I recently returned from my annual silent retreat in Colorado. I continue to be fascinated by what happens when my mouth is shut. I have an active mind prone to playful ideas and deep inquiry, and when they surface, like many I am inclined to share them with others. Deprived of this option through the discipline of silence, thoughts kept to myself while sitting for hours focused on my breath and observing thoughts as they arise and fade away, I ultimately find that most things on my mind are not worth expressing anyway.
When a group of 60 people simultaneously engage in such discipline, the experience is magnified. Sitting together for 14 hours a day in silence, eating three meals a day together in silence, and waking up the next morning in silence creates a unique form of intimacy unmatched by casual discourse. Though instantaneous impressions, likes, dislikes, fascination and repulsion all arise upon first meeting others, they fade away in the absence of talking. Opinions are often the fuel through which we largely find justification for our initial feelings and fantasies about others, and when deprived of such fuel our automatic engines of discrimination peter out.
By week’s end, despite little actual conversation, what had been a group of strangers becomes an oddly comfortable family. Within the safe confines of a quiet and predictable container, postural shifts and adjustments, walking styles and body movements, facial expressions and hair styles all coalesce into an all-encompassing non-verbal transmission far more revealing than speech. In such an environment, words are at best superfluous and at worst destructive. Bereft of verbal argument and rationale, people are simply people, working with silence in whatever ways we can.
With mouth shut mind opens and begins to accommodate space. Actually, space is naturally present at all times, but it is veiled by the incessant chatter of discursive thought and its vocal expression. Within silence the internal chatter slows, gaps appear and the ever-present space is more easily revealed. Mind begins to mix with space. Slowly the gaps widen and periods of actual peace and quiet grow. Occasionally within that space, sharp clarity of awareness forms – insight beyond thought – knowing beyond thinking. And then, just as quickly, it dissolves. Moments change and cannot be grasped. This is the practice: not grasping and not not grasping – relaxing into simple awareness.
The practice continues into the night, even while asleep. Waking in the morning reasserts the continuum of silence, and without any expectation of conversation mind continues to relax. One even stops talking to oneself, internal dialogue too distracting. And then, there is the boredom.
To infer that silent meditation is never boring is to ignore the limits of self. Meditation is inherently boring, extremely boring, boring to the point of nearly intolerable. It is at the point of greatest boredom that I confront the edge, the location where ego entertainment ends and the reality of no-self begins. This can be a scary spot with nothing to hold on to, no reference points, and no place to go – the spacious open-ended moment of being. I rush back from that brink repeatedly, finding stability in my breath.
Breathe space in, breathe space out. Thoughts arise and thoughts dissolve. And so it goes.
