Five days of silence

6 May

by Jade Green

By chance, last week I found myself chatting to someone who has been on retreat at this particular house before. Her advice was: ‘get there early, and you get first pick of housework’.

It’s in my nature to arrive early to everything anyway, but it was sound advice. I’ve timed it so the train arrives fifteen minutes before the retreat officially opens, then it’s just a short cab ride to the house. Everything is running like clockwork – the trains are on time, I grab a coffee at the station (my last for five days – eek), and there is a lone taxi sitting in the car park. When the driver hears my destination he scowls slightly, like a native whose village has been invaded by a cult. He is obviously used to ferrying Buddhists to and from the house.

We drive deep into the undulant Devon countryside, civilisation receding into the background.

I have done as much preparation as I can as a kind of bulwark against anxiety. I’ve studied the extensive guidelines on the retreat’s website. I’ve bought a watch and unscented soap. I’ve tried to picture the house, the teachers, the architecture of five days without screens and noise.

According to the detailed email I received a week ago, silence doesn’t begin until later this evening, after the opening talk. Soon we are approaching a sand-coloured building (built c1588, according to the website) perched on the side of a grassy hill. I’m grateful for my laconic driver, who doesn’t utter a word to me the whole journey, leaving me to stew in my state of anxious prognostication.

As planned, I’m one of the first retreatants to arrive and am greeted at the door by Dave*, a petite man dressed in a paisley waistcoat with large, luminous eyes (the clear-eyed look is characteristic of every person that works here, I will come to learn – like looking into two pools of triple-filtered water). Dave shows me into a dining hall with rows of long, empty tables. We sit and chat over peppermint tea. Then he retrieves a clipboard, attached to which is the hotly-anticipated housework schedule. I pick breakfast wash-up.

Room

There will be a tour of the house later this afternoon. My bedroom is reasonably sized, with a soothing view of the sheep-dotted hills, and sparse furnishings; two single beds (I know from the website the bedrooms are normally shared, and feel guiltily grateful for the pandemic); two bedside tables with lamps; a few wooden hooks on the wall. I choose the bed nearest the window to sleep in, and the second bed becomes my sofa/writing nook/place to store my things. The room is warm, and smells pleasantly of fresh laundry. Bedding is folded in a neat pile on the pillow, and my first action is to make up the bed and test the mattress for lumpiness. It’s surprisingly comfy.

Then comes the first of many hours I will need to fill. I retrieve the fresh notebook I brought with me (illegally) and start scribbling.

Time to get confessional. I have a clandestine reason for coming here, a reason that will justify my need for writing in a notebook – an activity (along with reading) that is strictly ‘discouraged’ in the retreat guidelines.

Firstly – the guidelines prohibit the act of writing ‘in the spirit of simplicity and silence’, but as a writer I use the practice to help me achieve simplicity and silence, clearing space in my head by exorcising my thoughts onto the page.

Secondly – I’m here as an observer, as well as a participant (just call me Louis Theroux). This is partly because I want to write something about the retreat when I get home (a writer never passes up an opportunity to turn significant life experience into ‘content’), partly because I have this silly, half-baked dream of one day running my own silent meditation retreats, specifically for writers and artists, with creative practice woven into the structure of the schedule (take that, Buddhism!). So I need to gather notes for the purposes of research.

Silence begins at 7pm and I can hear the bustle of other retreatants arriving; footsteps creaking on floorboards; distant echoes of chatter; a woman asking where the bathrooms are. I have a sinking reminder of being on a school trip, the bit where all the kids are over-stimulated by a new environment and the thrill of being away from their parents. I have already turned off my phone and feel the first flicker of an urge to open Instagram and scroll.

House

After staring at the wall for five minutes, I decide to sneak back downstairs and squeeze in a quick pre-tour before the official tour at 4pm. The house is grand, stately, steeped in the essence of decades of spiritual practice. There is a monastic stillness in the air, even with the commotion of new arrivals. Big oak doors and uneven corridors lead into mysterious, shadowy areas I’m not sure I’m permitted to enter. The building is a hodgepodge of different wings that have been added over time, so some sections are more architecturally modern than others (like the brand-new shower wing which, as Dave explained, was built while the retreat closed over lockdown). I wander around the Meditation Hall, leaving my shoes on the designated wooden rack outside, and reserve my spot for the next five days by draping my cardigan over the back of a chair. Dave advised I do this before the best spots get snatched up, but it feels a little presumptuous to be claiming furniture this early on. Statues of the Buddha watch me from raised plinths.

Later, during the official tour, we are introduced to a ‘Walking Room’ (the name speaks for itself), a library that is out-of-bounds, the kitchen where I will spend an hour every morning filling and emptying a huge industrial dishwasher, and a lounge, which ends up being my favourite place in the house. The lounge is somehow the most silent room in a building full of silent rooms, with large windows overlooking the grounds, cosy furnishings and a plush carpet. In later days I will spend time sitting in the soft armchairs in front of the windows, sipping camomile tea and watching the wind batter the black tree branches. An amber weather warning has been issued for South West England. Storm Eunice is about to hit the country, and the lounge is the perfect spot to watch the landscape transform.

The first meal is pea soup. I sit at a table with three other women and we talk about how excited we are for the silence to begin. There is a heightened sense of anticipation in the air. We make small talk about how we hate making small talk. One of the women, Claire, wonders aloud whether anyone will leave the retreat early, and tells a cautionary tale of a friend who left the (much stricter, ten-day) Suffolk retreat early by jumping a fence. Claire will be my workmate on the breakfast wash-up shift. She’s also residing on the same floor as me and we drift back to our rooms together after dinner. I mention my intended abstinence from coffee during the retreat, and my concern about the headaches I sometimes get when I cut out caffeine. She says she will probably still drink coffee and sleep in past the 6.15 wake-up bell, because ‘you should do what feels good’. I get the sense she will find the next five days challenging.

Silence

By 7pm the wind is roaring around the house, pummelling the Meditation Hall in which we sit and await our first instruction. There is an introductory talk by one of the clear-eyed staff members, and then our teacher, Lina, guides us through a light meditation. I discover the chair I reserved is far too squat for my 5’9 body length, and by the end my back aches. The hallowed silence we have all been waiting for is finally initiated. When we leave the Hall, the schedule has been hung on the noticeboard, and we all cluster noiselessly around it, anxious to delineate the next five days.

The schedule goes like this:

6.15 Wake up

6.45 Meditation

7.30 Breakfast

8.15 Work hour

9.30 Opening talk/meditation

12.30 Lunch

3.00 Talk/meditation

5.30 Dinner

7.00 Closing talk/meditation

9.00 Final meditation

On alternate days there are also small group sessions before dinner, where you are allowed to ask the teacher questions or share your experience. This will be the only opportunity to talk.

The start of each period is signalled by the ringing of a bell. I intend to get up straight after the first bell the following morning to do some yoga stretches in the Walking Room (a big, bare room with a real human skeleton posed in a sitting position in front of the window).

My first night’s sleep stinks. This is the case whenever I stay overnight anywhere, so it comes as no surprise. Every floorboard creak, every gust of wind, every shuffle from my neighbour’s room wakes me and I spend much of the night staring at the ceiling. I keep thinking someone is going to open my bedroom door (there are no locks), and every time I drift into semi-sleep the door bursts open, the person entering sees my tits (I didn’t bring pyjamas), and my shame jolts me back awake.

Pain

The next morning, stretching my tired body in the Walking Room, I regard the cross-legged skeleton with a strange sense of rapport.

The 6.45 meditation is fine – just a hint of pain creeping into my lower back – and I eat a flavourless bowl of oats for breakfast, followed by my work period. The mornings here feel busy and productive, and by the 9.30 talk I am pleasantly worn out. I daydream about taking a nap this afternoon. Lina’s talk is about staying grounded, connected to the earth, but all I can focus on is the pain invading my body.

I’ve suffered with back pain ever since I spurted into an awkward, gangly teenager. By age fourteen I hated my height. My posture began to sag. My Mum always had a bad back and I thought it was one of those things I had no choice but to inherit.

Now, sitting in the Hall surrounded by serene-looking people sitting proudly with straight backs for hours on end, I want to burst into tears. The pain is growing, spreading to my shoulders and neck, intensifying as the minutes tick by. Some of the people in this Hall are in their 60s and 70s. Why am I the only person who appears to be struggling? I squirm and shuffle on my chair, repositioning cushions, cursing my dumb 31-year-old body for falling apart on the first day. My mind catastrophizes in the silence. I worry about the hours of meditation I still have to sit through, the potential paralysis when I wake up tomorrow, the possibility of leaving the retreat on a stretcher.

As soon as the sitting period is over I return to my room and collapse onto the floor, releasing my rage and stress in a big, ugly cry. I lament my life, my lack of control over things, and the bags of generational trauma weighing on my back. Will I ever be free?, I ponder, standing and looking pensively out the window like a Thomas Hardy heroine. I am about to have a confrontation with my Victim.

Darkness

Something no one tells you about going on a silent retreat, the thing they neglected to put in the FAQs, is that at some point you will come face-to-face with your darkness. Silence provokes this. For me, it happens on the first day, while I writhe in pain on the floor. My Victim rises up, beckoning me into the prison of hopeless misery I have found myself locked in many times throughout my life.

I decide I don’t want to go back there. Instead, I choose hope. Hope for a new sitting position, hope for a better life, hope for ibuprofen in the communal medicine cabinet downstairs.

(They have ibuprofen, praise Buddha).

In the small group session this afternoon, several people talk about how hard they are finding things, and I find relief in solidarity. One woman says she feels like she is ‘stuck on a long-haul flight’ and Claire talks about how she struggles to finish things, doubting her ability to endure the full five days. Making the choice not to finish something gives the illusion of certainty, Lina explains. It’s also the illusion of freedom – you may feel like you are free, driving out of here, but you are just as ‘trapped’ as you would be if you stayed. You’re trapped in a pattern.

All this reflecting on darkness brings me to Big Realisation #1, which comes during the evening sit. My body gave me all that pain to force me sharply into the present. I notice how alert in my body I am in the evening, after I have foraged a bunch of extra pillows and blankets and arranged a fort-like structure in which to sit, up against a wall. Perhaps anxiety serves a similar purpose. When I worry and feel anxious about something, I am raising my level of attention to that issue. This, in turn, leads me to finding a solution (if I – and the Victim – let it).

I skip the final sit and get an early night.

Time

During the work period the next morning, Claire and I scandalously break our silence to discuss her potentially leaving today. She was on the verge of a panic attack last night, she explains in an urgent whisper, and is overwhelmed by her fear of having a breakdown. I can sense the conflict in her. She knows, on an intellectual level, that staying here will be good for her – she will be breaking the pattern. But her compulsion to ‘not finish’ is pulling her in the opposite direction. She retrieves a folded note from her pocket, addressed to the teachers, that she will pin on the noticeboard should she decide to leave.

Conversely, I am feeling like I have ‘arrived’ today, after a much more peaceful and settled sleep. I am slipping into this new routine of meditation, work, listening, sitting, standing, walking, eating, napping, looking with barely any resistance. Having the days so rigidly structured is paradoxically freeing. The only decision you ever have to make is how to spend the next block of free time between sessions. Sans screens, these are the options:

- Sit in the lounge and look out at the trees/fields/sheep

- Nap

- (If you’re me) Secretly write in a notebook

- Have a cup of tea

- Walk outside

- Do some yoga stretches

- Shower

The basis of the decision is always the question: ‘what is the best thing for me, right now?’ Most of the time I choose the first option on the list. During the post-lunch lull I sit in the lounge and watch a woman being pushed backwards by the force of the gale as she tries to walk in the grounds. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this much time just ‘being’. Observing. Existing without distractions. There is still the occasional urge to look at my phone, but it is weakening.

In the house, time moves erratically; certain moments feel stretched, or placed on ‘pause’, but when I think about the retreat being nearly half-over I can’t quite believe how quickly things are moving. Every so often my mind will transport me into the future, worrying about how the storm will affect the trains, going over how I will describe the experience to my partner when I return. But as soon as they are noticed, the thoughts evaporate into the silence.

The next morning, Claire is not at breakfast wash-up. I clear the dining hall and load and empty the dishwasher alone, which is strenuous, but satisfying. I enjoy contributing to the house in this way. I remember Claire wasn’t in the evening sit and when I walk past the noticeboard I see her note, still pinned, and realise she is definitely gone.

I hadn’t expected this to disturb me, but it does. If she can’t handle being here, maybe I can’t either? My thoughts ring loud through the morning talk. After lunch I am overcome by a bored, restless energy, the feeling of being stuck on a long-haul flight like the woman in the group session (who has also left early) described. Time has slowed to the pace of a very old tortoise, struggling across an arid desert. I feel suffocated by the amount of time that remains, checking my watch constantly, monitoring the minutes. Can I really do this for 2.5 more days?

Patience

I resist the clawing urge to turn on my phone. At home, we have a piece of paper taped to the fridge entitled ‘7 Attitudes of Mindfulness’ and I keep bringing my focus back to number 5, ‘patience’. It is something I have never been very good at. I’m always jumping ahead, itching to get to the next thing, fixating on end points.

If you don’t practice patience, the restlessness can take over. Panic is the next logical step. It’s what got Claire. I imagine her speeding along the motorway en route to her brother’s house, which is where she said she would go if she left early. I wonder how the illusion of escape feels.

My body seems to be mirroring the restlessness going on in my mind, because my period arrives three days early and much heavier than normal. I’ve found my favourite bathroom in the house – in the corner of the corridor on the floor below mine, far away from any bedrooms, seldom occupied. I slip comfortably into my pattern of finding refuge in quiet bathrooms.

Movement is part of the afternoon meditation, bringing a welcome relief from sitting. You can either go into the Walking Room, or walk outside, or do yoga stretches. We’ve also learned some basic Qigong exercises involving conscious breathing paired with gradual motions of the arms and torso. I find these exercises powerful, and especially useful for dealing with pain (which I’m still getting in my shoulders, though nowhere near as intense) and impatience. On the in-breath you bring your full attention into your body, then on the out-breath you widen the space around the pain, or the restlessness, or any difficult thing going on inside. Lina explains how we usually constrict our energy tightly around the difficult thing so that it invades our whole consciousness. By widening the space around it, it becomes more manageable.

Gratitude

Friday night’s sleep is the best yet. On Saturday, I feel like a new person. The first morning sit, which is always the most potent, brings me to Big Realisation #2.

I’m sitting cross-legged beside the chair I tried (and failed) to meditate on during the first few sits. It occurs to me that I have always, since growing into this adult-sized body, been shrinking myself to ‘fit’. I shrunk my body by slouching when I was a teenager, forced my hips into low-rise jeans, slathered my pale skin with fake tan and waxed every unsightly hair. I’ve been shrinking myself to fit other people’s needs and expectations, along with all the needs and expectations of a dysfunctional, dysregulated society, for as long as I can remember.

I have lost myself to this process of shrinking, silencing, forcing my being into roles that do not align with who I really am. It’s something we are expected to do as women; to live any other way makes us ‘selfish’. But now, during this meditation, I feel unsuppressed. My limbs lengthen, my lungs exhale fully, and my weight sinks into the ground.

This level of potency continues for the rest of the day. I walk around the house with my head held high, taking conscious steps, living each second fully. ‘Give yourself wholeheartedly’, says Lina during the small group session this afternoon, and I do. We go around the circle and share our experiences. It’s an emotionally charged session, with people revealing their vulnerabilities in a way that deepens the compassion we are all feeling for each other.

One woman admits she ‘doesn’t want to go home’. Another says: ‘I have a full-time job and three kids, so…’ and just kind of trails sadly off, leaving us to complete the sentence. We all seem to be thinking about life back home. My mind flips to future mode and I am catching the train, seeing my partner, receiving the Tesco delivery on Tuesday morning. But there is no resistance in these thoughts; I am looking forward to going home. This brings me to Big Realisation #3: my life is actually pretty great right now. I am free, healthy, have someone to support me, and get to wake up each morning and do what I love most. For the remainder of the afternoon, I am lit up by gratitude.

Acceptance

By the evening, though, the restless energy is back, joined by a detached feeling of sadness. Is everyone else going through the whole spectrum of human emotion? My interior life seems to be in constant flux. I suppose the takeaway is that it is all OK. It’s basic Zen 101, but whatever comes up, you just have to sit with.

When I was preparing for this retreat I think I imagined something more akin to a spa getaway. I made the assumption that meditation = calm, and calm makes everyone feel good. In actuality, taking part in all this silence and sitting creates space inside, and that space gets filled with all the crap you haven’t processed. It’s like a fast-track form of therapy. You have no choice but to go through the difficult stuff – unless, like Claire, you leave.

Lina explains how, in Hindi, there is no term meaning ‘I am’. Rather than saying ‘I am bored’, you would say ‘boredom comes to me’. You are not identifying with the thing, but holding it, temporarily, then letting go when it is time to let go. You are not anxiety. You are not pain. You are not your suffering.

Transition

By the time Monday arrives, I’ve had a few more Big Realisations, too complex to recount here. All this realising is exhausting. I feel like a dirty, wet rag that has been rung out, over and over, and I’m not sure I have enough aqueous material left in me to survive the journey home. I’m hyper-sensitised to my surroundings and in the morning talk, when there is mention of trains being delayed, my anxiety goes into overdrive. The house bubbles and burns with the energy of transition and the threat of a return to sound, small talk, screens, lingers on the horizon like an approaching tidal wave. My terror shuts me in my room for the rest of the morning.

Silence is lifted after the final sit, but I’m not ready to talk. My stomach churns like I have swallowed acid. When I finally switch my phone back on, my heart is thundering, palms sweaty, eyes shaded against the glare of the screen.

My terrors are confirmed: there is disruption to my route home. Severe winds have made the tracks impassable and my journey will entail three separate trains to evade the damage. Notifications begin to crowd the screen as the valve connecting me to ‘real life’ is reopened; I notice an email from my letting agent about a leak in the kitchen and want to cry.

All I can do is take it one step at a time. As per the checkout instructions hung on the back of my bedroom door, I strip the bed, replace the fresh laundry pile on the pillow, hoover and antibacterialise the room. Movement helps my stomach settle. I stay for lunch before the taxi arrives to take me to the station, listening to one guy talk about another retreat in Cambodia where he was only allowed to consume fruit juice and ginger tea the whole time. I get away with not saying much, and don’t feel any pressure to say goodbye to anyone when I leave.

Rebirth

In the taxi, the driver has the radio blaring awful pop music and her phone keeps ringing in the holder on the dashboard. I feel like digging a hole for myself in the wet ground and curling up inside, becoming one with the earth. The taxi lurches along wind-beaten roads. Storm Eunice has pillaged the landscape; fallen tree branches and debris litter our journey; the sheep in the fields look nonplussed, as ever. All week I’ve been admiring their resilience through the lounge windows.

The first train is on time and thankfully uncrowded. There is a seven-minute gap between the first and second train at Exeter St Davids. It is peaceful watching the hazy river pass by the window, and I look forward to being home, settling back into my routine, sleeping in my own bed. For a moment, closing my eyes and enjoying the warmth of sunlight on my face, I feel good.

Then the train begins to slow on the tracks, high above the rooftops of Exeter. A crackled announcement tells us there is a slight delay. I look at a map on my phone; we are less than a mile from the station. The train comes to a complete stop and we sit, helpless, on the tracks while the minutes tick by. I keep frantically refreshing the Trainline app, but the information stays the same: my next train is on time and will be departing Exeter in five minutes. In desperation, I check to see if there is another train I can catch, but the next one going anywhere near Bristol is not until this evening – meaning I’ll be stuck in Exeter for three hours.

Five minutes fizzle into nonexistence. I have missed the next train. Eventually, the carriage lags forward and we are sliding into the station.

I wish I could say that all the grounding, presence-giving techniques I have learned over the past five days kick in at this moment; it would make for a much better ending to the story. But as I climb off the train, I want to sink to my knees on the dirty platform and weep. I have not felt this close to falling completely apart for the whole duration of the retreat. People swirl around me, voices blare from loudspeakers, and the air reeks of petrol fumes. I stand, shivering and at the mercy of the disrupted train schedule, with my bag.

Then I glance up at a screen showing departures. At the top of the list is the train I was supposed to catch, followed by the word ‘delayed’ in glowing red text. Was the app wrong? Is the train still sitting in the station? Is there a God? I run, as fast as I can while carrying a heavy bag, over a bridge connecting the platforms and find where my train is due to depart.

It hasn’t even arrived yet.

A huge crowd of angry-looking passengers throng the platform, clutching bags and suitcases, attempting to shield themselves against the unrelenting wind. ‘I am not anxiety’, I keep repeating to myself, ‘anxiety comes to me’. After five or so minutes, the train arrives, as casually as the sheep grazing in 80mph winds. People crush against the doors, clambering on, filling the seats, laughing, shouting, complaining about the state of British transport. I board and stand near the toilets with my bag at my feet. Through the window, I can see sheep grazing on a distant hill.

*All names have been changed.

mental healthessay

Jade Green