Carrying my mattress pad in hand, I opened the door to my room at the monastery. The essentials greeted me: an empty frame for my pad, a small desk, and another bed for my roommate. Except my bedframe wasn’t empty. Various bottles and knick-knacks were strewn across where my mattress was meant to go. And the other bed was fully occupied by an older man lying supine, typing away at a laptop on his belly. I had already known this was going to be different from previous retreats I had done, which were largely in silence with minimal stimulation1. Here, discussion was encouraged. So sharing a room meant having a more substantial relationship than just another body sleeping in the same space. The scene in front of me was still a bit of a shock and more chaotic than I anticipated.

We began chatting and quickly found common ground—we shared first names and both had roots in the Bay Area. We talked about meditation practice, our previous experience, what brought us to the center. For me, that meant my time mostly practicing in California. He gave me a fuller backstory of his life2 and his journey with several teachers and monasteries across Asia. It was clear he was looking for a guru more than just meditation guidance.

One of his teachers had written down a date and told him that was the day he would die. He wanted to go back to the teacher the day after the fateful date to prove him wrong. He started to laugh when describing it and then abruptly stopped. I could tell he didn’t think it was entirely implausible. He described following another teacher who he believed had traveled to astral planes and virtually to space. I have seen how meditation can create fairly different mental states, so I didn’t think too deeply about his beliefs even if I was skeptical. I chalked them up to his way of grappling with the mysteriousness of consciousness.

As we kept talking over the next few days, more opinions emerged – thoughts about government corruption, the CIA, and other nefarious foreign policy schemes. While there was often a kernel of truth, his appetite for conspiracies was clearly large. I mostly just listened.

At one point I asked him to outline more of his views. He began listing various conspiracies, some of which were familiar to me. A new one emerged: how a weather station in Alaska was being used to create hurricanes off the Gulf Coast3. Here my ability to just listen ended. While I wasn’t going to argue about the motivations of politicians or US foreign policy, I felt I had to defend basic physics.

Me: Even the most evil government in the world couldn’t physically create a hurricane. The amount of power needed would be astronomical. And how would you even transfer that energy from Alaska to the Atlantic?

Him: Where did you learn that? At your Ivy League school? From the New York Times?

Me: This is just how the world works. Any physicist would tell you the same thing.

Him: Sure, and where were those physicists taught? At those same corrupt universities.

I could feel myself getting more animated as we went back and forth. Where I saw a clear line between scientific understanding and human motivations, he saw conspiracy all the way down.

Later, I took a closer look at the bottles that had been strewn across my bed that first day. One of them bore the logo of Alex Jones’ InfoWars. I couldn’t have asked for a clearer sign of his worldview. And it had been there from the start.



This was the setting I found myself practicing meditation at the monastery. I tried to use it as a way to practice Right Speech4. I did my best to practice being in the body in the moment and while talking. Often when speaking my attention would escape the body and I would get caught up in my ideas. What proved most valuable was to go to the meditation hall after one of these heated discussions and really watch my body there. Eventually, I could see the agitation dissipate. Then the thought might arise again: “How can I show him how he is wrong???”. When my awareness would eventually return, I’d observe as my body eventually relaxed.

Conversely there is how to listen. With my roommate, our room setup was supportive of this. I would sit cross-legged on my bed when our discussions took place. So I was able to better be with my body and notice my reactivity when we talked. I found when he came after me personally, I was much more reactive. And this came across in my body, I could feel the heat and pressure in my chest pulsing. This was very valuable relational practice. It helped that the stakes were pretty low – this wasn’t someone close and while he would often make it personal, it wasn’t an argument with lasting effects. So practicing in this setting gave me the space to see my reactivity.

I often get less caught up in arguments now. I try to notice and be intentional with what I say. Listening with the whole body is very useful too. This helps me stay more engaged in conversation and less caught in thinking of what next to say.



Toward the end of my time at the monastery, my roommate and another man had donated the breakfast meal5. He enlisted me as part of the team helping (we did get along fine despite our arguments).

The most substantive support I gave was during the meal itself. I was tasked with serving everyone their coffee. It was quite simple, just handing coffees to those who requested them. It gave me a lot of joy, being able to have a simple interaction with all of the monks, nuns and various practitioners at the center. I felt like I was receiving their warmth of spirit as I was handing them their hot drinks.

This morning has stuck with me, and I have to credit my roommate for fueling it with his generosity. While I couldn’t connect with him in the realm of speech – there is another part of the Eightfold Path that is Right Action. And for that morning we were able to practice that together.

  1. I was at Shwee Oo Min Monastery in Burma, led by Sayadaw U Tejaniya. He encourages a form of practice to bring mindfulness to all aspects of life, resulting in a much looser schedule and open ended form of practice. 

  2. Worth noting that he was about 40 years older than me. 

  3. See HAARP conspiracy theories on Wikipedia. 

  4. One of the core teachings in Buddhism is the Eightfold path, outlining how a wise person should live. Right speech is included as one of these eight practices. There are 3 main aspects to Right Speech: is it kind, is it true, is it necessary. 

  5. A monastery like this one runs entirely on donations. There are different ways to contribute, and one is to donate a meal. The logistics are such that it’s a monetary donation, it’s not feasible to physically donate the meal (whereas this might be possible in another setting).