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The Sound of Silence

Excerpts from talks by H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and compiled by Scott Lucas, “Rishimukh” magazine, September 2009

  Every morning your alarm clock goes off. You toss and turn, hit the snooze button, and 5 minutes later, your alarm clock goes off again. As you pull yourself out of bed and slowly ease into your morning routine, your mind has jumped five, ten, or twenty steps ahead of you. As you wash your face, you wonder, “How much work is setting on my desk at the office? What will I have for lunch? Is my boss going to extend the project’s deadline?” You haven’t even brushed your teeth yet, and your mind is at a full sprint.
Soon enough – perhaps after some tea of coffee – your body will catch up. As you run out the door to catch your train, you pick up your cell phone and call a friend. If today is a normal day, this physical and mental chatter is due to continue throughout the morning, and into the afternoon until bedtime.
The chatter has a time and place – catching trains, making phone calls, and completing projects allows us to maintain jobs and relationships. Being a part of this world means being connected to it on some levels. However, chatter’s opposite value also has a place. What is the value of silence? Where does it have a place in our lives?
 
The Strength of Silence
 
In today’s world, we commonly associate loudness and assertion with confidence and outgoingness. A well-known politician recently declared, “It’s better to be strong and wrong than weak and right”. This view is widely shared around the world, and leads people view silence solely as something negative: the personification of anger, jealousy, or sadness. As these emotions well up in a person, they become silent due to their inability to properly deal with their emotions and express themselves. Perhaps you have seen this in a child before: he gets frustrated about this or that, and with a pouty face, silently broods. If you ask him “what’s the matter?” he will just sit and continue to wallow in this uncomfortable silence. You might have noticed that when adults are angry, they too keep silence. Or they might shout a lot at first, and then become silent. When people are sad, they say “leave me alone”, and keep a long, silent face. Sad people put their head down and keep silent. Ashamed people also become very silent. But silence is not inherently “weak”, and goes much deeper than these shallow and transient emotions. Silence goes to the depth of the being – where strength is created and cultivated. Consider the example of a young prince who studied silence long ago.
 
Buddha – The Manifestation of Silence
 
The Buddha’s journey from the palace to the Bodhi Tree is well-known. Many stories have been passed down through the ages, detailing the Budda’s discipline and determination, as demonstrated by lengthy fasts and marathon meditation sessions. The Buddha is also known for his compassion, wisdom, and insight.
But what the Buddha truly contributed to the spiritual world on a grand scale was the idea of silence. When Buddha reached enlightenment on that full moon night in the month of May, he kept silent for an entire week. He did not say a single word.
Mythology says that this silence frightened all the angels in heaven. Only once in a millennium does someone blossom so fully like Buddha – what was he doing in silence? It is said all the angels approached Buddha and asked him to say something. The Buddha slowly replied:
Those who know, they know even without my saying, and those who do not know, they will not know by my words. Any description of light to a blind man is of no use. One who has not tasted the ambrosia of existence, of life… there is no point in talking to them about it. So I am silent.
How could the Buddha use words to convey something so intimate, something so personal? There’s only one way, in fact – through silence. The Buddha’s words create silence, because Buddha is the manifestation of silence. His silence had come from saturation – not from lack. Lack creates complaints and noise, and brings about the petty emotions we commonly associated with silence. Saturation and fulfillment bring silence. Look at the noise in your mind. What is it about? More money? More fame? More recognition? The noise is about something, while silence is about nothing. Silence is the basis. Noise is the outer surface.
Noise indicates lack, need, or want. The Buddha’s life was not of lack, need, or want. From the very beginning he lived the very saturated life of a prince. Any pleasure would just be at his feet the moment he wanted it. Siddhartha Gautama led such a life. Anyone would wonder how such a person or pleasure and luxury could talk about sorrow. One has to experience sadness, sorrow, misery in the world in order to speak about it.
The first truth the Buddha discovered was that there is sorrow. Even living the lavish and isolated life of a Prince, the Buddha saw the existence of sorrow. One day he said, “I would like to go and see what the world is.” The enquiry arose in him and brought him into town, where he saw someone who was sick, someone who was old and dying, and someone who was dead. These three instances were enough to bring him into the knowledge that there is misery. When he saw someone who was sick, the Buddha said, “Enough! I have experienced it.”
Such deep, consolidated silence alone can be that sensitive to see someone’s pain and totally experience it. Just a glimpse of an old man and a dead body was good enough! The Buddha said, “There is no joy in life. I am dead already! There is no meaning in life. Let’s go back.” He went back to the palace and began his spiritual quest.
We see so many people dying, and we see so much misery, yet we remain insensitive because there is no silence. We are caught up in our own little hankerings, cravings and aversions. The mind is filled with it’s own noise, and therefore unable to perceive the music of existence. Silence is the music of this existence, and silence is the secret of this existence. Just a glimpse of misery was good enough for Buddha to start on a journey of enquiry. What is the purpose of life? Why are we living? What is the universe about? The most meaningful questions arose in that silence of saturation as the Buddha set out in quest of truth, all by himself, leaving the palace, his wife and son.
The stronger the silence, the more powerful the questions will be that arise from such a silence. Nothing could stop him. So he escaped at night from the palace and searched for many years until he discovered the four truths.
These truths are available to everyone. Observe the sensations, observe the emotions, and observe your true nature. What is your true nature? It is peace, compassion, love, it is friendlessness and it is joy. And silence gives birth to all these. Silence swallows the sadness, guilt, and misery, and gives birth to joy, compassion and love. And that’s exactly what the life of Buddha was. He came to take away the misery, the guilt, the fear, the arrogance, the ignorance and bring back wisdom, strength, beauty, knowledge and peace. All of these qualities are available for you, here and now.
 
Belonging To Silence
 
Silence is the undiluted source of life. There is an old Sanskrit proverb that says, “Distortion is the root of speech. The moment you start speaking, you have distorted.”
Words cannot capture existence, but silence can. Space and silence are synonymous. Whereas desire brings noise, joy and fulfillment bring silence. Silence is the cure because in silence you come back to the source and that creates joy. That’s why when someone is sad, they become silent and they get rid of their sadness. Silence is used to come out of sadness with joy.
You should have a belongingness to silence. Silence is mother of all creativity and invention. Silence is basis for love. So you need to create a sense of belongingness either with silence, or for silence. Do you feel that you belong to the whole world at any given time? That feeling is very precious in life. This realization – I belong to the whole universe – will give us an insight into something that is so stupendous and magnificent in life. We know we belong to this family, that community or locality, this culture, and that country. These are worldly identifications that we have, but expanding on it to the infinity, to the Divinity, will bring a sense of true peace and fulfillment. In a moment of sincere belongingness, you feel that you belong to God and you are part of Him.
Why don’t people have a sense of belongingness to this whole world? We accept food from every part of the world: you don’t have to be Chinese in order to have Manchurians, or Danish in order to have Danish cookies. You don’t even need to be an Indian to eat gulab jamuns. Everybody enjoys Indian food! The same holds for music – we seem to accept music from every part of the world. But when it comes to wisdom, people shy away from other cultures. If you read about the Buddha, Jesus won’t be angry at you. Mohammed will not get upset if you read Bible or if you read the Bhagavad Gita!
Instead of belonging to silence, people mistakenly choose to belong to feelings. But feelings change. Have your feelings not been changing? They change all the time. And if we base our life on the feelings that are constantly changing, we’ll be nowhere. There won’t be any stability in life. You feel good about somebody now, in another half an hour you won’t feel good about that somebody. Tomorrow the same cycle occurs. The feelings go on changing so it is not a stable relationship, and there is not a stable level of communication.
Communication is perfect from the level of silence that comes from deep inside. And very few have stepped aside and looked into the whole phenomenon of words, feelings and emotions and have watched themselves. Such students of life can understand and communicate in silence.
It is important to regularly carve out a time and place for silence in your life. Ideally, this comes together during a regular sadhana practice. Furthermore, it is also important to occasionally set aside a longer period of time to go deeper into silence. The Art of Living’s Part 2 Course offers such an experience, during which you can explore the deeper side of yourself during a few days of profound silence and meditation.
 
Going Deeper within the Self
 
At the Part 2 Course, we gather for a very auspicious cause: to take a dip into the center of our being, the center of our existence. This is the purpose of our coming together: for something higher, because everybody wants to have such a joy, which doesn’t come with the tail of sorrow. The quest of life is to find such a joy, which has no opposite. The journey is quite something. It is not too easy, and at the same time, it is not impossible.
During the few days of a Part 2 Course, we keep our purpose in mind very clearly. We want to do something that is more concrete rather than some superficial thing. We therefore take the mind off of all the superficial small little things because only small little things bother you a lot. Instead of focusing on the little things, we write down all those botherations, put in them in a basket, and let them go.
Once we have let the botherations go, we can silence thoughts and focus on feelings, for only through feelings will peace, joy and love down. They are all your very nature. To the question “Who am I?” the only relevant answer is silence. You need to discard all answers in words, including “I am nothing” or “I am the Cosmic Self” or “I am the Self.” Just remain with the question “Who am I?” All other answers are just thoughts and thoughts can never be complete. Only silence is complete.
Such profound questions can only be answered in silence. Silence is the goal of all answers. If an answer does not silence the mind, it is no answer. Thoughts are not the goal in and of themselves – their goal is silence. When you ask the question “Who am I?” you get no answer, there is only silence. That is the real answer. Your soul is solidified silence and this solidified silence is the sound of wisdom and knowledge.
Whether you’ve just completed a Part 2 Course, or your daily sadhana, be sure to take the silence with you, and observe it over the course of your days. Even while rushing for your train, or working hard on a project, the silence is always there… we simply need to observe it. And by merely observing and appreciating the silence, your patience, compassion, and insight will effortlessly grow as you become the joyous silence that hallmarks the teachings of sages past, present, and future.
 

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