Ssssssshhhhhhhh...silence!
Have you ever experienced it? As for myself - no, never!
More I try to remain or become silent more aware I become of every small movement, either in my appartment, nearby streets, people walking by the path behind our appartment, movement of the heat or water through the pipes, people walking upstairs....
I went for a walk the other night trying to feel silence when most people are possibly asleep. It was a very pleasant and wonderful walk. But it was not silent. I choose a place inside the canyon away from the main street so that I don't get disturbed by the cars. I lost track of time as I was trying to find silence. I could hear the wind, my heart beat, my breath and the snowfall! It was amazingly peaceful but NOT silent. So then what IS silence?
I could even hear the snowfall pounding on the ground, on trees or on my jacket. If I describe in words 'it was like being in rain with FAT and SUPER LAZY raindrops'. Although it was a quiet night but the wind seemed to be wanting to have a conversation and breaking all attempts of mine trying to find silence.
So, anyways going back to silence, I think it does not exist. I have wondering from past couple of weeks now, what exactly does it mean? Who coined it? Did he or she really experience it? The dictionary defination suggests it to be
More I try to remain or become silent more aware I become of every small movement, either in my appartment, nearby streets, people walking by the path behind our appartment, movement of the heat or water through the pipes, people walking upstairs....
I went for a walk the other night trying to feel silence when most people are possibly asleep. It was a very pleasant and wonderful walk. But it was not silent. I choose a place inside the canyon away from the main street so that I don't get disturbed by the cars. I lost track of time as I was trying to find silence. I could hear the wind, my heart beat, my breath and the snowfall! It was amazingly peaceful but NOT silent. So then what IS silence?
I could even hear the snowfall pounding on the ground, on trees or on my jacket. If I describe in words 'it was like being in rain with FAT and SUPER LAZY raindrops'. Although it was a quiet night but the wind seemed to be wanting to have a conversation and breaking all attempts of mine trying to find silence.
So, anyways going back to silence, I think it does not exist. I have wondering from past couple of weeks now, what exactly does it mean? Who coined it? Did he or she really experience it? The dictionary defination suggests it to be
- The condition or quality of being or keeping still and silent.
- The absence of sound; stillness.
- A period of time without speech or noise.
- Refusal or failure to speak out.
Except for no. 4 all others are impossible to define. There is nothing as stillness or a condition of being silent. How could it be? Even if decide not to speak, and achive the condition of being silent we still hear so many things. So, silence - refusal to speak is a human concept, since the other explantaion does not exist. According to me, it is the most disillusioned word. 'Silence' cannot be experienced till we are consciouos or alive! The closest I can think of silence is when I am asleep, because that is the only moment that I don't remember having heard of anything.
Truely said - a peaceful sleep!
Pursuing further on this, does it mean then that animals never experience silence? Animals are know to have a very storng 6th sense and can hear beyond human audible range. So they possibly hear more than we do and hence possibly wake up even at our slightest movement.
Thanks to Google, I came across some sites discussing the etymology of 'Silence'! Notable among them was this one with some thought provoking questions - http://humanityquest.com/topic/faq/index.asp?theme1=silence
Truely said - a peaceful sleep!
Pursuing further on this, does it mean then that animals never experience silence? Animals are know to have a very storng 6th sense and can hear beyond human audible range. So they possibly hear more than we do and hence possibly wake up even at our slightest movement.
Thanks to Google, I came across some sites discussing the etymology of 'Silence'! Notable among them was this one with some thought provoking questions - http://humanityquest.com/topic/faq/index.asp?theme1=silence
3 comments:
thoughts provoking, sometimes when you shutdown one your senses, it is very common to experience a exicted/vigilant state of other remaining sense(s). It has something to do with mind, try to think of "nothing". can you not think of nothing?. So, the mind determines what we want to hear/think/see as it what will become the priorities. So, when we are not vocal, our hearing obviously gets it priority bumped up !!
It's difficult to find true silence. The sages say that if you find it, you find realisation.
I guess calming the mind followed by thinking deeply of something so much so that you forget everything else for an instant may be considered an instant of silence by some. But it is easier said than done.
For a start, one can calm the mind by observing the breath, and that slows down breathing and gives a lot of peace and you may not even hear your breath at times, but I don't know if you would call that true silence.
A side effect of the above exercise is that it may put you to sleep and then you can say you have silence!
nice, liked your comment :)
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