Harry Truman once said that listening to good music made him think of the way things ought to be, instead of the way they are. In the presence of music, we gain a taste of Heaven and Earth. Music is vitally important to our spiritual health: clearing the air, changing our mood, taking us to faraway places, revealing mysteries, calming the soul, allowing us true glimpses into the past.
I remember years ago in Korea in the Peace Corps, how I felt the first time I partook of the daily culture of "just sitting" together with friends in informal tearooms in Seoul, without saying a word; at first I felt quite nervous and bored, but when I was able to relax my mind and just be, it was a refreshing communion... each moment's meeting of a person or even a flower is precious and fleeting, it is to be savored completely, perhaps best in silence.
The notion of silence appears to unsettle—or puzzle—no small number of people of all walks of life...Something as "unproductive" as silence is not often taken seriously. The evaluation of silence differs from culture to culture. In the West, if you notice that someone is silent for a prolonged period of time, the tendency might be to ask, "are you all right?" Or the silence might be interpreted as a sign of unbalanced introversion or isolation or passive aggression. In India, they would say of the silent one, Ah muni! (Ah, there is a holy soul!)
At first silence had seemed a deprivation, a symbol of an
unwanted isolation. I had resented the solitude of my life
and fought it. But gradually the enveloping quiet became
a positive element, almost a presence, which settled
comfortably and caressingly around me like a soft shawl.
It seemed to hum, gently but melodiously, and to
orchestrate the ideas that I was contending with, until
they started to sing too, to vibrate and reveal an
unexpected resonance. After a time I found that I could
almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of
its own...I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the
silence. Silence itself had become my teacher.
If I were a physician and I were allowed to prescribe one remedy for all the ills of the
world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the word of God were proclaimed in the
modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence!
The mind does nothing but talk, ask
questions, search for meaning; the
heart does not talk, does not ask
questions, does not search for meaning.
Silently, it moves toward God and
surrenders. The heart is God's servant.
One day, as if I had lived alone for many years in the deep desert, I was taken by a
stunning stillness, and without resistance I disappeared into Silence... It was my soul's
homecoming, my heart's overflowing love, and my mind's eternal peace.
In Silence, I felt my core identity, my essential nature, as a unity-in-love with all
creation. I experienced freedom, clarity, and joy as my true Self... This Self, this
Silence belongs to all of us—it is who we are, it is what we are. If we are to experience
and embody authentic peace and love, if we are going to bring true healing to our
wildly violent and endangered world, we are going to have to learn to live within this
essence which joins us together as brothers and sisters.
~ from THE HEALING POWER OF SILENCE by Robert Rabbin
To deliver oneself up, to hand
oneself over, entrust oneself
completely to the silence of a
wide landscape of woods and
hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still
while the sun comes up over that
land and fills its silences with
light. To pray and work in the
morning and to labor and rest in
the afternoon, and to sit still
again in meditation in the
evening when night falls upon
that land and when the silence
fills itself with darkness and with
stars. This is a true and special
vocation. There are few who are
willing to belong completely to
such silence, to let it soak into
their bones, to breathe nothing
but silence, to feed on silence,
and to turn the very substance of
their life into a living and
vigilant silence.
