The Sound of Silence

Spiritual leader, Baba Ram Dass, was on a ten-day silent retreat. He had a roommate, someone he didn’t know, who neatly folded the corners of his bedsheets every day and laid out his clothes. Ram Dass didn’t tidy up anything, he felt like a slob and he began to think that the other man must hate him. He was so upset he could hardly concentrate when he was meditating. He felt that he was being judged. He was so sure, that after a few days, he began to hate his roommate for hating him.

When the retreat was over and they were getting ready to leave, the roommate said, “I can’t tell you what an honor it’s been to share a room with you.”

“What a waste of ten days,” Ram Dass said. “I was convinced that this man hated me. I was filled with negativity and self-loathing when I could have used my energy to become enlightened.”

While silence has great benefits, spiritually and emotionally, it’s also a ready place to breed paranoia. Our world is so loud, there is so much coming at us from every direction, we have to practice being quiet and listening. We have to learn to go inside, be vulnerable and hear our own voice. That’s often a challenge because when we’re honest with ourselves about how we really feel, we may not like what we find. That leads us to the next lesson – learning to accept who we truly are without judgment or self-loathing. Without making excuses. Without trying to fix ourselves. It’s a tall order. Once again, it takes practice. We aren’t used to shutting up and listening without forming what we want to say next.

It's easy to hide behind our words. I know a man who is kind and compassionate, but from the moment we get together to the moment we part, he talks. The silence is so uncomfortable for him, he tells stories about his past. He talks about how he wishes he could live his life differently. He talks about what he wants for his future. He apologizes to me for things I didn’t even know he did. If I want to add anything to the conversation, I have to interrupt him which I don’t like to do. And the kicker is that he goes into intermittent accolades about how great I am, which strokes my ego and at the same time, makes it hard for me to be myself. I feel like I have to live up to his image of me. Being with him becomes so tedious, when I leave, even though I care about him, I feel exhausted and unseen. I feel empty.

I once went on a three-day Sufi retreat. I tricked myself. I hadn’t read the description and I didn’t know what was in store for me until I arrived and one of the facilitators whispered in my ear, “This is a silent retreat.” I was stunned and upset as she wordlessly pointed out the dining hall, the meditation room and where I’d be sleeping. I didn’t think I could do it, but I was surprised to find out that as the hours and the days passed, I began to feel more connected to myself and more comfortable with the silence. We all ate together, we sat in meditation together and we were polite and unhurried. It was a new way of being with people and it felt good.

When the retreat was finished and we began speaking again, we lined up for our last lunch. We exchanged numbers, we were friendly and pleasant until someone cut the lunch line. Someone began talking in a loud, annoying voice, asking inappropriate questions, and someone else rushed to her car so she could get to a meeting on time. The spell was broken.

Like Ram Dass, it’s easy to fantasize what someone else is thinking of us. It’s easy to decide what we like and don’t like about the other person’s point of view, even though we don’t know what it is. In my writing classes, I encourage my students to stop trying to write. Fancy words and overbearing descriptions make our pieces boring. I ask them to tell their stories on the page, simply and authentically, which makes the work interesting. It's much the same in talking with friends. When we speak constantly and try to be seen as intellectual or all knowing, we’re not interesting. Our words lose meaning, we sound arrogant, we lose the connection and we walk away feeling empty. When we speak candidly and to the point, when we allow the silences so we can think before we speak, we’re interesting, we become connected and we walk away feeling full.

I walk three times a week with a friend. We laugh a great deal of the time and talk about our impressions of the people around us and the challenges that come up in our lives. As entertaining as it sounds, and it is entertaining, we also go into silences that nurture our souls. It feels as good to be quiet as it does to talk. There’s a peacefulness that shows up and a trust in our friendship. There’s comfort in the space between the words. It allows us to consider what we’re thinking and to avoid blurting out things that have no meaning in order to fill up the space.

Master composer Claude Debussey said, “Music is the space between the notes.” I think of it as an echo, an interval, a moment when we pause to listen to the musical notes that continue to waft through the air before we move on to the next ones. When we take the time to pay attention to what is going on between the words, we have the opportunity to listen and be heard, the things that human beings need and desire.