The Quest For Absolute Silence

[frjames]

Zero Decibel: The Quest For Absolute Silence by Georg M. Foy:

Perfect silence.
No noise. No sound. No nothing.
That was when I thought of the farmhouse.
It's an old, dark house...The farm lies deep in the hills of the Bershires, far from any roads.
It's the dead of night, at midwinter. The air is frozen and void of wind. Farmhouse, meadows,
and woods surrounding are buried in a quilt of snow so deep that everything alive has chosen
not to fight, but burrow instead below the while insulation and go to sleep. All is so cold and silent,
on that farm in my mind, that the stars, shining against a sky the color of tarnished lapis,
seem to give off a vibration that is not sound and not light but something in between--something
that is perhaps the essence of silence."

I heard the author interviewed on NPR (National Public Radio) and the subject of meditation came up
and someone brought up that in transcendental mediation a type of silence can be found.

Gasho,

James.

[Jundo]

Re: The Quest For Absolute Silence

In our practice, sometimes we hear silence in silence ... sometimes we hear silence in/as/through the greatest noise.

Someone wrote me today to ask why we need sit if "All of life is Zazen and the City Streets a Zendo".

The answer is pretty simple, I feel.

We so rarely sit truly still, truly allowing and dropping all judgments and separation. That's why. It is easier to taste that stillness while sitting still, balance while sitting in balance, silence in a quiet room.

However, if we cannot then rise up from the Zafu and taste with our bones that stillness and silence amid the movement and chaos and disturbance ... and if we need to run always to a quiet place to find the quiet ... then it is not true Stillness and Silence.

Gassho, J

[Ryumon]

Re: The Quest For Absolute Silence

There's no such thing as absolute silence. At best, meditation can allow you to let sounds drop away, but they remain. You just stop attending to them.