Buddha--on Silence

Alex,

You have a gift for being silent. Because of your silence, others seek you out for your advice. Today, I am going to try to imitate your quietness, so that I won't feel out of sorts. Today, I will listen more and talk less.

Love u mostest!
Mom

This was copied from the spirituality today website:

TRUTH AND SILENCE

In the stories and discourses attributed to Buddha, one can clearly see a close link between Truth and Silence. Wherever Truth is mentioned in reference to Buddha it is always said in relation to Silence. In fact, popular Buddhist religious tradition attests that whenever someone asked Buddha to explain the Truth, he invariably answered by Silence. Thus he gave a new and deep significance to both Truth and Silence. His silence was not a mere absence of speech or words. Buddha's silence was eloquent! It was so blissful and ecstatic that it always provided the perfect answer to those akin to the philosopher in the above anecdote who sincerely sought for the Truth.

For Buddha, Silence as the inevitable path that leads to the Truth is not distinct from the Truth itself. That is, as the way to the Truth, Silence already contains the reality of the Truth. They are two aspects of the same reality.(6) It is no wonder that even in Christian tradition silence is spoken of as the language of God.7 In Christian terms, we may say that for Buddha, Silence is the sacrament of the Truth.

Satya, the word translated "truth" in English, is one of the oldest words in the Indian religious heritage. It too has a wealth of meanings. Derived from the root sat, meaning "being," "existence," "pure," "holy," "perfect;"(8) etc., satya signifies the Truth in all its unlimited perfection and plenitude. As the ground of all existence, satya can only be experienced through the medium of Silence. It cannot be expressed. The moment one tries to express it, one runs the danger of falsifying it, of rendering it asatya, "untruth." The fountain of Silence is the sole medium that is capable of delivering the Truth.

Buddha did not communicate any knowledge with his Silence, but he nevertheless communed with seekers of the Truth. He did not offer them a part of his knowledge, but imparted to them an aspect of his being. He used neither words nor the wordless (signs and gestures). Rather, the language he used was Silence in the sense of an effulgent mauna. That is why even a philosopher who counted rational power as the sole source of true knowledge could accept the failure of logic and reason and surrender to Buddha, asking him for the Truth in a medium that does not involve words and the wordless. Perhaps the experience disclosed to the philosopher both the poverty of words and concepts and the paucity of wordlessness, thereby motivating him to choose a medium that transcends them.

Buddha's Silence was not wordlessness or noiselessness. It had a transforming power, permeating and filling the atmosphere around him with such intensity that people seated at his presence experienced "the ineffable and the inexplicable." His Silence had no movement, yet people around him moved closer to the Truth just by being in his presence, permeated and filled by the effulgence of his joyous stillness. His Silence was contagious. It was like the unseen powers of a magnetic field or the invisible sound waves that travel in the atmosphere.

The close affinity that is said to enjoin Truth with Silence is not uncommon in the mystical traditions of other religions including Christianity. Whether it be in the Sufism of Islam or in the Hasidim of Judaism, silence is always referred to as the prerequisite for an interior experience of the divine. Silence is often eulogized as the language of the heart. Buddha's Silence reveals to us the nature and significance of an ideal form of silence. This becomes more evident when we contrast the mauna with our ordinary experience of silence.