KYOTO

I once attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Kyoto, Japan. There are meditation-training centers all over the world, but I chose Japan because I anticipated that the fellow students would be serious and the environment relatively free from subtle distractions. Whether someone wore Uchiyama sweatpants or Nakamura sweatpants would mean nothing here. The integration of Buddhism into the culture also influenced my decision – I wanted to feel closer to the source.

On Christmas morning, armed with a bag full of fleece and a new sleeping bag, I boarded the first flight to Japan. Two meals, one movie, a train ride, and a taxi journey later, I was deposited in front of a low building at the foot of a mountain about 40 minutes outside the city. This was the meditation center.

The few structures were scattered in a T-pattern across a plateau of approximately five acres. A natural berm, about 100 to 150 feet in height, surrounded the property on three sides. A rope staked down the middle of the property segregated the women from the men. The principal buildings, the meditation hall, the dormitories, and the dining hall, were connected by raised gravel paths. Bathrooms were outdoors.

At the start of the retreat, we surrendered our personal belongings except for our clothing, toiletries, and sleeping bags for those of us staying in tents. The hosts then provided a rough overview of our schedule: a meal in the morning, another around noon, and tea in the late afternoon. They recited the rules for our time together: no talking, no reading, no writing, no communication. The Noble Silence. Any form of communication with a fellow student – a nod, a smile, a gesture – was prohibited.

Every day started with the sound of a gong at 4 a.m. Initially disoriented by the fourteen-hour time difference, I would surface from a dark well of sleep, unzip the sleeping bag, search for the lantern in the dark and then illuminate it, then rifle through the clothes piled atop the sleeping bag, adjusting layers based on the temperature. Then, a slow 150-pace walk (I counted) to the communal bathroom before a return trip back up the path to the meditation hall.

The meditation hall was a simple single-story building, about 40 feet wide by 60 feet long. From the outside, it might be mistaken for a storage shed. Inside, the walls were bare with the few windows covered in blue cloth. At the front of the room, a low riser, maybe a foot or two above the ground, served as a platform for the teacher. Across the painted floor, two-foot by three-foot mats topped with cushions and blankets were arranged in two rows of five. Slips of paper marked our assigned spots.

A few minutes were spent adjusting to our cushions and figuring out the right layers of blankets. Once everyone settled, we began the day’s sitting.

From 4:30 a.m. each morning until 9:00 p.m. each night, we meditated. The day was punctuated by two breaks for light meals, usually of rice and vegetables, sometimes a stew. Then back to the mat to continue practicing concentration, focusing our minds on a single point for hours at a time. While not physically demanding in the way of, say, running a long distance, the work was equally tiring. The thought of stretching, lying down, or sleeping was a welcome respite as your legs and back would ache.

Every night before the official “lanterns out,” I would fill a hot water bottle, sometimes two, at the communal sink. The water was near boiling, and I would clutch the bottles as I walked back to the tent. I would slip one bottle into the sleeping bag and leave one by my head – a trick I am grateful to have learned. By the morning, when the gong sounded again, both were cold, with the one beside my head partially frozen.

It was sheer commitment that kept us from quitting or walking out. Some did give up. The pain of sitting, the isolation, the limited diet — all were challenging. We had been warned at the outset that the third and seventh days would be the most difficult. Fortunately, almost all the students stuck with it.

On the morning of the eighth day, the teacher offered to meet one-on-one with students to answer questions. This would be our only opportunity to speak during the retreat. After lunch, I found the sign-up sheet and added my name to the list.

The following day, at the appointed time, I walked to the meditation hall, removed my shoes, entered through the sliding door, and quietly walked to the front of the room where the teacher sat serenely on the elevated dais. As I approached, she gestured to a mat that had been placed in front of her.

For a few minutes, we sat in silence. She observed me impassively through her glasses while I gazed at the floor, uncertain of what to do. Mindful of our vow, I stayed quiet until she spoke.

“Do you have a question?”

As a lawyer, I had been trained to be persuasive. Ethos. Logos. Pathos. So, in the fewest words possible, I conveyed that (a) there was no scheduled end time for the last day of the retreat and (b) that catching the early train would be more convenient, before asking my question. On the final day, could we expect to leave after lunch?

Then there was quiet.

In the silence that followed, I had several realizations. The first was the difference between silence and quiet. Silence is the absence of sound, whereas quiet is the absence of speaking. And in that moment of quiet, I also realized the foolishness of my question. After what seemed like an eternity, she responded, “You signed up for a 10-day retreat, did you not?”

My face reddening with embarrassment, I bowed in acknowledgment, then stood and quietly withdrew to the door before exiting the hall into the cool air.

Walking the path back to my tent, my mind raced. First wishing to go back in time, then sorting through a catalog of questions I could have asked instead. If we know the causes of our suffering, why do we choose to suffer? Or, more simply: Why do we self-sabotage? The opportunity squandered, I was mired in a quagmire of regret. Yet, just as quickly as they had surfaced, these thoughts settled back into the depths of my consciousness. I recognized the teacher’s wisdom, even if it came accompanied by a sting of reproach: a commitment is a commitment.

A few days later when the final day of the retreat arrived, the gong sounded at 4 a.m. as it had every day before. However, this morning felt different. The air was crisper, and the gravel beneath my feet seemed to crunch a little softer, as if acknowledging the end of this chapter. I went through the same routine, but now it felt more like a ritual, a final bow to the experience that had taught me so much.

I took my place on my assigned mat for the last time, looking around the room at the faces I had come to know yet never speak to. I found comfort in the thought that each of them had also endured, learned, and possibly reached new levels of self-understanding. We had shared a singular experience, each in our own bubble of silent contemplation.

At the end of the session, we all stayed in our seats. The teacher stood and began to speak, breaking the long stretch of Noble Silence that had enveloped us for ten days. “We have concluded,” she said, then stood and left through a side door.

The room gradually broke from the silence as if a symphony had ended as people cautiously stood and stretched, still bearing a sense of reverence. Then, after some time had passed and it sank in that we were free to speak, the air filled with the sound of hushed voices, laughter, and even a few tears. But I stayed seated, engulfed in a flood of introspection. I had come here seeking enlightenment of some sort, and while I could not claim to have achieved that, I had found something perhaps equally important: the discipline to commit, to endure, and ultimately to learn to be choiceful with my awareness.

As I packed my belongings and returned the borrowed items, I felt a lightness I had not felt in years. The weight of unexamined emotions, preconceptions, and prejudices had lessened, even if just a little.

Stepping out of the retreat center, the cab that would take me back to the bustling world awaited. I took one last look at the meditation center, standing serene and unimposing against the backdrop of the mountain, as if urging me to remember the lessons I had learned.

And as the taxi pulled away, I considered a question that would perhaps be my next point of contemplation: In a world filled with incessant noise, both external and internal, how can one maintain the commitment to continue the practice of focusing awareness and following through on commitments even when difficult?

Would I succeed in maintaining this commitment, or would it evaporate like morning mist under the sun’s first rays? Only time would tell. But for now, I was content with the commitment I had fulfilled and the questions that lay ahead, ready to guide my next steps in the labyrinth of life…