“When I spent a winter at Princeton…I used to visit an old man who lived near the campus…He was a mathematician, a friend of Einstein’s. Every time I came, which was usually at night, he would open the door for me and take me in close to the fireplace. Then his wife would offer me a cup of tea and we would spend an hour just sitting there. After that, I’d bow to him and go home. That happened many times. I knew in advance that whenever I came, the same thing would happen. Yet I always came, because it was very nice and very rewarding. We need to learn again how to be silent…Silence can be more intimate than talking. It is a way of being that makes your doing, your action, deeper and more effective.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power, p. 156.
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Inspired by the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s story of his silent nights with the mathematician, our family has, over the past twenty years, sometimes experimented with “Silent Tuesdays.” We put the word out to friends and family that we’ll be hosting a silent gathering at our house on a particular Tuesday evening. That night, we greet people with a smile at the door. With a gesture, they are invited to come in, sit, relax, meditate, pray, maybe read a spiritual book – and, after about an hour, we have tea. We sit and enjoy our tea together, then folks are invited to wash out their cups and depart. All of this happens in silence, from the greeting to the good-byes, with a few hand gestures, smiles, maybe a hug as someone is leaving, and no words.
The paint that the storytelling artist uses is words, but the canvas is silence. We dwell in a cacophony of words, both spoken and unspoken. In the past (and perhaps still in some cultures), there was room for silence. The canvas was clean, unspattered. Today, our minds and the air are full of sounds – internally, the drum beat of our incessant thoughts, externally, the thousand and one ceaseless voices calling for our attention in every moment. We need to be selective in which internal and external voices we give credence to, but more fundamentally, we are called to create the space for silence.
We are infatuated with machine metaphors to describe ourselves and our ways, but we have much more in common with oak trees and radish plants than we realize: Sunshine, clean water, rich soil, some space, some nurturance, and silence allow for growth and provide us with much that is needed for joie de vivre, the joy of living.
We humans love story. One of the great fortunes of life is to share our worthy stories and to listen to the tales of others that challenge, enchant, and inspire us. And there is also the gift of silence – not just silence so that we can think and reflect (though this, too, has deep value), but the precious gift of a silence so clear that we are free of thoughts. In such silence, we are simply here. Alive. Present to the experience of the moment. This is richness…and it somehow sweetens the telling and listening when the space for story opens again.
This is the work: mindfully creating space for silence, for story, and for silence again – in an ongoing circle of health and growth and well-being.
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Do you create the space for silence to manifest in your life? In the life of your family? How might you create such times and spaces? Perhaps a dialogue with loved ones about silence – and its potential value, maybe even drawing from Thich Nhat Hanh’s experience described above, could be an entree into possible practices of silence. An invitation: Schedule a time for fifteen minutes of silence three times this week. Do not busy yourself with silent activities during this time. Simply open yourself to enjoying the silence – maybe going for a little stroll through your neighborhood or just sitting in the kitchen, perhaps enjoying the flavor of your coffee or tea, either alone or with a friend. You may find that your mind is racing with thoughts in the silence (and that’s okay), but create that space three times this week where you can at least begin to experiment with silence as a choice, as a practice, and as an opportunity for growth.
(Music: Courtesy of Adrian Von Ziegler, “Sacred Earth.” )