Rihanna Saved Me at a 10 Day Silent Retreat - part 1
Respect. Reciprocity. Rihanna. The Three R’s of enlightenment. I’ve returned from a 10 day silence and meditation retreat, which was a difficult and impactful undertaking. It wasn’t my intention to share this endeavour so openly and publicly; I wanted to keep it to myself. But I learned during the 10 days that part of trekking through this path is to share it with others. This way, patientlyand persistently, we can all walk each other home.
“ONE STEP AT A TIME, THERE’S NO NEED TO RUSH” - J. Sparks-
Taking place in the Ontario Vipassana Centre, the retreat centres around Vipassana – a meditation practice that was first taught 2,500 years ago. Supposedly, this was the original practice of the Buddha until too many people got a hold of the practice and started remixing his intentions with varying outputs – some were DJ Clue, some were that guy you used to know from high school trynna get you to cop his mixtape. Vipassana is not religious, it has no ties to secular ideologies, and it honestly nearly killed me. The retreat asks its students to observe Noble silence for ten days, which means no verbal or non-verbal communication with one another. There’s a potential to be in meditation for up to ten hours per day, some of which are mandatory and to be done in a large Meditation Hall in front of the teachers. All forms of communication to the external world (phones, tablets, pagers) are confiscated, as are books, journals, playing cards, music etc. According to my mom: “Jay! This is a cult!”
“YOU SAY IT BEST WHEN YOU SAY NOTHING AT ALL” – R. Keating –
Personally, the silence was very easy. I love talking to people, but I find small-talk very challenging. And when you’re around strangers, talk can be smaller than a mosqueeter’s tweeter so the idea of taking that off the table gave me an “ooh ah-ah” sensation. Or perhaps that was just gonorrhoea again. Whatever it was, it felt amazing.
One favourable byproduct of the silence was the anonymity it afforded. None of us were celebrities or whatevah, but people do love to put one another into comprehensible boxes based on some kind of social metric. Take the question, “What’s your job?” for example. When you peel back the layers of supposed genuine interest, this simple question can be used to size up a person’s entire life, personality, and at its worst, how much respect they should be given. I loathe that question in a social setting. And at the Centre, no one knew a damn thing about me in this regard. Was I a preschool teacher, or was I an amateur porn star? Good luck figuring it out, Sabrina. **eats whole banana in one bite**
Regardless of the silence, the 24 other men who were with me (students are divided by gender, which is… whatever) still managed to learn about each other. And I’ll venture to say that it’s because of the silence that we learned things that actually mattered. If one of the brothers walked while dragging his feet on a particular day, you knew that he was having a tough time. And when he was walking a bit more lightly the next day, you knew that he was feeling better. Or when that one brother who asked the teacher a question after every session finally stops asking, you knew that a moment of clarity was reached. Without saying a word, and perhaps because of the deprivation this shared experience offered, we were able to bond with each other pretty damn closely (more on that later).
“BUT YA CAN’T USE MY PHONE” - E. Badu -
I did not miss my phone. At all. Well that’s not entirely true. Once in a while, I would have an urge to message Daniel because something funny happened, but that’s about it. The Centre is in the middle of a forest so YouTube videos and social media scrolling got replaced by wonderful scenes of nature. I watched a dragonfly perch itself on a leaf and then fly around to catch food for what felt like an hour. There was a leaf that was hanging on to a tree branch by the smallest of margins, and I watched it struggle to stay on against the blowing wind. And honestly, all of it was much more riveting than that godforsaken disgusting series finale of Game of Thrones.
To be clear, I’m not vilifying the use of phones. We all created a world with a heavy reliance to our devices, and we'd rather jump from one distraction to the next instead of facing the discomfort that we also, have all created for one another. And if it’s not phones, it can manifest itself through an over-active social life, television, gardening, books, etc. None of us are above it. Hell, I’ll probably catch up on some Drag Race after I type this. I’m just saying that when my phone was taken away, there was no attachment to that experience. And when I got it back, I simply opened it to text Daniel that I was coming home.
“BAY-BEE. THIS IS WHAT YOU CAME FOR” - Rihanna -
Getting up at 4 am and meditating between 4:30 and 6:30 am sounds insane. Until you actually do it. One of the non-compulsory meditation sessions took place at this time, and during these optional sessions, you can meditate in the big Hall, or privately in your room. And straight up, when I saw the schedule even before I entered the Centre I thought “Meditation? More like stay-in-beditation, am I right?!” High five, Sabrina!
On the very first day, when the morning bells rang, I stayed in bed. Bye, hos! Then out of the ether, in the silence of my room and my mind, a siren’s voice whispered: “Bay-bee. This is what you came for…” It was Rihanna, and ugh, that damn woman is always right. So I got up and went to the Meditation Hall.
Meditations at dawn ended up being my favourites because they were so gentle, and the mind hasn’t been given an opportunity to be cluttered yet. There was a physical ease to them, because your body was still soft and supple from sleep. As you leave the Hall upon finishing, forest scents bombard your nostrils with the freshness portrayed in the finest of tampon commercials. What I came for indeed!
“AND I WANNA THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME THE BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE” - Dido -
The food! It was so good! There were simple vegetarian meals during breakfast and lunch, and only fruit and tea served at dinner. This isn’t a fast, nor a cleanse program. It’s simply eating wholesome and nutritious food in portions that will help eliminate the toxins of the North American diet contained in all of us, as well as being reflective of the daily activities. And baby, when you’re sitting on a cushion all day and the most physically strenuous activity is a gentle hike, you don’t need a lot of calories. While there were the occasional pangs of hunger, none of us were starving, and the simple vegetarian meals were so fucking delicious! Sabrina!
It also offered a valuable lesson in gratitude - a potentially complex concept in these modern times, that has been oversimplified by meme culture. “Practice gratitude”. OK, but like, how? In a society where I can have everything I want delivered to my door in minutes, how can I be grateful? Wait, tell me after! My UberEats just got here.
As mentioned, there is only fruit served at dinner: oranges, bananas, red apples. And then, on one magical night near the end of the course, a group of gentlemen walked into the dining hall to find… green apples. Though we could not speak, the energy managed to electrify as we collectively lost our shit. GREEN APPLES! It was a scene from Sister Act 2 up in there. O Happy Day! Honestly, with the way we reacted, they might as well have given each of us a Lamborghaddo or Mazzagatti or whatever - I’m not a car person.
What a wonderful reminder: gratitude comes so easily when you have next to nothing. So perhaps if we wish to “practice gratitude”, then a good place to start is by letting go of what we have in excess.
“IT’S. ABOUT. TO GO. DOWN” - Jay-Z -
OK, y’all. That’s some of the rudimentary elements of the retreat, with some anecdotal lived experiences peppered in. The foreplay is done, and it’s about to go down. Check out part 2 of the blog to find out:
So what exactly is Vipassana meditation?
What made me run into the woods and sob like a baby?
How did Rihanna save me on Day 4, when I got so pissed off that I almost packed up and left?
Did the green apples ever come back?
Find out here.
Thank you for reading, and if any of this is planting even the tiniest of seeds in your spirit, check out the Ontario Vipassana Centre.
TJ Borile is a freelance writer, small business owner, and areola model. He has a certification in Disregarding Patriarchal Bullshit, a PhD in the 1994 Miss Universe Pageant, and once, he fell down the stairs and accidentally got certified in Zumba. In his spare time, he likes to sit, breathe, and be a referee for a pillow fighting wrestling league.