On had no difficulties with this either.

What he did have difficulties with were the long group-meditation sessions, two hours of sitting in the mornings and in the evenings. He also suffered from a lack of sleep. He was only allowed a maximum of six hours per night. This was not enough for him.

He found out that the life of a monastic can be compared to that of a top sportsman, a prisoner or an inmate of an asylum for the mentally ill. Sitting is extremely demanding on the body. Ydob On was often so crippled by it that he could not sit at all.

He noticed that poem-like thoughts began to form in his mind. He tried to capture these as soon as they had arisen. He always carried a small notebook for that reason.

After four months in the monastery and two hundred and thirty poem-like thoughts captured, Ydob On understood what enlightenment is. He had a nervous breakdown, started taking 30 milligram of Avanza a day and moved back into the world. 

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He has called himself "a monk in wild" ever since. He underwent therapy for his severe PTSD and beat it with narrative and medication. The poem-like thoughts continued. He still writes them down when the arise. Sometimes he has no idea what they mean.

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Clear Mind Press is in the process of preparing his poems for publication. Below is an example.

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