Tag: silence

Meditation is to be Aware of Every Thought – J. Krishnamurti

A meditative mind is silent. It is not the silence which thought can conceive of; it is not the silence of a still evening; it is the silence when thought—with all its images, its words and perceptions—has entirely ceased. This meditative mind is the religious mind—the religion that is not touched by the church, the temples, or by chants.

The religious mind is the explosion of love. It is this love that knows no separation. To it, far is near. It is not the one or the many, but rather that state of love in which all division ceases. Like beauty, it is not of the measure of words. From this silence alone the meditative mind acts.

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Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old—this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

-J. Krishnamurti

From Meditations

Growing Into Silence – Vimala Thakar

Growing into Silence

The voluntary cessation, non-action of movement, can become possible if the brain, the cerebral organ, is not a restless, disorderly, chaotic brain.

Orderliness

One doesn’t have to begin to learn how to be silent, but one has to begin with learning to function in an orderly, clear, unconfused way.  Every cerebral movement has to be clear, precise and accurate.

Accuracy, precision, is the breath of orderliness.

So I learn to be precise and accurate.

And in learning to be precise and accurate I learn to be totally present with everything that I do.

Eliminating Reactions

One will have to learn to reduce the area and the duration of reactions seeing the futility and seeing the harmfulness of this constant game of reacting, evaluating, comparing and judging.

You reduce your rapport and contact with the past:  the memory, the knowing, the conditioning, the motivations, the defences.

If one would be with nature, even half the time that one is with human beings, machines and gadgets, there would be an opportunity to enter into a non-reactional observation, a non-reactional attention.

Then the brain would get some rest.  When you are with nature:  the birds, the lakes, the sunsets, the beautiful moonlight, when you are with the aloneness of the woods – then the comparative evaluating process has no scope.

The motivations and defence-mechanisms become absolutely irrelevant and meaningless when you are with nature.

The reactional pattern has no function, and yet there is observation.  So the cerebral organ grows into a new faculty of non-reactional sensitivity.

Act On Your Understanding

Never argue with one’s own understanding.

The whisper of intelligence is always there, whatever you do.

If you create a time lag between the whisper of intelligence and understanding in you and your action, then you are preventing the cerebral organ from growing into a new dimension.  When you argue with intelligence, when you postpone acting according to understanding then there is confusion, the brain gets confused.

The voice of understanding, the voice of intelligence has an insecurity about it.  How do you know that it is the right thing?

So we tend to ignore it.  Instead we accept authority.  We conform.

But the brain cannot be orderly, competent, accurate and precise if you do not listen to it, if you have no respect.  We are so busy with the outside world, and its compulsions, that the world that is inside us does not command that respect and reverence, that care and concern from us.

So one has to be a disciple of one’s own understanding, look upon that understanding as the master.

Sometimes one may commit a mistake, it might be the whim of the ego and we might mistake the whim, the wish of the ego for the voice of silence and intelligence, but that we have to discover.    Unless you commit mistakes, how do you learn to discriminate between the false and the true?  In learning there is bound to be a little insecurity, a possibility of committing mistakes.  Why should one be terribly afraid of committing mistakes?

So instead of accepting the authority of habits and conditionings, while one is moving one watches, and when there is a suggestion, a whisper from within, from one’s own intelligence, one does not neglect, ignore, or insult that.

To eliminate the time lag between understanding and action is the way to grow into spontaneity.

Keeping the Body and Brain Sensitive, Alert and Sharp

It is necessary to keep the body sensitive, alert and sharp, to feed it and to clothe it correctly, properly; to give it a chance to go through exercises which will mobilize not only the muscles, but also the nerves and be careful that the body does not become sluggish; to feed it correctly – not over- nor under-feeding it; to allow it to have sleep, necessary for its health – not to over- nor under-sleep; not to expose it to too much brooding, worrying, anxiety, which are impotent ways of wasting energy; not entering into excesses of indulgence and not denying and suppressing in the name of austerity, religion or discipline;  because the cerebral organ, the brain is woven into this biological structure.

It is very important, because in a sluggish body, in a lazy body, you can’t have a sharp, sensitive, alert brain, which would voluntarily go into non-action.

Self-education is vitally necessary in order to enable the cerebral organ to function in an orderly, quiet way.  When there is order, there is a quietness; an orderly person hardly gets excited.  It is disorder that leads to excitement, enthusiasm, depression which is the other side of excitement, passivity which is the obverse of enthusiasm.

When one has arrived at that orderliness in daily living, in whatever one does, then only one can talk about the brain voluntarily, relinquishing the outgoing and the ingoing movement, relinquishing voluntarily the hold upon the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, so that the infinite could be.

Summary: Four Approaches to Growing into Silence

  • Be precise, accurate and totally present with everything that one does.
  • Expose oneself as much as one can to nature, to the universe, all that is not man-made.
  • Be a disciple of one’s own understanding.
  • Keep the body and brain sensitive, alert and sharp.

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Charaiveti, Charaiveti – Osho

A while ago you said something about silence which startled me. In my sleepiness I’d simply thought of it as just an absence — an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I’ve noticed the distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind. I can have the first, without the second. Beloved Master, please talk to me about silence.

Anand Somen, silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone — just we never look in. All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside, our ears open outside, our hands move outside, our legs . . . all our senses are meant to explore the outside world.

But there is a sixth sense also, which is asleep because we have never used it. And no society, no culture, no educational system helps people to make the sixth sense active.

That sixth sense, in the East, is called “the third eye.” It looks inward. And just as there is a way of looking in, so there is a way of hearing in, so there is a way of smelling in. Just as there are five senses moving outward, there are five counter-senses moving inward. In all, man has ten senses, but the first sense that starts the inner journey is the third eye, and then other senses start opening up.

Your inner world has its own taste, has its own fragrance, has its own light. And it is utterly silent, immensely silent, eternally silent. There has never been any noise, and there will never be any noise. No word can reach there, but you can reach. The mind cannot reach there, but you can reach because you are not the mind. The function of the mind is again to be a bridge between you and the objective world, and the function of the heart is to be a bridge between you and your self.

The silence that I have been talking about is the silence of the heart. It is a song in itself, without words and without sounds. It is only out of this silence that the flowers of love grow. It is this silence that becomes the Garden of Eden. Meditation, and only meditation, is the key to open the doors of your own being.

You are asking, “A while ago you said something about silence which startled me in my sleepiness. I had simply thought of it as just an absence — an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I have noticed a distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind.”

Your experiences are true. The body knows its own silence — that is its own well-being, its own overflowing health, its own joy. The mind also knows its silence, when all thoughts disappear and the sky is without any clouds, just a pure space. But the silence I am talking about is far deeper.

I am talking about the silence of your being.

These silences that you are talking about can be disturbed. Sickness can disturb the silence of your body, and death is certainly going to disturb it. A single thought can disturb the silence of your mind, the way a small pebble thrown into the silent lake is enough to create thousands of ripples, and the lake is no longer silent. The silence of the body and the mind are very fragile and very superficial but in themselves they are good. To experience them is helpful because it indicates that there may be even deeper silences of the heart.

And the day you experience the silence of the heart, it will be again an arrow of longing, moving you even deeper.

Your very center of being is the center of a cyclone. Whatever happens around it does not affect it; it is eternal silence. Days come and go, years come and go, ages come and pass, lives come and go, but the eternal silence of your being remains exactly the same – the same soundless music, the same fragrance of godliness, the same transcendence from all that is mortal, from all that is momentary.

It is not your silence.

You are it.

It is not something in your possession; you are possessed by it, and that’s the greatness of it. Even you are not there because even your presence will be a disturbance. The silence is so profound that there is nobody, not even you. And this silence brings truth, and love, and thousands of other blessings to you. This is the search, this is the longing of all the hearts, of all those who have a little intelligence.

But remember, don’t get lost in the silence of the body, or the silence of the mind, or even the silence of the heart. Beyond these three is the fourth. We, in the East, have called it simply “the fourth,” turiya. We have not given it any name. Instead of a name we have given it a number because it comes after three silences — of the body, of the mind, of the heart — and beyond it, there is nothing else to be found.

So, don’t misunderstand. Most of the people . . . for example, there are people who are practicing yoga exercises. Yoga exercises give a silence of the body, and they are stuck there. Their whole life they practice but they know only the most superficial silence. Then there are people who are doing concentrations like the transcendental meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It can give you a silence which will be only of the mind. Just by repeating a name or a mantra . . . the very repetition creates in its wake a silence in the mind. But it is not meditation, and it is not transcendental.

And there are Sufis who know the third, which is the deepest of the three. But still it is not the goal, the target; your arrow is still falling short. It is very deep because Sufis know the heart more than anybody else. For centuries they have been working on the heart, just as yogis have been working on the body, and people of concentration and contemplation have been working on the mind.

The Sufis know the immense beauty of love. They radiate love, but still the home has not been reached. You have to remember the fourth. Unless you reach the fourth, continue the journey.

People misunderstand very easily. Just a little bit of experience and they think they have arrived. And mind is very clever to rationalize.

There is a Sufi story about Mulla Nasruddin. The Mulla hears a commotion in the street outside his house in the middle of the night. His wife tells him to go down, and after many arguments, he puts a blanket on his shoulders and goes down to the street. There were many people in the street and a lot of noise, and in the crowd somebody steals his blanket.

The Mulla goes home naked, and his wife asks him, “What was that all about?” The Mulla says, “It seems to be about my blanket because as they got the blanket, they all disappeared. They were just waiting for the blanket. And I was telling you ‘Don’t force me to go there.’ Now I have lost my blanket and I have come naked. It was none of our business.”

He has found a rationalization, and it looks logical, that as they got his blanket, they all disappeared. And the poor Mulla thinking that perhaps that was the whole problem . . .

“Their argument and their noise just in front of my house in the middle of the night, and my foolish wife persuaded me finally to lose my blanket!”

Mind is continuously rationalizing, and sometimes it may appear that what it is saying is right because it gives arguments for it. But one has to beware of one’s own mind because in this world nobody can cheat you more than your own mind. Your greatest enemy is within you, just as your greatest friend is also within you.

The greatest enemy is just your first encounter, and your greatest friend is going to be your last encounter — so don’t be prevented by any experience of the body or the mind or the heart. Remember always one of the famous statements of Gautam Buddha. He used to conclude his sermons every day with the same two words, “charaiveti, charaiveti.” Those two simple words — just one word repeated twice — means “Don’t stop; go on, go on.”

Never stop until the road ends, until there is nowhere else to go — charaiveti, charaiveti.

-Osho

From The Golden Future, Discourse #1, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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On Silence – Jean Klein

Silence is our real nature. What we are fundamentally is only silence. Silence is free from beginning and end. It was before the beginning of all things. It is causeless. Its greatness lies in the fact that it simply is.

In silence all objects have their home ground. It is the light that gives objects their shape and form. All movement, all activity is harmonized by silence.

Silence has no opposite in noise. It is beyond positive and negative. Silence dissolves all objects. It is not related to any counterpart which belongs to the mind. Silence has nothing to do with the mind. It cannot be defined but it can be felt directly because it is our nearness. Silence is freedom without restriction or center. It is our wholeness neither inside nor outside the body. Silence is joyful not pleasurable. It is not psychological. It is feeling without a feeler. Silence needs no intermediary.

Silence is holy. It is healing. There is no fear in silence. Silence is autonomous like love and beauty. It is untouched by time. Silence is meditation, free from any intention, free from anyone who meditates. Silence is the absence of oneself. Or rather, silence is the absence of absence.

Sound which comes from silence is music. All activity is creative which comes from silence. It is constantly a new beginning. Silence precedes speech and poetry and music and all art. Silence is the home ground of all creative activity. What is truly creative is the word, is Truth. Silence is the word. Silence is Truth.

The one established in silence lives in constant offering, in prayer without asking, in thankfulness, in continual love.

-Jean Klein

From The Book of Listening

You can read more from Jean Klein here.