10 Days of Silence
One of the most challenging and impactful experiences I've had: a 10-day silent retreat
In March of this year, I learned how torturous sitting can be. I struggled harder than I had during one of the ultras or marathons. More challenging still than climbing the summit of a mountain. And all I had to do was sit still and be aware. That’s it! Not solve any problems or overcome a crazy physical challenge. All I had to do was sit and be mindful of my mind and body. This humbling lesson was a part of the 10-day Silent Vipassana Retreat. I attend a center in the northern Indian city of Kushinagar.
I highly recommend attending the retreat offered by the Dhamma Organization. With over 370 locations worldwide, it is accessible to anyone. This experience is profound and something everyone should have the opportunity to try. Many of my friends say they want to disconnect from their phones. To escape the chaos of everyday life, this retreat offers a dedicated and serious chance to do that. I cannot stress enough the transformative power of this 10-day retreat. I will share my honest experiences below, but I must warn you that it is a challenging commitment. It is well worth the effort.
Let’s start by explaining what this meditation retreat IS and IS NOT.
What This Meditation Retreat IS:
Intensive and very difficult, with a powerful and transformative payoff.
Free to attend and is only financed through voluntary donations.
Funded only by donations of prior 10-day retreat meditators.
Focused on learning the Vipassana technique.
What This Meditation Retreat IS NOT:
A religious, cult, or sectarian indoctrination. You won’t be asked to join a group and drink Kool-Aid at the end of this retreat.
Instructed by a questionable long-bearded guru wearing expensive clothing and jewelry.
A cash grab by a group of people looking to scam rich, gullible Westerners into being comfortably introduced to Eastern wisdom or techniques.
Meditation Techniques
Several techniques are taught during the course, but below are the three main ones that will be taught and practiced during the retreat:
Anapana Sati (Mindfulness of Breathing). This involves focusing attention on the natural breath as it enters and leaves the nose. It helps to develop concentration, mindfulness, and awareness of the present moment.
Vipassana (Insight Meditation). Vipassana meditation involves naturally observing the body and mind, without judgment or attachment. A technique in which you use awareness to scan body sensations and thoughts.
Metta Bhavana (Loving-Kindness Meditation). This practice cultivates feelings of love, compassion, and goodwill towards oneself and others. Done by directing kind thoughts and well-wishes toward others.
Spartan Retreat
A friend described this retreat perfectly when he said: “This retreat is the most Spartan way to learn Vipassana.” This retreat is very Spartan, with no extra fluff or pampering. You won’t be given lush bedding or catered like the world revolves around you. It’s a bare-bone experience meant to strip away as many distractions as possible so that your sole focus is meditation. And this is mainly achieved through the practice of “Noble Silence.”
Noble Silence:
The silence maintained during the retreat is called "Noble Silence." It allows for deeper concentration and mindfulness by minimizing external distractions. Maintaining silence is challenging but a powerful way to focus your mind. In practice, Noble Silence is avoiding eye contact, having no writing or technology materials, and doing no busy work. You won’t sweep leaves for hours or clean bathroom tiles with a toothbrush. The retreat is 100% geared towards learning and practicing the technique of Vipassana.
The Ten Days
Day 0-1: The Shock of Silence
To reach the retreat center, I flew into New Delhi airport. I then took a small regional plane for an hour to Kushinagar, a northern town near the Nepal border. Kushinagar is an important pilgrimage site for Buddhists as it is where the Buddha died. Even though I'm not religious I find visiting places that are important to others to be a meaningful way to connect with teachings. The retreat center was an hour-long tuk-tuk ride from the airport. The retreat has simple white buildings with a temple-like structure as the centerpiece. This center building is the meditation hall where I would spend the next ten days meditating for 10 hours daily.
On Day 0 (the first day, which is half a day) of our retreat, we start Noble Silence. It's surprising how much noise and distractions we encounter daily. Once they're gone, you realize how much you rely on them. The mindless chatter, small talk, phone addiction, and countless interactions are gone. The silence can be shocking.
The first three days of meditation consist of the Anapana Sati (Mindfulness of Breathing). The technique focuses our minds by paying attention to the breath. It's more challenging than it sounds, which immediately becomes clear.
Day 2-3: The Restless Mind
During meditations, where I tried to focus on my breath, I realized that my mind kept racing with thoughts. Most of them were useless and irrelevant. My mind kept playing movie and TV show scenes. I replayed video games and other forms of entertainment. Over and over.
Before these meditations, I believed most of my thoughts were about politics or important life choices. You know, the important stuff. I considered myself to be wicked smart and who only focused on intelligent topics. Yet, I realized that my mind played with endless distractions and forms of entertainment. I’m embarrassed to admit that I spent most of my time reliving fantasy scenes. Everything from Marvel movies and Star Wars to John Wick movies. My mind was a contemporary pop culture-generating machine.
After experiencing lots of restlessness, I did have moments of pure breath focus. It felt fantastic to be completely aware of it without any distractions. But, it takes work to maintain this concentration level, even in an environment meant to eliminate distractions.
Now you are saying to yourself, “Pshh, it’s not hard to be aware of your breath, Dylan. You're crazy.” Fair enough, friend, give it the old college try:
Set a timer for 5 minutes.
Get comfortable.
Close your eyes.
And now, focus on your breath without letting your thoughts distract you for those 5 minutes.
Anapana Sati is a straightforward concept. But I discovered that it's both powerful and challenging to implement.
Day 4: Vipassana Day or the Day I Learned the True Torture of Sitting
On day four, you're asked to meditate for an hour without shifting your hands, arms, or feet. I call this the 'Power Hour' meditation. This first power hour was the hardest thing I have ever done. No shifting position, no movement. No matter the pain or how uncomfortable the position. The goal is to observe any sensations that come up without judgment. Whether the sensation is pleasant or painful, the technique is to be aware of it as a sensation.
And holy bananas, do painful sensations arise. I am not joking when I say that this single hour was one of the most painful experiences of my life. (I learned later that they don’t expect you to do that feat the first time you try. It’s meant to be something you achieve gradually after practicing for a while.) I sat there for the entire hour without voluntarily moving a muscle. That was fine for the first 20 minutes, but right around the midway point, all I could think about was moving. Somewhere around the 40-50 minute mark, something otherworldly started. I started shaking as if I was spazzing out from a seizure. My body was screaming to change position, but I refused. I was told to sit for an hour, so that's what I did. I was shaking so much that I became terrified that I could never stop shaking again. The involuntary shakes continued long after sitting. The pain was surreal.
I've endured the pain of running 30 marathons in one year. I spent six years in the military, where being uncomfortable is the norm. But, never before have I felt the level of torture that can come from sitting. This hour of pain made me think about quitting.
Thankfully, one of the servers (people who have completed at least one 10-day retreat and are now volunteering their time to support the meditators and make sure things function correctly) came up to me and told me something that I desperately needed to hear. “Dylan, you are too hard on yourself. It’s okay to give yourself a break. This journey is a long one. Let your mind and body gradually get there.” His words were so simple, but I desperately needed to hear them. Then I remembered that I was there by choice and didn’t come to torture myself but to learn a useful technique. In time, my body got used to sitting. I even reached the point where the power hours were no longer pure torture sessions. Sitting for that long remained uncomfortable at points, but they were manageable.
Day 5-6: Euphoria of Stillness
After the craziness that was day four, I came into the fifth day determined to observe my mind and body but do so relaxed and with less rigidity. This is good because we start doing three Power Hour meditation sessions on the fifth day. And while they remained difficult, I am happy to tell you I never went through that level of pain again. It helped that I no longer forced myself to be a sitting Superman.
During one of the power hours, I experience something that I am calling the Euphoria of Stillness. The best way I can describe it is that for a brief moment, the structures that are my mind and body seemed to disappear. It was like I was a cloud of sensation, and my consciousness was an observer with no stake in the game. I was an observer. I know this may sound like I jumped into the deep end of foo foo land. I am not saying I shook God’s hand or got spiritually tickled by Buddha. Instead, for one fleeting moment, I discovered the profoundness of this technique. It’s about being aware in the most total sense possible. It’s a hard sensation for me to describe. But this moment is why I wholeheartedly recommend attending the retreat. Even if you don’t experience this moment, there are plenty of simple and profound moments. Realizing you can survive ten days without distraction is enough to go to this retreat.
Day 7-9: Lucid Thoughts
The 10-hour days are much more manageable at this point. It’s why so many intense thoughts began to flood my mind. It was as if I was lucid dreaming. The technique calls for being a neutral observer of your body and the ideas that may arise. But, there were many points during these days when I would become aware of how lost in my thoughts I had become. While I never quite felt the same intense euphoric sensation of stillness as I did on day six. During my nightly reflections, I realized that the days passed with much more ease and less pain. 10 hours of meditation was still tiring, but I was no longer exhausted.
I began experiencing meditations where I could scan my body uninterrupted. I felt my body sensations more often and with more ease. It is nice to know that progress does happen. I would have lost my mind otherwise.
Day 10: The Day the Silence Broke
Late into the morning of the 10th day, Noble Silence is broken. The meditations at this point aren’t as focused because this day acts as a reintegration period. Most of my free time I spent sharing my experience with my roommate and the other meditators. The other bits of free time I spent taking hundreds of selfies. No joke; I posed in so many selfies, that an A-list celebrity would be jealous. I was the only American most of the other meditators ever met, so I was a magnet for pictures.
This reintegration period is very necessary. The shock from silence to limitless distractions can be overwhelming. After leaving the retreat, I needed an extra day to reflect on my time there. The effects of which I am still processing and learning from today.
Additional Materials:
Since this piece didn’t go deep into the benefits or practice of meditation, there are plenty of better writers and thinkers you can look into for that—people such as Sam Harris, Joseph Goldstein, and Tuan S.N. Goenka. The link to the organization I attended is here for those interested.
Laughing Like a Child:
This is a complete aside, but I can’t write about my experience of this retreat without mentioning one more thing. Everyone who reads this will realize how much of a child I still am. As a 31-year-old grown man, I laugh almost uncontrollably at a wholesome, grass-fed, deep fart. Even writing that last sentence has me laughing. In India, there isn’t the same cultural stigma around letting go of your bodily gases. That means you’ll hear both men and women belch out burbs that would make Homer Simpson blush. It means you’ll hear, albeit less often, someone rip out a fart that makes the world vibrate. No matter how deep into a meditation I was, when one of those bad boys came out, it would take everything in my power to stop me from laughing out loud. There you go. Now you know that deep down, I am still a child.
Crazy to know that out of all the trials you have put yourself through, sitting still could be the hardest. Great story. Makes me want to meditate more often.