Silence.

One of the most underestimated virtues is silence. People go about in their everyday lives not even noticing the beauty of one's \"inner silence.\" Most people do not even notice the amount of noise that is carried around in their own bodies. Even in this high tech, developing, industrial age we live in, the real noise is inside of us. But even these noises can dissappear if one realy wants to. Religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity...have many techniques for meditation, and their reasons for wanting to find \"pure silence\" are generally the same.

Well said. All religions teach a form of inner peace, or inner silence. A contentment in your beliefs that exceedes the physical world around you. This is truly the ultimate goal of any belief structire.

Meaningful silence has become a rare thing indeed. There is more noise than ever before. Not only is it louder, but it is more invasive.

We are saturated in sound. Showers play music. Elevators babel. Mobile phones interrupt. The quiet chat in a bar is drowned out by the ball game on the television overhead. I pods have become everybody`s companion. Twenty-four-hour commercial add pound our senses. There is little if no room for silence when our ears are being plugged with a delude of information.

Silence has become a threat or an unknown factor outside the capsule of noise that encloses our lives. Sometimes it becomes too quiet! We are uneasy at the thought of our imagination and our inner life, the silence of our own minds. People are migrating \"en mass\" from their private to a public world. Silence has become a luxury commodity, the well earned holiday. The only time when it is quiet enough to hear one`s own heart beat is when that heart has beat its last.

Silence is more than just a break or holiday; it is a place free from a hyperbole of words, sounds and information; it is a desert where we can hear ourselves think; it is a chamber in which our voice resonates.

SHHHHHH

Some people have the mistaken idea that Trappists make a vow of silence. They never have made such a vow. They have rules of silence, which were stricter in the past than are now, but there still remain times and places when they are expected to keep silence. The purpose of silence is to give one space in which to pray, meditate and read and allow others to do the same. Silence is a form of charity to others, but it is not absolute. Charity may sometimes oblige persons, including monks, to speak at the right time and in the right way.

...the trappists show us that there is always a time to speak...

\"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.\"

Martin Niemoller

...silence is for every Jedi a voice from the heart...

For me silence has always been a source of healing, not only only spiritually, but also physically and mentally. Whereas some like to go to sauna to relax and give themselves a treat with all kinds of wellness treatments, I love to go on retreats and immerse myself in silence. No TV, radio, newspapers... . The silence refreshes me like a cool shower on a hot summers day. I can piece myself back together again like a jig-saw puzzle. Like an energy drink, silence clears away any exhaustion accumulated during the nonstop noise of modern urban living and restores my energy.

But what's good for me is not necessarily good medicine for someone else. Silence may not be the best spiritual practice for individuals who suffer from melancholy or depression. These should learn to open up and be able to express themselves. As the Doctrine suggests to us, It is also important not to be silent in the face of injustice. In \"Ethics for the New Millennium,\" the Dalai Lama says that if we keep silent out of a sense of self-centeredness, then it's a problem. We have a universal duty to break out of such silence and help others. Above all though we must not only forget that it is in the womb of silence that we can develop ideas for what the best course of action there is to take, but also to make sure that such action is rooted in compassion and wisdom. If we are going to speak out, our task is first to be in tune with what the world needs and not what our ego desires, or we risk causing more harm even if unintentionally.

Another Take on Silence...

What did you not say yesterday? Were there things you wish you had said but held back? Did you corral certain words, certain sentences, and hold them for another opportunity? Were some thoughts pushed below the surface, allowed to be changed with time, perhaps to be forgotten forever? How many “I love you’s” went unsaid that would have healed an aching heart? As with sleep, you cannot store them and build a reserve to tap into at a later date. Their power, their balming effect, quickly dissipates with disuse. They work only in the moment that they were intended. Left idle, their potential is gone, the object of their delivery untouched by kindness, by tenderness.

“I love you.” It is so simple to say. Three words. There are many other opportunities to say them, but none more important and possessing more potential than now. Words can have the opposite effect if left unsaid, almost as if they were spoken as opposites. Silence can equal the opposite. “I love you” unsaid can become “I don’t love you” out loud. Your most tender and endearing thoughts, if not allowed to fly free from the prison of your mind, may silently tell someone that you don’t care. How many times has your silence told your partner or child that you didn’t love them? How often has an unsaid word created the opposite effect? Think of all the lives that would have been changed had armies of sentences been allowed to roam free. Those who go through life cloaked in spoken endearments, wrapped and comforted in the voiced love of others, are truly blessed. The power of the spoken word is mighty. The power of silence can be mightier still.

Countless millions of words have been written and spoken since the beginning of human history. A total of all the words in all the libraries of the world, past and present, and every word of every conversation, idle chatter, lecture, broadcast, and speech in history would be dwarfed by the vast legions of words left unsaid, those rendered impotent by silence. Not that it is a good thing to instantly speak every thought that comes to mind: chaos would ensue. We have to be selective of our words and deliver them into the pattern of conversation where appropriate; however, it is our mental editing that isolates certain words and thoughts as unspeakable, and sentences them to die (pun intended).

Words can change the world. They can incite, torture, kill, comfort, heal, encourage, humiliate, anger, inspire, sadden, give joy, make one laugh, and they can forever change one’s life. There are many kinds of words: “In other words,” four-letter-words, words that are read, words to make you blue; there is the spoken word, the written word, the forgotten word; we put words in someone’s mouth, and we don’t have the words to express.... Words, words, everywhere, and not a thought to speak. And the unsaid words—oh, how they could have changed the course of history! Would they have altered the destructive lives of John Wilkes Booth, Adolph Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jeffrey Daumer, or the Son of Sam? Would the unspoken “I love you’s” have given them a new lease on life had those three words been bestowed upon them?

The power of words and their silent cousins: “What did you say?” “Nothing.” Think of the consequences had that “nothing” actually been, “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I apologize and want to make it up to you.” Instead, a relationship was probably hurt forever, or even eventually terminated. “Ouch, that hurts,” if left unsaid, can become one of many familiar wedges in a marriage, or any relationship. Not expressed, it can fester inside, becoming worse and much larger over time than it originally was. It also will accumulate other unsaid “ouches,” and grow to become a very powerful “I hate your guts.” It can eat at one’s insides if not voiced. Actually, its release will help the relationship; its incarceration will destroy.

Don’t withhold. Let the hostages go. Release the words while they still hold their meaning. Release them before they change in silence. The loneliest place in the world, more desolate and forbidding than the blackest cell of any prison, is a silent marriage/partnership. All the city lights from Manhattan to Bangkok could probably be powered by the turbulent energy of the silent, but unrelenting, dialogues churning in the minds of an unhappy couple. And it would be possible, as well, to freeze solid the oceans of the world by the dynamics between the two.

Allow your thoughts to be heard. You are the most powerful person on earth. You alone possess the ability to change your world, make friends, and influence people. You have the key. Use your words for good. They can help you. Don’t withhold them, for in their muted state they can turn on you. Life is a fine balance of releasing the right words in the right order at the right time, and deciding which words are truly better left unsaid.

Those who know do not speak;

Those who speak do not know.

Lao Tzu

Silence can be a terrible mirror, a bottomless pit. It reflects sometimes terrible truths and can lead us into places where there is no way out. Silence is like a two edged sword, it can bring peace or it can bring war. It can not be taken on the light shoulder or treated as a romantic fancy. I learned this when I did a retreat in Buffalo (USA), and my one years retreat as a novice. Believe me, the pictures I got were better than any Cinema could produce.

Can you imagine everything you did, said and thought plus all the horror films you saw plus every piece of suffering bundeled into one moment coming at you like a high speed train? I am not ashamed, but I ran. I ran for my life. Thats all I can remember.

Like myself once, many are convinced that no type of film (no matter how horrifying) could not be of any harm. I know now I was mistaken. Silence showed me what has happened to my \"soul\" over the years. Take care of yourselves.