Silence
by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

I truly enjoy silent time, and extended silent time on retreats. It allows me to listen more deeply to my own thoughts.

Using silence to listen to our own thoughts is a step in the right direction, but silence means more than refraining from speaking aloud; inner chatter is still chatter and not yet silence.

Yes, I know. True silence is the ending of thought, but how do I do that?

There may be methods for ending thought, but that isn’t exactly what I am aiming at. I have been meditating for decades and have yet to master the art of ending thought. My concern is with not feeding the thoughts that seem to arise of their own accord.

I cannot stop a thought from arising. Indeed, but the time I am aware of a thought arising I’m already thinking it. What I can do is refrain from running with that thought, from deliberately adding more thoughts to it. In this way a thought arises and falls of its own accord and I don’t worry about it. Over time the space between thoughts lengthens, and in that gap is true silence.

So you don’t try to be silent. You just try not to follow any given train of thought.

Right. In this way silence is a gift, an act of grace, rather than something I am doing.

OK, but what’s the point of being silent? Quiet reflection makes sense to me, but what do I get out of being inwardly silent, without thought or without racing after thoughts?

Perhaps deep silence is like dreamless sleep. There is a powerful rejuvenation that comes from this level of sleep. We could not survive without it. Perhaps it is the same with silence.

Perhaps? Don’t you know?

I don’t. When I am gifted with this kind of silence “I” am gone. The “I” that I take myself to be is a product of thought, and disappears when there is no thinking going on. So silence is a kind of death, or, better, a birth into the greater reality that is to me as the ocean is to the wave. All I do know is that when “I” return from this silence I am less than when I entered: less harried, less fearful, less anxious, and less egotistical.

Whatever the gift of silence is, it is one of lessening, of purifying, of softening. The “I” that returns is more loving than the “I” who left. So whatever happens in that silence is something valuable, even if fundamentally unknowable..