silence, what is it ?

Carl: So, where is my talk? I'll need a moment to find my talk. Where is it? It's funny. Please patient. There it is. Okay. So now I see only Hamid. Good. Okay.

So, my friends, this talk is a kind of . . . it's about silence. It is an echo of silence from our last retreat in Karuna. In the last talk on Saturday afternoon, Hamid spoke about silence. This talk should be different. It should be a talk where the audience, we who were sitting around, could also take part answering and speaking.

Hamid came up with a kind of explanation of silence, I was free enough to say, "Not only." Not only this. And he turned to me and said, "What is it for you?" Now it was me to come up with definitions. I said, "It's the bottom of everything." But with every answer it became also clear that it is impossible to answer it. It's impossible to define silence in words. We tried by setting it in contrast to noise, but what is this definition ? Silence, we speak of, is always a secondhand silence, a silence wrapped in beautiful, explaining language. It might be an illuminating process, make it clear, but it's not enlightening as silence can be itself.

But there is the power of the question, which continued in me: "What is silence? What is this ? We could say it is the root of our practice?" When we speak about how Bodhisattvas can act and how we can act as Buddhists to violence or ayway . . . the answer comes from silence. It comes from not discriminating thoughts. The answer comes from this what Ahmed spoke about last week as he quoted the Lotus Sutra: the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara hears all the suffering. He is the hearer. Our actions should come from listening. It comes from listening into silence, and going into this nothingness, we can say.

Just before the retreat, I was reading a book from an author, an Irish author, John Millington Synge. I don't know how to spell his name, Gary could surely help, but he is not here, he's traveling. An Irish poet. The text was written in the beginning of the 20th century. John Synge was a traveler and he was very engaged in reviving the Gaelic language, and so he was on the Aran Islands sometimes. And in these texts, in the passage I will read now, I felt the testimony of silence very strong.

Afterwards I will read some words from Bal Krishna, our friend, the Tibetan Buddhist who created Karuna and passed away in 2022. The text is from his small booklet entitled, "Silence Is That Which Thought Has Not Touched." So, but first to the Aran Islands.

"I sat for a long time on a pier till it was quite dark. Now I am beginning to understand the nights on Inishmaan and their influence on the men who do nearly all their work after nightfall. I could hear nothing but a few curlews and other wild birds calling in the seaweed, and the low rustle of the waves. It was a dark, a sultry night such as often comes in September, and there was not a light to be seen except the phosphorescence of the sea, and now and then a rift in the clouds that showed the stars behind them.

Never before had I felt the loneliness of the sea so powerfully.I could not see my body or even imagine it, and I seemed to exist only in my perception of the waves and the crying of the birds, and of the strong smell of the seaweed.

When I tried to go home I lost my way among the sandhills, and the night grew unspeakably cold and hopeless. I groped on among slimy masses of seaweed and wet, crumbling walls.

After a while I heard a sound in the sand, and two grey shadows appeared beside me. They were two men returning from fishing.I spoke to them and knew their voices, and we went home together.

So following this experience are now some words of Bal Krishna.

"Silence is the realm of the unknowable. There is not the duality of the known and the unknown, but it is the unknowable. There is not the duality of that which has been defined and that which is not defined. It is something unnameable, immeasurable. Not that which is being measured or is yet to be measured. The duality exists only on the mental plane. But silence is a realm where knowing and experiencing become irrelevant because life is something that is unknowable, unnameable, immeasurable.

Why am I so afraid of letting life operate upon me, letting silence operate upon me? Could it be that life operates upon me? I cannot know it. I cannot identify when life operates on me, what is happening in me. I cannot describe it to myself. Silence brings you directly in communion with the thing as it is. It doesn't keep you busy with the word, the description. It brings you directly, intimately, immediately to the thing as it is, to life as it is.

So my friends, being with that solitude of silence, being with the limitless, nameless, measureless reality creates a new balance. It refreshes the worn-out mind and washes you clean of every manner of fear. To have the awareness of the total, to have the awareness of silence, one has to be with it. You have to be in it. You have to plunge into it. Once you have tasted the nectar of silence, then whether your eyes are open or closed does not matter. Once you have tasted the nectar of that dimension, then it doesn't matter whether you are sitting in a room or working in an office or the kitchen or talking to people. The quality of aloneness, the quality of motionlessness, the quality of thought-freeness does not get affected by physical or verbal movement."

So far, the words of Bal. As I already said, after our last retreat in Karuna, seven days in silence, I explored, I plunged into this question, beside the silence that is surrounding and that is in me. What is silence? How do we manage the gap of letting go the contact with what we know without being afraid to lose life?

For this, the text of Synge, accompanied by the wisdom of Bal, seemed to me a fitting combination. Also, I remember now that in this talk, in the last talk in Karuna, the word "communion," not "community" was mentioned. Communion. Interesting that Bal also uses it here. He says, "Silence brings you directly in communion with the thing, with life as it is."

So I thank you very much for listening.

Group Discussion

Anya: Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Carl. Thank you for your talk. Long time since I sat with you in silence. Thank you for sitting together. And, what a question, what is silence? For me, my first answer would have been it's the break in between sounds, when no sound appears. But I think there are different layers of silence. And what you then spoke about was the śūnyatā, like sitting for a longer time in silence, I think. And yeah, I had to think of this metaphor, like, leave the door open, because we never know what silence will bring us. And I completely resonate with, "Why am I so afraid?" I can't quote it now, but there was something about being afraid to let silence…

Carl: …let life operate on me.

Anya: Let life operate on me. Thank you. That really resonated with me because I think what we, what our mind does, is always this conceptualizing. It's also kind of controlling, like making sense of the world, making sense of "I," of "me." And I think this is what is so scary. It's at the root, it's the fear of losing the self, of losing the identity, maybe, when we let life operate. Yeah. It's a really, really powerful question, "What is silence?" I actually sometimes find more silence inside when there is noise around. Maybe you know what I mean. In Portugal, we always have the wind, we have the ocean, we have the sounds of nature. And this makes me more quiet inside, more silent inside, compared to when it's completely silent, and then I maybe listen more to the sound inside of my head. Yeah. So, thank you.

Carl: Concerning your definition, it's clear, we know that definitions don´t work. It is the power of the question, which is very important in our Zen practice. I remember that Deshimaru always said, "Watch the zero between the thinkings." That comes to what you said, there is a gap. Watch the gap between our identity-seeking ideas. So that was a hint also to look into silence, into that moment, because between two thoughts, there is always a gap. If not, they would be one thought. This is an intellectual calculation, but it´s true. There is this little moment of, yeah, the echo of silence.

Hamid: Thank you for your talk and for sharing the poem and the words of Bal and your own reflections, Carl. It was very interesting to listen to the text, to the words, and to the silence behind them. And as you mentioned, the last talk on Saturday of the retreat a few days ago, there are actually three here in this groiup who were present in Karuna. So Ahmed, our second Ahmed—we have two Ahmeds in this meeting today—Ahmed A was also there. So that was the first time we had a talk where others were also invited to break the silence, to talk about something, and the topic turned out to be silence. So, I don't know if in that moment, I don't think you shared anything, Ahmed A, but about how that moment felt for you.

Ahmed A: Good morning, everyone. And thank you for the silence. And thank you for the talk and for the poem. It's so bizarre, Carl. Just sitting with you guys meditating, I was actually thinking about that question, meditating on that question, and reflecting exactly on what people said during that time and how every definition seemed to fall apart when examined. I remember Helen said something quite similar to what Anya just said now. She said silence is before words are said and after words are said. But then after a while, she corrected herself and she said, "I actually recognize that silence can exist even while you're speaking. Silence can exist even when you're moving." And I remember this analogy that Eckhart Tolle said once that I really liked. He said you can bring a heavy metal band into a room and they would play, and then at some point they're going to have to stop. But then that room was empty and silent before, and it's empty and silent after. That's quite clear. But then to someone who practices non-duality, they can actually experience the silence while the heavy metal band is playing. They can experience it in their heart. I got touched by your comment, Carl, when you talked about, "For those who tasted the nectar of silence, they can never unsee it." I don't know how I know this, but I've tasted silence. I don't know how I know this, but there is something in me that craves it often. And I also got touched by the idea that it is unknowable, meaning it's not the known and the unknown. It's actually unknowable. You don't even try. It's not like there is an answer there. It almost feels like the whole point is to point towards something and be totally at peace and comfortable with not filling the gap. Yeah, that's a really, really powerful question. Hamid asked me what I thought. There was a, maybe two years ago or three years ago, I attended a retreat with you guys, and the topic of silence came up. And I said that there was a quote that I read somewhere that I absolutely found relatable. And the quote says, "Silence is the language in which God speaks. Everything else is a bad translation." And that seems like a nice way of sitting with the unknowable. Thank you.

Carl: I might add something to the commentary, the words of John Synge. Because interesting is how he comes out of the silence, of this silence where he's kind of losing himself by just being the sea, being in communion with the world, with life. He loses this self, the ego. And he comes out by meeting somebody else, by the help of somebody. And if I see some moments of silence in my life, it's very interesting how we come out of it, of this being lost. Because it is, if it's real silence, I would say it is healing and being lost at the same moment. It is open. And I had some experience also when I came out of this, by meeting something, by hearing a sound, or by having an idea what brings us back to concept out of the silence. Because we are not staying always in this silence. And then Bal says it is the loneliness, the loneliness of knowing that we are alone, even being in communion. This I found very interesting in the texts.

Linda: Thank you, Carl, for bringing silence to the conversation. There are so many layers, as Anya said, of silence. And lately, I have the feeling I need more of it in my life. I have too much noise. But when you were talking about duality, I just remember the first time I encountered the idea of non-duality. I grew up in a Christian way or a society that is basically Christian, and that is absolutely dual. There are good things, bad things, you can do good deeds, bad deeds, and all of everything is built on this: either you're this or you're that. And the first time I encountered non-duality was when I was talking with a very wise older teacher of mine, and he drove me crazy with his ideas of this non-duality. My mind just couldn't grasp it. "What? It is bad when I throw trash on the street." And he was just challenging all these, "What is bad and what is good?" And I said, "Come on." This feeling, and since then, many years have passed and many experiences, and the world is not so much... I don't see the world so much in duality, but still it's hard to reach the non-dual state.

What I realized is that there really is silence. There can be a silence in anything. Like what was said, it's a deeper silence when I hear the waves or the wind in me, and I can connect to that silence easier. But I also experienced a few days ago on a training where we were practicing active listening, and there can be a silence when you are talking to someone and really listening. There is a quality of silence. I guess for me, it's one flavor or one aspect of, "it is how it is," being in that state that it's not good or bad, I want it or I don't want it. It is. I guess this, I can connect to this aspect of the silence, this "is." And maybe the one of the biggest hardships for me to reach silence is wanting, wanting something to be somehow, not just letting things be how it is and experiencing, so opening myself up for the experience of what they do. I guess silence teaches me also humbleness. Yeah. Thank you.

Anya: I would like to respond to you, Linda. I think you worded it very well. It's this having ideas of how things should be. This is for me also a big one. I think this is for all of us maybe a big hindrance to silence because it's this part of letting things be, of letting things go, that can lead us into silence. And there's this quote coming to my head. It's, "The great stillness we seek does not occur because the world is still or because the mind is quiet. Stillness is nourished when we allow things to be just as they are." He's not using the word "silence," but "stillness is nourished when we allow things to be just as they are." And this is what we do when we are sitting, no? We try to let go, open the hand. Yeah. But I think we are so used to fill in the gaps. What you said, Ahmed, is like these gaps between words, and I think we are so used to fill those gaps in our everyday life because we think it's maybe boring or not interesting when there's silence when we are together, maybe also when we are alone. Sorry, I'm losing my thread, but this just came up.

Linda: Maybe just one more addition. Carl, you said something about when we come out of silence, it's because of loneliness that we seek contact, or did I...?

Carl: No, I feel that when we come out of silence when we notice with our ego that it was silent. Because in the silence itself, we are just it, we are in it. And this coming out is often happened by, well, it can happen by some help if we feel scared. The silence can be... a moment of silence where I felt really lost. And then suddenly something happened, also can be a thought, can be a contact with... It reminded me of this part in the story of Synge when he said that he came out of it by meeting those men. Because while he was in it, he would never have given this commentary about his surroundings. He was just in it. He also said, he never experienced the loneliness like this, a hopelessness. These are words which come afterwards. You can maybe describe it as a great reality, it has the non-dual aspect of being well and unwell, I would say. It is quite well if we are in it, but it's also ok or even a relief to come out of it. I could tell examples when I was in and out of this silence, scary not scary. Fulfillment what doesn't stay. Difficult to name it it's always a commentary. Very nice that we sit here together and share our commentaries. Yeah.

Hamid: On that note, what immediately came to mind was an experience I had in 1987, so nearly 40 years ago, 38 years ago. And I was in Florence. 40 years ago, I was a young man, so I had some interests that being an old man, you don't necessarily lose, but they diminish in some way. So I encountered this young German woman, and she had to leave. And a lot of our conversations was around poetry. And just before leaving, I was trying to engage her to talk more, and she was reticent. I was the one who was doing most of the talking. And then just before leaving, she left these words in German in my notebook, on which I contemplated a lot. I made a leap of 40 years to that sentence that she wrote in my notebook. And the sentence was, "Wer mein Schweigen nicht annimmt, dem habe ich nichts zu sagen." So, in my broken German, the translation is, "Whoever does not accept or take on my silence, to him or her I have nothing to say." Which is a very paradoxical statement. A 22-year-old young woman full of wisdom. And those words, they remained in my mind. I haven't read them in some random book, but they were actually the words, very generous, beautiful words that another being offered to me. The paradox of "whoever does not accept my silence, to him or her I have nothing to say." So then that makes silence the prerequisite for communication. It makes silence the prerequisite for communication, communion, exchange. And if you cannot accept the silence of the other, on what is the communication or the exchange based on ? It's based on just words.

But from what I contemplated from this very simple sentence is that when we immerse ourselves in the silence of the other, do we also give rise to the possibility of genuine heart-to-heart or mind-to-mind communication and exchange? Which brings me back to the question I asked Ahmed. And that is something I always feel very touchingly about the retreats we do, being in silence and not speaking, not engaging with words, is the invitation, the communion that you spoke of, that we spoke of also on last Saturday. It is a communion of people who have somehow touched and been touched by this silence. And then from there, the possibility of a genuine exchange of words is rendered possible, I would say. Otherwise, we just fill space with what we know. But in silence, we let go of what we know. And in that sense, that silence is unknowable. Silence itself is not knowing or not knowing what is knowable or unknowable. Silence is the place where we let go of all that we know, hence we experience the unknowable. So I think that is probably how we are then invited to speak from a different place.

And then also I would say that silence, contrary to, and some of you pointed that out, is not a question of words or absence of words or sounds or absence of sound. This brings a question that has been asked in metaphysics by Bishop Berkeley, the 18th-century English philosopher and theologian, who asked this question to which many people have tried to answer, it's also an open question. And the question is: if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, a giant tree that falls in the middle of a forest, if there is no one there to hear the falling, does that tree make any noise? So there's the question of the sound and the receiver of the sound or the perceiver of the sound. If there is no perceiver of the sound, is there any sound? What does sound mean? And then what does silence mean? So, we can continue these questions, but I always felt that silence has to do something very deeply with awareness. I don't think we can be aware if we are not silent. And by that, I do not mean that we do not speak. So we can be speaking, but we can be speaking from a place of awareness. And when we speak from that place of awareness, then I think we are silent because then the mind is still and the heart is still. And then we can have an experience of that silence.

Now I spoke about my experience in Florence with this note that was left to me by this young lady. It is unfortunate that I do not remember her name. But with regard to meditation and silence, I have had another experience. And I don't remember very much the places I meditate. I never had extraordinary experiences, like I would say, I was sitting in such a place and I had a deep insight into the working of my own mind. It's usually I just sit and wait for my mind to shut down or shut up, and it usually doesn't do a good job of that. But this time, I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That was about 20 years ago. And I was supposed to give a meditation session followed by a talk. The only person that showed up was the owner of that space, a yoga teacher. So it was just me and her, and we said, "We'll go ahead with the session." She said, "Yes, sure, let's go ahead." So we started sitting, and there was obviously not going to be a talk because there was no audience. And 15 minutes after we started our sitting, it was on a Sunday morning, I heard workers below, just below the studio, it was on the first floor, using sledgehammers to break the pavement. And it was the most intense, deafening noise I've ever remember. And I looked at her, and she looked at me, and she said, "We get up?" And I said, "Let's continue sitting." And we sat, and that is the only meditation practice I remember. Because at one moment, the sound, the noise was no longer bothering me. And that was not through any effort of my own. The noise was so intense that it deafened, like waves, my own thinking. So I was no longer able to think. And as I was no longer able to think, I had a deep experience of silence in the middle of that deafening, unbearable sound. And that experience I do recall. So that's the relationship between sound and silence that right in the middle of the noisiest possible activity, it's there. But we can maybe only access it when our thinking slows down or stops. „Something like that“, as Master Tōkudō would say. Thank you for your attention.

Carl: And then we come also to this what Anya just said, accept without wanting something. Because we go through trouble, because there is the trouble, it is too loud, it is too loud. But accepting that we will not change it by wanting, this is also a kind of door to accepting it, listening, awareness. Without judging, without wanting. We practice in this field, there is no doubt.

Ahmed A: Yes, what you said about accepting, I think there is a difference when we accept and when we don't accept. If we resist the noise, it's unbearable. And if we accept it's there and then we let it in, so that's also something I can recognize.

Carl: Ahmed, don't you want to give us a last silent word?

Ahmed M: Well, I was going to stay immersed in the silence and let that do the speaking, but that you asked... thank you, Carl, for your talk today. You pulled me out of it, yes. The silence has been broken. No, thank you again. And actually, I was wanting to stay in silence, but something you said, Hamid, has touched me and resonated. It's always easier to handle silence, I find, when it is within myself and in the sitting and in our sesshins. But it is very much more difficult when the silence is something that is happening out of your control with someone else that you want to hear from. And the note that the young woman has left you is also going to leave me thinking about it for a little bit of time after our session here. As it is very difficult, but there is a profound wisdom and it comes at a time when that noise of the silence, of wanting to speak or wanting to understand, is very powerful. And those words, that if you cannot accept the silence, then she doesn't think that you're ready to accept what it is that she has to say, is very powerful on many levels. I'm yet to begin even pondering it, but I just have to say that it touched me quite profoundly right now, and I wasn't able to concentrate on much until you said that. So it gives me a lot in my silence to think about. And yeah, that's it really. I think I'll return to silence now. Thank you.

Carl: So as the chicken have stopped, no, they have not, I would end our meeting now and if there is nothing to say anymore, we part until next Tuesday.

Hamid: We part in silence.

Erring Cloud Sangha meets weekly via Zoom for meditation and dharma discussion. For more information, visit www.maitri-retreats.com