Silence. The complete absence of sound. Yet, if one has never experienced sound, what to speak of its absence?
Language can oftentimes be that which frees us, and that which imprisons us. A philosophy teacher I once had in college said that we are stuck within a cage of language but we can reach through its bar and touch that that language could only ever glimpse at.
There are words I thought I understood by virtue of knowing a language only to encounter those and to be around those, and to enter into the outskirts of an entire world within our world where the meaning of a word or phrase is vastly different because of the way their particular causes and conditions have come together. How everything is shaped by it to degree that from within it, it can seem impossible to bridge that gap.
I have been studying ASL (American Sign Language) informally and (when I can) with a deaf center here in NYC and meeting and learning to communicate with those who are profoundly deaf and have been deaf since birth has shifted and drastically altered my understanding of silence.
For years I often thought that if I was just quiet enough, if I could be in a silent enough room, if everything around me would just shut up, then by its own process BAM enlightenment.
But what about those who have never experienced sound, what does silence look like to them? What does being in a quiet room mean when a noisy room has no experiential meaning?
Silence for me is no longer only about finding a space that is physically absent of noise or generally quieter, but about not adding too much of my own mental neurosis into the equation. The noise that distracts us from our practice is only a distraction because we think it need not be there. But what if it's ok? What if the blaring music, the sirens, the yelling, the parties, the birds and streams and the symphonic cacophony that is happening all around us can just be that; something that is happening all around us?
A Deaf person sitting Zazen faces the same mind that I do. Realizing this, I have become less concerned with finding a quiet space, and more open to allowing any space to be what it is. The moment does not need to be different. I do not need to be different.
Just this, as it is.
(Some thoughts from a noisy mind)
Gassho
SAT/LAH
Language can oftentimes be that which frees us, and that which imprisons us. A philosophy teacher I once had in college said that we are stuck within a cage of language but we can reach through its bar and touch that that language could only ever glimpse at.
There are words I thought I understood by virtue of knowing a language only to encounter those and to be around those, and to enter into the outskirts of an entire world within our world where the meaning of a word or phrase is vastly different because of the way their particular causes and conditions have come together. How everything is shaped by it to degree that from within it, it can seem impossible to bridge that gap.
I have been studying ASL (American Sign Language) informally and (when I can) with a deaf center here in NYC and meeting and learning to communicate with those who are profoundly deaf and have been deaf since birth has shifted and drastically altered my understanding of silence.
For years I often thought that if I was just quiet enough, if I could be in a silent enough room, if everything around me would just shut up, then by its own process BAM enlightenment.
But what about those who have never experienced sound, what does silence look like to them? What does being in a quiet room mean when a noisy room has no experiential meaning?
Silence for me is no longer only about finding a space that is physically absent of noise or generally quieter, but about not adding too much of my own mental neurosis into the equation. The noise that distracts us from our practice is only a distraction because we think it need not be there. But what if it's ok? What if the blaring music, the sirens, the yelling, the parties, the birds and streams and the symphonic cacophony that is happening all around us can just be that; something that is happening all around us?
A Deaf person sitting Zazen faces the same mind that I do. Realizing this, I have become less concerned with finding a quiet space, and more open to allowing any space to be what it is. The moment does not need to be different. I do not need to be different.
Just this, as it is.
(Some thoughts from a noisy mind)
Gassho
SAT/LAH
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