The World Isn’t Too Noisy — You’re Just Not Listening Right
How poetry, meditation and Thích Nhất Hạnh can help us enjoy listening.
by Joyce Englander Levy
Driving alone on a warm June morning in 2016, I approached a three-way fork in the literal road. Slightly concerned about getting lost, my posture was more rigid than usual. I aligned my directions with the approaching signs to find my way to New Haven, CT. I chose correctly, relaxed back in my seat and continued on with the cool rush of anticipation.There is a loop of that way that replays in my mind from time to time as a splendid moment of no-turning-back.
I was en route to attend Yale’s Summer Writer’s Workshop for Poetry. At the time, I was relatively new to marriage with a three-year old-son and I was pregnant with our second child. I was also the co-owner of a Yoga studio in Manhattan. Heading to Yale was my way of reclaiming something in myself that had been growing in silent retreat. As I checked in at the registration desk of the university courtyard, I shook off lingering guilt for indulging in time away from family and business. Wearing a denim maternity jumper and sneakers, I carried my small suitcase towards the old stone dorm and I felt strong in my moment of independence. I noticed a couple of birds who had built their nest in a light-fixture near the entrance. I paused for a moment to watch them, and felt a reconnection to that sense of freedom experienced as an undergraduate — when the only person I was responsible for was myself, and now slightly matured, I also felt my connection to the world at large.
In Search Of
With familiarity and foreignness I opened the door to my single room. There was the extra-long twin bed, standard armoire, boxy chair, and similarly wooden desk looking out a window upon a grassy mall. I unpacked my things, made the bed, and sat down at the desk for a moment to commit my thoughts to paper. A feeling of yes took over the quietness in the room. I looked out the window and watched a group of young people walking by. The first gathering was beginning soon, and so I left in-search-of. I love this feeling of in-search-of — The alertness of mind when it is in unfamiliar territory comparing what it is seeing with what it knows and what it is looking for. There is something edgy about the mind as a compass. All of the senses are anticipating and participating. New spatial information poured in as I navigated the corridors. I found room 207. We sat around a square of long tables. The teacher, David Gorin, was at the corner near the blackboard and backlit by afternoon sun. He was wearing army green pants and a thin plaid button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was relaxed, confident, enthusiastic. He opened with a story regarding the power of workshopping poems, we indulged a tangent about Gazelles, and then we went around to introduce ourselves. It was a motley crew of warm-faced Americans. We paired off for a writing exercise that was like Madlibs for poets, and then the more serious work began. Each student in the room had prepared a ten page collection of poems, which they had shared with the group. Each poet then picked one poem to workshop. First someone else read the poem aloud, followed by a second reading from the author, then the discussion began.
Silent Retreat
I chose to workshop a poem called, Silent Retreat. It had been years since I had shared my work in this format, and I found it quite pleasurable to be back in a classroom. I appreciated the compliments as well as the more constructive feedback. Some liked the irony of my title, some found it misleading. The poets from New York remarked how true my enactment of the city felt. Those not from New York appreciated the sense of place I had created. One woman brought up a recording by the Zen composer, John Cage, called Silence, in which he talks about the music of city life. To him, traffic is the new silence. My poem reminded her of this recording and how noise can make us feel like we need to escape to a silent retreat, or it can become meditative with practice. I was encouraged by the responses of my fellow classmates as well as the teacher. It was not only Gorin’s compliments that encouraged me, but his critique, and it wasn’t just the way that he critiqued my work but everyone’s, which made a lasting impression. Gorin, an accomplished poet, who has studied with some of the most noteworthy authors of our time, was taking us seriously.
As an aspect of the academic week, each poet had a private meeting with their teacher to discuss their poetry. In my session, Gorin pointed out a trend in my writing. He noticed that I was willing to explore a range of topics, but that all of my poems concluded on a positive note. It seemed to him that I had a need to solve, sweeten and soften within my lyrical verses. Gorin liked that I had broken the pattern of couplets with a single line to create closure, and that the “little silent retreat at the end created by the omission became a line of silence in its own right. But, was this really how the poem ended?” he questioned.
I admitted that I am an optimist to a fault, and I hadn’t realized I was guilty of this superficial innocence in my writing. I have thus spent years considering the immaturity of my positivism, but on that afternoon with Mr. Gorin, I brought up the ethos of Yoga Sutra 2.33, which I paraphrased as meaning “whenever we have a negative thought we should immediately replace it with a positive thought.”
Immediately?
“Immediately?” He questioned. He encouraged me to go back to this Sutra and deepen my research into what it says and how it is meant to be applied. He also encouraged me to read more from Thích Nhất Hạnh. He recalled a story of the world renowned Buddhist monk and the impact that the Vietnam War had on him. My new poetry teacher was reminding me that it’s important and enriching to awaken patiently with life’s mysteries. Back in my dorm, sitting at my desk, thinking in ink, I realized that Gorin was asking me to go on silent retreat into the spaces between the lines in my poems.
That evening I went with a woman from my class, Jessica, to a reading that several of the faculty were giving at the bookstore in town. Jessica was a professor of visual media at The New School, and a curious and inventive poet. She was the one who mentioned John Cage in her critique of my work, and we were enjoying each other’s company and insights. When we were leaving Jessica picked up a book from one of the tables and held it up declaring, “I’m getting this for you.” The book was titled Silence, The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise, by Thích Nhất Hạnh.
Jessica did not know that Gorin had just recommended I read more by Hạnh. It jumped out at her because it shared a subject with my Silent Retreat poem, and she knew silence and noise was a spectrum I was frequenting. Of course it was one of those stand out moments in my life when I felt like I was in the right triangle at the right time, and I appreciated the affirmation. I appreciate it still, several years later, as I sit with my earmarked book in the Newscafe, having a bowl of soup on a snowy Friday in Greenwich Village the week after Thích Nhất Hạnh has passed on.
The question now is, what have I learned about silence, and truth, and being open to life without needing to tie a neat wellness bow on everything and conclude all of my experiences with an Om Shanti? Have I learned anything about being the kind of writer or person who is not just optimistic but dynamic and mature?
There are real, serious problems in the world. (How is that for an understatement?) If we are too optimistic we plod on as if everything is fine, meanwhile ignoring hard truths that are erupting all around the globe. Yet if we truly look at and see what we as a society are creating, and therefore destroying, it’s difficult not to become flooded with dread. If we don’t think we can do anything about the tremendous problems we are facing then what choice do we have but to put on our rose colored glasses, continue in hopeful ignorance and do what we do? Or to take off the rose colored glasses and fall into a realistic despair? Alternatively, if we believe that we can make a difference, then we can be open to seeing the world for what it is, then we can think critically, listen to others, and cooperate towards viable solutions.
If we take the story of silence seriously then it seems what is required is listening. Deep listening. There will be times when we have destinations in mind, but we do not have the directions for how to get there. For example, there are many people who are individually and collectively trying to imagine a sustainable future. What will it look like? We may feel like we are gripping the wheel at times, especially when there are forks in the road and we are choosing to leave behind known ways of living that are habitual and convenient as we travel towards unknown territory. But if we are wise we will look to the past as much as the present and the future.
When I went back to investigate Sutra 2.33 I found that this teaching of immediately replacing negative thoughts with positive ones was not a misinterpretation on my part. It is in fact what this particular teaching, which has been guiding human beings for thousands of years, is saying. The choices we make in the present are critical. Students of Yoga who are sincere about pursuing a path of enlightenment are instructed that when they are in danger of breaking their moral code, for example by acting in a way that is greedy, then the student should not hesitate in replacing their greed with thoughts, words and actions of sustainability or generosity. According to Eastern Scholar, Georg Feuerstein, “Students of Yoga are attempting to ennoble their emotional life and promote a greater social harmony with every interaction.” If one makes a mistake, a Yogi doesn’t beat themself up or continue on the path of ignorance. They also do not wait until they have time for a silent retreat to process their life. They immediately make repairs and with discipline they continue to live, moment by moment, in commitment to enlightenment, which is to say in commitment to recognizing how the individual relates to the whole.
If I had made a wrong turn on my way to New Haven, I would have immediately assesed the situation and taken the next most efficient route to my destination. However, even in this teaching of immediacy was I perhaps missing something in my poetry? Was I bypassing the work that really occurred when moving from frustration to acceptance, or bitterness to gratitude, or selfishness to beneficence? Was I attempting to teleport past the difficult work of journeying to arrive at my desired conclusion and losing sophisticated readers in the process? Furthermore, Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Buddhist monk, and so he did not follow the tradition of the Yoga Sutras. Was the Buddhist approach to suffering and negativity, which my poetry teacher was pointing at for me, different?
Although there is plenty in both Yoga and Buddhist literature and practice that has nothing to do with immediacy, on this particular subject of what to do when one has a negative thought which is challenging one’s moral code, again there is instruction to promptly change mental course. Thích Nhất Hạnh says in his powerful book on Silence,
“Whenever you see an unpleasant mental formation manifesting, call on the seed of mindfulness to manifest as a second energy in your mind consciousness in order to recognize, embrace, and calm the negative mental formation, so you can look deeply into the negativity to see its source.”
In other words, when we are meditating and we notice an unpleasant thought or feeling arising we can become aware of the thought. By becoming aware, in a non-judgemental way we are able to recognize the negative experience (oh, hello greed), embrace it (give it a proverbial handshake) and thus calm the negative feeling. However, once the negative feeling is greeted does it mean the problem is solved? No. It is just the beginning. If you had to meet with a truly greedy person for a diplomatic discussion and you said hello, and you shook his hand, and everyone then sat down across from each other calmly, wouldn’t that be just the beginning of the discourse? Not the end? And what would happen if you tried to continue a conversation after your initial greeting? If you are meeting with an insatiable person, and they are destroying something in the world that you love, how can mindfulness help you?
In Thích Nhất Hạnh’s instruction the act of mindfulness plants a seed that helps a person to understand the source of negativity. Seeds don’t become wise old trees quickly. In the right conditions they grow slowly, have long fruitful lives, and the older a tree becomes the more efficiently it converts sunlight to energy and filters the air. Sitting still and meditating doesn’t help the world to become more silent. It plants seeds of awareness that help meditators to slowly grow wiser in how they approach the world.
It has taken me twenty years of meditation practice to understand that the purpose is not to sit in calmness so that I can have a calm and pleasant day. In many ways, when I approach meditation like this, and then I try to enter the chaos of the world, it makes me feel that much more sensitive and therefore agitated. The purpose of sitting is to practice meeting myself, and whatever arises in me with compassion and awareness. Then I attempt to bring this practice with me into my life as a householder. It is not easy. I have failed many times, just ask my husband and children. I have also succeeded many times, and I offer you the same references. There is no easy way around the difficulties that life presents. In some ways, being home during the pandemic with my young children under such extreme but isolated circumstances, something finally clicked for me on how to convert my meditation practice to real-life empathy and compassion.
David Gorin’s insight into my poetry and practices helped me to uncover relationships between silent retreat and daily noise, immediacy and wisdom, poetry and meditation, and perhaps even a little bit about opposition and diplomacy. The research he encouraged me to do has helped me to become a better listener — to life as it is. When we can sit in — the honesty of what is — the world doesn’t feel so loud. When I stopped needing to immiedetly solve my poems, I began to write portraits that more honestly explored the tension between the why, the where, and the how.
Revising Silent Retreat
After sitting with this poem for a few years, I was finally able to finish and I have included it for you here.
Silent Retreat
The developers bought the parking lot across the street. They sorted out their contracts and blueprints as I brought a new human being into the world.
I was in labor for eighteen hours. It took them three days to point fingers — remove a parkman’s hut, a few lifts, and a neon sign.
I had to settle my newborn down for all the naps as the construction crew jack-hammered from autumn right through winter. The operators bedrocked
with relentless daily assault. Then noisily they hauled their debris away
as we nursed, tummy timed, rolled over, pulled up, tried mangos.
I worried about my son’s developing nervous system under construction. Before we can go vertical we go subterranean.
I cradled my son and dug deep to swaddle the noise as music. The man-made crater was set with beams and concrete was poured layer-by-layer.
It was an 18-story earache. Day-after-day we encouraged our baby and as he began to reveal his essence we watched an idea rise into tangible luxury.
Step-by-step the space across from us filled with wood, tools, pipes, columns, floors, sawdust, footprints, ceilings, holes, noise, wires, windows, apartments
— touchable, fillable, relatable, valuable. We rarely saw anyone working. Yet, for all the labor we did not see, we heard — Rumbles. Screeches. Jolts. Shouts.
Bangs. Shots. Beeps. Beeps. Why so many beeps?I was desperate for
a silent retreat. Pacing in the rocking chair I shouted,
aren’t poets supposed to live in the forest, and wonder about woodpeckers?
What am I doing here?
Being here — Hear it? Hear that? Yes? That is the sound of diligence, of rising and falling humanness. That is the pitch of wanting, and a piece about
standing up and swaying for balance. That is the chatter of daily grind and the sonorous abode of silence, which holds all possibilities.
One day, we arrived home from a walk. My son pointed to the sky and said — got blocked. The Empire State Building and the blue sky were officially edited
out of view. We stood robed in the shadow of that which had destroyed my peace and robbed our quiet. We stared past the veil into the nearly naked
apartment with nothing but a mirror hanging above its mantle.
