Sound of silence. Is silence another sound?

The song.

Sound of silence.

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

I have listened to both songs. Yet again for the 100th time. Simon and Gurfinkel's the older version is equally dealing to listen. Ironically when I heard the above lyrics for the first time, I could not think it's a little stupid. Singing a song is the opposite of being silent. If you love the deity of silence, you should not disturb it with a song. Even if it is to praise the God of silence. But there is a deeper truth hidden behind apparently disturbing song about silence. Which we are going to uncover here.

Silence: https://unsplash.com/@louishansel

What's wrong singing a song about silence?

I was wrong when I say, singing a song about silence is going to disturb it. Infact, you felt it right? Even when the silence in your room is disturbed by the sound of the song, still you will feel the silence when you hear the song. I am sure majority of us do. That's why the 2015 version of the song has 1B views on YouTube. Why this paradox happens?

What is silence? Is it another sound?

Short answer to this is silence is a feeling. I will explain this in detail. Generally, silence means absence of sounds. We assume this is something external. Forgetting the observer. We assume that the silence is in the environment. An environment which makes no disturbances in the air, is surely silent. Like inside of a Chapel. But obviously silence doesn't exist without the observer. Someone needs to be there to listen to the absence of sounds. Some consciousness. And this basically answers above problem. In fact, we feel the silence Even in the absence of it, when we hear a song about silence. Only because it is mental. We go back in our minds down the memory lane to places where there has been silence. So even when the ear drums are constantly bombarded with music, paradoxically mind tries to be silent because of the lyrics of the song reminds of this. Isn't it amazing?

There seem some more things we can learn about mindfulness from this song. If you follow above argument, you know how a person can be calm even in a chaotic environment. As the inner peace and silence doesn't depend on what happens at the level of the ears. You may be listening to music, you may be listening to a sermon, someone may be blaming you. Yet if you focus on keeping the silence you can do this.

Observing in Silence: https://unsplash.com/@malidesha

Is silence nothingness?

Next important fact is silence itself is a thing. Silence is the side effect of the absence of the noise. So inherently it is defined and related to the noise. Infact, if there is no noise in the world, we would never know a silence exist or not. Silence would not be a "thing" in a world without noise. This is why we can say the silence is different from nothingness. Nothingness which I have explained in my previous article is outside of our imagination. It is a thing that is even not there. Nothingness is the absence of everything including silence and things created by our mind, is the closest we can get.

By this time you should have the question, why this is important?

I can answer this by saying, because it helps us in mindfulness. Which is the art of nonjudgmental existence. While practicing mindfulness, if you observe silence, it is going to create profound experiences for you. And just like music, just like food, your mind is going to crave this experience day after day. And as our objective of mindfulness is to understand truth about ourselves, I see this as a danger. Identifying silence as another thing helps me be non-judgmental. As at this point mind would know, that it too will be replaced by another object. Then there would be no loss. I do not want you to be stuck in silence. But to observe the valuelessness of it in mindfulness when it is there.