Once, Gautama Buddha was walking to another town with a few of his chosen followers. On the way, they came across a river with no much water flowing. They stopped there and Gautama Buddha asked one of his disciples, to bring some water for him drink. When the disciple reached the river, a bullock cart had begun crossing the river; the water soon became muddy and turbid. The disciple returned without water and told Gautama Buddha what happened. After about half an hour, the disciple once again went back to the river. This time he found that the river had absolutely clear flowing water in it; all the mud had settled down. Without hesitation he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.
Buddha looked at the water, and then he looked up at the disciple and said, “See what you did to make the water clean. You let it be ... and the mud settled down on its own – and you got clear water... Your mind is also like that. When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time. All the disturbances will settle down on its own. You don’t have to put in any effort to calm it down. It will happen on itself. It is effortless.” We see that Buddha emphasises on the effortlessness of the process. Having 'peace of mind' is not at all a strenuous job; it is truly an effortless process. When there is peace inside you, it naturally oozes outwards filling every space in and around. The whole environment begins feeling the ripples of that peace.
A few weeks back, I got a mail forwarding on silence that begins with a comment from Blaise Pascal which said, ‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ Pascal was both a catholic philosopher and a mathematician. With silence aside, he could play better in distinctive areas. A few moments of stillness in life are definitely panacea to most of the problems we face in our everyday lives. The text continued saying that if you’re content to sit alone quietly, you will be released from the rule of impulses; instead, you come to a stage in which you need nothing else. In my opinion, without silence, there is no music; without space there is no picture; without emptiness within, there is no realisation. Living in a house simply means that we utilise the space in it. But I am for the definition that ‘silence is total communication’. Silence is the den of fierce creativity, for me.
Anyway, how many of us have ever tried to sit alone in silence for a few minutes? It definitely is a habit to be seriously cultivated. You can practice silence, inner and outer or spiritual and physical, while your morning coffee is brewing or when you are roaming through your compound garden. Slowly you will learn to listen to your thoughts and communicate with your own self. As you learn to watch yourself, you learn to be contented in stillness. Celebrating silence is an art. Just like an all time chocolate, it is a sweet healing cake for the spirit. As you grow, an empty room might turn a luxury. Being alone is a pleasure we too often neglect. Without TV and internet, in harmonising void moments with the emptiness of nature, we find ourselves in queue with the happiest creations in the universe. Can you practice being alone, being still, being quiet? Just a little at first, then perhaps a bit more. In silence, nobody craves for anything except more of the same.
