CULTIVATING SILENCE

CULTIVATING SILENCE

July 7, 2006

Dear friends,

I had a wonderful experience at Eastwest Bookstore on
Saturday July 01st. The talk and chant performance was
recorded on audio as well as video and we hope to make it
available to you soon through our web site. Asha and I went
to San Francisco for the Fourth of July celebrations, which
was quite wonderful. We live a hermitic lifestyle so it was
quite an experience to be with tens of thousands of people
but we loved it.

Coming up next is my retreat “Moving into silence” at the
Mercy Center in Auburn, CA. In the context of this
retreat, I want to address in this newsletter the effects
of noise pollution in our lives today. As I’ve stated in my
book, The Yoga of Sound, noise negatively affects human
health and well-being.

Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress,
high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost
productivity. Noise tells our body we are in a stressful
situation because humans, like most animals, are hardwired
to react to loud noise as a 'warning' of impending danger.
This is why we jump when we hear something loud and
unexpected. When we're around noise a lot, our bodies seem
to react by raising heart rate and blood pressure, and this
can cause hormonal changes. Over time, this can lead to
heart problems and other health problems.

There is no doubt that that we live and move about in
environments that are subject to noise. The low boom of
atrocious car stereo systems that vibrate our cells and
bones even if we have our car windows drawn up, many of our
machines such as lawn mowers and blowers, or the hums of
powerful generators in hotels, are all extremely invasive
to our bodies. These are all humanly produced sounds that
are having a destructive effect on our health and our
environment. There are many things you can do about this.
For instance, you can research and get involved with local
organizations that are working against noise pollution. Or
you or start your own lobbying group. Canada is perhaps
most knowledgeable about this situation than the U.S.
Please visit www.quiet.org for more information.

One way that we heal ourselves from noise is by and
nourishing ourselves with silence and it is toward this end
that I am offering the upcoming retreat. During this
extended weekend (Thursday through Sunday), we will explore
the nature of silence, both a concept as well as an
experience.

The meaning of silence is not evident from popular culture.
Western society, for the most part, does not really
understand silence the way the East does. Japan, for
instance, is a great example of an entire culture that
nurtures silence, except of course in places modeled on the
west, like Tokyo. Even the Bible does not address silence
in depth. I found only seven references to silence in the
New Testament. The Old Testament has much more but most of
the time they are negative references, such as, “to silence
someone”, which is to shut them up, or “put to silence”,
which is to kill. This negative association with silence is
what we inherit in modern Western society.

The East, on the other hand, has a profound understanding
of silence along with many techniques that show us how to
cultivate silence. In Yoga, the silence of the mind is most
valued, and today, we are fast realizing that understanding
silence may hold the key to improved health and well being
in ourselves and in our society. Patanjali, in his classic
Yoga Sutras, proclaims, “Yogas chitta vritti nirodhaha”. In
English, Yoga is the cessation of the disturbances of the
mind. We have trained our minds in such a way that like our
environments our minds are also generating so much “noise”.
How do we find the off switch?

Another byproduct of noise pollution is Attention Deficit
Disorder (ADD), which is a serious problem in America
today. Becoming silent allows us to listen with all of our
being and to attune ourselves to something deeper. In other
words, to become silent is to become receptive, to attune
ourselves to the Divine Presence, which is also a way of
reducing in ourselves those inner states of aggression that
are related to the ego. Silence is that condition of mind
that allows us to observe ourselves with equanimity. But
how to become silent?

Silence is our home yet to we are constantly moving “out”
of silence. How do we return to that silence? How do we
remain or live in that silence? How do we extend that
silence into our workplaces? How can we consciously live
out of that silence? How do we converse with others and
engage with others without losing touch with that silence?
How do we “think” and “reflect” and “imagine” within the
context of that silence?

I hope you can join me in exploring how the techniques of
chant and breath and movement can help us rediscover the
power of silence. Om.

Wishing you a marvelous summer,

In One Spirit,

Russill Paul

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