Sweet Silence!

It is only the youngsters who know how hard it is to keep quiet; almost all the students in a school at some time or other get whacked for making noise, or talking to someone else. This has been accepted as one of the symptoms of growth process, and we do not make much noise about it either. But this symptom continues well beyond their adolescence, and runs sometimes even upto their old age. The noise which keeps them busy in their adolescence slowly transforms itself into an inner noise.Most of us reach our graves making huge noise, and very seldom may we recognize that we are a noisy lot.

We love noise, and that is the reason why noise pollution is not a problem for us; it appears that it is the problem only of the neighbors and civic bodies and not we who live in the midst of high decibels. There are people who cannot sleep unless there is some loud noise. I had the good fortune of living in a room just adjuscent to one of the main streets of the city, and every day early in the morning I can hear the rattling noise of the trams and then the vehicles, but after a few months of stay there in that room, I had so got used to the noise that it would not disturb my peaceful sleep. We all of us get used to the noises and that becomes our way of life.

One of the greatest tragedies of human existence is that most of us do not even know that we live in the midst of noise, and we do not taste the beauty and wonder of silence. We think that there is nothing beyond noise, and that it was the end of all. We are born into a noisy world and we are given grand farewell with so much of noise. All that we know is the silence of the graves, but not that of the deep oceans. I am told that there is absolute stillness at the deep waters of the ocean. Maybe we will never feel what it means to be in stillness, and that is why we so much love noise and feel we cannot part with it. The very moment when we are separated from noise, we feel certain amount of emptyness creeping in, and we are afraid of facing the vacuum.

I understand it is a terrible experience to face stillness and silence. I would be too frightened to be left in a room, all by myself, with silence all around. I may be more comfortable with even eerie noise, but not silence, which may be more frightening and threatening. But if only I begin to enjoy silence and the stillness of silence, then it may open up several sweet vistas for me. But to take a bold step to drown myself in stillness, calls for great guts and courage, and unfortunately not many of us have that much guts. If ever we had that courage to face silence, we might be madly in love with silence, which can give a foretaste of the blissful sweetness of stillness.

I know that if I have to take a close look at silence and taste of the stillness of the heart, I have to cross two layers of noise: one, the bodily noise, the physical one, and two, the mental noise, one which is created and maintained by the mind. If I can cross these two boundaries, then I might have access to true silence. One of the greatest consolations is that I am never alone in life's journey; there are people wherever I go, and there are very few chances for me to really fall out of track. I am still looking for the way to reach stillness of the heart, where alone I can drink the sweet nector of the soul.