Sermon 10/19/08
Katha Upanishad

What the Silence Taught Me
Tom Lawson

The signs were all around this past August as I pulled into the parking lot of the Franciscan Retreat in Danville: “Retreat in progress—Please respect the silence.” For the next two days our group of sixty moved in an ocean of silence, punctuated by four sessions where Fr. Cyprian Consiglio, a Camaldolese monk, provided teaching and original music on the theme on the unity of spirit, soul, and body. What I want to emphasize today is not so much the thought behind the process but how the silence affected me, and can affect all of us.

Even in the rural splendor of Carmel Valley silence is sometimes hard to come by. At times it seems that silence is alien to our culture. Some will do anything to avoid it. This message actually has a subtitle. It is “How can you hear God speaking when you won’t shut up?” And it’s true, even our times of worship do not include enough time for silent reflection, not to mention our daily lives. We must actually fight to carve out brief uninterrupted periods where we can confront the core of our being, to be in a state of pure attention, pure existence, pure connectedness. To some this may seem boring and a waste of time, but deep down they are probably afraid to be alone. To contemplate the depths of being is actually a fascinating process.

What is happening here? It is an interiorization of outward experience. For example, how did we react to the music today? Paul Hindemith said that the outward music is interiorized, so we should be careful of what we listen to. It is all, as Ram Dass says, grist for the mill, as the sum total of life impressions and experience are ground up in reflection. We need this process. It is the only way that we can move beyond the insanity of our neurotic, divided existence. No matter how powerful our thought processes, we cannot think our way out of it—no one can. We are haunted and obsessed by mental impressions. Also, our minds suffer from too much information, and in the future this information overload will only increase. Silence holds the key to making sense of it all. The Katha Upanishad that Barb read from explains it, and it is why Christian congregations can benefit from the wisdom of other traditions, as we do here. Those Ancient seers discovered the progression from the external to the interior. In it, an inner knowledge is awakened, an “intelligence of the intelligence.” In Sanskrit it is buddhi (from where the word Buddha) comes from. We move from the self with a small “s” to the Great Self, or Mahat, Self with a capital “S.” This is actually the way it appears in English translations of the Hindu scriptures. During the retreat I felt not only more in touch with who I was, my capital “S” Self , but with others around me.

How can the silence help me? First, it has the potential to normalize my sometimes warring relations with those around me. As if from a well, a stream of gentleness and compassion seems to be set in motion. There is a kindness that is natural and easy to express, a joy in encountering others, as well as an acceptance of them as whole people, not just as functionaries to meet my needs. I see myself in them.

Second, my small “s” self, being surrounded by this great ocean, assumes a sense of humility, which is truly the key to enter higher things. Think of the Mahatmas of our age, Ghandi, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and Albert Schweitzer, who not only transformed their beings in the quest for a higher purpose but who drew meaning and satisfaction from it to the point that they could not, and would not, turn back.

Third, my life acquires a newness, like that of the endless dawn described in Thoreau’s quotation in our bulletin.¹ This is the eternal ground, the rebirth alluded to in holy scriptures, an existence which goes beyond both the joy and the pain of my temporal situation. It is hope itself, and I know it to be real because it is within the reach of my intuition.

But what about the condition of our world? World cultures, political systems, and religions will never simply cease to exist, nor should they. But nations, religions and cultures, influenced by groups of committed individuals who are united even though they may not know each other, can move through silent contemplation to that deep, healing relationship which has the potential to spread like ripples on a pond to break down the boundaries as we know them. The late Bede Griffiths, a Christian monk who lived as a Hindu among Hindus and came as close as anyone to reconciling the two religions, envisioned a world society of meditators who would transcend the boundaries of their respective religious cultures—in fact, this organization has already been formed and is attracting worldwide participation.

The change we seek cannot be accomplished in our present generation—we can only begin the process. It takes time for a society to overcome being trapped by its past impressions, which only those younger and not conditioned by the past can do. But we can make a start. If you don’t believe me, look at how our thinking on race relations has evolved since the Civil Rights movement. The seeds were sown and have flourished so that, as a society, we really think differently toward each other. And, ultimately, I believe that this is the key to peace in the Mideast, as Robert Hunter’s poem says, “Let’s meet as friends, the Flower of Islam, the Fruit of Abraham.”

And so, we begin with silence. As I returned home from the retreat, I found myself drawn to those times of silence and aloneness. I see them as not only beneficial, but necessary, and I commend this practice to you. It is truly the great discovery. It is what religion—all religion—is about, beyond any creed, doctrine or litany. None of those have any power to save or transform us. It only happens when we confront the real. To illustrate my point, I will close with an anonymous passage from a brochure I picked up in a bookstore containing the instruction, “Definitely pass this on” :

“Water is quite different from the word water. The word bread is different than the real bread. The soul within each and every one of us is definitely different and more than the word soul. Can you be totally satisfied with these words or do you desire the real thing? Can you get any real benefits from the words? What would you know of bread or water if you had not tasted or experienced either of them? And what will you ever know about the soul without personally contacting and experiencing it?”