5 minute read

About Silence And Listening

About Silence And Listening

Hearing is a natural phenomenon to normal ears.
Listening is a conscious phenomenon from a willing mind.
It is possible that with a normal ear I can hear but not listen.
And it is also possible that with a deaf ear I may not hear but listen.

When our mind is busy talking
or preparing to talk for our turn
We miss the point,
because we couldn’t listen.

We may not listen
when nothing is being said
And we may not listen
when people are shouting at us.

We can listen when
we are sensitive to the voiceless.
We may listen when
we are cooking assumptions in our minds.

We may not need a doctor to tell us,
what has happened to us
If we can listen directly from our body,
but do we have that mind, who listens?
All-time chattering mind can not listen.

We don’t need a judge to tell us that
we have done injustice
If we can listen directly
from our conscience
that this is the time to take punishment.
But are we that much honest?
A prejudiced mind cannot listen.

Can our surrounding talk to us?
Of course, without an instrument of speaking,
Tree, wall, street, plants, and objects
in our surroundings can talk to us!

How do we know they are talking?
Sound is the vibration in the medium
which we can hear all the time but
An insensitive mind misses listening.

When a frequency is too low
we are not able to pay attention to listen.
It is like listening to a mute person
We need to listen with a lot of patience

But this skill payback a lot
Because a surrounding
which is tongueless
Always vibrates the Truth
And this helps us knowing our truth as well.

If we can tune to the objects of the surrounding
then we can listen to the truth from
the food on our plate
the Moorthi at Pooja alter
the Photo on the wall
the Objects in the room
the Tree on the way and
From the flower in a garden.

A sound can be voice or music or noise
But, what is the difference among all these?

Voice belongs to life.
Music belongs to instruments and nature.
And noise is multiple voices and music
get mixed up and humans not able to make sense.

Voice and music makes sense only
When it is coming from the silence
But when voice and music is coming
with another voice and music
then it is noise and not music!
You cannot enjoy that longer.

The sound which comes to our ear
Which is created by public festivals or prayers,
May be music or noise
It depends upon our state of mind or faith
For some, it is pleasing, and for
other it may be entertaining or
and for the rest, it may be paining.

Have you spent some night or day
In a forest or near a forest?
All the insets and birds are talking aloud
In a rhythmic way
We cannot understand the voice
but we enjoy the rhythm.

Have you ever sat under the tree
When slow air is flowing?
There is a sound from the leaves of the tree
This is a music of nature
We may not understand but we enjoy that.

Have you ever sat at the bank of a slow-flowing river?
There is a sound of water,
lives in the water jumping on the surface
and creating a music
And it soothes our mind

Have you ever thought
Who is the mother of the sound?

What did you say?
The object which is making a sound?
oh, then you missed the point.
It comes from silence!

More the silence better the sound
Between the silence, there is a small sound
we notice that which is between silence
And miss that in which sound is packed.
Silence is omnipresent,
It does not live in the sound
Sound lives in silence

Can you listen when you keep speaking?
The more you speak less you listen.

So, you listen when there is silence.
The silence of a mind is called peace.
The silence of an environment which we enjoy
is called the rhythm and beat of nature.
A rhythm of flowing air, chirping birds,
running water, and dancing fire.

Between two sounds in the surrounding
Between two thoughts in the mind
There is silence.
In fact, this silence is so universal that
We can say that between the two intervals of silences
there is a spike of sound and spike of thought.

Without listening to anything
from the surrounding
Without listening to any sound
from your own mind
Can you listen to a possibility
of music in the silence?

Silence is mother of Sound,
It is like darkness.
From silence all sound takes shape.
Frequency is the shape of the sound.

From darkness even light takes shape.
Frequency is the shape of light.
And in the presence of light
objects in their shapes are visible

Sound can be identified only
when it displaces the silence
Light can be praised only
when it displaces darkness
Without darkness and silence,
what is light and what is sound?

What is that which is all pervasive in existence?
Even present at the place
where the light of the sun
can’t reach in the sky.
And no air exists?
It is darkness and silence.

What is that on the back of which
light and sound play like a child?
It is mother who is dark, Kaali
It is father who is silence, Shiva

Our non stop talking and
showing off to others,
Make us sick to ourselves
and to others around us.

Thus take a rest while
keeping body on the lap of Kaali
And head on the lap of Shiva.

Have you ever thought
In the night when you get extremely tired
and fall on the bed.
What is that which picks you immediately
from your body
and takes you to a no man’s land
And in the morning
drop you back again in your body?

Just after waking up
From a deep sleep
someday ask yourself
where were you two minutes back?

And in answer don’t refer
to the body and say I was here on the bed
but refer to one who enjoyed
the travel to noman’s land
In silence and darkness

O Pratibmba, one who could listen
and enjoy the music of silence
Can communicate with unmanifest
Can communicate with unfolded time
Can know the formless cause of creation.

Hari Om Tat Sat
Your Truly Hari