My New Year’s Challenge: How long can I stay silent?

My New Year’s Challenge: How long can I stay silent?

Or not use my phone, check email, watch TV, write, go on the internet or read a book? I am about to find out as I prepare for a a 30 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. Why does being silent, meditating, alone with my thoughts and sensations, seem so intimidating? What am I so afraid of?

I have spent most of my life doing. Going to school, getting a job, raising a family and starting a business. But I have spent precious little time undoing. Meditation is the process of letting go. Just observing without reacting trying to remain equanimous. Like letting a twisted rope unfurl itself with no effort required other than not react. Yet it seems so hard to just sit and do nothing.

Doing nothing is hard. But when I can learn to do nothing, then everything becomes easier.

I have worked up to this 30 day retreat with 13 years of practice and even longer searching for lasting peace, happiness and liberation. Not some intellectual exercise which ultimately fades. I have accomplished most of what I thought would make be happy and though I am grateful for all of it, I had to get it to know that I didn’t need it. Now what?

Unlike other meditation techniques most of which have value, the ultimate goal of Vipassana meditation is enlightenment. Full liberation. It is a long path with many benefits along the way but it requires strong determination starting with a 10-day course. Without a doubt, it has been the hardest thing I have ever tried.

So if I have to sit 10 hours a day for 30 days in silence, it seems a fair price to pay. I spend most of the year fully engaged in the world constantly doing, going, traveling, speaking, writing, struggling, failing and sometimes succeeding. So to sit daily for 2 hours and then go on annual silent retreats seem like an appropriate counterbalance.

What is enlightenment? In part, because I am not enlightened, I think it means being able to see reality as it is not as I fear or hope it to be. To remain equanimous with whatever happens. To take 100% responsibility for my actions and my own happiness. To be here now. To practice eternity. Moment by moment by moment. Mere awareness. Mere understanding.

It is a journey without distance. The journey is required. Only the time I decide to take it is voluntary.

So what after enlightenment? Laundry.

See you all in 30 days – signing off.