Silence and the storm

It was time to head into the cave within. I had been curious about Buddhism for years. Tara was named after a Buddhist goddess of healing. Now, in the country of the Buddha’s birth, it felt right to go deeper. I felt it was time to sit with myself and confront the pain I carried. I had booked myself into a ten-day Vipassana retreat on the outskirts of Pokhara.

Vipassana is one of the world’s oldest meditation practices, its roots reaching back over 2,500 years to the time of the Buddha. The word means insight, to see things as they truly are. Unlike devotional or ritual forms of meditation, Vipassana is practical training of the mind. Through careful observation of the breath, sensations, and the constant flux of thought and emotion, the meditator begins to break free from cycles of craving and aversion. The aim is not bliss or escape, but clarity, balance, and freedom from old patterns that keep us bound.

At Dhamma centres where S. N. Goenka’s tradition is preserved, Vipassana is taught in silent, residential ten-day courses. The environment is stripped to the essentials: simple food, simple accommodation, no books, no phones, no contact with the outside world. For ten hours a day, from before dawn until nightfall, students sit in meditation. The first three days are devoted to focusing on the breath, sharpening the mind until it becomes steady enough to look deeper. On the fourth day, the Vipassana technique begins: scanning the body, observing sensations arise and pass, training oneself not to cling to the pleasant nor recoil from the unpleasant. On the final day the practice expands into mettā, loving-kindness, a deliberate cultivation of goodwill toward others.

The logic is severe and simple. When everything else is stripped away, when silence closes in and all distractions are removed, the only thing left to confront is yourself.

Ten days of complete silence felt extreme, but I was drawn to it. For many, the thought of being alone with their thoughts is frightening. I was consumed by questions the night before: would I cope, could I last the ten days, what would I learn? Could I be left face to face with my soul? Could I surrender fully to being alive? I needed peace, this much I knew. It was time to turn the outward journey inward and see what I could find. I kissed Imaan goodbye, not knowing it would be the last time I saw her. I was determined to be open-minded, observant, disciplined and brave.

The meditation centre was an hour’s ride from Pokhara. Perched on the side of a lakeside mountain, it looked humble. The centre was divided in two halves, the women’s quarters on one side of the ridge and the men’s on the other. Each side had a row of simple rooms, three beds per room. Each bed was a hard wooden frame with a small shelf. A shared bathroom and a washing line. At the top of the hill was the meditation hall, a rectangular room. At the head of the room, a seat for the meditation leader. Facing that seat were twenty cushioned spots for students, women on the right, men on the left, separated by a blue silk ribbon.

There was a small walk that looped around the camp, which felt more like a rat in a cage than a path. The camp was surrounded by jungle: butterflies, monkeys, deer. A road passed at the bottom of the valley, the only real reminder of the outside world.

I entered my austere room. I shared it with a young Nepali boy. We did not speak. The rules were clear: no contact with other members. I was nervous, my thoughts spiralling, but I reminded myself I had been searching for equanimity and peace for a long time. I was committed to stay the course. Despite fear, I felt calm. I was exactly where I needed to be. That contradictory state of fear and calm was what I wanted to explore. I was ready.

About twenty of us silently drifted into the meditation hall to receive the starting instructions. The rules were simple: abide by the Buddhist morality code, refrain from killing, lying, stealing, intoxicants and sexual misconduct. No communicating with others, by speech or even eye contact. Ten days of contemplative silence. We took our places, were assigned a number, and the whole thing felt martial and structured. It appealed to my former Army self. I sat on my numbered spot and waited to be told what to do.

Our teacher was short, thin and sinewy, mahogany skin and a blended air of severity and serenity. He took his seat at the head and played a recording of Goenka, the founder of the modern Vipassana movement. The teacher spoke mostly in Nepali, his English broken, taking long and deliberate pauses between words. He delivered a brief five-minute explanation of what was expected and then played the recordings. Was this it? Two and a half millennia of Buddhist teaching reduced to a set of recordings. I felt anger and frustration boil. This started wrong. Was I just to sit in a hall, listen to a recording, close my eyes and endure my thoughts for ten days? There was no way I would make it. My thoughts raced. How could I get out?

Amid the panic and the storm, I decided I would not leave first. I would wait until two or more people had gone before I walked out. I would not be the first to break. So we sat in silence, instructed by a recording of a man whose name I had never heard. I prayed some poor soul would be weaker than mine so I could leave with whatever dignity my ego had left.

The instructions were simple. Focus on the air coming in through your nostrils and direct all your attention to the area between your upper lip and your outer nostrils. When your attention wandered, gently bring it back to the breath. Ten hours a day for ten days felt impossible. To my right, a gangly kid with semi-long hair hunched over and coughed every ten minutes. At first I felt sorry for him, but he soon became the scapegoat for my inability to focus. Every time he coughed I cursed him. As time passed I even imagined a plan to throw him out the window. So much for the do-not-harm precepts.

Then, as I schemed and stewed in my frustration, the penny dropped. I had an anger issue. The more I stopped focusing on his cough and brought my attention back to the breath, the clearer it became that he was not the problem. My anger was. That was a turning point. The lessons were starting to become clearer.

Days began to merge. Time slowed and became almost irrelevant. We sat for hours as our minds fought to escape presence, chasing futures, repairing pasts. We learned to gently bring our attention back into the now, to focus on the breath. In so doing we were learning that even though we have no control over the amount of thoughts we have or what these thoughts may be, we do have mastery over our attention and can harness that focus.

No coffee, no tea, no sugar. For ten days our minds and bodies adapted to this spartan regime of purifying the soul. After three days of tightening focus on the breath, the second stage began: using that focus to scan the whole body from head to toe.

We sat for seven days scanning every centimeter of our bodies using the honed-in focus we had developed. Watching every sensation equanimously. Hot, cold, good, bad, sensation, no sensation. The point was not to look for it or to anticipate it but to just observe. Slowly the sensations became stronger as my senses developed. At times it felt that I could feel every particle in my body flowing with life. At other times I felt nothing and would boil with frustration and angst. I had to remind myself that both feelings were to be approached with equanimity, for impermanence is the essence of life. There is no point clinging to the pleasurable and no point riling at frustration. Both reactions lead to unhappiness.

Despite the rule not to communicate, the urge to connect was too strong. Every morning after our first three hours of meditation, I would walk down the hill of our enclosed area and build little stone cairns. After a few days, I noticed a new one I hadn’t built. On it rested a little stick man made out of reeds and leaves. For the next ten days, we would all wander down the path and individually add a creation of our own, silently communicating our desire to connect. It was our little garden of connection.

The days went by. Time slowed down. Things became clearer. The techniques grew harder, but the feeling of presence deepened. I would wander around the garden with a new sense of clarity, able to observe things for a long time without wanting to jump onto the next distraction. A butterfly landing softly on a fallen leaf and fluttering off into the jungle canopy. A colony of ants building a highway across a washing line, carrying bits of wood ten times their size. Internally I was starting to feel quiet, not melancholy or depressed, but a strange feeling of serenity was building in me.

The sessions became harder as we were introduced to the “Adithana” practice, also known as strong determination. Three times a day we had to pick one meditation position, close our eyes, and stay immobile for a full hour. This may seem easy, but when one cannot see a clock and the body starts to crave movement, sending pain waves through damaged knees, it becomes a trial. These sessions were by far the most beneficial for me. I had always believed that resolve and determination are muscles that must be trained. Yet I had never imagined one could do so by simply sitting still.

In those hours of immobility, my mind turned back to another kind of endurance, one forged in uniform. I had damaged knees from parachuting and years of abuse in the army. Every session reached a point when the pain became unbearable. My mind screamed at me, “What are you doing to me? You won’t be able to move again. This is stupid. What are you trying to prove? Just give up and move.” Using the focus we had developed and understanding that this too shall pass, I observed the pain without reacting. It might sound masochistic, but it worked. Rather than categorising the pain as good or bad, I looked at it in detail. Where exactly was it hurting? The top of the knee, the side, the surface? By detaching from judgment, I could observe. When the pain became too much, I moved to the next body part and repeated the scanning, sweating with determination and pain.

It reminded me of being on the All Arms Commando Course as a young 2nd Lieutenant. I had discovered an injury in my lower back about a week before the final test, a gruelling 36-mile cross-country march in Dartmoor carrying over 36 pounds of gear including rifle. It was the final test after four months of exhaustion and humiliation. I knew that if I reported my injury I would be removed from the course and lose any chance of joining the commando brotherhood. So I kept quiet, dosed myself with painkillers, and went for it. My mindset was simple: I would come off on a stretcher or earn my green beret.

At first I felt strong, carried by excitement. The last thirty of us who had made it this far from the original one hundred and fifty were determined to finish. We took off at breakneck speed in our group of eight. I had already taken two painkillers before we started. As the terrain grew more difficult, the exuberance of the morning began to fade. We encouraged one another but slowly fell silent, each man retreating into himself. After the eighth painkiller, nothing masked the pain in my hip and lower back. I withdrew into the cathedral within, focusing only on the present. As long as I could walk, I would keep putting one foot in front of the other. As we approached the end, I was in complete agony, but I knew we had done it. Miraculously, our ragged group of eight formed up in two columns without a word. We straightened and crossed the finish line in unison. I collapsed in a mix of pain and tears. The doctor rushed me to hospital. The X-rays revealed a fractured sacrum, the large bone upon which the spine rests. The doctor tried to admonish me for my poor judgment. I laughed. I had my green lid now. Nothing else mattered. No one could take that from me. That day taught me that pain passes and endurance can outlast it. How could I have known that the path to Buddhism was already being laid for me at the Commando Training Centre.

As the course ended, we were gently allowed to start talking. The first word I uttered was “hi” to the person next to me, and we both burst into laughter and tears. We were handed back our phones. I was hesitant to turn mine on. I didn’t want to be bombarded by the demands and expectations of the outside world. When I finally did, I felt a pang of anxiety. I was so attuned to my sensations that everything seemed to vibrate at a higher frequency. I retrieved Tara’s keys and headed back into Pokhara. When I turned the ignition, I could feel every pulse of the engine through my body. The machine felt alive. I rode slowly back to Pokhara, not seeking peace anymore, but carrying it within me.