I come to a page and wait for the words. As they come and don’t I know that they come and don’t but I don’t know when or how or what. I only must not be pinned down by waiting. I must wait freely, largely, silently.
Silence is not what I think it is.
I can’t hear it. It comes mid-phrase on the bus at La Motte-Piquet Grenelle.
Silence is not where sound stops. It is where there is no sound.
Waiting freely
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
"Silence is not where sound stops. It is where there is no sound."
Is silence a "where", a place? Or a "when"?
Sure.
And not making them?
making concepts is allways very confirming?
“Silence is not where sound stops. It is where there is no sound.”
Yes, and liberation is not where the cycle of life and death stops. It is where there is no cycle of life and death.
If you don’t mind, I will get off my chest something which happened to me today.
A very Christian colleague came to me and started – again- about creationism, intelligent design, and the literal meaning of the Bible.
More precisely he wanted me to read Lee Strobel’s “The Case for a Creator”, a piece of propaganda for Christian apologetics.
He tells me he believes fossil evidence for the earth’s age is fraudulent.
He knows me.
He gets what he expects (and wants?), a couple of grumpy atheist slaps in the face.
I tell him that in the old days a night around the fire could be long and boring. And old people started telling fantastic stories about the origin of life and everything else they had absolutely no clue about. They were killing time.
And the stories they invented in the Middle East are as meaningless as the stories they invented in Greenland, Mexico or – indeed – in India. Having no clue is universal.
I read that some distant galaxies seem to be moving as if something outside our universe is pulling them.
Wow, something outside our universe? Scientists have absolutely no clue what that means.
We are like flees on an elephant. We wonder if there are more flees just like us on distant parts of the elephant. Some brilliant flees speculate about what an elephant is. Where it comes from. And now some idiots talk about something outside the elephant? Another elephant? A herd? Ha!
i close my eyes. listen. a bird sings. the car passes. kids yell on the street. i am. silence