Silence

 

 

There are two kinds of silences: one is that which you cultivate, the other is that which arrives. Your cultivated silence is nothing but repressed noise. You can sit silently, and if you sit long and you continue the practice for months and years together, slowly slowly you will become capable of repressing all noise inside. But still you will be sitting on a volcano -- it can erupt any moment, any small excuse will do. This is not real silence, this is just imposed silence.

 

This is what is happening all around the world. The people who try to meditate, the people who try to become silent, are only imposing a silence upon themselves. It can be imposed. You can have a layer of silence around yourself, but that is just deceiving yourself and nothing else. That layer is not going to help.

 

Unless silence arises from your very being, is not imposed from the without on the within but comes just the other way round -- it comes, wells up from the within towards the without, rises from the center towards the circumference...

 

That is a totally different phenomenon.

 

Lu-tsu said, "When the silence comes" -- remember, it is not brought, not forced, but when it comes -- "not a single thought arises." Then you are not sitting on a volcano. That's why my whole approach is in catharting your inner noise, throwing it out rather than cultivating silence.

 

People become very puzzled when they come to me for the first time. If they have been with some Buddhist Master, then they were doing vipassana, sitting, forcing themselves into a certain static posture. Why the static posture? -- because when the body is forced to remain in one posture, mind also is forced to remain in one posture.

 

Body and mind function together. Mind is the inner aspect of the body; it is a material phenomenon. It has nothing to do with your being. It is as much matter as your body, so if you do something with the body that automatically happens to the mind. Hence down the ages people have been cultivating postures -- sit in a lotus posture, force your body to be like a statue, a marble statue. If your body is REALLY still, forced, you will see your mind falls into a kind of silence, which is false, which is not true. He has just been forced to be silent by the body posture. You try it: just make the posture of anger with your fists, your face, your teeth; just go into the posture of anger and you will be surprised, you start feeling angry. That's what the actor does: he moves the body into the posture, and following it, mind comes in. [....]

 

Try it! If you are feeling sad, start running, go running around the block seven times, breathing deep breaths, in the sun, in the wind; and after seven rounds, stand and see whether your mind is the same. No, it can't be the same. The bodily change has changed the mind. The body chemistry changes the mind. Hence the yoga postures. They are all postures to force the mind into a certain pattern. That is not real silence.

 

The real silence has to be a silence that comes on its own. My suggestion is: don't force your body. Rather, dance, sing, move, run, jog, swim. Let the body have all kinds of movements so your mind also has all kinds of movements, and through all those kinds of inner movements, the mind starts catharting, releasing its poisons.

 

Shout, be angry, beat a pillow and you will be surprised -- after beating a pillow you feel very good. Something in the mind has been released. It does not matter whether you were beating your wife, your husband, or the pillow. The pillow will do perfectly as well as beating the wife or the husband, because the body does not know whom you are beating. Just the very posture of beating and the mind starts releasing its anger. Mind and body collaborate.

 

Start with catharsis, so that you become empty of all the rubbish that has been accumulating in you from your very childhood. You were angry but you could not be angry because the mother becomes mad if you become angry -- so you repressed it. You were angry, you wanted to shout, but you could not shout; rather, on the contrary, you smiled. ALL that is accumulated in you -- it has to be thrown out. And then wait... and a silence starts descending in you. That silence has a beauty of its own. It is totally different; its quality is different, its depth is different.

 

"When the silence comes, not a single thought arises"not that you force your thinking not to arise, not that you keep watch, not that you become very tight and you won't allow a single thought to pass. You are not struggling, you are in a let-go, but nothing arises. That is beautiful -- when no thought arises, when thoughts disappear of their own accord. Then you are utterly silent, and this silence is positive. The forced silence is negative. [....]

 

When you forget that you are looking inwards. If you remember that you are looking inward, that again is a thought and nothing else. First you were looking outward, now you are looking inward, but the ego is there. First it was extrovert, now it is introvert, but the ego is there. First you were looking at the trees, now you are looking at the thoughts. First you were looking at the objects, now you are looking at the subject, but the whole thing remains the same. You are still divided in two -- the looker and the looked upon, the observer and the observed, the subject and the object. The duality persists.

 

This is not real silence, because when there are two there is bound to be conflict. Two cannot be silent. When you are one then you are silent because there is no possibility of any conflict.

 

Allow silence to descend on you rather than forcing it. The forced silence is artificial, arbitrary.

 

That is one of the great changes that I am trying to make here with you, with my people. All the old methods are basically of enforcing something. My own understanding is: never enforce anything. Rather, throw out all junk that you have been carrying. Become more and more empty, become more roomy. Create a little more space in you, and in that space the silence comes. [....]

 

Just sit silently and try not to think of a monkey, and you will see; it is a simple experiment. Not one, but many monkeys will start coming, and they will make faces at you, and the more you push them away the more they will knock on your doors, and they will say, "We want to come in." And monkeys are not so polite: they may not even ask, they may simply jump in; you will be surrounded by monkeys and monkeys. The more you try to forget them the more they will be there, because to try to forget something is nothing but remembering it. It is another way of remembering. You cannot forget by making efforts.

 

When silence descends, then suddenly all entanglements disappear -- and without trace! They don't even leave a trace behind. You cannot believe that all that noise... where has it gone? You cannot believe that it ever existed in you. You cannot believe that it still exists in others.

 

-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 2, #9"