Silence is a practice too. Particularly when the noise grows.
I find, again and again, that the noise comes from within me.
It’s true that the noise is out there.
But it’s my relationship with that noise that determines whether it lingers or leaves.
Gunilla Norris has offered some passages on silence that I’ve appreciated many times. I dug this one up from a previous post. She says,…
If we can simply learn to follow our breath
in a steady way — attending to the inhalation
and the exhalation until we feel that we are no longer
breathing, but are being breathed
— we have grown in practice.
The point of practice is not to perform,
but to participate — not to achieve specific experiences,
but to develop a new relationship with experience itself.
It’s big work to become breathed. For many of us. Yet, so fruitful.
