A Tradition of Silence:
Quotes from the Masters
The more I read, the more I surf the web, I am finding an increasing amount of
treasure in the words of many magnificent teachers and teachings about silence.
I am resonating with these gifts no matter what tradition they come from. There
is a commonality of experience and declaration. It is the genuine heart of
Spirit speaking here through the ages. The voices differ, the textures differ,
and yet the experiential fact is exactly the same. Those who have found Pure
Silence: the freedom within, are moved simply to share it. The following are
some random texts for your enjoyment and resonance.
"But the perfect reflection of the One is shining by itself in lonely silence,
there safely pent as one and indivisible. The unity (of God) is un-necessitous,
it has no need of speech, but subsists alone in unbroken silence. The mind is
rid of light when it is rid of mode; and it is rid of darkness when letting go
of all natural things, it sinks in nameless actuality. Then it loses both light
and darkness in the abyss that a creature in its own right never plumbs. Such is
the estrangement in one as foreshadowed in the ordinary mind, but the
realization of unity which the blessed have lies in the exquisite consciousness
of another than themselves. O unfathomable void, bottomless to creatures and to
thine own self, in thy depth art thou exalted in thy impartible, imperishable
actuality; in the height of thy essential power thou art so deep thou dost
engulf thy simple ground which is there concealed from all that thou are not;
yet those whom thou wouldest commune with shall know thee with thyself."
Meister Eckhart
"Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the
silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of
God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not
separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves
because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality."
Thomas Merton
"This silence, this moment,
every moment,
if it's genuinely inside you,
brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing
in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that
will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that
you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the
tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence."
Rumi
"In listening and stillness there is nobody who is still, and this stillness
doesn't refer to any
object; it is absolutely objectless; it is our real nature."
Jean Klein
"Silence is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation."
Thomas Keating
"Be quiet in your mind, quiet in your senses, and also
quiet in your body. Then, when all these are quiet,
don't do anything. In that state truth will reveal
itself to you. It will appear in front of you and ask," what do you want?"
Kabir
"Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return. They
grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature."
Lao Tzu
"Go into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is
in the Secret Place."
Yeshua (Jesus of Nazareth)
"Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything
in this life has a purpose. There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to
find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your
garden or even your bathtub."
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
"True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the
body, nourishment and refreshment."
William Penn
"Things that are real are given and received in Silence. God has been
everlastingly working in Silence, unobserved, unheard, except by those who
experience His Infinite Silence."
Meher Baba
"Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention
to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and
stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence."
Deepak Chopra
"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what
is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness."
Ghandi
"Silence is the language of God;
It is also the language of the heart."
Dag Hammarskjöld
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But
neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and
future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor
decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance."
T.S. Eliot
"Silence vibrating is Creation
Silence flowing is Love
Silence shared is Friendship
Silence seen is Infinity
Silence heard is Adoration
Silence expressed is Beauty
Silence maintained is Strength
Silence omitted is Suffering
Silence allowed is Rest
Silence re-circled is Scripture
Silence preserved is Our Tradition
Silence given is Initiating
Silence received is Joy
Silence perceived is Knowledge
Silence stabilized is Fulfillment
Silence alone is."
~ Author Unknown ~
"How then are we going to reach God? How, but in quietness and in confidence, in
the stillness and the Silence? How, but by learning to abide in a quietness
within, by being still."
Joel S. Goldsmith
"Be still, and know that I am (God)."
Psalm 46:10
"If only all might be hushed, sense impressions, the soul itself,
all
imagery, all symbols, all things transient, then we might
hear the very voice
of the eternal, and if that experience were prolonged, we would indeed enter
into the joy of our Lord."
Augustine
"Passion is overcome only by him who has won through stillness of spirit the
perfect vision; it comes through the contentment that is regardless of the
world."
Santideva
J. Krishnamurti
A Course in Miracles
Ramana Maharshi
Nisargadatta Maharaj
"...[] remember, in the face of Mystery, silence ultimately alone will do: you
simply cannot categorize, in ANY way, that which is radically Unqualifiable. You
know that Mystery by being Emptiness, not by conceptualizing it, naming
it, labeling it."
Ken Wilber
"Whenever we moderns pause for a moment, and enter the silence, and listen very
carefully, the glimmer of our deepest nature begins to shine forth, and we are
introduced to the mysteries of the deep, the call of the within, the infinite
radiance of a splendor that time and space forgot"
Ken Wilber
"There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind's
immobility and thought-free stillness.
When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the
silence."
Sri Aurobindo
"Silence is ancient. Silence has been in the space you
are at this very
moment for longer than anything else
has. It will remain after you leave and
exist long after
all other things have faded."
Pagan reflections Yule: The Silence of Winter
"There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It
is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one's mind and one's subtle body rest
upon that and not rest on anything else."
From the Maitri Upanishad
"Real action is done in moments of silence."
Emerson
"For the ignorant there is no better rule than silence and if he knew its
advantage he would not be ignorant."
Saadi
No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor
dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far off things, and listens
at
the shores of the great silence.
- Antonio Machado
"Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all
foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after
disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or
bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground,
remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no
personality can disturb us."
Thoreau
"Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time."
Thomas Carlyle
"A tremendous "knowing" comes effortlessly into the mind when it falls into
Silence, when it gives up trying to understand, when its reel of stored images
no longer projects abstract pictures onto the clean screen of simplicity.
This kind of knowing is transmitted to us as pure revelation, as a clarity
untouched by words or other symbols of meaning. When we allow this knowing into
our minds, our very lives become as clear and startling as this knowing." Robert
Rabbin
"Silence is the essential condition of happiness." A Zen Master
Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old
sorcerers were after was the final dramatic, end result of reaching that
individual threshold of silence. Some very talented practitioners need only a
few minutes of silence to reach that coveted goal. Others, less talented, need
long periods of silence, perhaps more than one hour of quietude, before they
reach the desired result. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called
"stopping the world", the moment when everything around us ceases to be what
it's always been. This is the moment when sorcerers return to the TRUE nature of
man. The old sorcerers always called it "total freedom"
Don Juan (Carlos
Castanada)
Concepts can at best only serve to negate one another, as one thorn is used to
remove another, and then be thrown away. Only in deep silence do we leave
concepts behind. Words and language deal only with concepts, and cannot approach
Reality. Ramesh Balsekar
One realizes the Absolute as one's true identity, totally beyond all
manifestations, but containing them within its mysterious vastness. The emphasis
is on the transcendence of the world, including the body and mind. One becomes
the immense solidity of the absolute, totally still and inactive, while
dispassionately witnessing the play of all phenomena. [One] witnesses all
phenomena as the dynamic transformation of a cosmic and boundless consciousness,
which consciousness arises in [its] silent immensity as a surface phenomenon. In
the vastness of silence, the world arises in all its multiplicity, but all the
world is made out of a conscious presence, a Presence which is a consciousness
that can reflect on itself.
A.H. Almaas
Discovering silence
Your chances of discovering this inner silence serendipitously, are slim. You
could get a taste of it when your hand unexpectedly gets caught in a lawn mower
or something. You are jolted into silence, and your whole thought process gets
interrupted for a few moments. Or you may have a glimpse of it when you jump out
of a plane for the first time. Or when you jump out for the 31st time, but now
your chute fails to open. In these extreme situations your mind might go into
spontaneous silence, a silence in which you are acutely aware. Your inner
dialogue can come to a halt because of radical circumstance. And in a way it's a
thrill. This silence in your brain, this acute awareness, is so refreshing,
replenishing.
Timothy Schoorel
Ellie
Roozdar
Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from the Depth. And
Silence kept quiet about what she was unable to describe: the Unspeakable.
~Clement of Alexandria
If I were to say "God exists," this would not be true. He is beyond being. He is
a no-thing-ness beyond being. This is why St. Augustine says "The best thing to
be said about God is silence." You must love God as not-God, not-Spirit,
not-Sun, not-image, but as He is - sheer, pure absolute Oneness, without any
duality." Meister Eckhart.
Be very careful. The subject that can be seen is not your
home-ground. What
is sometimes called the ultimate subject
is nothing other than silence,
sunyata, emptiness of images.
This is consciousness, the light behind all
perception.
The subject that is talked about is still in duality, the
subject-object relationship.
Jean Klein
I shall update this page as more quotes appear.
Joy and Gentleness to you and yours.
