The Essence of Silence

The modern world is filled with noise. Most workers are overloaded by multiple, simultaneous streams of messages. Social life is experienced via overlapping channels of electronic activity leading to stress and exhaustion. In contrast, meditation practices invariably depend on silence, or at least the quieting of one’s mind and body. Silence is at the heart of such crucial peacemaking practices as deep listening, forgiveness, love and compassion. And yet many men fear lapses into silence and resist meditation as contrived and unnatural.

Women too sometimes react this way, but women in general are more articulate and skillful with words and the silent spaces between them, and so they are often more comfortable with meditation and silence generally. While we are all faithful listeners to what the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh has called “Radio NST” - Non-Stop Thinking - (Silence, 2015) men more aggressively depend on the constant noise to shield them from a fearful and unfamiliar reality.

But the essence of silence is largely unexplored and may be difficult to recognize for beginner meditation practitioners. Silence is key to arriving into the present moment, the much glamorized and probably over-rated key to mindfulness practice. But what is silence?

Silence is simply the lack of noise. External sounds include anything that surrounds us in daily life: wind whistling through the trees, birds chirping, building systems switching on and off, cars moving down the street. These are largely irrelevant to “silent” meditative practices. Much more important are internal sounds or noises stemming from mental formations: distractions, obsessions, worries, fears, anticipations, and all manner of non-stop thinking.

If you are new to meditative practice, try this simple exercise. Sitting in a relaxed position, close your eyes. What do you see? What do you hear? While experiences vary, most people report “seeing” manifestations of the sounds around them. Humans are vision-centric, and so even with eyes closed, we cling to what we think we “see.” Keeping your eyes closed, you will likely begin to notice a confusing jumble of internal sense impressions. These distractions will become “louder” the longer you keep your eyes closed, bringing many fearful thoughts and feelings to the surface.

If you performed this exercise you may have noticed that silence itself is mostly invisible, even perhaps beyond awareness. As beginners gain experience with meditation, most individuals become accustomed to their most common sense impressions, and begin to feel the freedom of non-reacting. Awareness of silence follows.

Ajahn Amaro’s insightful review of the “sound of silence” (Mindfulness, 2021), suggests that sound may be a useful alternative to breathing as a guide to mindfulness meditation. The sound to which he refers is “the continuous, subtle, high-pitched ringing tone in the background.” The tone, known as “nada” in Sanskrit, is discerned variously by different individuals, and some may not hear it at all. As Amaro points out, it is a variety of “white noise” upon which we may focus our attention.

The nada sound as a sense object has many advantages over breathing. It is continuous, unvarying and always available. For advanced practitioners, the tone becomes a nonjudgmental screen upon which to project our fears and joys. But even beginners may find it useful: when attention is focused on the sound, thoughts, memories, feelings and fears become lightened and seem to detach from the self.

Since the tone is both a sense impression and not of the self, it represents the selfless, transient nature of awareness and consciousness. The tone suggests that it was always present, and some think of it as the background sound of Creation, although there is no scientific support for this.

Medically, the tone may be a “phantom ring syndrome” which is common across the population, or it may be a sign of tinnitus typically related to aging. In the latter case, young people may have more trouble hearing the tone than older folks.

On a practical level, the tone may be something of a reward for quieting the mind, a joyful sensation of interbeing, and a soothing representation of impermanence. Somehow we sense the nada tone as ever-present and greater than the self. With practice, men may focus on the tone and experience significant soothing sensations, and eventually find their fearful thinking fall away.

Finally, for some individuals with neurological and related disorders that interfere with steady breathing, the nada tone may be a very useful sense object on which to build their mindfulness meditation practices. Many conditions disrupt the regularity of breath or interfere with the vocal cords, mixing breath with involuntary sub-vocal sounds. For many of these individuals, experiencing the steady background tone may be a very joyful experience, and an open invitation to mindfulness.