As a student, like many of us, I loved reading Henry David Thoreau. Many of his resonant verses moved me and were copied in my regular book, but there was one sentence that I barely registered: “Every man is charged with making his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his highest qualities.” And the critical hour.” In my early twenties, my life was all about action, movement, and exploration: meditation was for old people in their rocking chairs.
But within a few years, real life started to catch up with me: I completed my first four years in an office; I had fallen in love with the woman I was going to marry; I’ve been lucky enough to see a large part of the globe, from Cuba to Tibet. Even more dramatically, my house burned to the ground in a massive fire, and I lost not only all my possessions, but also the handwritten notes that were the basis for my next three books. My future, in short, as much as my past.
After weeks of sleeping on the floor of a friend’s house, I made my way (at another friend’s suggestion) to… Benedictine ritefour hours north along the California coast, just south of Lucia Village. I will try to forget that 15 years of Anglican education as a boy in England made me more interested in traditions from the far side of the world. What I found at the top of the mountain, the moment I got out of my car, was a radiant view of the blue Pacific Ocean, freedom from all distractions (no TV, no cell phones, no internet) and a day that seemed to last for months. I could read, take a walk, write letters, or best of all, do nothing at all. The roar of the highway was far below, and for most of the day, even amid the chirping of birds and the ringing of bells, the main sound was a living silence.
I stumbled, in short, into the world of meditation. I had never meditated, and as a writer in place, I was often on the move, traveling the world each week. But now I was just invited to sit and watch – not as I did when I was writing, but with no end at all in sight. And I don’t think, because my thoughts calmed down as soon as I left the noise behind me; Just for attendance. Perhaps to observe the world as if it were a central Bible.
The results were absolutely amazing. I’m no longer angry with that friend I used to get angry with when I was driving; Maybe he too was trying to find some peace in an exhausting life. Memories arose—sometimes poignant, sometimes dramatic and insightful—and captured and gripped me as they never did as I drove down the highway, preoccupied with my next appointment. Death itself had never seemed so terrifying in a landscape of rocks and redwoods and uninterrupted ocean, and in silence it seemed no less changed. It was instant joy, in short, the kind that lasts even when things are tough.
I was asked to offer just $30 per night, which covers hot lunches, a hot shower, books, fruit, salad, bread, and the most heart-warming views along the famously beautiful coastline I have ever discovered.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I quickly booked a hillside trailer for two weeks, then three. The monks were a great group and not strict. They were confident that each of us would find what we needed here, whatever names we chose to call it. I can drive to a hotel payphone along the highway if an emergency arises — but emergencies are never as common as we might imagine. Of course it wasn’t easy to leave my mother or my future wife, but it was rewarding to bring back to them someone who was refreshed, alert, and full of joy, not a distracted, overburdened spirit. He saw grumbled, “Not now!”
At the same time, I could never ignore that sentence from Thoreau, which I was reading more carefully now in silence: How to make my life worth what I saw and who I was—and was not—in this space of contemplation. ? I was never a monk and never will be. My mother was calling for company after her husband’s sudden death; My loved ones in Japan needed emotional and financial support; I had bills to pay.
Maybe I could try to reshape my life a little in light of what I saw in silence? She surprised my girlfriend and me by moving to Japan and a tiny two-room apartment, crammed with her, her 12-year-old son, and her 10-year-old daughter; I realized, as Thoreau reminded me, that “a man is rich in proportion to the things he can leave alone.” In this tight space, I would have the luxury of living without a car or a big house, free from constant distractions. I began to select some of the wise writers in the Western tradition – such as Meister Eckhart and Etty Hillesum – who were no longer convinced that Sufis or Buddhists had a monopoly on wisdom. I resolved to try to go on a three-day retreat every season, simply to clear my mind, ground myself in what mattered, and remember what I loved.
Plus, of course, to gain perspective on the world and my life in it, I couldn’t see any of it in the midst of all the turmoil. Some friends run or swim every day for the same reason; Some cooking, sewing or golf. Almost any practice that allows you to open up space in your day and mind seems invaluable, especially as the world speeds up, but it was a special luxury to spend three days and nights doing nothing. Even on vacation, I’m usually a prisoner of my plans.
As the years passed – there are approximately 34 retreats now, and more than 100 – the nature of my days in silence began to mature. Not only did the silence bring the people I cared about closer to me—and more clearly—than they might be when they were in the same room; It also turned strangers along the monastery road into trusted friends. We were all here for a common goal, and it wasn’t usually a text, a teacher, or even a doctrine; It was just a human longing (or suggestion). I have become closer to the monks, a talented and friendly group of scientists, musicians, artists and alchemists. I realized that I had a connection with everyone I met in silence—even if I knew almost nothing about their jobs or backgrounds—that I rarely had with people I met along a crowded sidewalk.
I have come to understand what Thoreau, like all meditators, knew: the point of being alone is to be able to give more to others and be a more useful member of society. “I am not, of course, a hermit,” he wrote in Walden. “I think I love the community as much as I do.” I didn’t ask anyone to go to my private retreat, but I would occasionally remind my friends that three days away from distraction could clarify their lives. Those who had spent time in silence were not surprised when I explained that being alone in this resonant silence was what finally led me, at the age of 42, to get married.
I have never regretted my life in this world, chronicling its movements and explosion of possibilities that our ancestors could not have imagined. But I hope I will never cease to return to my friends in the hermitage; Sometimes I stayed with the monks in their barn, where I saw that their whole life was one of hard work and constant activity to ensure that their guests enjoyed absolute peace. I can’t imagine a more important investment.
One day, I was cleaning out my little trailer, polishing every surface and wiping the sink until it shined — as I rarely do at home — when I noticed something that stayed with me (no detail seems insignificant in the silence). I had to squeeze just one drop of dishwashing liquid into my cup of water and everything turned blue. It doesn’t take much to change a life.
Biko Iyer is the author of “The art of stillness“And the next one”Flaming: Learning from Silence“.