Flowers of Silence
Yesterday evening, after a busy day and after having done the daily flow of e-mails I set upon translating an invitation of friends for a seminar on silence. I felt, that silence is something very untimely. We are always very much outgoing, and silence is totally unusual. During the day, there is often music coming from a neighbor’s office. On the roads, even in nature people are jogging or cycling with earphones – the ipod generation. Also at home the music of one of your youngsters is often on, while the other puts on a headphone… Not to speak of the shops with their convenience music, and with the roaring waves of the roads or from the sky.
There can be outer silence, with inner noises going on, even during meditation. Calming down the emotional and mental is uncommon and has to be practiced. Since over three decades it belongs to my daily hygene with meditation, but the urge to noise is still there. A thought I read from a seminar with Sri Kumar helped me some weeks ago: We can be active with several things at a time. When we drive a car, we can talk. So we can also keep linked to the inner silence while being outwardly active. It is just a matter of training.
In the invocation given by Dr. Ekkirala Krishnamacharya it says: “May we speak the silence without breaking it / May we live in the awareness of the background.” For me this give a lot of energy, keeping linked with the inner source. Then the outer is going on in a flow, even in the waves of activity.
