I'd like to hear from anyone about how they feel about silence. Here are some thoughts from: Petra Rethmann, ‘On Presence’, in Extraordinary Anthropology (eds) in Goulet and Miller 2007, pp.36-52:
‘Silence is never quite empty, and much learning can
transpire in quiet moments. […] In the
tundra, it is not so much the words of humans but the
sound of the breaking ice, footfalls on the hardened snow, the gush of rivers,
the cries of wild swans, the crackling of grass, the puddles of waters that
grow into ponds, the yelping dogs, the rustling of feathers in the snow, and so
on, that fills the silence. This is not noise. These are the
barely audible sounds that get lost when one’s focus is on either the absence
of talk or the obsession with verbal communication, the discomfort that can
arise when one is not comfortable with silence.’ (p.45)
and:
‘… when I think back to those moments of silence […] it seems as if there was something going on that related to an intrinsic sense of being. It is this sense that I have found most challenging and intriguing. […]What continues to fascinate me is the being-ness of being. And it is from this that I continue to learn.’
‘…to me, this silence has always felt like a moment of
presence. So, instead of allowing the silence to melt into language […] it should
be perhaps left as what it is: a connection with something larger than the
self.’ (p.46)
My Random Thoughts on Silence for 12 March 2013:
Being in the moment enables me to appreciate so much. No
concerns. No worries. As I sit, in the early morning listening to soft rain on
the tin roof of my house, I can hear the birds also enjoying its softness as
they call out to me. All of this I feel, hear and smell as a soft breeze gently
touches the mosquito net over my bed. Looking out through my window at the mist
moving through the trees and fields outside; the cows grazing in the distance
seem like matchbox toys. My verandah is a carpet of violet jacaranda blossoms,
carried there by the wind. I wonder why we humans invest so much time and
energy being so stressed by lives that we have made so complicated.
On Silence
from Krishnamurti [This Light in Oneself: True Meditation. Jiddu Krisnamurti, Shambala Books 1999] :
Thought comes to an end. Then there is that sense
of absolute silence in the brain. All the movement of thought has ended. It has
ended but it can be brought into activity when there is necessity in the
physical world, Now, it is quiet. It is silent. And where there is silence
there must be space, immense space, because there is no self. The self has its
own limited space, it creates its own little space. But when the self is not,
which means the activity of thought is not, then there is vast silence in the
brain because it is now free of all its conditioning.
That may be the most holy, the most sacred - may
be. You cannot give it a name. It is perhaps the unnamable. And when there is
that, then there is intelligence and compassion and love. So life is not
fragmented. It is a whole unitary process, moving, living.
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