A Meditation On Noise And Silence

Passive watchfulness gathers undirected attention. There was hardly a man-made noise as I listened with delight at streamside to the gently flowing current and various birds. An hour passed quickly, almost imperceptibly.

Meditation is a phenomenon, not a method of system. It occurs when goal-less, effortless attentiveness to the outer movement of nature and inner movement of thought yields spontaneous stillness of mind.

Just as it was beginning however, someone started up a tree shredder on the other side of the hedge across the creek. The noise of leaf blowers and tree shredders assault not only the ears but the entire body.

Naturally I reacted, first with a physical jolt, then with anger. But the timing was so obvious, and such things happen so often while meditating in the park or backyard, that it’s beyond coincidence.

Since people don’t deliberately start up tree shredders or generators when I take a meditation in the park or backyard to annoy me, what is going on?

Is there a metaphysical movement of the darkness in human consciousness? That is, is there collective darkness, plus intentionality, of which the individual conduit is unaware?

Disturbingly, yes. But we cannot avoid darkness anymore than we can avoid noise. One has to meet both as they arise, inwardly and outwardly, and allow daily space for healing silence to be.

The sounds of nature and noises of man hold tremendous meaning, if one knows how to listen. Normally, we react with recognition, annoyance or indifference to sounds and noises. People living next to railroad tracks or freeways become inured to the extreme noise, even though it affects the health of the body.

The human being requires regular periods of stillness and silence. After all, for thousands of years before the Agricultural Revolution humans dwelled amidst the sounds and silences of nature. Much more importantly however, silence is the essence of the universe.

Acoustically speaking, the ‘Big Bang’ is the greatest misnomer. There are no sounds in the vacuum of space, and there was no explosion in any case. The universe was not created at some point and is winding down or speeding up like a comic clock, but is being continuously re-created from infinite depths of silence.

This background silence is synonymous with the ground, and with death, the everlastingly mysterious source of all energy and matter in the universe from the beginning to its perpetual recapitulation in the present.

And the human being communes with this inseparable ground of death, creation, love and God with the complete silence of thought.

It’s strange how the evolutionary cognitive development – symbolic thought — that gave us the neural capacity for conscious communion with the sacred, has become a tremendous impediment to realization of cosmic intent.

Being at one with cosmic silence is the highest capacity of the human being. To the extent that we only hear the noise of man however, outwardly and inwardly, we are incapable of silent being.

I live where the din of freeway traffic varies according to weather conditions and time of day. Sometimes the traffic din is overwhelming; sometimes I can’t hear it at all. The freeway din is the noise of human consciousness made manifest.

But the thing about listening to one’s reactions to man-made noise – generators, leaf blowers, motorcycles, freeway din, etc. – is that it makes silence that much sweeter and more vital.

When thought spontaneously ceases with intense, non-directed attention to ugliness and beauty, to noise and stillness, one enters the cosmic womb of silence.

The self-made darkness dominating human consciousness does not want us to live in harmony with the immanent sacredness that pervades nature and the cosmos. But ordinary human beings can face and go beyond man’s self-made darkness.

Though a meditative state was beginning as the tree shredder started grinding branches into wood chips, I took it in stride after the initial reactions of shock and anger. I didn’t get up and leave, but remained with conditioned and emotional reactions, as I had done during the previous hour of salubrious silence.

There was a hint of fear, I admit, and the question, “why?” To my surprise however, the mind was not jolted out of a meditative state, but remained calm and curious.

Suddenly the shredder stopped. The external silence returned, and silence deepened inwardly. The duality between the external and internal ceased to exist. A small, white-headed tree climber flew up and circled the beech tree in front of me. There was an explosion of affection.

Martin LeFevre
Lefevremartin77@gmail

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