The Power of Silence

 This is the concluding part of the Mindfulness trilogy.

Boredom, frustration, bereavement, loss, anxiety, and fear are negative reactions of human beings.

Incidentally, a person who is freed from these reactions is likely to be loved and esteemed, if only because s/he has no sorrows to inflict upon others who feel they have enough of their own sorrows to bear.  Besides, s/he is sure to develop into a merry person, free from envy and dislike, and therefore much sought after as a friend.

When you “really” want to become this type of person read on…

This is an exercise. When possible, do it NOW.  After reading this passage.  Certainly, you can also do it tomorrow, but when you do it now, you can take the next step – repetition – tomorrow.

Perhaps you can sit in the lotus position.

It is important that the knees are below the navel. Sit upright, but not with “ shoulders back and chest out!” Rather put energy into your belly, without strain.  Become quite…. Breathe as your breath flows.  Not in a shallow, superficial manner, but also not overly deeply.  Simply let your breath wander through your belly.  Avoid  puffing the breath inside yourself, let it wander inside.  This has to take place in your consciousness, but not in your thinking. 

 Your breath is what connects you most intensely with the world and with being, in a constant process of exchange, in a constant process of giving and taking.  No looking, no talking can make this exchange process happen more intensely than breathing.  Since the exchange takes place in every breath you take, it is more than just an exchange.  It is a process of identification.  Of “being one”.  Breathe consciously and you will experience it: you are one with the world.

First, listen to your breath…. Do this for seven or eight minutes…. After a while, listen through your breath…. You will hear the room where you are sitting.  Do not deliberately decide you want to hear it.  When you listen long enough, you will hear that the room has a sound- and you can hear it.

Now listen through the room…. Perhaps there is a bell ringing in the distance…steps…. a car…a bike…birds singing…. music from someone’s music system…receive these things positively. Listen through them.  Room, bell ringing, steps, car, bike…birds – everything is a veil.  Behind that is silence. It opens up, wider and wider.  “Open spaces – nothing holy.” You can hear that: wideness opening up.

Later, perhaps you hear the pounding of blood through your veins.  Or you may become attentive again to the coming and going of your breath.  Thoughts will come, but you do not “hear “ them.  You listen through them.  Even when you have no use for them right now, never have a hostile attitude toward your thoughts.  Regard them as good friends-, which they really are.  Good friends may drop in anytime.  They will notice it by themselves if they are not wanted just now – and then they will leave.

After a while (may be only after weeks of practicing) you will notice that nothing is “as loud as silence”.  There is such a thing as the droning of silence.  Listen through that, too.  With ears as large as sails on an ocean.  You are your ears.  The ocean is existence.   You are sailing on it, with and through your ears.  It is delightful to do that.   Like sailing on a bright summer day. 

This is Zen* meditation.  Zen exercise should be practiced twice a day.  Twenty minutes each time.  Don’t say, “ I can’t do that”..just do it.  Anyone can do it.  Millions of people do it.   And since they simply do it without talking about it, outsiders have no idea that millions are already meditating.

When you do it, it will change your life.  More than love can change it.

THE EFFECT OF MEDITATION is “the attainment of increasingly profound intuitive insights into the nature of reality”.  Invariably result in a deepening of wisdom, of joy in life and greater understanding of life’s meaning.  Other goals, perhaps to be regarded as incidental to this one, are the prolongation or restoration of youthful vigour, excellent health, and longevity extending to upwards of a hundred years of age that is attended by good health and happiness to the very end.

This exercise was taught by a Zen Monk

*Zen – the word has been imported from the Japanese. But the word Zen has been derived from the word “Dhyaan”. (means meditation)

Our ancient yogi's had conceptualised this form of meditation ( Dhyaan) many thousands of years ago.