The Real End of Silence

On the ninth day of the ten-day retreat, I began to dread the moment when our group of a hundred meditators would break the silence. I was finally finding a rhythm and sense of quiet, and here it was, just about to end.

The teachers were preparing us. In the afternoon, after sitting meditation and some house-keeping announcements, we’d be guided through an exercise in mindful speech. At dinnertime, we’d go back into silence until the retreat ended the next morning.

We’d gone into what is referred to as “Noble Silence” the first evening. Meals were silent, or rather, speechless, as we all sat in the dining hall, looking out the window at the birds in the leafless tree. The tree, like most of us, was waiting for that first warm day of spring. We listened to the clangs of ladles in the vats of oatmeal. There were coughs and sneezes and the sounds of chair legs rubbed against the floor.

In the hallways, we didn’t say hello to each other. I would sometimes smile at someone who held a door open for me. At other times I kept my eyes downcast, not wanting to go through the pantomime of social niceties. It depended on my mood.

On the ninth day my mood was complete resistance to returning to the world of talk. It’s not that I’m socially inept; it’s the opposite. I feel outwardly confident in almost any situation. I also feel a responsibility to put others at ease, to ask engaging questions and bring everyone into the conversation. For nine days, I’d relinquished that role. It was a loss of identity and a huge relief.

I had spoken out loud a few times. At my job in the kitchen, I had to ask, “Where does this go?” or say, “There’s no room in the fridge for the leftover soup.” When I took long walks before lunch, I found myself singing songs from summer camp. On the third night, I woke myself up from a sound sleep saying, “That just isn’t true.”

Ten days before the retreat I’d abruptly ended a relationship. Though I wasn’t speaking to others, the internal dialogue in my head continued at a furious speed. I couldn’t stop thinking about dishonesty and loss. At times, I cried silently. If anyone noticed, the group vow of silence protected me from questions such as, “Are you okay?”

The housekeeping talk had finished and a teacher began leading the silence-breaking exercise. I’d done enough retreats to know that we’d be asked to find a partner. The young man sitting on the cushion to my left was a focused meditator and impossibly beautiful. For some reason, I’d begun to dislike him and the other groovy twenty-something meditators who all knew each other.

To my right was an older white-haired man in a red fleece vest. He sniffed a lot when his stomach wasn’t gurgling. All week, I alternated between sending him metta and wishing he’d spontaneously combust.

When the inevitable “chose someone” instruction came, I turned to the Old Gurgler and we did the exercise together. It was relatively painless, if not particularly meaningful. We looked into each other’s eyes and took turns mindfully describing how the retreat had gone for us. It felt like a requirement, rather than something I truly wanted to do.

The exercise ended. Those who wanted to keep talking could do so until the dinner bell rang. Lots of people had enjoyed the experience and were talking animatedly to their partners or people around them.

I just wanted to go to my room and close the door. I knew that other people were feeling just like me. A number of people fled quickly. I didn’t want to appear to be a Fleer, so with a semblance of mindfulness, I slowly made my way toward the exit.

A guy who worked the same shift in the kitchen approached me and said, “We seem to keep bumping each other.” If we had, I hadn’t noticed. He started talking. It was an awkward conversation. I tried to keep up my part by asking questions and appearing interested. Though I can be dense about such matters, it became clear that Kitchen Guy was hitting on me, not in an obnoxious way, but definitely hoping for something. I wasn’t interested and said, as soon as I politely could, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m going to get a cup of tea.” Then I walked straight past the tea station, went to my room, and mindfully closed the door.

I felt like an isolated failure. There were people talking and laughing and genuinely enjoying themselves, but I wasn’t part of it. I felt badly about the way I’d behaved towards Kitchen Guy. Could I have handled the situation more wisely? Could I have said “not the least bit interested” more compassionately?

The clang of the dinner bell marking the return to silence was a relief. I ate a little, then did my job in kitchen. Kitchen Guy was there, but avoided any sort of eye contact with me. Fine. Whatever.

After the evening mediation, I was wide-awake and agitated. I made a cup of tea and took it out into the cold night air. There was no one else outside. The moon was full and I felt the comforting vastness of the night sky.

At breakfast everyone had that getting-ready-to-go energy. I caught site of Kitchen Guy and noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring, which he clearly wasn’t wearing the day before. “You little turd,” I thought.

After breakfast there was time for packing and room cleaning before the last meditation and the real end of silence. I tidied up and loaded my car.

Though we were officially still in silence, lots of people were talking, saying goodbye to their fellow floor-moppers or hall mates. It seemed liked everyone had made friends except me. The Impossibly Beautiful Young Man was talking to a middle-aged woman outside the laundry room. They were smiling and laughing and clearly cherished each other.

I sat on a bench at the edge of the parking lot with my boots on the melting snow. I cried, knowing that my isolation was of my own making, knowing that I feel safest on the edge, looking in. I cried because I understood that silence had been the perfect camouflage for my own loneliness.

When it comes to the Triple Gem—the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Buddha and Dharma, but less so of the Sangha—the community of seekers. Humans are so annoying. Students ask self-important questions just to hear their own voices. There are Swallowers and Heavy Breathers and Constant Shifters. Then there are Egotistical Teachers and Philandering Gurus. And there are those, like me, who sing off key even in the simplest of chants.

I’ve always felt an affinity with hermit monks who spend years in a cave. They’ve escaped the politics and pettiness of any established group. Like them, I’d been trying to practice my own private Buddhism.

Yet I was at the retreat because I knew the value of the group. The structure and schedule made me more disciplined than I could ever be on my own. And the peer pressure of a hundred other meditators kept me on the cushion.

Our group had a life of its own. Sometimes the entire hall seemed to be experiencing a joyful calm. We’d  all be in a groove, carrying each other easily. At other times, the opposite happened. One person completely lost concentration. The whole row followed and soon the entire hall was impatiently waiting for the gong. You could see it happen.

But now the Sangha was teaching me something besides discipline. It was showing me my own isolation. Or rather, it was showing me my own preference for distance and what I lose because of that.

The bell rang for the last sitting and I walked back to the hall. I continued to cry during the sitting, not a noisy, weepy cry, just tears rolling down my cheeks. I realized that with all of us all facing forward, it was impossible to know how many of my fellow meditators were also quietly crying.

The teachers said thank you and good-bye from the dais and the singing bowl was struck for the last time. I kept my eyes closed, as I always do, until the last reverberation of sound completely disappeared.

I opened my eyes. People were starting to get up and leave. I touched the arm of the Impossibly Beautiful Young Man. “Thank you for being so steady in your meditation,” I said, “it helped me.” We began to talk. “Just because I didn’t move doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult,” was the first thing he said. We talked about the retreat and how things had gone for each of us. He was kind and interested. There were tears in my eyes that I didn’t want to be there, but I had lost the desire to flee.

We were two of the last people to leave the hall. The rows of maroon cushions around us had been stacked while we were talking. In the hallway and parking lot I talked to other people. I had, in my own good time, joined the Sangha.

Martha Henry prefers not to talk until she's had her morning cup of coffee. She can be reached at marthahenry3@gmail.com. Image: iStockphoto/© Robert Churchill

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