From the depths of silence

I have just returned from a 4-day silent meditation retreat. This means I and a group of 20 others, along with a teacher, spent four days together in silence (no eye contact either). We alternated sitting meditation with walking meditation from early morning to late evening (with breaks for meals and some "free" time too). Once a day, we listened to a talk by the teacher, and once during the 4 days, we each got one 15-minute time slot to speak privately with the teacher about our practice.

I tend to get two reactions from people about this:

"Wow, that sounds boring! How did you survive without going nuts?"

or

"Wow, that sounds so blissful and peaceful. It must have been so relaxing!"

In fact, it is neither. It is really far from being either boring or blissful, but this is very difficult to understand unless you're a meditator and have done this. When the mind slows down and shrugs off the pace of the world, sitting still and simply paying attention to things ceases to be boring. However, the things you must pay attention to are certainly not blissful; you discover the contents of your mind, and most people have at least some inkling that everything in their head is not blissful.

But it's certainly interesting! It's a whole new world in there.

In August I do my "big" retreat-- 10 days. That's even more intense. One aspiration is to do a really long one, like some number of months. Of course, that takes a lot of planning and arranging, so it may be a while before I can pull it off.

I've left one question here unanswered: Why?

I'll just let T.S. Eliot have the last word:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.