Silent Meditation Retreats: Are You Up for the Challenge?
Silent retreats offer a respite from our clamorous, digital world. But is the rigor of mute vacations worth the wellness rewards? A skittish novice and a seasoned meditator speak out Silent Meditation Retreats: Are You Up for the Challenge? Silent retreats offer a respite from our clamorous, digital world. But is the rigor of mute vacations worth the wellness rewards? A skittish novice and a seasoned meditator speak out vacations worth the wellness rewards? A skittish novice and a seasoned meditator speak o
By
Dale Hrabi and
Daryl Chen
May 30, 2019 2:15 p.m. ET
A Rookie Dabbles In Silence
AS THE TRAIN noisily sped me to my first silent meditation retreat, in upstate New York, I decided to practice—by panicking quietly. I’d never meditated before, not for a minute let alone a weekend. When in a group, I generally regard the briefest silence as “awkward,” and fill it with chatter. To quell my worries, I reread “Franny & Zooey” on the train. My only meditation reference point, J.D. Salinger’s novella concerns a 1950s college girl who compulsively, near-silently repeats a prayer to overcome her shameful egotism. That theme was to prove prophetic.
The retreat, booked through a Manhattan-based mediation center called Still Mind Zendo, was held at the Garrison Institute, a 1930s former monastery on the Hudson River. Once in my spartan room, I studied the schedule before dinner. This baffling request failed to ease my mind: “Please don’t let your zafu/seizah overhang your zabuton as we do kin-hin.”
NOISE REDUCTION The Garrison Institute, a former monastery and governor’s estate, is about an hour by train from Manhattan. Photo: Garrison Institute
That first meal—superlatively vegetarian, served buffet-style—confused me further. After I joined a table of silent retreatants, avoiding eye contact while nibbling my frittata as noiselessly as possible, I noticed the 30 or so people at other tables were blabbing away. Laughing even! Had I instinctively found my way to the only truly disciplined attendees?
It turned out my tablemates and I were all newbies, unaware that silence hadn’t yet been decreed. Once we, too, began chatting, I learned that two were French graphic designers; another a restless, local, stay-at-home mom who felt she’d lost touch with her core self. I felt a pesky need to be passably charming—that tug of ego that Salinger’s Franny deplored—and realized I’d been relishing obligatory muteness. The freedom to be boring is a kind of vacation.
When we entered the meditation hall, once the monastery’s chapel, I promptly did two things wrong: failed to remove my shoes; and approached the rows of mats at the far end prematurely. “Not before the 108 gongs have sounded,” I was told.
“Don’t worry,” another leader reassured me. “The beauty of Zen is that there is no right or wrong.” Her superior shhhed her: “We are transitioning into silence,” he chided. For the record, 108 is a lot of gongs.
The newbies were ushered into a room for orientation: how to sit spine-straight on your zafu (a small cushion that rests on your zabuton, a larger mat) for hours with a manageable degree of pain (not quite cross-legged); how to banish intrusive thoughts like “how much longer?” (laser-focus on your breathing). We shared our previous non-silent meditation experience, quite extensive for some. “None,” I admitted and, since they were staring pityingly, added, “but I recently reread ‘Franny & Zooey.’”
A Buddha statue at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass.
The next day I woke at 5:20 a.m. to perch on my mat and mutely meditate in earnest with the entire group of 40-some retreatants, starting with a 25-minute session. Still half asleep, I was banishing thoughts like crazy (or maybe just dozing off) when the “you’re done” gong sounded. Already? I was a meditation natural! After an 8-minute silent walking mediation (or “kih-hin,” in which you trot around the sunny chapel single-file in sync, your hands clasped like a Von Trapp Family singer), it was back to the mats for another 25 minutes. I breezed through this, too, somewhat astonished by my meditation prowess. Gong!
After breakfast and a solo walk by the river, I returned to the hall to find an ego-crushing note from the newbies coach on my zafu: “Dale, you may want to try sitting on two cushions to help you keep a straighter back.”
In the long series of alternating sitting and walking meditations that filled out the day, broken only by delicious, silent meals, my early prowess deteriorated. Each spell of 25 minutes felt like 50. My legs cramped; my foot dozed off. Just when I’d successfully vacated my head of thoughts, entirely focused on breathing, my neglected ego would butt in. At one point, I realized I was vainly composing my future obituary, in which I “became a Zen master late in life.”
Once back in Brooklyn after the weekend—humbled, somewhat rebalanced, intrigued by my introduction to Zen (“How can both life and death reign supreme? Because they happen simultaneously”)—I resolved to meditate five minutes each morning, as suggested. By day three, I was feeling quite smug about my discipline. On my own, away from the soothing Hudson River, my zafu and my zabuton, I lasted all of four days.
—Dale Hrabi
A Convert On Why She’s Hooked
AT THE END of my first silent meditation retreat in 2012, I felt a strange sensation—it was like I’d finally satisfied a deep thirst that I wasn’t quite aware I’d had. And I’ve felt the same way after the nine retreats (ranging from 3 to 10 days) that I’ve attended since then. But the path to reaching that feeling of simple relief is anything but easy.
Although every retreat has been different, each has tended to fall into four stages for me. The first is the adjustment phase, which lasts one to three days. It’s torture. I ache all over, I struggle to stay awake, I want to look at my phone, I need coffee, everyone else is meditating so perfectly, and why is the “Dear Evan Hansen” cast recording on repeat in my head? At the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts where I’ve gone for almost all my retreats, retreatants, or yogis, abstain from speaking, reading and writing, and coffee is not available. The alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation are tedious. Existing with people in a state of silence feels strained and artificial, like being an extra in a Syfy series about a zombie virus. I welcome the daily dharma talks, in which a teacher explores an aspect of Buddhism, because my mind has something to seize onto.
Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass. offers meditation retreats in the Buddhist tradition. Photo: Insight Meditation Society
Next is the unraveling phase. By this point, I’ve stopped chafing against the routine, I don’t automatically doze off when I shut my eyes at sittings, but I am far from at peace. Jon Kabat-Zinn, scientist and meditation teacher, has said that meditation can give one the ability to stand behind the waterfall of one’s thoughts instead of being caught beneath them. I experience moments like that, but much of the time I’m lost in the onslaught. It’s during this phase that I craft nicknames for the other retreatants and concoct a murder mystery set at a silent retreat (working title: “Last Yogi Standing”). “Evan Hansen” has become “Guys and Dolls.” My mind finds endless ways to escape, I catch myself, and I commit to staying—over and over and over again.
Then there’s the settled phase. My mind continues to be busy but I don’t get as entangled in my thoughts. I feel an increasing mental spaciousness—it’s as if the ceiling of my consciousness is rising from a confining 1980s-Manhattan-apartment height to a prewar loftiness. The sitting and walking periods, which once felt rigidly scheduled, have assumed a natural cadence, like one’s heartbeat or the path of the sun during the day. While the murder mystery and musical soundtrack (now “The Band’s Visit”) still intrude, the reality of walk-sit-eat-breathe is more engaging.
Especially the walking. IMS is set amid scattered houses and farms in central Massachusetts, with acres of wooded trails and ponds to explore. I’m most often there in the winter, and spending my days in meditation can turn a gray afternoon in New England into an occasion that fires the senses. Outside, I feel the crystalline edge of air against my face, my boots pleasantly crunch on ice, I catch whiffs of wood smoke, and my reading-starved eyes scan the faint tracks of chipmunks, deer and unknown others on the snow for messages (there are never any).
“I concoct a murder mystery set at a silent retreat. Working title: ‘Last Yogi Standing.’”
Inside, I go to the dining hall to warm up over a cup of tea, where there’s inevitably a group of people clustered near what I think of as yogi TV: the birdfeeders, which attract a sitcom cast of overstuffed squirrels, darting chickadees, dogged goldfinch and the sporadic, shockingly handsome woodpecker. I feel a strong connection to every one of my fellow yogis, as if we all have each other’s back, even though we haven’t spoken.
Finally, there’s the return. Anyone who’s gone on vacation has felt the end-of-holiday letdown, and the last two days of retreat are that, plus fear in different flavors. There’s the fear of leaving the company of people who can tolerate silence, fear of rejoining the noisy, chaotic world, fear that I can’t explain what has happened inside me, and fear that whatever it is, I cannot hold on to it. As I sit for the final meditation, all I know is my thirst is gone, the piping voice in my head that clamors “more!” is quiet and, when I close my eyes one last time, the space is vast like the sky at night.
—Daryl Chen |
