Page 81 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

Silence flowing over you, calming and quieting you down,

washing away all your thoughts. I am not speaking poetically, or
imaginatively: you felt it quite literally. You felt it as a sort of
positive wavelike power flowing over you all the time. This was

the silence — the real silence, the true silence — that Ramana
Maharshi so beautifully exemplified.

But silence of this quality is only too rare. Even ordinary silence,
the lowest form of silence, is only too rare in modern life.

Certainly in most of our lives there is far too much noise, and
usually far too much talking. By talking, I do not mean real

communication through speech, but mere verbalization, i.e. that
multiplication of words without too much meaning which one
modern Indian teacher called — rather crudely perhaps, but

rather effectively — 'lingual diarhoea'. One cannot help thinking
that speech, which is so precious and so wonderful, so expressive

and such a treasure, should be something exceptional; at least
something, like eating, that you do sometimes, after thought and
preparation, and not, as is usually the case, the other way round,

with speech the rule and silence and exception.

But perhaps there is hope for us all, as there was for the young
Macaulay, about whom the great wit Sydney Smith — I think it
was — remarked, 'Macaulay is improving. He has flashes of

silence.' Most of us are in this sort of position. Maybe we are
improving; maybe we do have, occasionally, even quite brilliant

flashes of silence. We should therefore perhaps try to make
more time for silence in our lives: make more time just to be
quiet, just to be alone, by ourselves. Unless we do this from time

to time, say at least for an hour or two every day, we shall find
the practice of meditation rather difficult.

81