prose

“The Sound of Silence”

An edited excerpt from oral teachings given by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche during the Bardo Retreat at Serenity Ridge, April, 2003.

When you find a moment of silence, you can see it in two ways. One way is to see what is not there. You may say, “The beautiful music is not there anymore” or, “Someone I love to talk to is not talking anymore.” You see it here as an absence rather than recognizing what silence itself is.

However, you can also look at silence in a different way. When you find a silent moment, don't think of it as the absence of all those sounds but rather, realize that the silence itself is an open space where pure sound, knowledge, teaching, or anything can appear. You recognize the silence in this way as complete, clear and open. You recognize silence as the potential for manifesting all the speech of enlightened beings, and not only enlightened beings, all beings. You recognize silence as full of power. You recognize it as full of joy.

When you open that door to what silence itself is, you feel more and more of the joy and power in it. It's a very opening experience. Silence is not the absence of something. It's not dead. It's full of energy and it's full of joy.

When you walk into a room and there is a sign: “Silence Please” that is not what we are talking about here. That sign just means “Hush up!” or “Don't make noise!” That sign implies that in that room we are bothered by sound and we would enjoy an absence of sound. It doesn't foster an insight or recognition of the silence itself. It is not saying that there is a great thing inside the silence, nor is it encouraging you to discover that. This difference in perspective is as huge a difference as that of earth and sky. Or, probably like the difference between sutra and dzogchen. One who is practicing sutra may try to avoid sound by going up into the mountains. But a dzogchenpa might go up into the mountains and visit the same silent place not to avoid sound, but rather to discover the inside of silence, the life in silence, the recognition in the silence. I don't mean that sutra will not do that, but the original intention is very different.

A little later, Rinpoche emphasized:

There is a very important distinction between one's being aware of the silence and just being silent. Silence is always there. The nature of mind is always there. When you're awake, it's there; when you're asleep it's there; when you're confused, it's there; when you're happy, excited, jumping, it's there. It is always there. We are not talking about whether the presence of your awareness is there or not, we are talking about your awareness of that presence. Right? Being aware of what it is is more important than knowing something is there.