Monastics should diligently cultivate silence at all times.
— St. Benedict, Rule.
It is clear that silence is not just a gift and a blessing. Rather, it is the underpinning sense of natural being that is present always, although we may forget it, look away, or imagine that it has gone. But even noise, distraction, and all activity, are happening within it. Not over it. Not in place of it.
Whilst most of us here may not be monastics, a few of us might be described as new monastics, householders committed to a contemplative life, finding nurturing wisdom through attention to and the cultivation of silence amidst our worldly lives.
When we turn our attention to this silent ground of being, in which all arises, and to which all returns, we are resonating with the vibration of presence, our natural state.
Silence is easily mistaken for the absence of things — sound, movement, presence. But silence is presence. Silence is the ground of being, in which all things live, move and have their being. Silence is what remains when we take away all sense of definition, naming, identity, all aspects of ourselves that cloud the world, drowning it out in our noise.
Let us make time and space in our lives for the cultivation of silence, pausing to sit with, in, and as the silence.
Let us open and close our day with it. From this nourishing ground of being, let us live our life fully.
Image: from the cover of Dialogues with Silence by Thomas Merton.
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