Silence

Last week, my housemates and I attended our JVC silent retreat in the rolling hills of Los Altos, California. It was the first JVC retreat that I have left actually feeling fully rested, and it was by far the most meaningful. Even those who originally dreaded three days without talking ended up enjoying it. I would recommend it for everyone. I have included three quotes by the twentieth century social critic, writer and mystic Thomas Merton. The Trappist monk wrote a lot about silence (and devoted at least one entire book to it, Thoughts in Solitude). Merton has a way with words, and I have chosen these passages because they represent, and perhaps confirm, some of what I experienced last week.

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.

This last quote hits upon one of my major points of contemplation during the retreat: the illusion of the mundane. Silence came to be a way for me to recognize the beauty—in every sense of the word—in what I often write off as plain, boring, or normal. This blandness is something that I sometimes project onto my surroundings. I stop paying attention to my senses and I am no longer present and participating in the moment. And then I remember to relax and to just be.

Now that I am writing this, I can not help but think of the film American Beauty, and the main character’s closing monologue (replace mad with bored):

.. it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst ...

And then I remember ... to relax, and not try to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. Don't worry ... you will someday.