Every day of a retreat is this day. It is drawn to scale: an hour is the same height everywhere, so you can see how much of it is sitting before you read a word.
Sitting in the hall is together and still; you are asked not to leave the hall for that hour. Sitting where you like is the same practice in the hall, your room or on the verandah. Walking is slow and on the estate path. Rest is yours.
The evening talk is the one hour in the day when you will hear a voice. It is a plain talk about the practice, forty minutes long, then questions written on paper.
Sunrise and sunset are for mid-October. In January the first sitting starts in the dark and the last in the dark.
From the first evening to the morning of the last day, nobody speaks. Not at meals, not on the path, not in the rooms. There is no reading, no writing, no phone; phones and books go into a labelled box at the office on arrival and come back on the last morning.
You can always speak to a teacher or to the office. There is a slip of paper by the hall door for anything that can wait, and a bell for anything that cannot. People find the silence hard on day two and easy by day four; that has been true for almost everyone who has come.
Eye contact, gestures and notes to other participants count as talking. Nobody will scold you, but the silence only works if everyone keeps it.
Ten-day retreats are the full practice; five-day retreats are for a first time, or for people who cannot take ten days off. Both start with arrival by 16:00 and end after breakfast on the last day. 32 places on every retreat; August and September are already full.
And leave at home
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