by Harris, Dan
This I wasn’t expecting. It turned out that Mr. Atheist had a whole groovy past. As an undergrad at Stanford, Sam had experimented with ecstasy and LSD, had his mind blown, dropped out, and then spent eleven years traveling back and forth between the United States and Asia, where he lived in monasteries and ashrams, studying with various meditation teachers. During that time, he accumulated an aggregate total of roughly two years on silent retreats, meditating for twelve to eighteen hours a day. (Annaka, too, had years of meditation experience, and even worked as a volunteer teaching mindfulness to kids.)
Sam had never tried to hide this part of his past. In fact, as he reminded me, just moments after I had interviewed him at that convention back in 2007 he delivered a controversial speech in which he told the assembled atheists that denying the potential of “spiritual” experiences (he put the word in quotes, arguing it was an embarrassing term, but there were no real alternatives) made them just as ignorant as people who believed in Jesus. “It was the only time I’ve ever given a speech,” he said, “that started with a standing ovation and ended with boos.”
Sam truly did not mind pissing people off, though—and that rhetorical bloodlust was on full display at the debate. The hall was packed with partisans from both camps, a thousand people in all. Deepak’s opening statement was a vintage Choprian word salad. It included lines like this: “Today, science tells us that the essential nature of reality is nonlocal correlation.” As he spoke, our cameras captured Shermer and Harris rolling their eyes. Deepak wrapped up by calling the people at Caltech the “jihadists and Vatican of conservative and orthodox science.”
To which Sam responded, “I would never be tempted to lecture a room full of a thousand people at Caltech about physics. I’m not a physicist, you’re not a physicist—and basically every sentence you have uttered demonstrates that.” The crowd roared in approval.
As the debate ground on, Deepak made his points while gesticulating and shouting. When others talked, he slumped in his chair, looking annoyed, like he had somewhere better to be, even though he was the one who initiated this whole thing.
When it was over and the audience cleared out and I prepared to take off, I made sure to circle back to Sam and Annaka, who once again raised the subject of meditation. They had a suggestion for me: I should go on a retreat. Recognizing the look of dread on my face, they acknowledged it could be a little tough, but assured me it would be worth it. They knew an amazing teacher, they said. His name: Joseph Goldstein.
It was hard to ignore two brilliant people recommending the same meditation teacher. (Turned out, Sam, too, was old friends with Goldstein, although Sam and Mark had never met.) So when I got home, I promptly read a few books by this purported meditative genius. While the books provided terrific explications of how to employ mindfulness as a way to create space between stimulus and response in everyday life, there was also a lot of talk about reincarnation, psychic powers, and “beings on other planes of existence.” I wondered how Sam handled assertions like this one: “There are those even today who have developed the power of mind to see karmic unfolding through past and future lifetimes.” Charitably, Goldstein did say if you don’t find this stuff credible, it wouldn’t affect your chances for “liberation.”
Still, I had Mark’s and Sam’s advice ringing in my ears like a taunt. My curiosity was piqued; a little bit of pride was on the line. If I was in this meditation thing now, I might as well go the distance. I went online and saw that Goldstein was leading a retreat in California, called simply the “July Insight Meditation Retreat.” Certainly less grandiose than James Ray’s “Spiritual Warrior Retreat.” Less expensive, too: about a thousand bucks for ten days.
When I tried to sign up, though, I found to my wonderment that it wasn’t so easy to get in. There were so many applicants that slots were awarded through a lottery system. I called Goldstein’s people and tried to pull the reporter card. They were unmoved. Now that I couldn’t have it, I wanted it even more.
I emailed Sam Harris and asked if he could hook me up. He told me he’d put in a word, but gave no guarantees. (In the course of our email correspondence, I was surprised to learn that the hard-nosed atheist used emoticons.) Since this was the only retreat Goldstein would be leading anytime soon, I was now in the awkward position of stressing over getting into an event designed to help me manage stress, and that I was sure I would dislike intensely.
Not long thereafter, I got another chance to test my mindfulness skills under duress. Amy Entelis called to tell me that they were giving the Nightline job to Bill Weir. There was still no word on whether I’d gotten GMA, and no date certain for a decision. So I would be in a special kind of purgatory for the foreseeable future.
The timing was interesting, though. The very next day, thanks to Sam, I was headed to California. As he put it in an email, he had “toyed with the laws of karma” and gotten me into the retreat.
Chapter 7
Retreat
It was the longest, most exquisite high of my life, but the hangover came first.
Day One
Here’s what I’m mindful of right now: pervasive dread.
I’m sitting in a café in San Francisco, having what I assume will be my last decent meal before I check in for the Zen Death March. As I eat, I leaf listlessly through the mimeographed information sheets sent by the people at the retreat center. The place is called Spirit Rock, which sounds like a New Age version of “Fraggle Rock,” populated by crystal-wielding Muppets. The writing is abristle with the type of syrupy language that drives me up a wall:
“Retreats offer a sacred space, protected and removed from the world, intended to allow participants to quiet the mind and open the heart.”
The sheets request that we “take whatever room is offered,” whether it’s a single or a double. (This sends unpleasant images dancing through my head of potential roommates who are all gray-haired, ponytailed, beret-wearing, Wavy Gravy look-alikes.) The chefs will “lovingly prepare” lacto-ovo vegetarian food. We will be assigned daily “yogi jobs,” either in housekeeping or the kitchen, or “ringing bells,” whatever that means. There’s a lengthy list of “What Not to Bring,” seemingly written in 1983, which includes beeper watches and “Walkmans.” The retreat will be conducted in “noble silence,” which means no talking to one another and no communication with the outside world, except in case of emergencies.
The whole ten-days-of-no-talking thing is the detail that everyone I told about the retreat keyed in on. To a man (or woman), the people I had the courage to admit how I was spending my vacation asked something to the effect of, “How can you go without talking for that long?” Silence, however, is the part that worries me the least. I don’t imagine there will be many people at the retreat I’ll be dying to chat with. What truly scares me is the pain and boredom of sitting and meditating all day every day for ten straight days. For a guy with a bad back and a chronic inability to sit still, this is definitely a suboptimal holiday.
I call a cab for the hour-long ride to northern Marin County. As we cross the Golden Gate, I feel like a lamb leading itself to slaughter. I get an email from Sam saying he’s “envious” of the experience I’m about to have. His timing is impeccable. It’s an encouraging reminder that, apparently, these retreats can produce remarkable moments. In fact, I recently read a New York Times op-ed piece by Robert Wright, a journalist, polemicist, curmudgeon, and agnostic not known for either credulousness or mystical leanings. Wright wrote that he had “just about the most amazing experience” of his life on retreat, which involved finding “a new kind of happiness,” and included a “moment of bonding with a lizard.”
However, major breakthroughs—known in spiritual circles as “peak experiences”—cannot be guaranteed. What is almost certain, though—and even Sam acknowledged this—is that the first few days will be an ordeal. Classic prapañca: I’m casting forward to day two or three, envisioning myself marooned and miserable.
We roll up to Spirit
Rock at around four in the afternoon. As we pull off the main road and onto the campus, I spot a sign that reads YIELD TO THE PRESENT.
Jesus.
The place is beautiful, though, like something out of a French Impressionist painting. We are surrounded by hills covered in pale gold, sun-bleached scrub grass, with clusters of vivid green trees nestled throughout. The center itself is a series of handsome wood structures with Japanese-style roofs, built into the side of a hill.
As I wheel my luggage up to the main office, I catch the first glimpses of my fellow meditators. They are solidly, solidly NPR—card-carrying members of the socks-and-sandals set.
We line up for our room assignments and yogi jobs. (I’m starting to figure out that yogi is just another word for “meditator.”) I’m told I will be a “pot washer.”
Hallelujah: I get a single room, on the second floor of one of the four dorm buildings. The accommodations are spare, but not gross. There’s a single bed next to a window. The walls are white. The carpet is tan. There’s a mirror and a sink. The communal bathroom is down the hall.
At six o’clock, dinner—and my first big shock: the food is excellent. It’s a buffet of smashed-pea dip, just-baked bread, salad with dill dressing, and soup made out of fresh squash.
I wait my turn in line, load up a plate, and suddenly find myself in one of those awkward, high school cafeteria–type situations, in which I don’t know where to sit. There are around one hundred of us. The crowd consists overwhelmingly of white baby boomers. A lot of these people seem to know one another—they must be regulars on the West Coast meditation scene. Since we haven’t yet been told that we have to stop talking, everyone’s kibitzing happily.
I find a spot next to a kindly, older married couple, who strike up a conversation. I express my fears about the first few days being brutal. The wife reassures me, saying it’s not that bad. “It’s like having jet lag,” she says.
As we finish eating, Mary, the head chef—a chipper, cherub-faced woman with short brown hair—gets up and makes a little presentation. There will be three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and a light supper. There are rules: no food in the rooms; no entering the dining hall until invited in by one of the chefs, who will ring a bell; after eating, we must line up, scrape off our plates, and put them in plastic tubs for the kitchen cleaners. For hard-core vegans, there’s a special side area of “simple foods.” And for people who really have special dietary needs, there’s a “yogi shelf,” where they can keep their personal stash of wheat germ or whatever. Mary has none of the severity I was expecting. I had pictured a Buddhist Nurse Ratched. “I want you to think of this as your dining room,” she tells us, and she seems to actually mean it.
The official opening session is held in the meditational hall, located in a stately building on an outcropping of rock set apart from the dorms by a hundred yards or so. Before entering, everyone takes off their shoes in a little foyer. The hall is large and airy, with shiny wood floors and lots of windows. There’s an altar at the front with a statue of the Buddha. Arrayed before it are roughly a dozen mats in neat rows. Many people have shown up early to claim their spots and have built elaborate meditation nests out of small wooden benches, round cushions called “zafus,” and thin, wool blankets. They’re sitting, with legs crossed and eyes closed, waiting for the proceedings to begin. This sends my “comparing mind” aflutter. I’m clearly out of my league.
For those of us who can’t hack the traditional postures, there are several rows of chairs lined up behind the mats. So, much as I’d done as a sullen punk kid in high school, I find myself sitting in the back of the room.
As soon as I’m settled, I look over to see a row of teachers walking into the hall, single file. They’re all silent and stone-faced, with Goldstein bringing up the rear. I recognize him from the pictures on his book jackets. He’s taller than I expected. He walks in long, slow strides. He’s wearing a button-down shirt and khakis that ride high on the waist. There’s a roughly three-inch strip of baldness down the center of his head, flanked by short brown hair on either side. The centerpiece of his angular face is a large, elegant protuberance of a nose. He’s wearing a goatee. He looks very, very serious. The overall effect is a little intimidating.
The teachers take their seats in the front row and one of them, a fiftyish Asian woman named Kamala, welcomes us in that artificially soft, affected manner of speech that I’m now thinking they must teach at whatever meditation school these people attended. She formally opens the retreat and declares that we have now officially “entered into silence.” More rules: no talking, no reading, no sex. (I’ve read that there’s such a thing as a “yogi crush,” a silent longing for one of your fellow meditators, at whom you steal furtive glances and around whom you construct feverish fantasies. As I look around the room, I realize this will not be a problem for me.)
In her contemplative purr, the teacher tells us that the goal on retreat is to try to be mindful at all times, not just when we’re meditating. This means that all of our activities—walking, eating, sitting, even going to the bathroom—should be done with exaggerated slowness, so we can pay meticulous, microscopic attention.
At this point, I get my first look at the schedule we will be following for the rest of the retreat. It’s even more brutal than I’d imagined. The days will start with a five o’clock wake-up call, followed by an hour of meditation, then breakfast, then a series of alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation of various lengths, lasting all the way up until ten at night, broken up by meals, rest and work periods, and an evening “dharma talk.” I do some quick math: roughly ten hours a day of meditation. I honestly do not know if I can hack this.
Day Two
My alarm goes off at five and I realize, suddenly and unhappily, where I am.
I pick out one of the three pairs of sweatpants I packed in anticipation of long, sedentary days. I pad down the hall to the bathroom, perform the ablutions, and then walk outside into the chilly morning air and join the stream of yogis heading out of the dorms into the meditation hall. Everyone’s walking slowly, with heads down. I realize that these people are really taking seriously the injunction to be mindful at all times.
As I walk amid the silent herd through the predawn darkness, I resolve to go balls-out on this retreat. If I’m going to do this thing, I’m going to do it right, damn it.
So, when I enter the hall, instead of going to the chair I’d picked out the night before, I wade into the archipelago of mats. I put two cushions on top of each other and straddle them, imitating the sitting style of some of the more experienced meditators.
I notice that as people file in, many of them stop and bow in the direction of the Buddha statue at the front of the hall. This makes me uncomfortable. I wonder how Sam deals with this.
Then another unpleasant surprise: There are pieces of legal-size paper at each of our meditation stations. They are lyric sheets. We will be expected to chant.
One of the teachers, a middle-aged white guy, takes the podium and explains that these are the “Refuges and Precepts,” the chants with which yogis have, for centuries, started their day. The lyrics are in Pali, the language of the Buddha, but they’re spelled out for us phonetically. He begins chanting, slow and low, and the rest of us join in, reading from our sheets. (Chanting is one of the only exceptions to the “Noble Silence” rule, along with the occasional opportunity we’ll get to speak with the teachers.)
On the right side of the page is the English translation. In the first part of the chant, we’re “taking refuge” in the Buddha, “the Blessed One, the Perfected One, the Fully Enlightened One.” Then we take the “precepts,” which are basically a series of promises: no harming (people or animals), no stealing, no lying, no substance abuse—and also, as if this might be a problem, “no dancing, singing, music, and unseemly shows.” If my friends could see me perched on this tuffet, chanting, they would be laughing their asses off.
When the chant ends, we’re
off—we’re meditating. This is it. Game on.
Almost immediately, I realize that sitting on cushions is a terrible idea. I am assailed by back and neck pain. The circulation to my feet feels like it’s dangerously choked off. I try to focus on my breathing, but I can’t keep up a volley of more than one or two breaths.
In.
Out.
In.
Holy crap, I think my feet are going to snap off at the ankle.
Come on, dude.
In.
It feels like a dinosaur has my rib cage in its mouth.
Out.
I’m hungry. It’s really quiet in here. I wonder if anyone else in here is freaking out right now.
After a truly horrible hour, I hear a gentle ringing sound, kind of like a gong. The teacher has just tapped on what looks like a metal bowl, but apparently is a bell.
Everyone gets up and shuffles—mindfully—down the hill toward the dining hall. I follow along in a daze, like I’ve just had the bejeezus kicked out of me. A line forms outside the building. Oh, right. We’re not allowed to go in until one of the chefs comes out and rings a bell. There’s something a little pathetic about this.
I look around. While the word yogi sounds goofy—like Yogi Berra or Yogi Bear—these people all seem so grim. Turns out, mindfulness isn’t such a cute look. Everyone is in his or her own world, trying very hard to stay in the moment. The effort of concentration produces facial expressions that range from blank to defecatory. The instruction sheets gently advise us not to make eye contact with our fellow retreatants, so as to not interrupt one another’s meditative concentration. Which makes this the only place on earth where the truly compassionate response to a sneeze is to ignore it completely.