In this article I would like to contemplate silence and how it can be accessed and inhabited as a refuge. Finding this well of silence helps us not to get dragged around in the mind and gives the space that is needed to act from a position that is not fixed and divided.

External disturbance is tricky in that it can easily convince us that all our troubles are caused by outside forces. This can lead to a form of vicarious living where we move from our internal lives to living outside of ourselves and become involved in others business where we have no place. This can lead to assuming positions and strategies which focus on the external to the detriment of our internal processing. We can learn to ‘live in the world as if in the sky, as the lotus is not wetted by the water that surrounds it’. By identifying with worldy concerns and thereby constantly rebuilding a permament self which fails to recognise impermamance, we can fall into the constant cycle of suffering. To empathise with anothers or our own suffering is not the same as taking it on. It seems to me it is more compassionate and helpful to occupy another space. A silent space.

To be aware of the silent space is to see how we can let everything pass in and through. The empty form. Silence is indeed big enough to allow everything in, we just don’t need to repel anything, just don’t hold on. There seems to be a logic for example in dealing with distraction by building a wall and not letting it in. Mara’s arrows bounce off of the shield and don’t penetrate. This kind of logic unfortunately doesn’t go far enough and only achieves a short term gain. Sit within the distraction and watch it going through leads to a transformation which flowers into something much more wonderful.

Whether it is distraction, anger, frustration or one of the many tempters we can find, it can be hard to see beyond it. This can lead to us easily buying into what it has to sell. The mind is a very good salesman trained in all the tricks to convince us we need to act on such emotions. It becomes very noisy and insistent. It asks us to identify with anger for example, that we can’t live without it. At this point it important to remember and realise that there is nothing to hold onto. Here lies freedom from enslavement to the senses. My getting angry and opinionated about a particular situation doesn’t get anywhere near to resolving it at anything other than a surface level. Remembering that all is both beginningless and endless. We may appear to achieve a short term gain, a sense of relief for example, yet in our heart we know this has the wrong feeling, which leads to sense of being ill at ease. It doesn’t lead to the cessation of suffering.

What disturbs does come from within. We are only hurt because there is something still unresolved which can be hurt. By living within the silence we can see beyond the immediate sensory sensation. Silence is all encompassing and holds our delicate emotions in cupped hands. ‘As vast as space itself’ noise gets lost in the vastness of silence. Silence has no boundaries. no inside or out, no limit. To hear the silence we need to be still. There doesn’t have to be an absence of noise to know silence, it soaks it all up. So to know silence anywhere is vital. It can become our constant environment where seperation and division fall away. How do we find it? Let it go.