As a great admirer of silence, I have only gratitude towards it. This is yet another discussion on power of silence. If you admire the silence just like me, following articles would help. Lately I find that it does not matter what Noice is out there, a mind at peace is just a mind at peace when you understand the fundamental nature of sound. Hence in this article we will focus on understanding sound. Because of the duality of the nature, silence exists only because there is sound.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. - Aldous Huxley
Music is not Noice. If you know something about spectrums of nature, you will understand the sounds we hear also come in spectrum. We can reorder them in pitch, and loudness or even according to our preference to hear them. Obviously, the spectrum of sounds with our values in it is more important. If I ask you the question What is the most preferable sound you want to hear, immediately something would come to your mind. Maybe a song which you heard a long time ago, within a specific context and personally affected you. Or it may be a sound of a someone dearest to you, who is no longer there. We do have preference to sounds. For someone like me, the silence also takes some important preference over the music or Noice. Of course, nobody would want to hear the sound of a metal crusher, or pigs in a farm. But the idea of this thought experiment is to look at the full spectrum at a glance. So that we get the big picture. (This intuition comes from Charlie Chaplin who said, life is a tragedy when close up, but a comedy in a long shot)
Once you know the spectrum of sound, at one end silence, and at the other end loud, Noice, everything else is in between. And you can see, the sounds are sounds, the values are a separate spectrum. Which is unique for yourself. Hence, when you hear a sound, it is wrong to attribute the values are inherently in the sound. Of course this goes with the silence as well. A world with people, liking music and some others liking, silence makes a total sense. Some, loving Jazz while others loving folk music, when another just want to admire a painting, in silence in a museum, makes a total sense too. There is no argument over the other, as sounds are a different spectrum than the spectrum of values of sounds. Hence, If I say silence is better than music, that is wrong. For mindfulness and meditation, it does not matter. And it should not matter.
It is a so unique piece of wisdom to see the sounds as a mental object. It made me realize; I have been wrong in wanting silence. It did make me uneasy when there is no silence, which is most of the time of the day. Constant chatter of people haunted me until I knew, silence is just the other side of the Noice, but it is just a same spectrum. Hence, it doesn't matter at all to the mindful listening as long as you are aware of it. Just like what you see is not what it is but who you are, what you hear is not what it is but who you are. Why should I be angry or upset over same thing which makes me aware of my being?
If you can see, my previous articles, I have written about the value of silence and importance of how to embrace it. But, now in this article I am writing about losing the value of the same silence. You may ask why? Answer is it is relative. Yes, in my spectrum of values silence is above everything, which gives me intuitions about life and living, hence, previous articles. But as you would also know the most valuable thing in the world is to know the valuelessness of things. Which will stop the rat race of wanting more. And silence is also a thing which I crave for.
I will end the article with the following quote.
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” -Seneca
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