A Week in the Jungle With No Screens, No Reading, No Speaking: How It Changed My Life
(An Open Letter to Dipabhāvan Meditation Center)
April, 2023
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Dear Dipabhāvan Meditation Center,
“Changed my… world.” These are the first words I said to Josh, one of my peers at our meditation retreat, after 6 ½ days of silence. We were standing in the dining hall, returning our newly-cleaned tin bowls to their original places for the final time.
Over the past week, our group of 47 had eaten a dozen meals together in this hall, where we sat in rows (women in the front, men in the back) facing the front of the room. Back then, the loudest noises to be heard had been the buzzing of cicadas, scooting of chairs on the floor, and scraping of metal spoons against dishes. Today, for the first — and only — time, we had finally united for breakfast in a lively chorus of introductions and stories in at least a dozen different accents.
Now, Josh — who was from London, as it turned out — was asking me for three words to describe my experience. I knew he was probably expecting separate adjectives, but that wasn’t really my style. “No, no, actually…” I reconsidered, “brought me clarity.”
I’ve known for the better part of a year that I need meditation in my life, and I’ve been doing my best to practice it every day. What I had never considered before this retreat, however, was how much I could learn and benefit from Buddhism.
I hadn’t really understood why I should meditate.
As you can imagine, this week was so different from anything I had ever experienced. For a full week, I was waking up at 4:30am, meditating for 5+ hours, and abstaining from speech (excluding the food reflection, chanting, and occasional swearing under my breath) each day. It was the first week of my (memorable) life that I didn’t look at a screen once… and I didn’t miss it. This was one of the most important weeks of my life.
I admit, for the first few days, I was not your biggest fan. I would wake up grumpy as hell — who wouldn’t when they had to rise before dawn after using only a bamboo mat for a mattress? I resented having to answer to such an obnoxious bell, put on clothes that covered my shoulders and chest despite the intense Thailand heat, and climb the 142 (ish) steps to a meditation hall, where we wouldn’t even be allowed to turn on the fans until after breakfast.
After our first 30-minute meditation session each morning, I would toss open a yoga mat in the back of the hall, stretch for the first few minutes of our “yoga class”, and then doze off until Pierre instructed us to return to our usual spots. (Sometimes, I would even fall back asleep during the following 30-minute meditation session.)
In the evenings, when my stomach ached for a meal that wouldn’t come until the following morning, I would sneak a few bites from the large tub of crackers I’d (luckily) brought with me from Koh Tao.
All of this, when there was a beach with the most gorgeous water I’d ever seen (and none of the strict rules) only a 5-minute drive away.
After only one night, I watched silently from my seat at breakfast as a woman retrieved her valuables and wrote on what I could only assume was a sign-out sheet. A day later, we witnessed our instructor erasing several names from the chore chart, and I wondered if I, too, should quit. What was the point of staying here if I hated it?
Pierre had pointed out to us, before we began our silence, that you are not a prison, and that we could leave you at any time. As I lay on my wooden plank of a bed a couple of days later, I thought about how funny it was that I was here — in this place where I had very little freedom over the ways I dressed or slept or ate — voluntarily. I had chosen to be somewhere that was apparently comparable to a prison.*
Nevertheless, I reminded myself that “it would get better after the first few days” (according to one of your Google reviews). More importantly, I held onto my own words, which I’d texted a loved one only a day before I’d started: “there’s no doubt in my mind that this is the right thing for me.”
I’d released these words into the world knowing that I would sleep poorly. Knowing I would loathe wearing such suffocating clothes. Knowing that 20 hours was an absurd amount of time to fast each day.
Because I had come to you to break out of a different kind of prison — the one of my mind.
For years, I have observed how my own mind can essentially feel like a prison, trapping me in patterns of thought and feelings that I would never choose for myself. (I would also argue that the consumerist, capitalist, and greedy society where I grew up is a type of psychological prison as well… and Buddhism kinda challenges this one too.) To people who aren’t familiar with these experiences, my words may sound dramatic… but you (and anyone who meditates and/or struggles with mental illness) know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’d occasionally seen glimpses of what life could look like outside of this prison— but this was generally limited to times I’d consumed a substance that had altered the chemistry of my brain. (Safe and legal consumption, of course! I am not endorsing drug abuse.) I hadn’t realized, until meeting you, that I could reach this state of “clarity” voluntarily and sober, through practice. Through meditation. I guess I understand the concept of “enlightenment” now.
This is why I had no doubts that you were right for me. Because I knew you’d somehow, in some way(s), disrupt my prison-like ways of thinking.
Of course, I didn’t expect one week in the Thai jungle to fully heal me—and it didn’t. My initial reason for seeking out a silent retreat was simply to unplug for a few days, as I hoped time away from screens would be healthy for my brain. I’d tried to give myself a few self-enforced “no phone” days over the previous couple of weeks, but they’d always fail. Apparently, living in this world without a smartphone is near impossible. So, I decided to go somewhere that would support me in my efforts — to you.
Sure enough, after a couple of days, I began to notice very subtle changes in my own attention. During one of my meditations, I spontaneously recollected the third and fourth verses of “My Highland Goat,” a Girl Scout song I’d learned at sleep-away camp over a decade ago. I’d thought of this song for the first time in years only a few days earlier, on my final night before unplugging… but even then, I’d only remembered two verses.
Another day, I watched with unwavering fascination as a red ant struggled to figure out how to maneuver around my bare feet, which were propped up on the railing it attempted to cross. Never had I ever been so captivated by an insect.
It wasn’t until Day 5, though, that I had a “breakthrough” moment that resonated with me more powerfully than I could’ve expected from one week with you. I had been discovering, from the previous days of “Dhamma talks,” that the main premises in Buddhism regarding happiness are inherently the same as so many concepts I’d been hearing about for the past year from my life coach and on social media. These concepts are:
- Radical acceptance (a.k.a. “it is what it is”)
- Being present (a.k.a. recognizing when our attention is fixated on the past or future, and leaving those thoughts there)
- “Letting go”
- Resisting the urge to assign meaning (e.g. “good”/“bad”) to any given situation
- “Mindset is everything” (in fact, the funk I was in when I drafted this other blog post is the same one that led me to you. I think I signed up for your retreat a day after drafting this post.)
While these ideas had generally made sense to me already (and I guess I sort of knew they were tied to Buddhism after listening to The Power of Now), I’d been struggling to fully grasp them. It wasn’t until I’d heard them explained from one holistic perspective, in the context of meditation — and I was in the middle of meditating — that all of it suddenly clicked.
Now I understand why people have been recommending meditation to me for so long! Hah. No wonder.
So, that’s how you changed my world. And brought me clarity.
Now, for the more random parts of this letter — I’d like to share a few miscellaneous thoughts/experiences that I had during this retreat (bear with me, they’re quite all-over-the-place).
1) Divergent vibes
For one, on Day 2 or 3, I was strongly taken aback when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the silver bowl I was drying. At that moment, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked in a mirror. Wait… were there no mirrors in our bathroom?
It’s like I’m in Abnegation, I immediately thought. “We reject vanity.” No mirrors, no makeup, repeating the same unflattering outfits… Except our modest, unflattering clothing didn’t have to be gray.
The Divergent references didn’t stop there. When reflecting on this idea of Dukkha — that we, as humans, would have to strip ourselves of ALL desire and learn to control our natural thought patterns in order to be completely void of emotional suffering — I repeatedly pictured a platinum blonde, blue-suited Kate Winslet declaring, “human nature is the enemy.”
That spooky moment when the words of a dystopian villain start to sound relatable…
2) A few bones to pick
By the way, even though I ultimately benefited from my experience with you, I do need for you to hear my complaints. Namely, regarding the whole bedding situation. I found it so ironic that we were given multiple cushions to sit and meditate on, as well as yoga mats to “exercise” on, only to return to bamboo mats and CHUNKS OF WOOD for sleeping. I wanted to ask permission to take some of those mats or cushions to my room for a decent night’s sleep, but of course, I would’ve had to break my “vow” of silence to do so. And yes, I’m sure I could’ve made an exception for my physical well-being, but your instructors didn’t really emanate an energy that encouraged requests like this, and I was convinced that if they gave an ounce of crap about our right to sleep comfortably in the first place, we wouldn’t have even had to ask…
I did sneak one of my meditation pillows into my room, but it didn’t really help much. I also considered snagging a couple of yoga mats, but I honestly was too afraid of getting caught. (As if you would really kick me out, though…?)
Little did I know, the girls on the floor above me had been provided yoga mats and cushions to pair with those useless bamboo sheets and sorry excuses for pillows upon move-in. Apparently, there had even been extra yoga mats sitting in their entryway the day so many people quit, which anyone living on the top floor could see and claim. Meanwhile, I was getting the most uncomfortable sleep of my life right below them.
I only learned of all this on the last day of our retreat, when I was finally able to voice my frustration to my new friend, Inola.
“No wonder you were sleeping so terribly,” she exclaimed. We were finally lounging on the beach I’d been longing for, several hours after we’d said goodbye to the others in our group. Of course, had we been able to communicate earlier, we would’ve been aware of our unequal sleeping conditions.
I’m still salty about this.
3) Here Comes Activist Carms
This situation kind of reminded me of the whole taboo around discussing salaries and led me to reflect on the danger of any sort of silencing/censorship in real-life societies. (Yup, we’ve made it to the social-justicey part of the letter.) If my peers and I had been able to freely communicate our sleeping situations — and freely express ourselves in general — I would’ve known what I was entitled to, and I would’ve demanded it. Perhaps, my peers would’ve even supported me.
Of course, I’m not claiming to believe that this “unequal distribution of bedding” was intentional on your part. But then again… how do I know the men’s dorms didn’t have electric fans?
Speaking of social issues, I have to ask… does Buddhism have beef with homosexuality? I know this religion is very “traditional,” so, of course, I wasn’t surprised by it, but I found the gender separation very hetero- and cis-normative… Our instructors actually requested that we (women) keep our distance from the men during walking meditations to avoid distracting one another, as if this wouldn’t likely be moot point for at least a handful of people in our group. As far as I know, gender and sexual orientation have nothing to do with the ethical principles discussed in our talks…so will Buddhist institutions ever acknowledge this disconnect with reality?
*One more thing: I don’t think I can responsibly bring up the topic of “prison” without briefly acknowledging that actual prisons in the U.S. — and the entire American criminal “justice” system— are pretty terrible and unjust. Even when I was comparing you to a prison, had to remind myself that there was one key difference: the environment I was in ultimately existed to support me, not oppress me. In case you are not familiar with what I mean, I highly recommend the documentary, 13th, as well as the book, The Innocent Man.
4) Can I get a connection, though?
Okay, back to the topic of silence. I knew this retreat would be difficult in some ways, but I was never concerned about the week of not talking. I’m quite an introspective gal (can you tell?), so I’m used to spending a lot of time in my own head (even if my inner voice can be annoying at times). In fact, I looked forward to a week that was guaranteed to be free from small talk and desperate attempts at filling silence. What I didn’t anticipate, though, was how isolating it would be. With the silent meditation came active avoidance of eye contact and acknowledgement of one another.
It didn’t occur to me how much I missed human connection until Iveta caught my eyes one morning in the meditation hall and chuckled knowingly after my stomach growled. I think this was the first real interaction I’d had with another person in days, other than a few friendly smiles in passing.
Such knowing looks and laughs were few and far between, but I felt the weight of every one of them:
When the guy behind me in the dish-washing line laughed as I returned to the tubs to fish my hand around in the soapy water until I retrieved the spoon I’d forgotten moments earlier.
When another girl in the dining hall blushed after Iveta pointed to the dark orange towel the girl was using to dry her mug, mimed wiping a table, and then pointed to the pastel pink hand-towels that were actually meant for dishes. The three of us silently giggled.
And then the acts of kindness. Ugh. Those got me.
When I watched one girl offer another half of her banana after noticing the second girl hadn’t gotten one during “tea time.” (I also didn’t get one that day, but it’s cool. I’m over it. Witnessing this cheered me up.)
When Iveta, who was currently sitting in my usual spot on the floor next to an electric fan, rotated it toward me so that I could still feel the breeze a few feet away during our Dhamma talk. Or a different time, when I was struggling to find a comfortable position leaning against the window sill, and she tapped my shoulder then pointed to the small unoccupied cushion behind me.
When a girl with dark, curly hair approached me in the bathroom/laundry room with a large tub in her outstretched hand — a few minutes earlier, she’d watched me rush to finish using this tub in order to give it to another girl who had been waiting impatiently. Even though Curly Hair was in the middle of doing her own laundry (with a separate tub), she’d made a point to return this now-unoccupied one to me so that I could more easily rinse my own clothes. What a sweetheart.
After witnessing these moments, it hit me that, just because we were being mindful of our own behaviors and couldn’t talk, didn’t mean we had to ignore one another completely. On Day 6, instead of rushing to clean my bowl and take my usual post-lunch nap, I simply turned in my chair and observed a dozen people crowded around the dish-washing and drying stations in the back of the room, each fully immersed in their own tasks as if the world around them didn’t exist.
I had to stifle a laugh as it hit me that we were in such close proximity with one another for so long, going through the same routines and “lectures” every day, and we knew nothing about each other. Wouldn’t it be funny if we all had some super random, obscure thing in common, and we just didn’t know it? I thought. What if everyone in this room is also passionate about graphic design, or Avril Lavigne, or we’re all cat people, and we’d have figured it out if only we could speak? What if that’s the real reason we were selected for this retreat? Like a social experiment?
“Your laughing yesterday cracked me up,” a guy around my age said to me in an American accent the next morning, as we stood at those same dish tubs. At first, I was surprised this man was speaking to me, as we’d never even made eye-contact before now. He was smiling right at me, though. “I needed that.”
His name was Payton. As I’d suspected, he was American—probably the only one in our group aside from me. He never even asked why I was laughing. Just appreciated it.
A few minutes later: “I loved your giggling yesterday,” said the woman who’d shared my chore of sweeping the driveway. “I really wanted to tell you that I was doing the exact same thing the day before! People-watching, and noticing how everyone was taking their tasks so seriously.” This person, Evelyn, had been sitting in the row behind me when I’d turned around to people-watch the day before, and for a moment, she’d caught my eye and laughed along with me.
I was touched that my random laughter had brought joy to these strangers. I’d actually worried they might think I was losing it. But alas, my anxieties were all in my head.
Well, I think that’s a sweet note to wrap this up on. It was a pleasure, Dipabhāvan. I absolutely plan to do another meditation retreat someday, and I would love for it to be with you.
Sincerely,
You’ve won the heart of this atheist
