Sound Of Silence

Ajahn urges us to contemplate memories as present moment experiences. Underneath it lies in knowing, knowing the way things are rather than guessing or speculating or knowing about things. Now is the knowing. Allowing things to be the way they are allowing things to cease rather than trying to get rid of or follow things. Listening to the sound of the mind itself provides a calming and contemplative space.

Transcript

Beginning of a day,

Yesterday is a memory,

Memory something we remember in the present.

The past is a memory.

Really contemplate this,

So that memory is seen as an object,

Rather than getting all caught up into memory,

Absorbing into memories.

To see memory,

Remember something deliberately,

Some unpleasant thing that happened,

An unpleasant memory,

Or try to think of the most,

Recall the,

Try to remember the most wonderful thing that ever happened,

Or the most horrible,

But deliberate remembering.

You begin to see memory much more objectively than when you,

When it just kind of goes on in your mind without,

And you're just reacting to it.

Pleasant memories come and you're happy,

Unpleasant memories come and you're depressed.

That's how,

When mind just goes on and on and on with pleasant unpleasant memories.

When in investigation of Dhamma,

Looking into Dhamma,

Then we take things and examine the memory.

The worst thing that ever happened,

Or the best,

You deliberately remember it,

Just to note it as something that arises and ceases in the mind.

And tomorrow is the unknown.

When you don't know something,

What is your mind like?

When the mind goes blank because you don't know the answer.

What will happen tomorrow?

Blank.

Do you know that?

When the mind goes blank,

When there's nothing in it,

Stops the thinking,

Because the future is unknown.

You start speculating,

Imagining,

Well tomorrow this will happen,

That will happen,

But that is speculation,

Isn't it?

You're filling the emptiness with some ideas from the past,

Possibilities of just being caught in the momentum of habits,

So we assume that tomorrow all kinds of things will happen,

Because of the momentum of habitual behavior.

But now we're just looking at what happens in the present moment,

Here and now.

We don't know,

That's what you can honestly say about the future at this moment,

Is that you don't know.

There's not knowing of the future,

The future hasn't happened,

So you can't know it,

You can only know that you don't know.

There's still knowing,

Isn't there,

But knowing the way things are,

Rather than than guessing and speculating,

Knowing about things.

Now is there knowing?

The body's here,

There's this physical body made out of the solid element,

The water,

Fire and air.

It's a planetary body,

It belongs to the planet,

You have to feed it with the things that grow on the earth.

When it dies it goes back to the earth,

Fire,

Water and air elements.

It's under the force of gravity,

So it has weight,

It's substantial,

It has weight,

Follows the laws of nature,

Of the planetary forces.

And it's conscious,

There's consciousness,

So consciousness is what?

We're using this consciousness now as a reflection rather than just as a habit,

We're not just,

We're just not this conscious out of habit,

Just going from habitual consciousness,

We're actually looking,

Investigating,

Awakening to the nature of things,

Because being in this separate form gives us this opportunity.

Being born in this,

In a human form,

With sensory,

With sense organs,

Caught in a sensory world,

Sensory planet,

We can reflect on it,

Can study it,

We can examine it,

Investigate it.

Now,

While contemplating the breath,

There's a breathing of the body,

There's just the feelings of the body,

The sensations of weight,

Of touch,

Of pleasure,

Pain,

Heat and cold.

You can observe the,

Just the emotional feeling,

Just the sense of anguish or despair or expectation or hoping,

The kind of mood of the mind,

That which is present,

What you're kind of inclining toward,

There's a version,

There's fear.

Just abide with that,

With those feelings,

With the mood of the mind,

The way it is,

And feeling depressed or elated or anguished or sorrowful or doubtful or uncertain,

Frightened,

Greedy,

Confused,

Deluded,

Sleepy,

Dull,

Restless.

So that the openness of mind,

Embracing all these,

The moods that are in the mind,

By totally accepting them,

By noting just the feeling of it,

The mood of it,

That's encompassing the whole thing,

Allowing it to be the way it is,

So it can go away,

It can burn itself out,

It ceases in the mind,

Rather than trying to get rid of it or follow it.

I remember discovering this in Thailand,

Where I was going into a very kind of dreary state of mind,

Everything was just so kind of,

I was apathetic and depressed,

Everything just seemed so endlessly wearisome and dreary.

Living in Northeast Thailand,

It's so flat and hot,

Everything turns brown,

You're so innovating,

You can,

Midday,

You can hardly pick yourself up off the floor.

A kind of dreary apathy,

Depression,

Seemed to just hang,

Hang on the mind all the time.

Now all the attempts to kind of inspire and inspire the mind seemed to make it even worse.

I said the inspiration wasn't going to work anymore,

It's trying to get inspired.

And then just the total acceptance of the dreary,

Depressing feeling,

Rather than resisting and trying to get rid of it or get away from it,

Going right to it and totally accepting it,

Abiding with it,

Staying with it,

Being completely with that feeling,

Not indulging,

Not indulging in it,

Not believing in it,

But just totally accepting of it.

One felt a sense of relief,

Of one didn't have to run away or do something or get rid of something,

Or they wasn't taking it all personally or making it into a difficult problem or just sinking into apathy and kind of just wallowing in it.

There is this much more skillful embracing,

Encompassing total acceptance of it.

And it was completely bearable in itself when one totally accepted it.

And being impermanent,

Of course it goes,

So then it's gone.

But it goes because of its karmic nature,

Not because of my desire.

When it's time to go,

It's gone.

It reaches its end,

Its karmic force has ended,

Not because I wanted to go anymore,

But because I'm willing to let it be as it is,

So it can cease accordingly.

It's a different attitude,

Isn't it?

A wholly different attitude than the one,

The annihilating one,

The judgmental,

Impatient,

Critical thing going on in us.

I want to get rid of that,

I don't want it.

I know also when,

As you let go of just getting and stop reacting so much to conditions,

Getting caught in them,

You begin to be aware of the silence,

The natural silence of the mind,

The ringing,

Kind of ringing silence,

Like ringing in the ears.

It's always present,

Except it's not seldom ever noticed.

I like a high pitch of ringing,

Ringing sound,

Reverberating the sound of silence.

This is natural and it's continuous,

It's constant,

It's like the background of everything.

Unlike the breath,

The breath arises and ceases,

But the sound of silence is continuous,

Doesn't arise and cease,

Whether you pay attention to it or not something else,

Your attention to it comes and goes.

Now when you're with that sound of silence,

The ringing sound,

Then your mind is very open,

It's very receptive,

Very mindful,

As you're not fixed on any one thing,

Because that sound of silence is like a sign of an open,

Totally open mind,

Where concentrating on the breath,

You're concentrating your mind on an object that is changing,

That arises and ceases,

The inhalation,

The exhalation.

In order to contemplate your breath,

Say if you're talking to me,

You're having a conversation with me,

That you think I have to watch my breath,

You have to stop talking to me,

To watch your breath,

You can't watch your breath and talk to me at the same time.

So say I'm saying something that's upsetting you,

Something I said is really,

Really upsetting you,

So I watch my breath.

You have to shut me off,

Go to the breath.

With the sound of silence,

You can incorporate everything,

Include everything,

So that it's like the background,

That one can notice the background as well as the space,

As well as the forms.

For example,

In this room,

If I just notice the forms in this room,

I'm not aware of the space,

Am I?

I'm just going,

This person is maintaining Robert,

Douglas,

Crayon of Ciri,

Go from one person to another,

Look at the curtains on the windows,

Look at the shrine,

Adrian and Taiman.

I could do that the whole,

Whole hour,

Couldn't I?

Just going from one thing to another without noticing the space,

But what is most obvious,

But most unnoticed in this room is the space in it.

The people come and go,

The objects,

You can take the shrine out,

You can take the curtains down,

Carpets,

All the people can leave,

You can take the walls down,

The floor away.

The space is still here,

It's always been here before the building was here.

The space,

You think the space is in the room,

But actually the room is in the space.

Now to notice the space,

We have to,

We can't just go from one object to another,

We have to withdraw attention from just habitual wandering of going from one thing to another and just open the mind to the space in the room.

This is getting a perspective,

Isn't it?

You're not judging,

You're not admiring or criticizing the objects anymore,

You just open the mind to,

So that the mind is spacious and all the objects are in perspective,

They have perspective,

They relate to each other in space.

But if I don't do that,

Then I can get obsessed with certain things,

Like somebody here,

Maybe I'm very attracted to,

Oh fantastic person,

Absolutely fantastic,

Totally infatuated,

Lost in love,

Can't think of anything else,

Don't notice anyone else anymore,

Just obsessed.

Or I'm full of anger,

That horrible person,

So that I'm just caught in an obsession of hatred,

Dwelling on how much I don't like somebody.

And by doing that,

I can forget all about the rest of you,

Not even notice that you're here,

Anything else,

Not to mention the space,

When you're angry you don't notice space at all,

You're just caught up in that bad feeling,

You don't notice any other people,

You're just obsessed with aversion towards one person.

So that anger and greed,

Delusion,

They blind us,

We just become totally lost,

Blinded by them,

We can't see.

Say if you're an interior decorator,

And you come into this meditation hall,

Critical mind starts operating.

Why do they ever get curtains like that?

Whoever chose those curtains must have been an idiot.

So every time you come into the room you think,

Oh what horrible curtains.

So that you don't,

That's all you ever see,

You see just one thing you don't like,

And the mind just becomes obsessed with that one thing.

But if you withdraw your attention from even the flaw,

Or that which is attractive or repulsive,

It's in perspective,

You have,

You see,

Because from a spacious mind,

Rather than from a fixed view.

So in the space there's room for everything,

For the beautiful,

The ugly,

How things relate,

How this one isn't obsessed anymore with the objects,

Because space itself doesn't have any quality to it that is repulsive or attractive.

Space is not,

Doesn't attract us,

Nor does it repel us.

It's spacious,

It's where everything,

All the forces of attraction and repulsion can come and go,

All the beautiful,

All the ugly.

Apply that inwardly.

Inwardly,

There,

Just the,

With the sound of silence,

You,

When you're with the sound of silence,

It's like you're not,

You're no longer dwelling on what's wrong with yourself,

Or what's wrong with somebody,

Or how much you like somebody,

Or don't like somebody,

Or what's wrong with the room,

Or what's wrong with the world.

Even though these things might,

Might arise in your mind,

You're no longer obsessing yourself with them,

Because you're abiding more in the silence and spaciousness,

Rather than in the conditioned.

Inner listening,

It's like listening to,

To the mind,

Its own kind of sound.

And it's,

Because it is monotone,

Monotonous,

It's,

It's not,

It's not going to take us into any kind of,

Into anything other than peacefulness,

As you,

As you abide more with the sound of silence,

You'll find yourself feeling calm,

Peaceful,

It's like space.

Contemplation of space is peaceful,

Calming.

So these are the,

This is the way it is,

At the present time,

This time in this place,

There's the body,

There's the,

There's consciousness,

There's the breath,

There's the sound of silence.

And in noting the sound of silence,

The more you,

You,

You say,

Bring your attention to that,

The easier it is to let go of things.

Because if you,

If you begin to just count to seven,

The sound of silence,

You'll find you're not hanging on to anything,

Clinging to even the most powerful emotions and,

And memories,

Seem to just hang and hold you and keep,

Keep hanging,

Clinging to you,

No matter where you go,

They just kind of go with you.

You don't know what to do.

How do you get rid of those things?

They just hang on the mind all the time.

Can't get away from them.

But as you sit here,

Open the mind to the silence,

Just be patient enough to,

And stay with the silence,

Sound of silence.

Well you can't,

Can't remember what it was that was bothering you.

You have to put forth an effort to remember it.

I remember developing this practice very much when I came to England,

The first year in London.

There are a lot of problems that weren't really just problems of the English Sangha trust and every,

There's been problems everywhere.

Everything were problems in those days.

The first year was just full problems.

So I used to,

The mind would easily,

Would kind of go into resentment about it,

Not wanting to be bothered with worldly problems or the complications.

Why did I ever come here?

I should have stayed in Thailand.

Could have gone off to a nice cave in the mountains.

Sit there and listen to the silence.

Not have any problems.

All these petty little things,

People fighting,

Quarreling,

Angry things being said,

Unkind words.

Horrible.

Why did I ever come here?

Then,

Then I noticed that that was suffering,

Not wanting,

Regretting,

Wanting things to be otherwise.

So I started just,

Whenever the,

Just practicing more and more with the silence.

Then when they have the committee meeting and tempers started flying,

I'd go into the silence.

And suddenly I just,

All these,

These,

These strong passionate feelings that are flying around me,

Suddenly I have a perspective on them.

I'm not getting caught up into the anger and the passions of the people around.

I'm not just being averse to it or resenting it or being pulled into it.

Suddenly there's a kind of release and a relief from being in a space where you're not being pulled into the problems of the world and the passions of people around you.

You can see much better.

You begin to see where,

What's really the matter,

Why people,

Why people are doing this.

Because none of the people were bad.

None of people were kind of evil and wicked and,

And stupid and heartless people.

They were all well-intentioned people.

But there was just,

I just noticed that sometimes people talking to each other,

They don't really,

They're not really communicating.

They're coming from different viewpoints.

And they,

They,

They just suspect and,

And and misunderstand each other.

It's like,

You can see like words going toward a person but somehow missing them.

And now there seems to be a lack of communication.

Yet they're all speaking the same language,

The old English language,

All English people.

I mean I am an American so there are probably some problems there.

But they,

But this were all native English people.

And practice here this way one,

One felt a sense of relief that even in the most kind of,

In the middle of the battlefield or the,

Or the center of conflict,

One has a place to abide in that is peaceful.

If you don't know this then of course life is frightening for you because you get yourself into situations where there's conflicts with others and problems and all kinds of things.

Who should,

You know,

Getting,

Either you've been forced to take sides or you're trying to get away from it,

You resent it and so forth that it becomes very complicated.

Here in a monastic life,

There's more monks and nuns abiding the silence of their minds,

The problems diminish,

The personal problems and community problems diminish.

As soon as we get caught up in,

In views and opinions and personalities and this seems hopeless.

You got 40 people living together in a,

Even though this is a spread out kind of place,

You do come together and there all have to be decisions made and not then people,

People's passions get all stirred up over little things.

The kitchen are here,

People's passions get stirred up in the kitchen over tiny little things.

Well the,

It's amazing how passions get stirred up over anything.

If we,

And if we don't realize,

If we don't have any abiding place for that,

To get out of that,

We're just caught and then we do feel,

Well I can't stand it anymore,

I've got to get away where I can have some space where I can not be caught up in the passions of problems and people around me.

So people leave or run away,

But for those who stay then the,

Then the,

The refuge is in the silence of the mind.

More and more we train ourselves to abide there,

Then the problems diminish.

We don't make problems,

It's not the egotistical conflicts with others because we begin to let these things fall away in the mind.

To note the sound of silence is like listen inwardly,

Kind of gentle buzzing or ringing in the ears,

Reverberating silent sound.

I remember watching desire in my mind when I was in the first few years of monastic life screaming away.

It's like,

Like saying I want to live.

This screaming things going on sometimes carrying on in most powerful ways.

And then aversion,

A lot of,

A lot of hatred and aversion was coming up.

The first year of monasticism I was surprised at how much hatred I was feeling for everything.

I'd always avoided that.

My self-image was one of being kind of kindly and not hating people.

That's what I had kind of my image of myself was.

And then the first year I was surprised how much hatred was coming up in my mind.

Frightening.

Maybe this is the real me,

It just was a mind filled with hate.

Maybe that's,

But the other was just a false self,

The kind of kindly loving person was really,

That was just,

That was just a masquerade covering this demonic,

This terrible demon that was hating everyone.

Because that's the way it seems isn't it?

The personal,

The personal feeling of,

That emotions bring.

But then there's,

Then in that,

That way of taking it personally then there's only either indulgence or suppression that you can do with it isn't it?

You just either following it completely,

Believing it,

Or trying to get rid of it,

Get away from it.

This way now you're learning how to skillfully contain it so that its,

Its comic force ends in your mind.

It ceases,

What arises ceases in the mind.

Now the sound of silence we got is a sign in the mind,

Nothing more than a sign,

Because it is a continuous monotone.

It's quite pleasant to be with it once you,

Once you get used to it.

It's peaceful,

It's calming,

It's a way of say letting go,

Letting these things go away,

Letting the strong emotions that you might be feeling,

Admitting them,

You're not judging them,

Or denying them,

Or suppressing them,

You're admitting them into consciousness,

But you're not following them or rejecting them,

Because they,

They can be as they are,

The emotional state,

The mood.

You're totally accepting that,

But staying with the sound of silence.

So it gives you like an expansion of consciousness where you're,

Your mind is all embracing rather than picking and choosing.

Otherwise we just pick and choose among mental conditions,

Rather than,

Than expand to embrace all conditions.

Now this might,

Some people,

Even though it's present,

It's,

It's unnoticed by most people,

Or they think it's,

Well when they do notice,

They think it's some kind of maybe ear disease.

If you,

I remember in,

When I was 19 years old,

I was in the Navy,

American Navy,

Very unhappy,

During the Korean War,

Very unhappy with it all,

And I went to this monastery for a weekend in,

In Santa Barbara,

Anglican monastery up in the mountains,

Very beautiful place,

And Sunday afternoon I was walking out in the hills in the sunshine,

And suddenly I heard this,

This ringing silence,

And all this,

All that self-consciousness had fallen away,

All that,

When you're 19 years old,

You're so self-conscious.

All the fears and self-consciousness that seem to dissolve,

And there's just this,

This incredible peace everywhere,

Reverberating,

Reverberating peacefulness.

Now that happened quite naturally,

Spontaneously,

There wasn't no seeking after it,

There were no drugs,

No,

No,

No intention,

No,

No understanding of mystical experience,

Or meditation,

Or anything like that,

Just something that happened.

So I didn't understand what it was,

But I kept thinking,

After that,

This is how I'd like to be all the time,

Rather than this wretched little creature with all these worries and problems.

Life is such a,

It's so difficult when you're 19,

And it seems like you're,

There's no way out,

You're just stuck,

And there's all this view,

Self-views,

And fears.

That's how it should be.

I wonder how you can get that way,

Because it lasted for quite a while,

But then that evening I had to return to the military base,

And all the self-conscious fears and that immediately started taking over the mind,

I felt this,

It's like I was being attacked.

I found myself back where I started,

Depressed,

But I remembered that,

I always wondered what it was.

When I asked people,

Nobody seemed to know.

I think you maybe went off a bit.

You know,

Why would a 19 year old sailor go off to a monastery anyway,

Or a weekend,

When you could be having a ball,

In the bars,

In the discos,

And all that,

They didn't have discos then,

In the bars,

San Diego,

Down to Tijuana,

Mexico.

Sky's the limit for pleasures.

You went off to a monastery.

I think you're crack,

Anyway.

That's probably what happened,

You went nutty.

Then,

Because that was such a powerful awakening experience,

With not having any knowledge of what it was,

Then when I,

Several years later,

I started reading about Buddhism and something clicked in my mind.

Suddenly,

My mind just kind of soared with delight reading about Buddhism.

That's how,

That's what you do,

To get to that place.

To be that way,

You have to,

You know,

This,

Just things began to fall into place in my mind.

That was about,

When I was about 21.

But in that,

In the sound of silence of the mind,

It's not,

There's no personal quality in it.

It's not,

There's no person,

In other words.

It's not male or female,

Not American or British.

It's as it is,

Isn't it?

There's expanded consciousness,

All pervading consciousness,

Silence,

Alertness.

It's not a trance.

You're not in a trance,

So that you're not aware of what's happening.

You're not,

You're not lost in any,

Any kind of state of mind,

And yet it's truly peaceful.

So what is that anyway?

In,

In,

As we,

As we examine it,

We begin to trust more and more in the silence and emptiness of mind,

And abide there,

Because that's where,

Where things come together,

Where things,

Where things are seeing properly.

But it's not,

The attitude cannot be one of just trying to get rid of the world by,

By using the sound of silence,

But by noting the sound of silence so that the world can be seen clearly.

That's a different attitude,

Isn't it?

We're not,

We're not using that as a kind of rejection of the world,

Cuts down this thing,

Go to the sound of silence.

But it's,

The,

The attitude has to be the right attitude,

Right understanding,

That all that arises ceases in the mind,

So that the,

The mind is willing to,

To bear with what has arised,

What has arisen in what ceases.

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Reviews

He was right. I couldn't be in my breath and listen at the same time. I chose my breath most of the time

Surprisingly this kept my attention for the duration and was thought provoking. Thnk you.

Not guided, although you can certainly listen to it contemplatively. Not as informative as the transcribed talk of the same name in The Way It Is but definitely helpful as a companion piece to that one. Wonderful teacher, wonderful teaching.