but could I not do this?

In my recent post about the quietest room on the planet, I claimed that I thought I'd be able to last longer than 45 minutes inside the room—45 minutes being the (unofficial?) record, thus far, for anyone who has experienced the utter silence of the Redmond, WA, chamber in which Microsoft tests the sound-related properties of its products (think: mouse clicks and such). The room has been built on its own special platform, is surrounded by six feet of concrete to block out all external noise, and is lined with foam sound baffles that cover its interior walls. People who have gone into the room have been unable to last longer than 45 minutes in there.

When I wrote that I thought I could last longer, my buddy Charles left a comment saying, "I think you might be underestimating the effects of complete sensory deprivation." Oh, that almost sounds like a challenge, my friend. Of course, Charles hasn't entered that chamber himself, either, so his comment is based on speculation and not from special knowledge or experience. For all we know, I could fall asleep inside the chamber and have myself the most peaceful three-hour nap in history.

There are several reasons why I think I'd actually do quite well inside Microsoft's Chamber of Silence. I'd like to go over a few of them with you now. From the previously linked article:

...the firm has found [the chamber is] too quiet for most people - and nobody has been able to spend more than 45 minutes inside.

The few outsiders who have entered it have complained of everything from becoming disturbed by the loudness of their own breathing to ringing in the ears and deafening stomach gurgles.

‘Some people come in for a minute and want out immediately,’ Hundraj Gopal, Microsoft’s principal human factors engineer, and the man who led the team that built the anechoic chamber, told Dailymail.com.

‘People can’t handle it, it rattles their brains, it’s sensory deprivation.’

Gopal said the record for staying in the room, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest on Earth, is short.

‘This is the quietest place on the planet, and the most someone has been able to stay in is 45 minutes.’

What are the people being freaked out by? For the most part, it sounds as if they're freaked out because the room forces them to confront themselves, and confronting ourselves isn't something that human beings—who are mostly social and extraverted and averse to introspection—are accustomed to doing. An introvert like me, with an admittedly patchy background in Zen meditation, would probably fare far better than most of these folks.

When you meditate in a zendo (Kor. seonweon), sitting in ranks with a large group of people, all of you on cushions, the ambiance is so quiet that, as with Microsoft's room, you can indeed hear things like your own breathing, the borborygmi (i.e., gut-gurgling) of your stomach and intestines, the gentle pulse and flow of blood in your ears, the quiet popping of saliva bubbles in your mouth—not to mention the body-sounds emanating from the people around you, including, quite possibly, the occasional unwelcome fart. There's a bit of a paradox that occurs when you meditate: on the one hand, your mind and body are settling and calming themselves, but at the same time, the mental clarity that results from such settling has the effect of sharpening your senses: if someone's cell phone goes off during meditation, at a point when the mind has settled into a deeply receptive state, a mere ring of the phone can be enough to startle you. The same is true should someone suddenly begin talking. This happened to me in Washington State during my 2008 walk when the head monk at Red Cedar Zen Center in Bellingham, Washington made the unorthodox move of talking during zazen (Kor. chamseon): I nearly jumped out of my skin. No Korean monk ever talks during seated meditation: speech is reserved for the Q&A dharma talk after meditation is over.

What would such heightened sensitivity to one's environment mean for someone inside a sensory-deprivation chamber? I don't know. The mind is never merely conscious; it's always conscious of something, and if it has nothing external onto which it can latch, it will turn inward and latch onto its own swirling, churning thoughts. The prospect of this is a horror for many people, who have no desire to be trapped anywhere with just their own thoughts for company. As an optimist about this experience, though, I think that my own body-sounds, and my own thoughts, would be like familiar companions to me; there's nothing there to freak me out because I've heard and felt and experienced it all before.

The introvert-extravert issue is also worth pondering. Most people, being social primates, tend to like hanging out together, hooting and hollering like the apes they are. Most of us have a compulsive need for some sort of companionship; very few of us actively desire being alone. As an old pastor of mine noted to us introverts, "Remember that you're introverts in an extraverted world." Even many introverts crave life-partners to share their inner lives with. So being a contemplative introvert who seeks solitude is a rare thing. I think I teeter on the edge of such introversion (see more here); if I found myself marooned on an island in the middle of the ocean, I wouldn't go crazy with loneliness, although I'd certainly miss the people I love. It's going to turn some of my readers off when they read the following words, but there's a part of me that sees neediness and dependency as weaknesses to be avoided at all costs. While I recognize that I need help to get certain things done in my life, I pride myself on being able to do most things without help because, for me, that's the measure of a man. I'm not an expat who has to enslave a Korean girlfriend who becomes my beck-and-call interpreter and translator because I'm too lazy or stupid to rise above my linguistically handicapped state and learn the local language. I find such dependency shameful—embarrassing.* Anyway, before I digress too much, my point is that I prefer to do things myself where possible. Even when I cook, if I can't find the ingredients I need, I'll often try to make them for myself. It's hard to live life well if you insist on being an incompetent cripple.

Now, if the Meyers-Briggs people are right, then extraverts derive their energy from others while introverts derive their energy from themselves. Put an extravert into Microsoft's chamber of silence, and he or she will wilt or go mad in short order because s/he has been cut off from a prime energy source. Put a strongly introverted person into such a room, though, and I think that person will come into his or her own, possibly even reveling in the imposed isolation—a pure form of aloneness that can't be experienced anywhere else on Earth.

So, while a "normal" person—probably extraverted—would end up crying "Mommy!" in just a few minutes inside Microsoft's Chamber of Silence, I think someone like yours truly would actually thrive. I'd like to visit Redmond, ask permission to meditate inside that room, and do a full two-hour meditation session within: as I had done at the Korean temple in Germantown, Maryland, this would be three 40-minute sessions of seated meditation broken up by two bouts of walking meditation, with each bout being approximately 2-3 minutes in length. I think this is eminently doable.

I could be completely wrong about all of this, though. Assuming I actually received permission to sit at length inside the chamber, there's always a chance that I, too, might end up freaking out before the 45-minute mark. But I truly don't think that would happen: I sincerely believe I could last at least two hours in the room and come out just fine.

I should note, though, that meditating inside that chamber for the explicit purpose of breaking the 45-minute record would be a gross misuse of meditation. The activity would be—and I have to admit this if I'm being honest—utterly egocentric in terms of motives and goals. It would also ultimately be vain, both in the "egotistical" sense of the word and the "futile" sense of the word because someone else would eventually come along and sit inside the chamber for three hours. Properly done, meditation is 180 degrees away from what I would be using it for.

So, with all that said: whatever Charles's misgivings, I'm convinced I could take up the chamber challenge and meditate in there for two hours plus a few minutes (we can't forget the extra minutes devoted to walking meditation).

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*At the same time, I'm forced to admit there are many areas in my life where I absolutely need help. I don't like being reminded of my own dependency, but it's there, and as long as I remain part of the human species, I'm really not that different from anyone else. Also: should I ever end up falling in love with a funny little honey, my views on dependency would be likely to change, and you'd be free to mock me in the future for what I've written here tonight.