FOR THE AFTERNOON, we were instructed to abide by noble silence. Meaning: no talking for the next six hours. I suspect we all wanted to get to know everybody else, but that wasn't the point of this retreat. Like it or not, we were here to get to know ourselves.

After a silent lunch, we walked in single file—slowly, solemnly, and silently, with our hands clasped in front of our stomachs like friars—through the snow up to the stupa. I kept thinking about hitting the woman in front of me with a snowball.

A stupa is a religious monument meant to remind humans of their potential for enlightenment. The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, at the Shambhala Mountain Center, took 13 years to build and enshrines the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Having seen hundreds in Asia, I can report that this stupa, right here in the middle of modern America, is one of the most stunningly beautiful ones on the planet. Resembling a tall, narrow, gold-topped crown, it's exactly 108 feet tall and (excuse my floridity) radiates tranquillity.

We all sat and meditated inside it, although I spent most of my time staring up at the mandala on the ceiling, a gorgeously complex, worlds-within-worlds Buddhist version of the Sistine Chapel, painted by our instructor, Greg Smith, and a team of volunteers.

That afternoon, back at the Sacred Studies Hall, we meditated for two more hours. Like a kid after recess, I found I could relax better and focus more easily. I let my mind settle onto my breath and then, naturally, to the comforting thump of my heart. I could feel the blood circulating through my body like wind through the mountains. My breathing almost seemed to stop. Between my ordinary salmagundi of thoughts about sex and mayhem, I discovered that, now and again, I could actually be still and be in the moment. And whenever I got there, I was surprised to find that I recognized the feeling. I'd been there before.

We ate dinner in silence, which I enjoyed—back at home with my family, I can barely get a word in edgewise. Noble silence was then lifted for rota, or chores. I volunteered for kitchen duty, which I've always considered a good chance to goof off. Then someone broke out a bottle of wine (yes, it's allowed), which struck me as promising—maybe we'd get to know each other—until people started wandering off to bed. Just in time for lights-out.

Later, after everybody in my dorm room was asleep, I slipped out again. It was snowing, and I decided to hike up to the stupa. I didn't move fast or slow; I just walked at a natural pace. There are few experiences more grounding or more peaceful than walking through snowfall in the dark. When I reached the stupa, it was luminescent, bathed in faint light from four floodlights, one in each corner of the grounds.

I began to circumnavigate the monument clockwise. I walked and listened to the snow crunch underfoot. Ever since yoga practice, I'd been coming to something in my mind. I just didn't know what it was.

The floodlights created four wedges of light separated by four large spaces of darkness. A line of prayer flags curved upward from each of the floodlights to the top of the stupa. On each circle, I stopped beneath a different line of red flags, put my head back, and stood there inside a magical curtain of falling snow. Tiny flakes wet my face like rain. At an undetermined moment, I would step out of the panel of twinkling light back into the empty blackness.

The snowfall was so faint it could hardly be felt or seen between the floodlight beams. I was listening to my footfalls in the snow, making my seventh circumambulation of the stupa, not thinking a thing, when I was struck by something: There had been many times in my life when I was calm, limpid, and fully present—they just didn't happen when I was sitting. They happened when I was climbing.

When I'm leading on rock or ice, I'm usually so focused that it's impossible for a thought to slip in. There is no chatter, no emotion, no analysis. It must be the feeling experienced by a single-handed sailor, when he centers all his energy on surviving a storm, or a kayaker, when he's fluidly running whitewater. Smith had said that in deep states of meditation you don't simply feel the breath; you become the breath.

Perhaps it's the innate fear of falling, but when I'm leading well, I'm not merely moving; I feel like the movement itself. I could have it all wrong, but I'd bet the sensation a monk experiences after meditating is much the same as the rush of euphoria and peacefulness that comes over me after leading a pitch.

I practically danced back to the dorm that night. Along the way, I remembered once asking my 14-year-old daughter, Addi, who is a competitive swimmer and has loved water since she was a baby, what she thought about lap after lap.

"Nothing. Water washes away all my worries. I'm just moving through the liquid."

No matter what teenage mood she goes to swimming with, she inevitably comes home flushed and cheerful.

I remembered what my wife told me after running the Boston Marathon. Minutes after she'd crossed the finish line, I asked, "What are you thinking about mile after mile?"

"I'm not," she said.

The next day, I once again failed miserably at sitting meditation, but it didn't bother me too much. After all, I'm just beginning. But then again, maybe I've been meditating my whole life.