A Silent Meditation Retreat Experience: Facing the Unknown Alone

About 15 minutes before arriving, as I am driving down the winding country roads of central Massachusetts, I start to get nervous. Fifteen minutes of nerves is more desirable than days, for sure, but I start asking myself why I thought it was a good idea to try my first silent retreat?

Why would I want to sit in a room for days with a bunch of strangers in total silence? What if my silence isn’t done properly? What if I embarrass myself with my clearly inconsistent meditation practice? What if I just can’t handle being quiet for three days?

I pull into the driveway of the Insight Meditation Society, a large stately brick building. It is January and cold and dark. I grab my bags, including extra pillows, my journal and some books and enter the building. The silence will begin that evening. On our quick tour of the buildings, I learn we can hand our cell phones in as soon as we like. We will be practicing Noble Silence, which includes abstaining from reading and writing. How will I remember the deep thoughts that arise during meditation without my journal?

I find my small austere room and settle in, placing my books that I won’t touch on the windowsill. They make me feel less alone, even if I won’t open them. There are extra pillows and blankets and everything is lovely and comfortable. The hallways and meditation rooms are filled with the beautiful green energy of all kinds of plants. I make a mental note to document these beauties, with my phone, when I get it back on our departure day. 

That evening, seated on a bolster with my scarf, recently gifted to me by my daughter, draped on my shoulders like a shawl and my prayer beads in hand, I sit with 90 other people in a large hall in peaceful silence as the sun sets through the expansive windows and am glad I took this small risk to try something new and explore the stillness within myself. 

I wake at 4:45 am, a good two hours before I usually get out of bed and do my service job, which is running the dishwasher. It is nice to do a task and give a little balance to the quiet meditation practice. After our morning sit at 6 am, I have time to swift away outside into the morning quiet of winter woods. There are trails on the grounds of the center and there is a thin layer of snow untouched except for the paw prints of I what I believe to be a fox. I follow the fox prints and am in awe of my good luck. Nature came to wow me and I am here to receive. 

I follow the paw prints along the trail for a good mile until they finally veer off into the bramble and places humans can’t access with our larger, clumsy bodies. The woods look beautiful with their pristine coating and I follow the path through frozen ground and up slick rock. 

I am still in the woods when I am supposed to be transitioning into walking meditation. Walking meditation is similar to sitting meditation. You are encouraged to walk slowly and mindfully, to follow your breath, to send out loving kindness with each step or use another technique to stay in the present moment. Being in the woods is the most beautiful place for me. I am connected to the ground below and the heavens above. I am in community with trees older than me and tiny, invisible beings in the earth. I feel embedded in a fabric too large to ever understand and the perfect size to feel awe and love. I decide being aware of this feeling, which is being so gratefully placed in the present moment, is an anchor for me, a touchstone. Missing my walking meditation for the hike in the woods is a lovely, flexible exchange in mindfulness. 

The day continues with a shifting schedule of sitting meditations where we all meet in the large hall to sit together for about 45 minutes and then our walking meditations, where we break apart to find a place for our practice. As the night begins to wrap around the meditation hall, we get to hear the sweet sound of human voice when our two teachers share a dharma talk with us.  

TO BE CONTINUED… (Read Part Two Here)