Silence...It's that perfect interstice between one gust of springtime wind and the next, an incandescent interval at twilight when the setting sun illuminates a melt pool in the park, turning the water and reflected trees a brilliant gold as one stands nearby open-mouthed.
It's the space between one bead on a rosary or mala and the next — it's the mute and eloquent distance between two words in a tale or narrative, the quiet mindful expanse between the opening chime of the zendo bell and the one which closes our meditations. Is anything ever really finished or over?
One always seem to be reaching for silence and stillness, and occasionally one finds it as I did last evening while walking in the park at sunset. In small everyday silences, one dwells (however briefly) in mindfulness and infinite possibility: rooted, connected, one with the whole world and everything going on in it, the suffering, breathing, flowing, becoming and occasional blooming.
Silence is a song, a prayer, a benediction, and there is too little of it in modern life. Sometimes, we need to be able to hear ourselves think — or better still, not think anything at all, just show up and BE there.
Written for the shining mamas at Mama Says Om.
1 comment:
How right you are about the rarity of silence in today's world, people seem afraid of it - every waking moment must be filled with noise - the appalling music that is in every shop(in the UK at any rate), cars racing by with open windows and hifi blaring and in of all places, the doctor and dentist's offices. Then, just when you think you will sit quietly in the garden, someone starts up with a mower or a strimmer or some other power tool,even in the woods there is the distant hum of traffic or planes going over. Only in the very early morning of a summer day is it sometimes possible to find silence for a few blessed minutes. I think that if people learned to appreciate the value of silence there would be a great deal less stress around.
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