I have been reflecting recently on silence in meditation. Meditation leads us to profound stillness enabling us to reach a place of inner silence, to stop the chattering of our minds.So does it help to be in a place of silence - is there such a place? The simple approach is to stop talking, turn off pesky mobile phones and find the quietest place you can.
The first time I experienced prolonged silence as part of a retreat with other people, I found the silence to be a great relief to me. It was at a very difficult time in my life and the opportunity not to have to speak, to explain, to communicate was somehow very liberating. We were using the Buddhist based practice of ‘noble silence’ which is where stopping talking is often encouraged from the time of the last meditation in the evening to after breakfast the next morning.
https://oneminddharma.com/noble-silence/.
We were encouraged not only to not speak, but to have no non-verbal communication either, eyes would be kept lowered, and there would be no attempt to communicate except where essential.
On the first couple of nights after going back to my room I would tend to listen to music on my headphones – to ‘fill’ the silence. But it didn’t take me long to start to enjoy the silence itself – not just the absence of communication. Similarly I would often read, but again after a while I would find that I didn’t need the ‘escape’ of the written word and someone else’s world but enjoyed just being in the silence, using the silence to expand my thinking.
The more I experience silence the greater my ability to enjoy and appreciate it more strongly. On one retreat near the western coast of Portugal once silence from the humans fell usually only the sounds of nature could be heard at night and in the early morning – the birds, crickets, a veritable cacophony of frogs on some nights (!), the sound of the distant ocean if the wind was in the right direction, and the sound of the wind itself. I found that the more I experienced the silence the more I appreciated other sounds, particularly early in the morning when I would tend to arrive in the meditation room before anyone else and start my meditation earlier. This period of silence – and the absence of communication with others – deepened my meditation. I would approach the morning meditation with a feeling of calm and inner quiet already present in body and mind, finding it much easier to more quickly get deeper into my meditation. Silence becomes noble when it’s an inner silence.
Thinking about my experience of silence in meditation – has encouraged me to revisit a book by Sara Maitland - A Book of Silence: A journey in search of the pleasures and powers of silence. One of the things I have found about silence since deepening my meditation practice is the difference between communal silence and the silence of solitude. I consider myself to be a fairly outgoing and gregarious person, I like to have people to talk to, but more recently I have become more and more comfortable with solitude and quietness. This doesn’t have to be as part of my meditation, it can just be a solitary walk (although I am rarely unaccompanied – having Max my dog with me!). However I equally find great strength and solace through group meditations – communal silence – experienced though my own meditation teaching. Sara Maitland talks about ‘silent religious communities…for whom the silence around them enriches their own’. It is this enriching experience of meditating in silence with a group of other people that I have been struck by, we have often commented on the feeling of energy (and yet quietness) that we have all experienced in the ‘communal silence’.
Sara also discusses the types of silence. Her experiences echo mine that whereas initially silence of human interaction serves firstly to enhance awareness of natural sounds: wind, water, birdsong; it is ultimately the ‘interior dimension to silence, a sort of stillness of the heart and mind which is not a stillness but a rich space’. It is this that I find in meditation: my inner silence that opens up a vast awareness of myself and that in itself provides the space for spiritual development.
Another element of silence that I’ve become aware of and that Sara Maitland discusses is that you do not always have to seek silence – it can be accessible at many times and in different ways She talks about there being ‘bits and pieces of silence being woven into the fabric of each day…some were just there, waiting for me as it were’. So whilst sometimes it is important to create that ritual that allows silence – finding the right place, muting phones , taking walks where I know there won’t be other people – it’s also possible to just grasp moments of quiet and silence and ‘move into them as swiftly and quietly as possible’.
Sara Maitland’s spent weeks in solitude and silence on the Isle of Skye – reading about her experience has both made me more aware of how important and profound silence is already in my own life, but also made me want to explore further the experience of longer periods of silence, whether this be through longer silent meditative retreats or simply spending time in solitude (with dog!) in a remote environment.
So why not find your own silent space. Just sit there in quiet and calm and enjoy the sense of peace it brings.
Something to meditate on!