Page 80 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

transmission, according to the Vajrayana, is that of telepathic

communication, which of course takes place in silence. This is
the direct communication of mind with mind, without the
interposition of either the spoken or written word or the visual

sign or symbol. It is mind flashing, not signals but itself, directly
to another mind without any intermediary, without any medium

of transmission at all. It is the direct, immediate impingement of
mind on mind.

Now we should not think that silence is mere absence of sound.
When all sound dies away, — when the sound of the traffic in

the street or the creaking of chairs in the room, the sound of our
own breath and, even, the 'sound' of our thoughts, is utterly
stilled, — what is left is not just something negative or dead, not

just a vacuum. What is left is a living silence, as someone once
called it.

In this connection I remember the very great example of the
Indian sage and teacher Ramana Maharshi, who died in 1950. I

had the good fortune to be with him for some time, just about a
year before he died, and he perfectly exemplified this attitude.

He just sat there on a dais in the hall of the Ashram, on a kind of
settee with a tiger skin spread on it, and most of the time he said
just nothing at all. He had sat there for forty years, I think, and

though the hall was usually full of people, when you entered
there was a strangely vibrant quality to that silence. It quite

literally seemed as though the silence flowed from him. You
could almost see waves of silence flowing from him, flowing over
all those people, flowing into their hearts and minds and calming

them down. As you sat down yourself, you quite literally felt the

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