The silent treatment:
By Nadine Kam
It’s a good thing
Star-BulletinPoetry and songs have long extolled the virtues of silence, but those of hearing rarely experience such a thing. City dwellers learn to find comfort in noise, lulled at night by the sirens, the neighbors' televisions, the whoosh of traffic.
Even in the rain forest, far from crowds, the roar of life is deafening and reassuring. If not for the cacophony of insects buzzing, under the blackness of night, one would feel the world had ended.
So what was I to make of this man seated in front of me, Mateo Madani, who makes an offer of silence.
"I could stop talking right now," he says. "My mind would be a blank."
"Don't do that!" I scold, mostly concerned about what I would tell my boss about the strange, willfully catatonic person in the conference room, with a part of me uncomfortable with the silence.
The modern world leaves little allowance for such a thing. We feel we must talk to be friendly. We talk to be understood. We talk to revel in our own intellect or sense of humor. We talk, therefore we exist.
Madani suggests the opposite, that it is through silence and contemplation that we truly hear ourselves. To prove it, he will be hosting three-day silent retreats on the island of Moloka'i.
"It won't be silent all the time, maybe 50 percent," he says. Much of the time will be spent learning yoga and meditation, and eating. Madani, owner of Casa de Mateo in Montreal, Canada, and formerly on Maui, will be cooking gourmet meals, mostly vegetarian, for guests at the Pu'u O Hoku Lodge.
Madani attended his first silent retreat two years ago in Utah, and admits the idea seemed strange.
"The first time I experienced it I felt funny," said the chef/guru who was born in Iran, grew up in Belgium and who felt he had seen everything while traveling the world. "I wanted to laugh. Here were all these people sitting around the dinner table and they don't say nothing. It was kind of uncomfortable.
"But two days later, if somebody speaks to me, I wouldn't want to speak to them. And five days later, I don't want to speak anymore because I know the value of talk.
"We don't realize how much energy we expend when we speak. When we know the value of talk, we learn how to think before we speak. Then we have no regrets, like 'Oh, I shouldn't have said that.' "
Part of the workshop will focus on breathing techniques. Early Hawaiians understood the value of breath. "Ha" is their word for breath and life.
"When you get angry, your breathing changes. It speeds up. It gets shallow," Madani said. "With breathing you can calm yourself. If you change your breathing, you can change your body and mind.
"Many diseases are stress related. The Western way is to wait until disease comes before we start looking for solutions. The Eastern philosophy is to prevent from becoming sick."
Judy Pliner, a human resources manager at Hard Rock Cafe Honolulu, attended a silent retreat four months ago on Kauai. She was drawn by the idea of escaping the stresses of her career. She looks forward to attending Madani's workshop, saying, "To me, he looks so peaceful. He seems more evolved and less involved with the world than people I know.
"I think that people who participate in retreats are all searching for inner peace, inner strength. It's part of a desire to reconnect with intuition and to learn to trust ourselves more.
"What we are searching for is definitely not in the external world and not in another person either; it's just inside us."
She said the experience from that first retreat has already spilled over into the rest of her life. "When things get stressful, you remember to slow down."
Through meditation and silence, Madani says, people learn to appreciate the small things that make life enjoyable. "If you don't talk, you see a person's eyes better, you see a part of your partner that you never saw before because you never paid attention."
He entered the world of silence and meditation through the martial arts. "Eight years ago I met two brothers from Hong Kong who were going to teach me kung fu. I wanted to be Bruce Lee. I wanted to kick some butt, learn fancy kicks and throws.
"But the funny thing is, as you get higher in martial arts, you no longer think of fighting. You know you have ability physically, so you get to know yourself spiritually. The ultimate goal becomes wisdom.
"Before, I kept accumulating money. My life was all about wine, food, women and partying -- everything to the extreme, every day over and over -- I had nothing. I was arrogant, (I had a) big ego, I was angry at everything.
"Now, it's so simple. Most of the challenges in life comes from oneself. We're harder on ourselves than anyone else. Now, if I make a mistake, I say, 'It's for the better.' "
Things do work out, he said. "Bad things happen to me all the time. Today, I missed my flight to Chicago, but while I was at the airport I met a guy who wants to come to my workshop and he gave me the down payment on the spot."
Weekend Silent Retreat
Where: Lodge at Pu'u O Hoku, Moloka'i
