Not just silence. I have – we all have – signed a pledge to observe what's called "noble silence." This means no speaking, no gestures, no eye contact. "You must live here," we're told, "as if you're completely alone." There is also no exercise permitted, except walking. No cellphones. No computers. No radios. No pens or paper. No books, pamphlets, or magazines. Nothing at all to read. There will be only two simple vegetarian meals a day. My suitcase, with my phone and laptop, is locked away in the meditation center's office. I have just a day bag, with a couple of toiletries, a med kit, and a single change of clothes. I'm wearing sandals and sweatpants and a loose T-shirt.
The line begins to move, and I follow Wade and the rest of the men – women are in a separate area – through the 20-acre campus: cement paths piebald with bird droppings, a couple of shady banana trees. In the center is a monumental pagoda, with a gleaming gold-painted dome perched, wedding-cake style, atop several white, circular tiers. The 250 or so men have been divided into four groups, and I follow mine, Group Three, down a set of stone steps to a smaller pagoda.
We remove our footwear. I pick mine up while I notice that most of the Indian students – I'm one of only a handful of Westerners – pinch their sandals between the toes of one foot, lift the pair, and park them deftly on a metal rack. Inside the pagoda is a large, roundish room with white cinderblock walls, empty save for neat rows of square blue pillows.
A couple of volunteers – they're officially known as Dharma Servers and are permitted to make occasional hand gestures – point to where I should sit. Cushion 51, according to the safety-pinned tag. To my left is a middle-aged man, portly, wearing slacks and a purple dress shirt and a large gold watch. To my right is a reed-thin student-looking guy in jeans and a polo shirt and stylish, metal-framed glasses. They're both sitting cross-legged, with a straight back, so I assume the same position. We are all facing the front, where there are two raised platforms with unoccupied cushions. Soon a pair of older men, one with a mop of black hair, the other balding, walk in and sit on the raised cushions, facing us. These are our teachers. The first meditation is about to begin.
I'm deeply, heart-slammingly nervous, yet also elated. This is something I'd long wished to experience: a chance to unplug, de-stress, switch off. To halt, for a decent spell, the incessant babbling – my own and everyone else's. I'd had three children in three years: My life, morning, noon, and, goddammit, middle of the night, was overwhelmingly noisy. I was snared in the new-father vortex of fewer hours to work and more bills to pay. At my last doctor's visit, for the first time in my life, I registered alarmingly high blood pressure.
I chose the meditation style known as Vipassana for several reasons. It's wholly nondenominational. No gods are prayed to, no mantras chanted, all religious iconography is prohibited. If you typically wear, say, a crucifix, you must remove it for the duration of the course. Also, there is no need for prior meditation experience – in fact, I was told, a neophyte is the ideal student because you won't have any bad habits to avoid – which suited me perfectly, as I'd never meditated before. (...)
Demand for Vipassana courses, despite the 10-day commitment, is often overwhelming. Waiting lists are common. Classes are now taught in more than 70 countries, including the United States, but I wanted to travel to India – to the motherland of the Buddha, to the world's preeminent Vipassana center, to a place so far from home that I'd be deterred from quitting. Dhamma Giri, the center I wished to attend, can house more than 500 students, but getting in is like applying for college. I even had to write a brief essay, in which I pleaded that I was desperate to "capture a greater degree of calmness in myself." A few weeks later, via email, I learned I'd been accepted for a spot in the February 2012 class. So I left my wife and kids and flew to Mumbai.
Now, folded atop my royal-blue cushion in the crowded room in the small pagoda, facing the teachers, I wait. I don't quite know what to do. It's evening; there are no windows in the meditation room, but there's ambient light, gradually waning. Spiderwebs are hammocked about the ceiling. I glance at the teachers; they're motionless, eyes closed. I look at my neighbors. Eyes shut. I close my own. I listen to the birdcalls, intense beyond the pagoda's walls. There's the scent of a burning bug coil. Someone burps.
by Michael Finkel, Men's Journal | Read more:
