What Drives a Man to Spend 10 Days in Silence
There's a quote I've heard repeated many times, that perfectly sums up my reasons for choosing to spend 10 days sitting in silence with a bunch of monks in Thailand. It's by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who wrote "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
Like many things, that statement is probably more true for some people than others, and I definitely think I land on the (MUCH) more true side of that continuum.
In some of my previous (as yet unpublished) writing, I've said that I have an obnoxious mind with no off-switch. I've joked with friends before that, if I were being brought up now (instead of 15-30 years ago) I'd undoubtedly have been diagnosed as ADD/ADHD/any number of the other acronyms they use for people who just can't focus, or just have too much damn energy.
In middle school my friends jokingly referred to me as goldfish, since they allegedly have incredibly short attention spans. They claimed it was four seconds, but my Google research now informs me that it's actually nine seconds!
Take THAT, minor slight from childhood! Who's laughing now, eh? Probably not the person who's bringing up a frivolous joke from two-thirds of their life ago, that's for sure!
But I digress. It wasn't ever that I couldn't stay focused on the conversation with them, or the basic math class we were drudging through, or any number of the other humdrum activities of daily life.
It's that I didn't want to.
Why would I? When I was interested in so many different things, and the pace of thought in my head was so fast, getting lost in the playground of ideas in my head seemed like a FAR better way to spend my time!
And it certainly was, for a while. I was always able to do fairly well in school with little time spent studying or reviewing material. I can't be certain, but I chalk that up to my brain always running a million miles a minute. Simply paying attention in class then letting my mind run with the ideas for a bit would usually lead to a pretty good understanding of the core concepts.
And it was a no-brainer for me, because every second of free time that I saved from the clutches of dreadful studying was one more second I could spend reading, watching cartoons, or playing video games. What kid doesn't want more of that?
In the innocence of youth, it always felt like I'd been given a great gift. But as an adult (more or less, anyway) my mind is free to run with more…real world concerns.
Things like:
-How can I make plenty of money with my own skillset and intelligence, so I don't have to return to the 9-5 grind and spend most of my life doing something I loathe and ending up severely depressed (and probably an alcoholic) as a result?
-How are we gonna fix this environmental clusterfuck we've been ramping up over the past 100 years or so? Is it even possible to fix? Or are we (and more importantly, our descendants) destined to live in some sort of Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland?
-How and I going to find a partner who can tolerate a person who's this much of an emotional train wreck(see examples above)?
-Or how I'm 30 years old; shouldn't I have much clearer answers to all this stuff by now?
I want to be clear, this is NOT some sort of cry for help! When my mind goes to a dark place, those are some of the things that might crop up. But that is NOT the normal, everyday state of my mind.
That said, when you see the same negative thought patterns crop up over and over, but you understand logically that: things aren't that bad, you're honestly doing pretty good, and things are getting better and better? It can be damn frustrating, to say the least!
So back to my reason for spending 10 days sitting in silence with a bunch of monks in Thailand. The best way I can describe it, is to think of a very active mind like a wild horse. Incredibly strong and capable of great feats of speed and agility, but lacking in any sort of direction or discipline. Lacking restraint, for both good and ill.
But if you can train it well and put a skilled rider in the saddle, the horse and rider together are capable of doing FAR more than they were individually.
That may not be exactly what meditation provides, and I'm sure some practitioners would tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about(and they're probably right!). But for me it's what's driving me to take this next step, and I'm…cautiously optimistic about what will come of it.
So here's to 10 days of silence, vegetarian food, and self-imposed mental torture! I'll share my thoughts again when I'm on the other side of this thing.
Here's the retreat center I'm attending, for anyone who’s interested: http://www.suanmokkh-idh.org/