Cooking for forty silent strangers
This summer break I decided to try something different.
From Utah, I drove with my son Tommy and his girlfriend Stephanie over the mountains to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, to work from 5am to 9pm for ten days, cooking and cleaning for forty silent strangers.
Tommy and I have both attended ten-day silent Vipassana retreats at Lava Hot Springs, but this was the first time I had volunteered to be a server. Shortly after I arrived at the Vipassana meditation retreat center, I handed over my mobile phone and valuables, cleared the various bugs off the foam bed in my outhouse, and set to work washing dishes.
For the next ten days, I worked quietly with my four fellow servers from 5am onwards to ensure that our forty silent ‘Sitters,’ including Tommy and Steph, were well-nourished as they bravely struggled through their own long days of self-imposed silent meditation.
In between peeling endless pounds of vegetables, preparing and serving (surprisingly complex) menus, and then clearing, hand-washing, and sanitizing everything in sight, we also clambered up the hill to join three meditation sessions each day in the main hall. We ended each day with a final evening server group meeting, during which I struggled and often failed to stay awake.
So the obvious question is: Why? Why would I ever sign up for this?
I’ll try my best to answer this, and while I’m at it, a few other questions: What did I hope to get out of it? What was the experience like? What was most unexpected? What did I learn by the end? And would I do it again?
First, I should describe a Vipassana meditation retreat. If you’re already familiar with the tradition, you might skip this part. Alternatively, you can learn about it directly from the official Dhamma.org website, where anyone can reserve a free place on a course at over 300 locations worldwide.
Vipassana, which means to see things as they really are, is one of the oldest and simplest techniques of meditation. It was rediscovered by Buddha more than 2500 years ago and was taught by him as a universal remedy for human suffering. Once very prevalent in India, it died out and was almost lost forever, but survived amongst Buddhist monks in Myanmar, where it was rediscovered in the 1960s, reintroduced to India, and has been spreading globally ever since.
The technique is non-religious and free to learn, and participants donate whatever they want to at the end of each course. The standard silent course is a challenging eleven days long, although there are shorter and longer versions available. Participants are encouraged to maintain a daily practice in between retreats.
Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian and brilliant author of ‘Sapiens’, once described discovering Vipassana in his early twenties:
“The most important thing I realized was that the deep source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn't happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind.”
I also wrote about it in the chapter ‘Her Story’ in my novel Path, when the girl describes her retreat to the boy:
“We were just sitting in silence, paying attention to our breath, the air coming out of our nostrils, the sensation on our upper lip. It was all very simple, practical, and not religious at all. It immediately started to have a profound effect on me.
“From that first hour, I learned that I had almost no control over my mind, and my attention would spring like a grasshopper between past memories and anxiety about the future. Despite all my attempts to stay ‘in the now.’ The harder I tried, the worse it was. It was like somebody else was endlessly channel-flicking on a TV set I was trying to watch.
“They told us to focus on our normal breath through the nose, to keep going, to stick to our practice with persistence. But after several hours, my brain ached. It was brutal. The hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. After a few days, I slowly got the hang of it and learned to meditate using the rising and fading sensations in my body. I could observe my thoughts, but I still suffered setbacks and frustrations.
So why did I choose to volunteer as a Server this time, instead of choosing to join again as a ‘Sitter’, and what did I hope to gain from it?
First, I felt a simple sense of duty and fairness. Other volunteers had previously worked hard to prepare and serve my food on my first retreats, so it felt fitting for me to serve now to help others learn this valuable technique that I’ve benefited from.
Second, I was curious to understand more about how things work ‘behind the scenes’ at a retreat center, but more importantly, how to unlock the full power of mettā, a form of compassion usually translated as loving-kindness. I had often read and heard Buddhist teachers talking about the enormous positive energy that can be generated through a form of meditation called mettā-bhāvanā, but I had still not experienced it consistently myself. I was curious. What if I could learn how to harness this positive energy, for myself and others, through serving and meditation?
Third, like any parent, I felt a sense of responsibility for the emotional health of Thomas and his girlfriend, still only 18 at the time. I had introduced them to Vipassana, and I do trust the process, but I still had fears, given their ages. I didn’t want to interfere with their spiritual journey, but I felt I could watch over them and intervene more effectively if I were serving rather than sitting.
So much for letting go! At the end of the day, I’m a hypocrite: I love making fun of ‘helicopter parents’, but I’m hardly any better!
In short, I signed up out of duty, curiosity, and parental anxiety.
So what was the serving experience like versus my expectations?
First, it was far more physically challenging than I had expected. A Vipassana retreat day starts with a gong at 4am, and finishes around 9pm, and follows a strictly punctual itinerary. For instance, in the kitchen, we had to make sure breakfast for forty was laid out and served by 6.30am, including cooked oatmeal, toast, cereals, frutis, every imaginable variety of tea, milk, and condiments, and then everything need to be cleared or refrigerated, wiped down and hand washed and sanitized by 7.52am, giving us 8 minutes to sprint a quarter mile up the hill to join the 8am sitting. An hour later we then had to race back down to continue preparing and serving the complex vegetarian recipes for each day to serve by 11am. Then clear, wash, sanitize, peel, and repeat for ten days.
On top of this, I had decided to follow the fasting schedule for ‘Old’ (returning) students, which meant I fasted between 11am lunch and breakfast the next day. After the first two days once I realized how physically demanding all this was, I decided to reframe it also as a helpful fitness bootcamp. Sure enough, I lost a dozen pounds by the end!
While the experience was more physically challenging than I’d expected, it was less mentally challenging than being a sitter. For a start, we typically only had time to sit in silence for three hour-long sessions each day, so there was less scope for introspection. I had a basic room to myself, instead of sharing with a silent stranger, which no doubt helped.
Also, in the kitchen at least, we were allowed to talk and get to know each other. Strictly speaking, servers are supposed to limit conversation to task-related issues, but in reality, we got to know each other well over the ten days.
The camaraderie that slowly developed between our small group was very deep and unexpected, and we continued to stay in touch afterward. Perhaps we were blessed to be part of a uniquely kind, authentic, and joyful band of souls from all walks of life, or perhaps it’s just a natural outcome when any small team works intensely on a common, altruistic purpose.
I have no way to prove this, but I believe somehow the rare purity of the intent we all had together for a common goal - to serve the forty silent, struggling sitters - was the reason why the bonds felt so strong. Either way, I had not expected to find such a joyful sense of community on a silent meditation course.
Another surprise was how difficult I found it to meditate as a server. As a sitter, I can get into a strong rhythm, and by day three or so my ‘monkey mind’ has calmed down and I can consistently observe my thoughts come and go, and experience the energy flowing around my body. And my daily practice at home usually goes well.
But as a server, I found it almost impossible to stop thinking about peeling vegetables and washing dishes! With all the physical exertion and the kitchen conversation, I struggled to switch between action mode and calm mode, and at times it felt frustrating. I suspect and hope that things would go better a second time, now that I’ve learned the ropes and processed everything.
To sum up, the whole experience was more physical, more joyful, less emotionally challenging, and less calming than I had expected.
However, it was still deeply spiritual in one crucial way: loving-kindness.
When I look back on what I learned through serving, and what has stayed with me in my daily life (apart from a dozen incredible new recipes!) I need to unpack mettā-bhāvanā, the loving-kindness meditation that we practiced together every night.
I had always known that mettā is an important aspect of Vipassana, but until I decided to serve myself and then practice mettā each evening together with our group, I hadn’t appreciated its full benefit.
On the face of it, the mettā meditation can feel like a religious prayer, or a gratitude diary entry, as in lines like these:
May all beings be happy; May they all be secure.
May they all see good fortune; May no evil befall them.
May no suffering befall them; May no sorrow befall them.
And like a Christian prayer, there’s space to include specific people or groups that are in our thoughts for whatever reason. In my experience during a retreat there’s always a ‘pareto’ effect, where one person in my life occupies 80% of my mental energy all week. Perhaps they are struggling, or we are fighting, and no matter how much I want to move on, I keep returning to think about them. Mettā allows me to direct my love and energy to this person.
However it’s something different and deeper than a petition to a powerful god:
Mettā is not prayer; nor is it the hope that an outside agency will help. On the contrary, it is a dynamic process producing a supportive atmosphere where others can act to help themselves. Mettā can be omni-directional or directed toward a particular person. In either case, meditators are simply providing an outlet; because the mettā we feel is not 'our' mettā. By eliminating egotism we open our minds and make them conduits for the forces of positivity throughout the universe. The realization that mettā is not produced by us makes its transmission truly selfless.
- Vipassana research Institute
Metta is not something that can simply be directly ‘understood’ intellectually, it has to be practiced after Vipassana, to first take us beyond our aversions and clinging thoughts:
To be really effective, though, mettā meditation must be practiced along with Vipassana meditation. So long as negativities such as aversion dominate the mind, it is futile to formulate conscious thoughts of goodwill, and doing so would be a ritual devoid of inner meaning. However, when negativities are removed by the practice of Vipassana, goodwill naturally wells up in the mind; and emerging from the prison of self-obsession, we begin to concern ourselves with the welfare of others.
And
As inner serenity develops, we clearly see how others are enmeshed in suffering, and naturally this wish arises, "May they find what we have found: the way out of misery, the path of peace." This is the proper volition for the practice of mettā-bhāvanā.
For me, the big learning was that Vipassana and Mettā are like two wings of a bird. They only make sense together, and when together, everything makes a lot more sense. Without Mettā, the practice of Vipassana can quickly feel egocentric. Without Vipassana, our minds are not calm and pure enough to generate Mettā for others:
This must not be merely an intellectual stance, a veneer over unresolved negativity. Mettā works only when it is the spontaneous overflow of a purified mind.
The serenity gained in Vipassana meditation naturally gives rise to feelings of mettā, and throughout the day this will continue to affect us and our environment in a positive way. Thus, Vipassana ultimately has a dual function: to bring us happiness by purifying our minds, and to help us foster the happiness of others by preparing us to practise mettā. What, after all, is the purpose of freeing ourselves of negativity and egotism unless we share these benefits with others? In a retreat we cut ourselves off from the world temporarily in order to return and share with others what we have gained in solitude. These two aspects of the practice of Vipassana are inseparable.
I suspect this has to be experienced personally rather than explained, but I want to share one last passage, this time from the British-born Tibetan nun Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who lived alone in a cave in India for 11 years:
Compassion is extraordinarily important in the spiritual path. It’s the other side of the coin: we have both wisdom and compassion. The greater the understanding of the inherent pain in beings—the more the mind becomes very clear, as if wiping away dust from the eyes—the more one sees the underlying pain in people’s lives, and the more compassion arises. Even if overtly people don’t look like they are suffering, we see that under the façade there is a lot of pain and many problems.
Naturally then compassion arises, and the two feed each other. Compassion without wisdom is sterile; it is blind. It’s like having legs but no eyes. Wisdom without compassion is like being crippled; you can’t go anywhere. So, we need the two, and they mutually support each other because it’s not just that the intellect has to be open, the heart also has to be open. They are indivisible. Wisdom and compassion are like two wings. We cannot fly with one alone.
- Into the Heart of Life, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
So to the final question, would I choose to serve again?
Yes, I would.
It’s something that I enjoy and believe in. I know Vipassana helps people calm their minds because it’s worked for me and others. To steal a line from Ted Talks, it’s an idea worth spreading. And when I serve, I can literally see it spreading.
Before this summer, I knew how to practice Vipassana every day.
After cooking for forty strangers, I now know why.
J. E. Chadwick