Silence. The difficulty of accessing it or allowing oneself to be in it. Its weight, its sound. The fear it generates, the emptiness we associate with it.
I remember my first fairly long meditation retreat. I think it was at the end of 2008. I had gone to Dechen Choling, a place I’ve revisited many times since and that has become a second home for me and my family. I knew I was going there to do something special: sit on a cushion doing nothing and live in silence for a few days. It was still back when my thirst for knowledge was loud; it had to make itself heard and express itself through long ramblings and lots and lots of questions. There, it had to fall silent—and that wasn’t so easy.
First Encounter with Silence
Outer silence invites inner silence. In theory. In practice, not speaking makes us hear all our inner chatter—our incessant commentary on our experiences, our judgments, our evaluations of everything. And that silence is deafening. During that first retreat, I remember the stories that kept running on a loop in my head—including one that was particularly persistent and very surprising: “So-and-so annoys me; she’s a princess; she doesn’t care about others; she only thinks about herself; she’s this way, that way—it drives me crazy, etc. …” The person in question wasn’t even there, nor was she someone I saw regularly, yet she occupied my mind day after day. This part of me had nothing else to do and was desperately searching for distractions; it was afraid of the void, afraid of being alone—it seemed to tell itself that it was better to judge others. It was exhausting, and in fact, it eventually wore itself out. Behind all that chatter, the possibility of profound peace emerged for the first time in a tangible way in my experience. I’d heard about it, of course—peace of mind—and that was surely why I was there in the first place. But I was experiencing it—albeit tentatively—for the very first time.
It changed everything
It changed everything. First, my relationship with time: it is no longer something to be filled with an endless list of expectations in order to “get a head start” on the endless tasks to be accomplished, in the hope of finally being able to rest afterward. Life becomes accessible, and in the silence of meditation, the present moment opens up—life is right here. My relationship with myself: I am no longer afraid of myself; my inner experience interests me; my emotions are sources of curiosity; my inner chatter is adjustable background noise. Next, my relationship with my body: it, too, can relax in the silence—which is not stillness but the movement of life, an effortless movement that carries and sustains me. Finally, my relationship with others: I don’t care if people know that I know; I don’t care if I don’t have opinions; I no longer reduce myself to my words. I also know how to be in the other person’s silence, with the other person—I know how to let them speak in order to enter into a nonverbal connection that is more intimate, more human, and deeper.
Silence is a fullness within emptiness
That is why I meditate—not to do myself a favor, but to learn to let myself be in the silence that contains everything.