Why Go on a Silent Retreat? Why Not Jet to St. Lucia?
Answering your burning questions, dear readers
A year ago, I went to Southern Dharma, a retreat center about 3 hours away from my house, for the first time for a silent retreat. I understood the concept; no talking, no phones, etc. This wasn’t entirely foreign to me, but I was about to do it for 4 nights - 3 WHOLE days and 5 days if you counted the travel days- with complete strangers in a totally new place.
I didn’t want my phone back when it was time to leave. I explained it to my therapist later like this: “With so little stimuli, the brain has nothing to grab onto. The only choice is to just be.”
So Much Noise We’re Deaf
The amount of people I meet who think a silent retreat is one of the versions of hell waiting for them is astounding and not surprising at the same time. We live in a world that is so full of noise we’ve become deaf to it. Fingers on keyboards, cars on streets, dogs barking, appliances groaning.
I live in a medium-sized town in the Southeast. Lest we forget New York City or the noise of an airport or train station or somewhere a little more metropolitan. I used to live in one of these more metropolitan places.
Fire truck sirens my white noise machines and trains unable to wake me up from sleep as they faithfully chugged by my window. I don’t miss the noise of hundreds of thousands of people crammed on top of one another, a house party in the apartment above, the trolley rolling by, or someone being brought in on a helicopter to the hospital around the corner in an attempt to save their life.
Even here, in the almost rural outskirts of my smaller city, noise can be too much. The kids down the street have these electric bikes and I feel I have no place to judge but certainly experience some unpleasant feeling tones, as we might say in the Buddhist tradition, as they go by.
My dog likes to bark at thin air.
So this year, I joyfully shut my computer and drove off into the late afternoon sun toward Southern Dharma. Peace, here I come.
Planning Mind
Except, as my teacher pointed out, the end of the retreat is what we tend to remember. That rosy-hued afterglow of finally settling the mind. So, it took a few days of, “shouldn’t we go fall clothes shopping soon?” and “ how will my workflow go when I get back?” thoughts to settle in properly.
Somewhere around day 3(time loses all meaning when you meditate all day and stop only to eat and do working meditation) I wrote this poem to get wedding planning thoughts out of my mind:
Wedding planning
flowers photography cake?
Cake is a question
Not an exclamation mark
Invitations catering
That’s about it
And my favorite
Honeymoon
It will all have to wait
For now
Planning mind is on vacation
I’ll deliver this poem to her when she gets back
ask her if she has any honeymoon recommendations
and tell her I approved her request for more PTO
It’ll all come together
I know
“Planning mind” is what I call the part of my mind that likes to … plan. Constantly. You know, that inner dialogue that goes, “after this newsletter, I’ll do this. Then, this. Oh, and I can’t forget about that! And to call so-and-so.”
Planning mind, personally, makes me tired and usually less efficient and is completely useless on a retreat where I literally can’t plan anything except to make me worry.
That’s why we practice.
Buddhism & Retreats
A lot of people have asked, what type of retreat was this?
While I hold no one set of spiritual or religious beliefs, I do hold that all major religious and spiritual traditions are trying to get at the same idea, thing, ideal, questions, or state of being at the deepest level.
Buddhism is no exception. I started learning more about Buddhism rather unknowingly in 2020 when I deepened my meditation practice with my yoga teacher who trained in the Theravada and Tibetan lineages of Buddhism. I still practice with her and a big group of people online every Tuesday/Thursday.
I associated meditation more with yoga back then and held Buddhism as this other thing in my mind without understanding or really caring that my teacher was drawing on a *lot* of Buddhist teachings.
In 2020, I really just wanted to find some peace. As time has gone on, I’ve become more cognizant of how deeply rooted in Buddhism our meditation container is, although I am not a “card-carrying Buddhist”, to quote my retreat leader.
It’s been quite natural for me to start attending Buddhist retreats. In these, we explore the teachings of the Buddha( this one focused on settling the mind, cultivating insight into impermanence, reactivity, and no-self, and cultivating spaciousness) and bring them into days full of meditation, lovingkindness practice, and in this one, Qi Gong.
So many people - I imagine- envision sitting on a cushion, ignoring stabbing lower back pain when they think of meditation. (See: spiritual bypassing). I sat in a chair the whole retreat, and we were encouraged to cultivate awareness of the body, heart, and mind.
Practicing for All Beings
When people ask me how I benefit from these retreats, it can be hard to describe. Here it goes: By deepening my own sense of well-being, profoundly, I feel I benefit the world. Every time I sit for meditation at home, and especially when I immerse myself in a retreat space, I profoundly shift my relationship to my own life.
I come home less worried about what others think of me, less in a rush to do things, no longer feeling like no part of me is not enough, and like everything will be, quite simply, okay. Love and joy come to me with more ease. I’m present more often and on my phone much less.
Yes, I still have bad days and deeply entrenched thought patterns and negative beliefs do resurface. Now, I have better tools to recognize them with, and frankly, more love to extend to myself.
I strongly believe these effects affect the well-being of those I love and of everyone I come into contact with.
I’m not trying to proselytize you, dear reader - I think we can all get to a place of deep ease and abiding love in different ways.
My concern is merely getting there at all. Coming back from the retreat, I was instantly overwhelmed, as I alluded to in my Monday newsletter, by how people were living. How everyone was walking around with their guard up or promoting an idea of themselves instead of displaying who they really are. It was so apparent coming back from a week of silent contemplation.
A woman erupted in laughter behind me in the grocery store on Monday and I started laughing too, overtaken by her joy, only a touch sad that no one else was giggling as hysterically as the two of us strangers.
A girl in a store in Black Mountain smiled at me like no one had looked at her all day when I said, “Have a good one!” on the way out.
I worry about our world. I hope for our world because it’s not like I’m the only one asking these questions. I see my beloveds rushing to get work done, stretched thin, not having enough time, saying “I’m too busy”, again and again - and believe me, I’ve sung that sung more times than I can count - but when will we be ready to stop? Are we too busy for love? For one another?
Contemplation of these questions, cultivation of hope for the world - this is why I still go on retreat. Why I do my own inner work. Why I try and walk the walk of my retreat takeaways, “Kindness. Rest. Ease. Peace.”
I cannot force others to act any other way than they do, but I can be myself, and know that that is enough.
Here’s another poem for you from retreat time. Let me know if you have any questions I didn’t cover. People often do.
My Many Faces(Which One Today?)
Joyful heart
Planning mind
Story weaver
Future teller
Memory keeper
Protector
Child-self
The one who never ceases speaking
Soul shredded
Make myself smaller so others have room
Tune out of me tune in to you
Spiritual seeker
All aspects of me worth loving
Born blessed
Welcomed at this home
in me
With metta(lovingkindness),
Camille
Such a wonderfully valuable post, Camille. "So Much Noise We’re Deaf" - yes! As always you've given me a great deal to think about. Thank you. ♥️