Ten Days of Silence
By Holly French
I wake to the sound of a bell, which isn’t from my alarm because I don’t have my phone. Instead, someone is hitting a gong outside the stone house where I sleep on the floor next to five strangers. I can’t check the time, but I know it’s 4:00AM, because the schedule told me the bell would ring at 4:00AM. And the bell is ringing now.
My day started this way yesterday too, and it’s supposed to start this way for the next nine days, but I tell myself that I’ll leave tomorrow. I could leave tomorrow, but I know that I won’t, even though I tell myself I will.
On a dimly lit path I walk from the stone house to the meditation hall, where I’ll spend the better part of the next seventeen hours. The instructions are simple: sit cross-legged, close your eyes, focus on your breath. I try to focus on my breath, but my mind wanders, always landing on the same thought: How much longer? The answer is one hour and 58 minutes until we break for breakfast, but it’s only Day 2 of 10, so the real answer is 99 hours and 58 minutes.
My legs are cramping painfully. I was telling myself I’d leave tomorrow, but now I tell myself I’ll leave after the morning session, if I can get through it. You can do anything for one hour and 57 minutes, I tell myself.
I don’t leave after the morning session, but Jenny does. I know she’s decided to leave because her chair and plate are gone at breakfast. We’d met in town and hiked to the meditation center together, so I’m sad to see her go.
Breakfast is served in FEMA disaster relief tents, which I theorize reached Nepal after the 2015 earthquake and were donated to the center thereafter. The six men eat in the tent on the right, the six (but now five) women eat in the tent on the left, and the food is cooked by volunteers in a central tent.
The three dining tents are grouped at one end of the center, which sprawls across a clearing in the woods, a twenty minute hike from town. The stone house where we sleep is at the opposite end of the clearing, next to two identical houses: one for the men and one for the teachers. The meditation hall is in the center, and all structures are linked by wooded paths.
After breakfast, the schedule dictates a one hour break. We can’t read, write, exercise, or speak, so I return to the stone house and lay down until the bell rings again. It must be 8AM.
We assemble in the meditation hall, where my mind is ruled by an increasingly familiar thought pattern: two hours and 59 minutes left in the session, then 6 more hours today and 8 more days but I’ll leave tomorrow. My legs are hurting again and there’s a sharp pain in my back, too. There’s absolutely no way I can do this. I stand up, walk out of the hall, and start to cry.
Growing up, my dad told me that I could do anything I set my mind to. He must have said it enough times that the concept became ingrained in my character, and I developed a habit of setting my mind to lofty objectives. In 2018—after a two week trip to Ecuador— I set my mind to traveling the world for a year. Four years later I was on the road, living out of a backpack.
During my travels, I caught word of the Vipassana meditation course, which is frequented by long-term travelers and known to test even the most seasoned of meditators. I had never meditated once in my life, but I showed up to a Vipassana center in rural Nepal, because I can do anything I set my mind to.
It’s Day 2 of the course and I’m crying outside the meditation hall, because apparently I can’t do anything I set my mind to. The teacher is still in the hall, and there’s no graceful way to inform him mid-session that I’m leaving, so I stand outside in a weird state of limbo. I haven’t spoken in two days, but suddenly I’m speaking out loud to myself: “Go back in the hall, sit down, and keep trying.” It takes more willpower than I know I have, but I walk back into the hall.
After the session I request to speak with the teacher, not to tell him that I’m leaving, but to seek his advice on how to stay. I’m crying again, and he asks me why. “I want to complete the course, but it’s too hard,” I reply.
He delivers a short monologue, explaining that my ambition is the cause of my suffering. I’m fixated on success, so I perceive challenge as a threat. If I can remain neutral about the outcome, then the challenge can’t upset me. He closes with a question: “You might succeed, or you might fail, and one outcome is not better than the other. They are equivalent. Do you understand?”
I think I understand.
The teacher’s wisdom has come just in time for the crux of the day: a four hour session after lunch. I close my eyes and focus on my breath. When my mind wanders toward the hours remaining or the pain in my legs, I remind myself that I may not complete the course, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
The bell rings. Four hours have passed. I’m still here.
It’s time for dinner, which means nothing, because for “dinner” we’re served tea and a few pieces of fruit, as if this course wasn’t hard enough. There’s a jar of peanut butter on the condiments table left over from breakfast, and I eat three spoonfuls. The volunteers must disapprove, because I’ll never see the peanut butter at dinner again.
After dinner we meditate for an hour, watch a video-taped lecture, meditate again, and return to the stone house to sleep. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had difficulty sleeping before challenging things. Tests, interviews, and mountain climbs are prime candidates for my insomnia. Sitting quietly on the floor is somehow harder than all of these things, so I lay awake for what feels like an hour. I’ve brought a small stash of a prescription sleep aid, which I utilize. I’m asleep in minutes.
The bell rings, so I emerge from bed and walk a familiar path to the hall in the dark. The posted schedule is identical to that of every day prior, except for the first line, which reads “Day 10” in large bold letters.
I had expected the last few days of the course to be easier, but they aren’t. My coping mechanism of telling myself that I’ll leave “tomorrow” hasn’t been of use since around Day 8, because no one would actually leave on Day 9, right? Wrong. Luke and Katherine, an American couple, left on Day 9. Their departure was peculiar, because they timed it so they left together. But we’re not allowed to speak and the men and women are separated at all times, so I am bewildered as to how they accomplished this. After their departure, only myself, an Iranian woman, five Nepali men and one Nepali woman remain.
On Day 10 I violate the course code, which prohibits any form of interaction with a fellow student. Before each session, I’ve developed a habit of pacing the perimeter of the women’s side of the hall. A Nepali man has developed the same habit on the men’s side of the hall, and our timing is such that we converge in the center, walking directly towards one another. We make eye contact, smile, and burst into laughter.
The silence is lifted at the end of Day 10, and I learn that the Iranian woman is a meditation instructor and the Nepali woman lives in the nearby town. They are shocked that I’m still there: “You were visibly miserable,” the Iranian woman tells me. “I’ve never meditated before,” I reply, and she looks at me like I have three heads.
The volunteers inform us that we can leave the next morning, but only after the two-hour, pre-breakfast session. I am irate, because tomorrow will be Day 11, but I committed to only 10 days. I ask what will happen if I don’t participate, and I’m told that no one has ever asked this question, but that I’d fail the course. So at 4:00AM on the eleventh day, I assemble in the hall for the last time.
Halfway through the session I stand up and walk out of the hall. No one is surprised, because I’ve developed a habit of doing exactly that in nearly every session. Usually I do so because I’m on the verge, but in the mornings, I leave for a different reason entirely. Across from the center is an impressively large, snow-capped peak. Clouds render it invisible throughout the day, but sometimes in the early morning the peak is visible, dominating the surrounding landscape. I’m intent on catching a final glimpse of this mountain, but outside the hall, it's raining and the meditation center is engulfed in clouds.
I don’t see the mountain that morning, but I’ll see it every morning for years to come. In the hallway outside my bedroom in New York there’s a painted photo of this mountain. From one year of travel, it’s the only souvenir I’ve brought home.
Holly French is a New York-based finance professional who enjoys hiking, cycling, mountaineering, and running. She became interested in writing after keeping a blog while traveling through South America, Pakistan, and Nepal for one year.
