Encountering Silence

Imagine an empty house. Silence. No TV, no music, no electricity. Silence. No work, no deadlines, no illness, no aim, no relationships. Silence.

When you isolate yourself from the noise outside and its immediate causes, you face a vast abyss: dark, unfathomable, scary. It’s almost as if you are standing at the edge of a cliff on a moonless night.

The search for truth often forces us to explore our inner worlds. It is easy to follow the teachings of others, of masters who have already traversed the path. But even if they hold the light, you have to walk with your own feet.

Much of life’s noise—its strutting and fretting—is to avoid that abyss within. Hence, the busy bazaar of life to escape loneliness. A crowded life to avoid drifting lonely as a cloud. We clutter our life with things, people, events and issues not because of their own value but because they help us remain in our comfort zone. It is important, if painful, to ask why we do what we do. How much is necessary to live a meaningful life and how much to create noise that drowns the unfamiliar sounds of silence—mere ploys of the mind to prevent reaching a mindless state?

If you are satisfied with touching the mere skin of life, if the inevitability of death or the wonder of birth don’t jolt you, well then, good for you! But if they do, then you have no choice but to clear the clutter in order to look within.

Isolation is necessary to travel to that inner space, which people avoid. It often forces us to look at our inner emotional and psychological selves, make some challenging changes and a get new perspective. From here the journey begins. That is why seekers inevitably go into isolation for short or long periods at some point in their lives. The initial darkness must be entered. It is the only way to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.
-Harvinder Kaur

(www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1011061 - 49k; Friday, February 03, 2006 )