Noble Silence

Stains in a notebook, part 2

Silence (c. 1911), Odilon Redon

Saturday, February 14, 2026

Is it still considered catastrophizing when you don’t actually think that all the horrible things that you imagine will really happen? Last night, while trying to fall asleep, I felt a slight jump in my chest, and within seconds I found myself wondering if anyone in my family would think to notify my employer that I’d not be returning to work again, ever, on account of my death. Would my wife know who to contact? Would anyone else try? Yes. My mom would. It would definitely be my mom. She’d probably either reply to one of my org’s newsletters or go to its site to find an email address. In the worst-case scenario, Facebook would be involved. She and my boss would likely end up having a warm but somber exchange, hopefully in private, and then life would go on. As it did anyway. I never actually thought that that little hiccup in my chest was anything to be concerned about. I even had good reason to suspect that within a few minutes I’d be asleep, and one would need to be alive to fall asleep, wouldn’t one? But the thoughts still came, unimpeded by my lack of an adequate verb for them.

A couple years back I attended a 10-day Vipassana meditation course. It was 10 hours of meditation a day, which I think is probably something like the seated equivalent of a 200-plus-mile ultramarathon, the latter of which sounds far more appealing to me at this point in my life, on this cool, sunny, and polluted February morning.

They have residential quarters at the meditation center, separated by sex, to house the students, each of whom is mercifully assigned a modest private room. I retreated to mine during most of the days’ afternoon breaks. On one of those breaks, I heard a loud thump from one of the adjoining rooms. Before I knew it, my thoughts were stringing together a scenario wherein one of the sex-separated men must have succumbed to a malevolent cocktail of boredom and carnal desire and clubbed another man over the head with some implement or another as the latter man was entering his room, so that the former man could drag the latter one inside and rape him. No part of me actually believed that any of this was happening. It was just as though the thoughts needed to be heard, needed someone to listen to them. My part in this warped psychic dialogue was merely to hear, to listen, to observe, and to respond—by way of non-reaction and non-response—that, no, whatever the source of the thump might have been, it was most likely an innocuous one, and almost certainly not a criminal one. To which the intruder-thoughts could respond with the unalloyed grace of their retreative silence. To which I could reply in kind with mine. As to any questions about whether this warped psychic dialogue was in fact a warped psychic monologue all along, all I can say is that I’m still looking into it.

Sunday, February 15, 2026

We weren’t allowed to speak for the duration of the course. Noble Silence. That’s what it’s called. No communication of any kind among students. The decree is supposed to extend as well to one’s internal chatter, but we are who we are, and some of us are involuntarily committed internal dialogians, and old habits die hard and all of that. Not unlike the Covid-era lockdowns, the external variety of Noble Silence was a social restriction that suited me quite well. I remember thinking long after the course had ended that it would be a great practice to adopt in the general population: 10 days of Noble Silence per month, or something of the sort. It still sounds like a great idea to me. But then I remember that I’m a rhinoceros wandering in traffic, and that it would be much more sensible for me to wander off someplace else and go it alone.

Noble Silence is broken on the morning of the last full day of the course, meaning, the morning before the morning that everyone returns to the world. This makes sense as a reorientation measure. But given a choice in the matter, I’d have opted for leaving our collective silence unmolested.

Almost immediately after it broke, this guy who didn’t speak much English cornered me and started making his pitch. From what I could tell, he wanted me to join some stock-trading app or online community that he was involved in. I expressed my disinterest as clearly and politely as I could. But he wouldn’t let up. He wanted all of my contact information. So we could talk more about it. Like we were suddenly friends or business partners now. Even as I was making my exit from the center’s grounds to catch my ride home the following morning, he was still hot on my heels and pestering me about it. Suffice it to say, I had no trouble imagining the various tales of desperation that might be central to his life and serving as his lodestar. Not that the rest of us were any different. You don’t offer yourself up for 10 days of seated suffering unless you’re trying to overcome something deep and grisly and endogenous. Some people do, I guess. But those people don’t make it through to the end.