Strange to say, I can feel the silence in the simplicity of your expression. I wish you every blessing in your journey into the “useless” realm, which I sometimes wish I could enter. It seems the amount of psychological noise we are exposed to changes us profoundly. I live a comparatively quiet life, but not nearly so quiet as yours; and around me I see people who walk about with blinking earbuds all day. Different animals, it feels like.
Either way you are encouraging me to think more about silence and stillness in the context of ordinary (non-monastic) life. Thank you.
I want to point out that at least for anyone living in America, there are practically limitless opportunities for private hermitages in nature, in near total solitude amid the most spectacular scenery.
In the West, 70% of the land is owned by BLM, which graciously makes nearly all of it available to anyone who wants to camp on it, often in remote and spectacular locations. Dirt roads make most of this land easily accessible. And you can choose your scenery, the most spectacular deserts or the deepest forests, or the tops of mountains, or wild and desolate coasts!
One can simply choose a beautiful spot, and set up camp for weeks. For that matter, one can climb a mountain and just camp, and spend a week in utter silence and solitude.
It is my fervent wish that one day the spectacular and amazing deserts and forests of the American West will thronged with hermits and holy men of all types, and monasteries will perch on mountain crags.
I am right now on my way to Moab Utah, near canyon lands np, to do exactly this - seek silence and solitude in the limitless and amazing redrock canyons of the Southwest.
Every time I pass a particularly moving and desolate stretch I think, this is the kind of scenery that people should go on pilgrimages to in order to visit the holy hermit (s) who live there, seeking advice, and every time I pass a remote hilltop I think how suitable it is for a monastery.
“There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.
There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?”
I was struck by your first sentence, Jack. “It turns out it isn’t easy to write about silence”. Got me to thinking. Took me back to the collection of essays by Lev Shestov I have been reading in the hills of Snowdonia over the last couple of weeks. Two things: first the apparent caprice and stone-cold suddenness of God’s revelation to His chosen; and, second, the impossibility of ‘teaching’ that revelation by any means other than paradox and parable; and, even by those means, in a form that threatens, always, to violate the Truth that has been revealed.
‘Silence’ is a slippery sucker, eh? Seems to me that the Desert Fathers and Mothers hymned the power of a ‘silence’ defined as the renunciation of the right to speak. And should we wish to dress that notion of ‘speak’ in contemporary terms it would need to incorporate all manner of communicative media that was not known to those ancients.
I guess that the renouncing of speech, in one sense, embodies the struggle to make quiet the internal monologue that we all run on a more or less constant cycle. The voice that comments, flatters and gives shape and sanction to our desires, predicts, arrives at conclusions, pronounces judgements and so on. The ‘voice’ that is drenched in the cultural norms and values we imbibed with our mother’s milk. I will modify this proposition in a moment.
I wonder, Jack, if you might agree that a real danger of ‘silence’ with respect to Christian prayer is that it becomes understood as a ‘technique’ that one might employ to arrive at a ‘goal’? When Fr Voillaume instructs his novices how to comport themselves in their silent prayer of adoration, he says this:
“It is, then, of the most importance that you be convinced that you go to adoration, not to receive but to give, and, what is more, to give often without either realising the you are giving or knowing what you are giving. You go to adoration to deliver up to God, in the night of faith, your entire being [. . .] Adoration is not, to begin with at least, either a matter of feeling or a matter of thinking, but a matter of recognising God’s legitimate hold upon what is deepest in us - upon our very selves; a work that is something bigger and more absolute than you can be conscious of”.
So then, I talked above of the ‘struggle to make quiet the internal monologue’. As a first indication of the desired direction of travel it is OK. But what we need to see, in the light of Fr Voillaume, is the danger of imagining ourselves as the architects and managers of the process. I am tempted to put it this way. ’Silence’ (in this sense) is an emptying of the ‘self’ performed as a Grace of God; capricious, sudden, ‘a work that is something bigger and more absolute’ than we can be conscious of.
Not quite sure what I am saying, now, but I want to speak this: ‘Silence’ is not ‘stilling’ the ‘internal voices’. That is God’s work and God will do God’s work when, where and howsoever God pleases. Rather. ‘silence’ might be something like the ‘medium’ within which we present to God “what is deepest within us”.
"Silence is ecumenical. It precedes dogma. It is incapable of crusades. In silence, people who do not speak the same language may yet act together, creating a tableau that talks louder than words."
- Barbara Brown Taylor
As Anglican contemplative Maggie Ross has noted, the insights and the processes of silence are open to everyone because the fundamental workings of the human mind are universal. [MR1] The following collage of reflections about silent contemplative engagement, (meditation/prayer) was compiled from the writings of several Buddhist and Christian scholar/contemplatives and edited into a sequence to be read as an instructive evocation of universal aspects of this process written by a single author. N.B. Source references are given in brackets [ ] after each quote. A key to these sources follows at the end.
Engaging Silence
"Silence is naturally present. " [ML140]
"To touch what is truly straightforward and natural
we have to let go of the ways of knowing that we are used to." [KM104]
"We need a method...that brings us right into what we are experiencing...
in such a way that we neither hold on to nor try to dispel what arises." [KM75-76]
"It is not necessary to believe anything,
but only to observe one’s mind at work with the silence." [MR1]
"Recognize your mind when it stays or leaves.
These two, staying and leaving are respectively called, ‘stillness’ and ‘movement’...
That which sustains the recognition of these two...is awareness." [GA157]
"Awareness is the eye of silence." [ML81]
"Shifting attention...from the objects of awareness to...awareness itself
will bring the thinking mind to silence." [ML28]
"You will be able to recognize the nature of awareness
and rest in that state of recognition without altering anything." [DK52]
"When we rest and look, we first become aware of a mass of unaware thinking." [KM34]
"Some thoughts, feelings and sensations simply come and go on their own
and cause no disturbance. Others catch [us] and [we] fall into distraction.
Which does which is not something [we] control.
As soon as [we] recognize that [we] have been distracted, [we] are already back." [KM64]
"Now all [we] need to do is rest right there." [KM94]
"Silences are built around a central paradox:
all distractions have within them the silent depths we seek." [ML75]
"Whatever appears, whatever arises, first identify it,
then relax and rest in that state, and finally let it be released by itself." [GA102]
"Belief in meditation and striving takes place in a bewildered mind.
Yet simply resting in the reality itself of bewildered mind, unelaborated,
everything is a pure realm of equalness." [PB170]
"When we are well practiced in this...
we will find that we have acquired a certain skill at recognizing thoughts.
They appear and disappear in awareness." [ML65]
"At some point you will note that there are actually moments relatively free of thought." [RD171]
"While the previous thought has ceased and the next one has not yet arisen,
in that mind of nowness...you abide." [PR27]
"Meditate without regarding a long duration of that state as a virtue,
or a short duration as a fault." [GA51]
"Our interiority is not so cramped; indeed it is a vast and spacious flow." [ML93]
"You will be able to recognize the nature of the natural flow.
If one rests uncontrived in that state of recognition, it naturally becomes stronger." [DK31]
"Training is simply short moments of recognition repeated many times." [TU84]
"The key point is to rest and recognize." [KM94]
"Although mindfulness still remains at the core of maintaining this practice.
Here it is mindfulness imbued with self-awareness or our natural awareness.
One can say it is our natural mindfulness." [PB266]
"If we do not do anything with it, or to it, (and that is the hard part),
it is there, Spartan in its simplicity, constant in its presence, vivid and awake,
revealing and refreshing itself moment to moment." [KM88]
"When you come to the conclusion that...awareness does not dwell in
or take support on anything whatsoever, rest right there." [GA236]
"One does not have to ‘hold it up;’ instead it is the one who ‘holds one up.’
And in its very doing so, nothing is lacking." [PB49]
"Therefore, with trust and conviction, with joy and determination,
remain in silence and rest in composure." [GA38]
Key To Sources:
DK - Dilgo Khyentse, "Primordial Purity"
GA - Gerardo Abboud, "The Royal Seal of Mahamudra" [Vol I]
KM - Ken Mcleod, "A Trackless Path"
ML - Martin Laird, "Into the Silent Land"
MR - Maggie Ross, "Silence: A User's Guide" vol.l
PB - Peter Barth, "The Meditations of Longchen Rabjam"
PR - Patrul Rinpoche, "The Nature of Mind"
RD - Rodney P. Devenish, "Natural Mind Meditation"
I am curious -- how different will your life be in the hermitage compared to the monastery? Will you still join in the chants, prayers, services? Will you eat there alone? I'm trying to envision this life i know so little about. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
I did my own version of what your doing a 3 years ago when I was broken. It had an unexpected effect on me . And l also remember what a great companion my fire/stove was , brought great comfort
I'm really pleased that you have received such a providential opportunity. It looks like the path you have begun to walk suits you well. I am reminded of words a former school teacher used to say often: " we are human beings not human doings". Simple but, the more I consider the words, quite profound. Now you get your chance to become a human being again; being the person that God intended you to be. I'm looking forward to more of your writing (and speaking).
Oh, I was wondering if you still wake in the night? I believe that spiritual healing is just as potent as anything physically administered and would be interested to know if your experience has had an effect.
'If all goes well—and this by God’s grace—I will become ever more useless by the day.'
This is an excellent aim to have.
Strange to say, I can feel the silence in the simplicity of your expression. I wish you every blessing in your journey into the “useless” realm, which I sometimes wish I could enter. It seems the amount of psychological noise we are exposed to changes us profoundly. I live a comparatively quiet life, but not nearly so quiet as yours; and around me I see people who walk about with blinking earbuds all day. Different animals, it feels like.
Either way you are encouraging me to think more about silence and stillness in the context of ordinary (non-monastic) life. Thank you.
Good for you Jack, I'm sincerely happy for you!
I want to point out that at least for anyone living in America, there are practically limitless opportunities for private hermitages in nature, in near total solitude amid the most spectacular scenery.
In the West, 70% of the land is owned by BLM, which graciously makes nearly all of it available to anyone who wants to camp on it, often in remote and spectacular locations. Dirt roads make most of this land easily accessible. And you can choose your scenery, the most spectacular deserts or the deepest forests, or the tops of mountains, or wild and desolate coasts!
One can simply choose a beautiful spot, and set up camp for weeks. For that matter, one can climb a mountain and just camp, and spend a week in utter silence and solitude.
It is my fervent wish that one day the spectacular and amazing deserts and forests of the American West will thronged with hermits and holy men of all types, and monasteries will perch on mountain crags.
I am right now on my way to Moab Utah, near canyon lands np, to do exactly this - seek silence and solitude in the limitless and amazing redrock canyons of the Southwest.
Every time I pass a particularly moving and desolate stretch I think, this is the kind of scenery that people should go on pilgrimages to in order to visit the holy hermit (s) who live there, seeking advice, and every time I pass a remote hilltop I think how suitable it is for a monastery.
May it one day be so!
“There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.
There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?”
- Thomas Merton
I was struck by your first sentence, Jack. “It turns out it isn’t easy to write about silence”. Got me to thinking. Took me back to the collection of essays by Lev Shestov I have been reading in the hills of Snowdonia over the last couple of weeks. Two things: first the apparent caprice and stone-cold suddenness of God’s revelation to His chosen; and, second, the impossibility of ‘teaching’ that revelation by any means other than paradox and parable; and, even by those means, in a form that threatens, always, to violate the Truth that has been revealed.
‘Silence’ is a slippery sucker, eh? Seems to me that the Desert Fathers and Mothers hymned the power of a ‘silence’ defined as the renunciation of the right to speak. And should we wish to dress that notion of ‘speak’ in contemporary terms it would need to incorporate all manner of communicative media that was not known to those ancients.
I guess that the renouncing of speech, in one sense, embodies the struggle to make quiet the internal monologue that we all run on a more or less constant cycle. The voice that comments, flatters and gives shape and sanction to our desires, predicts, arrives at conclusions, pronounces judgements and so on. The ‘voice’ that is drenched in the cultural norms and values we imbibed with our mother’s milk. I will modify this proposition in a moment.
I wonder, Jack, if you might agree that a real danger of ‘silence’ with respect to Christian prayer is that it becomes understood as a ‘technique’ that one might employ to arrive at a ‘goal’? When Fr Voillaume instructs his novices how to comport themselves in their silent prayer of adoration, he says this:
“It is, then, of the most importance that you be convinced that you go to adoration, not to receive but to give, and, what is more, to give often without either realising the you are giving or knowing what you are giving. You go to adoration to deliver up to God, in the night of faith, your entire being [. . .] Adoration is not, to begin with at least, either a matter of feeling or a matter of thinking, but a matter of recognising God’s legitimate hold upon what is deepest in us - upon our very selves; a work that is something bigger and more absolute than you can be conscious of”.
So then, I talked above of the ‘struggle to make quiet the internal monologue’. As a first indication of the desired direction of travel it is OK. But what we need to see, in the light of Fr Voillaume, is the danger of imagining ourselves as the architects and managers of the process. I am tempted to put it this way. ’Silence’ (in this sense) is an emptying of the ‘self’ performed as a Grace of God; capricious, sudden, ‘a work that is something bigger and more absolute’ than we can be conscious of.
Not quite sure what I am saying, now, but I want to speak this: ‘Silence’ is not ‘stilling’ the ‘internal voices’. That is God’s work and God will do God’s work when, where and howsoever God pleases. Rather. ‘silence’ might be something like the ‘medium’ within which we present to God “what is deepest within us”.
May your journey into the unknown depths of your silence reap rewards beyond your imagination. I wish you Godspeed. Much love.
Will be praying for you Jack and look forward to hearing all that you learn!
Silence is our Yes to Gods Yes to us
"Silence is ecumenical. It precedes dogma. It is incapable of crusades. In silence, people who do not speak the same language may yet act together, creating a tableau that talks louder than words."
- Barbara Brown Taylor
As Anglican contemplative Maggie Ross has noted, the insights and the processes of silence are open to everyone because the fundamental workings of the human mind are universal. [MR1] The following collage of reflections about silent contemplative engagement, (meditation/prayer) was compiled from the writings of several Buddhist and Christian scholar/contemplatives and edited into a sequence to be read as an instructive evocation of universal aspects of this process written by a single author. N.B. Source references are given in brackets [ ] after each quote. A key to these sources follows at the end.
Engaging Silence
"Silence is naturally present. " [ML140]
"To touch what is truly straightforward and natural
we have to let go of the ways of knowing that we are used to." [KM104]
"We need a method...that brings us right into what we are experiencing...
in such a way that we neither hold on to nor try to dispel what arises." [KM75-76]
"It is not necessary to believe anything,
but only to observe one’s mind at work with the silence." [MR1]
"Recognize your mind when it stays or leaves.
These two, staying and leaving are respectively called, ‘stillness’ and ‘movement’...
That which sustains the recognition of these two...is awareness." [GA157]
"Awareness is the eye of silence." [ML81]
"Shifting attention...from the objects of awareness to...awareness itself
will bring the thinking mind to silence." [ML28]
"You will be able to recognize the nature of awareness
and rest in that state of recognition without altering anything." [DK52]
"When we rest and look, we first become aware of a mass of unaware thinking." [KM34]
"Some thoughts, feelings and sensations simply come and go on their own
and cause no disturbance. Others catch [us] and [we] fall into distraction.
Which does which is not something [we] control.
As soon as [we] recognize that [we] have been distracted, [we] are already back." [KM64]
"Now all [we] need to do is rest right there." [KM94]
"Silences are built around a central paradox:
all distractions have within them the silent depths we seek." [ML75]
"Whatever appears, whatever arises, first identify it,
then relax and rest in that state, and finally let it be released by itself." [GA102]
"Belief in meditation and striving takes place in a bewildered mind.
Yet simply resting in the reality itself of bewildered mind, unelaborated,
everything is a pure realm of equalness." [PB170]
"When we are well practiced in this...
we will find that we have acquired a certain skill at recognizing thoughts.
They appear and disappear in awareness." [ML65]
"At some point you will note that there are actually moments relatively free of thought." [RD171]
"While the previous thought has ceased and the next one has not yet arisen,
in that mind of nowness...you abide." [PR27]
"Meditate without regarding a long duration of that state as a virtue,
or a short duration as a fault." [GA51]
"Our interiority is not so cramped; indeed it is a vast and spacious flow." [ML93]
"You will be able to recognize the nature of the natural flow.
If one rests uncontrived in that state of recognition, it naturally becomes stronger." [DK31]
"Training is simply short moments of recognition repeated many times." [TU84]
"The key point is to rest and recognize." [KM94]
"Although mindfulness still remains at the core of maintaining this practice.
Here it is mindfulness imbued with self-awareness or our natural awareness.
One can say it is our natural mindfulness." [PB266]
"If we do not do anything with it, or to it, (and that is the hard part),
it is there, Spartan in its simplicity, constant in its presence, vivid and awake,
revealing and refreshing itself moment to moment." [KM88]
"When you come to the conclusion that...awareness does not dwell in
or take support on anything whatsoever, rest right there." [GA236]
"One does not have to ‘hold it up;’ instead it is the one who ‘holds one up.’
And in its very doing so, nothing is lacking." [PB49]
"Therefore, with trust and conviction, with joy and determination,
remain in silence and rest in composure." [GA38]
Key To Sources:
DK - Dilgo Khyentse, "Primordial Purity"
GA - Gerardo Abboud, "The Royal Seal of Mahamudra" [Vol I]
KM - Ken Mcleod, "A Trackless Path"
ML - Martin Laird, "Into the Silent Land"
MR - Maggie Ross, "Silence: A User's Guide" vol.l
PB - Peter Barth, "The Meditations of Longchen Rabjam"
PR - Patrul Rinpoche, "The Nature of Mind"
RD - Rodney P. Devenish, "Natural Mind Meditation"
TU - Tulku Urgyen, "Rainbow Painting"
Really glad you got this opportunity Jack. Go well
Good Morning Jack, Glad you have this chance.
I am curious -- how different will your life be in the hermitage compared to the monastery? Will you still join in the chants, prayers, services? Will you eat there alone? I'm trying to envision this life i know so little about. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
Clara
Beautiful post! You're on such a fascinating journey and I look forward to reading more about it.
I did my own version of what your doing a 3 years ago when I was broken. It had an unexpected effect on me . And l also remember what a great companion my fire/stove was , brought great comfort
Congratulations for the test run! You sound very inspired.
A great saint once said true silence is talking about God... In case it sparks something.
I'm really pleased that you have received such a providential opportunity. It looks like the path you have begun to walk suits you well. I am reminded of words a former school teacher used to say often: " we are human beings not human doings". Simple but, the more I consider the words, quite profound. Now you get your chance to become a human being again; being the person that God intended you to be. I'm looking forward to more of your writing (and speaking).
Oh, I was wondering if you still wake in the night? I believe that spiritual healing is just as potent as anything physically administered and would be interested to know if your experience has had an effect.
Thank you for the update. It would be fascinating to hear how the silence is changing you.
If i may I'd like to recommend this book by a woman also seeking silence:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003MAJU92/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_bibl_vppi_i1