Over twenty years ago I had an unexpected deep experience with stillness without really looking for it. In the midst of a very busy time, away from home, as a volunteer in a foreign country, while I was rather exhausted, that silent rest was filled with energy and joy. My tired body would fall asleep in the evening, but always with the joyful thought: Tomorrow I can go and sit beside that well again!
In the beginning, the paths and methods of stillness that I explored were coded in the Christian language and cosmos. Meditation practice in a Christian context is basically mindfulness of the breath, assisted by a word (for example the name of Jesus or a short phrase from scripture) that functions as a tool to ever guide awareness back to the breath. My understanding of meditative practice was heavily informed by my reading of a work by the 16th-century Spanish mystic Juan de la Cruz: The Dark Night. The narrative carrying the contemplative practice was that contemplation is not something that humans do, but the work of God who draws us into unity with them. The lover will come and lead one to the garden. This happens in the 'dark night', with senses calmed. So there is nothing for us to do, other than being open to unlearning our conventional language and our preconceived ideas, even those around 'God'. This narrative resonated with my own experience, as I went through a crisis in which familiar phrases from Scripture and the way religious experience was voiced didn't work for me anymore.
I can't remember how I discovered the voice of Thich Nhat Hanh. I would download his Dharma talks and listen to them on my MP3 player. It was not an iPod, but basically a USB stick with a display, minimal controls and a headphone jack. There was a yearning for wholeness, for loving kindness and community in my encounter with Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village.
Eventually I found it quite hopeful how my Zen friends understood it: 'Just sitting' as embodiment of Bodhi mind. Enlightenment is not the result of hard work. Practice itself expresses Buddha-nature. I was very fortunate to have met a very warm Zen people in Finland and Sweden who lived out their Bodhisattva vows in very practical ways - as if they, as a community, would be the incarnation of the Great Bodhisattva Kannon herself.
Nonetheless, after twenty years of silent practices came the crisis of 'doing'. I realised that I wasn't able to do anything well or anything good. Under the impression of a pandemic I doubted that 'just sitting' would be something I still could do on my deathbed. Ironically, I turned to a school of Buddhism that emerged, in part, from deathbed rituals. The sound of unhindered light would find me, even in hell: Namo Amida Butsu.
With that, practice ended.
However, the pandemic also gave me the opportunity to start working on my Thai speaking, reading and writing skills. It started with an online conversation partner, then branched out into taking online music lessons (learning to play Thai string instruments), and eventually led to online lessons once a week to study Thai Buddhism with another tutor. After a year I thought: "I can't just continue learning the theory. You have to find out through your own practice and experience!" That's why I decided to take part in a seven-day retreat in Thailand in October 2025. Looking back I can see that my online study and the preparation (learning two pages of Pali-Thai recitation by heart was a requirement, for instance) leading up to the retreat was very much part of it.
The practice at that temple was not the method from the 20th century Vipassana revival that is now globally associated with the Theravada tradition in countries such as Sri Lanka, Thailand and Burma. I am deliberately not discussing the lineage of the temple where I stayed because, these days, one has to be actively cautious to prevent religious and spiritual practices from being appropriated and becoming "content".
What I can say though is that, of course, Classical Buddhism quite simply is about dukkha and its extinction. Meditative practice is one part of this path. The monks, the Eight Precepts nuns, and indeed generally the visitors practising at the temple where I stayed believed that it was possible to eliminate the Three Poisons through practice.
Broadly speaking the practice can be described as letting sati ("recollection", but commonly translated as "mindfulness") do its job of seeing and knowing. Eventually there is realising (although for beginners like me, this only shows up for short moments) that it's not always necessary to believe what mind comes up with.
The classical Buddhist curriculum would state that Buddhist meditation is about seeing The Three Marks (dukkha, impermanence, anatta) in their processes. This may sound rather dry and precise, so I should mention that the temple's teaching style leaned very much towards asceticism and renunciation, just considering that we slept on a concrete floor with only a thin mat and followed the monastics' daily schedule of two meals a day. We were also scolded a lot. I often felt like a primary school kid, especially on the last evening when I was interviewed and then critisised in front of everyone by a monk who didn't like what I said. I just tried to explain that, as a lay person, I would need to prioritise other aspects of my daily life as well. For a monk, not putting practice first was something he could not accept.
So, how is it for me today with meditative practice? That first unexpected encounter with silence seems unwiederbringlich, lost forever. I'm not waiting, blindfolded, in the dark night anymore for my lover to come. I failed to connect to a community of wholeness and loving kindness. And my heart was not big enough to embody Kannon-Sama. (I'm also very far away from corporate mindfulness, mental health apps and content creator spirituality. I can't see a connection at all between those things and Classical Buddhist lived experience.)
Have I become like a primary school kid then, in need of listening what my teachers and parents tell me?
Questions: Are you aware that context and narratives matter for meditative practice? Are there contextualisations from the past or other narrative traditions which are not important to you (anymore)? What's your current narrative that holds your meditation practice? Could you imagine that the way you understand the practice now will change again?