I wanted to know who I am when not thinking. And mountains never fail me. My thoughts get clearer after a solitary climb. Once, as I struggled with indecisiveness, I thought of heading to the mountains. But my wife had a suggestion: “Instead of searching for silence, should you not cultivate it?” That evening she booked me for a 10-day silence course at a retreat nestled in the German Black Forest. “You’ll get to do all the walking you want,” she said. I was unconvinced.
Located in the south of Germany, close to the borders of Switzerland and France, the village of Bad Antogast is not easy to reach. It’s a small hamlet punctuated by houses, terraced fields, and of course, a silence retreat. Mountains and forests encircle Bad Antogast. There are no markets, no traffic. A mineral water spring is the only tourist attraction. The village is custom built for experimentation with reclusiveness.
The retreat was built to aid these experiments. Located on a mountain slope, my room was a minimalistic triangle, the windows of which opened into the forest. It didn’t catch cellular network. Perfect! I planned to sit in front of the fireplace, read books and go for long walks in the woods. Alone.
The problem with plans is that they often fail. I realised I had to share my room with a complete stranger. Overnight, 80 more checked in to the retreat. Gone was the promise of silence. I looked for an escape initially but decided I ought to give it a fair shot.
Let the mind wander
“No need for artificial pleasantries,” our guide told us in the first session, “no sorry, no thanks, no nodding, no acknowledgement whatsoever. Words are not needed.” That’s unendurable, I thought. But then again, I had an excuse to not introduce myself multiple times over. The roomful of people shushed. With silence descending, the crowd reduced to a notion. In the days that followed only a few passing cars and the wind had voices.
Meditation was integral to the retreat. I was told that I should not force my mind to concentrate too hard but to just remind it that I want nothing. I should let the mind wander freely and find its own place. On most days, nothing happened as I sat in a wrenchingly uncomfortable position. On some days, a screen appeared. It walked me through my embarrassments, successes, long-forgotten events, often unremarkable ones, as if wiping away unwanted memory. “Watch every thought. Label it, put it in a mental basket and move on,” I was told. Perhaps I wouldn’t have needed a lesson in quietness were it not for my need to compete, my desire to assert myself.
Every morning, I would walk to a big hall adjoining the front garden at 5.00 a.m., sit down on a mat, and close my eyes. The trouble with a wandering mind is that even silent pauses are pregnant with planning. In my free hours, I would conspire to bike to the neighbouring villages of Maisach or Griesbach, or discover the secret location up somewhere in the mountains from where a sole parasailer sometimes appeared out of thin air and remained hung on the blue vastness for long hours. When not meditating, I would go for long walks. I would walk past the cowshed next door, where elderly men separated hay for their animals, and women worked on the slopes to grow potatoes and cabbage. In this part of the world, they still dressed the old German way, in lederhosens, leather pants that last a lifetime.
No expectations
All of us at the retreat worked on projects in small groups—silently, without making eye contact. This I found most uncanny. We vacuumed, planted flowers, cut vegetables. A huge resistance built up inside. “Have no expectations from your activities,” the guide summarised the philosophy of the retreat, “and be 100% into it as if this was all that mattered.” I made a desperate attempt, investing all of me in the moment. A minute became 10, and then an hour. The simple task of planting flowers became an engrossing activity. And the problems I had brought with me seemed so distant, so microscopic.
I took to walking very seriously. Black Forest ingests everything—the sound of my footsteps crushing dry leaves, the vaporous puffing from the effort of the climb, the grunt from slipping on a wet stone.
Walking through Black Forest taught me something else. The urge to speak diluted, and then disappeared. With silence, my perception also sharpened and I began to notice things that would have previously gone unnoticed. On one such walk, I stood soaking in the silence. For once, thoughts failed to bubble up and the indecisiveness I had carried with me to the trip, faded away. All I could notice were the several shades of green of the trees around me. Never before had I noticed the vibrance of a single colour outside a box of crayons. I stayed there looking far out in to the valley till the sun disappeared. I closed my eyes.
Living with strangers for 10 days, without a word spoken, would leave us strangers. Or so I thought. When the time came to break the silence, none of us felt the need to speak. Like true confidants, we smiled speechlessly.
The author is an adrenaline rush-seeking travel writer who lives in Malmo, Sweden, and hopes to travel the world in a boat.
