I certainly became more aware of the facial expressions of my fellow practitioners and found myself compiling great stories about who they were and what they were doing here based on the judgements I had made when observing them. It was funny to talk to them after the retreat and to realise that these fantastic life stories I had woven around them were ultimately figments of my imagination!
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The Sound of Silence
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When I first enter into a silent retreat, it takes me a few days to get used to this extraordinary state. Standing and staring across the monastery’s silent landscape, it would feel as if my ears were reaching out for sound, any sound at all. It was as though they were so habitually accustomed to listening that they needed some form of stimulus. It took me a while before I stopped trying to listen and became at ease with this state of silence.
When I first entered the retreat, I was so used to using my sense of hearing for discursive reflection and for contemplation. Listening could not be separated from an engagement with sound, processing it and packaging it in my mind so that I may react to it in some manner. However, the nature of monastic silence does not impair your ability to hear but it relieves the necessity to listen, to react and label the sounds that present themselves to us.
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I certainly became more aware of the facial expressions of my fellow practitioners and found myself compiling great stories about who they were and what they were doing here based on the judgements I had made when observing them. It was funny to talk to them after the retreat and to realise that these fantastic life stories I had woven around them were ultimately figments of my imagination!
It was mid-way into my stay that I suddenly became much more aware of the chattering that when on in my mind. The mind is constantly racing away conceptualising our universe and it is only when we quieten other aspects of our lives that we can witness how much we are thinking in the depths of our consciousness. It was at this point, when I began to see this whirlwind of thoughts coursing through my mind, I began to find the practice of silence difficult. Through lack of an external stimulus, it was very easy to get lost in my thoughts and to cling and react to certain ideas that would fly up from nowhere into my conscious awareness.
It was only through the monastic discipline of the monastery that allowed me to detach from pursuing this introspection and to focus on my activities in the present moment. This discipline, the strict method of meditating, cooking, eating and sleeping, provides the necessary tool to finally quieten the mind.
While I only had glimpses of this deeper level of silence – the letting go of the need to control thoughts and the peace of the present moment – I found it a wonderful experience. In this way, the practice of silence can lead us into newfound depths and allow us to confront the activities of the mind that we never normally notice. Just don’t expect it to be easy!
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