How to be silent?
Freedom from incessant thinking
How to be silent is another way of asking how to be free of incessant thinking. We are all addicted to unnecessary and repetitive thinking of thoughts that saps our vital energies and leads to suffering in various forms. Thoughts create duality — which results in division between the “I” or ego, and the “other” and due to this division, creates many times conflict and thus suffering. So the question to explore is how to be free of identification with thoughts, removing redundant and unnecessary thinking, and be in the flow of life with serenity.
The Problem of Thought
What we observe when we attempt to sit silently or even when we are engaged in various activities is that there is a constant thinking process that goes on in the background. It seems almost like we are addicted to thinking constantly. Thinking is going on all the time and the thoughts seem to have a life of their own. We think about the past. We think about the future. We think about what to do next. We think about questions such as, “Did I do this correctly last month?”, “What will happen next year” etc. Thoughts are essentially movement of the mind in an internally perceived axis of time — both forwards and backwards. We are always moving in this imagined time, instead of being aware of what’s happening now. When we sit silently, this becomes clearer because there is the voice in the head that’s constantly chattering. How to sit silently without these thoughts is then the question. What we can recognize here is that the entire problem of the voice in the head, the chattering, the addiction to constant thoughts, however we may want to describe it, happens because we identify with whatever is arising in our minds. Whenever any thought arises, there is an instantaneous and subconscious identification with the thought.
So how to be free of this identification with thought? There are many methods and techniques offered to solve this problem such as controlling thoughts through willpower, watching thoughts, chanting mantras etc. But all these practices concede the existence of the separate “I”. Instead the direct process of self-inquiry is to go into the source of thought itself by inquiring into the very nature of “I”.
The Duality of Thought
First of all, we notice that any thought always arises as a subject and an object. There is a character in the thought which is identified as “I”, and there is something else that’s identified as “other”. There is thus a duality created. In the duality there is always some kind of conflict. Either “I” wants something out of the “other”, or “I” is afraid of something about the “other”. The “other” here can be a person, just a situation, or circumstance, etc. The primary form of thought is a duality where the thought is divided into one portion which is “I” and the other portion which is the “other”. If we look carefully though, we realize that the entire thought is just one movement in our mind. When we close the eyes and sit down and say, a thought comes into the head. This thought is like a movie playing in the head with the entire movie being a product of our own memory that has been acquired through a whole bunch of factors as we will see. But then, within the thought, we identify with one character as “I” and the rest as others and thereby through this instant identification, we lose sight of the fact that the entire thought is a projection of memory which is one movement within the mind. This movement has got no “I”. This may not be intuitive to begin with, but it becomes clear upon careful introspection.
What is the “I” in our thoughts?
As observed, thought is a unitary movement of mind which is the collection of all the memory. This memory was built up over time with various inputs which we had no control over. We didn’t choose any of the contributing factors that built this memory — where we were born, the body we got, the school we went to, the environment we grew up in, so on and so forth. And interestingly, the same is true of the body too. We didn’t choose any of the genetic or environmental factors that built this body as well. What we call the body is simply an acquisition of matter through food. What we call the mind is essentially an acquisition of memory through knowledge and experience. And at any given moment going back from childhood till now, we operate in a stimulus-response mode, wherein new acquisition happens based on the prior acquisition. Thus acquisition of both the physical and the mental keeps on happening through various inputs throughout our lives based on what is already stored. We keep acquiring food, and the body keeps on changing. We keep acquiring memory, and the mind keeps on changing. This whole process has no “I” in it. There is no supervising entity called an “I” that is in control over the inputs and subsequent acquisition that constantly evolves as body and mind. If we are very clearly perceiving the whole matter, when a thought arises, or a perception arises, we will notice that there is no “I” there at all. “I” is simply an illusion that we create.
Who am I?
When we clearly see that the separate “I” within a thought is only an illusory projection, then the essential question of self-inquiry is, where is the thinking happening? This question is another way of asking the most essential question of all, who am I. Because clearly I am aware of the thinking, so where thought is happening is the essence of I. The answer to this question of where is clearly that all thought perceptions are happening within awareness. All the things I perceive as thoughts are happening within awareness.
Awareness is the precondition for thought to happen. For perceptions to happen. For actions to happen. For anything to happen. And awareness is my very nature because that is not something that was acquired — unlike body or mind. Awareness is not something that changes with time — unlike body or mind. It is not something that is built with food or knowledge. It is simply there. Awareness exists every single moment. Even when we go back to our childhood, so many things might have been different, but we were always aware. And we are aware now. We are aware in dreams. And even in deep sleep we are aware that there is rest. Awareness is therefore the only constant factor that does not change, and it is our very nature.
Freedom from Incessant Thinking
Ridding our mind of unnecessary thoughts or being silent is by simply being free of the unconscious identification with the character in the thought. And this is done most directly by posing the question, “Where is this thought happening?”. The answer will clearly be “in our awareness”. This is the essence of self-inquiry. This takes us out of false identification to our real nature as awareness. This question need not even be verbalized. As we engage in this inquiry, we recognize that we don’t even have to ask this question by recognizing that while thoughts come and go, the silent awareness is always present. Just as the sky is always present while clouds come and go.
The question “Who am I?” or “Where is this thought happening?” are themselves, of course, thoughts. But they lead us back to the true source — awareness. With time, these questioning thoughts can be dropped as well. We don’t have to even ask these questions as they become redundant. Even if they do occasionally come up, they instantly drop off because of our realization that all there is, is silent awareness. And that the awareness that is ever present background is our unchanging true nature that is silence.
The Nature of Silence
This silence is not a state of being idle. On the contrary, the nature of this silence is “intense activity” as Ramana Maharshi put it. What is the intense activity of silence? It is to be very alert, and to not be subconsciously identified with thought, but instantly drop it with this silent recognition that our nature is pure awareness. If we can abide in the silence by sitting silently, then this silence becomes our “ground”. Activities can still go on. But we will find that more and more, this silent awareness becomes our ground state, the default resting place. When thoughts come by, they are handled, if necessary, as are words and actions. And unnecessary thoughts, words and actions drop off on their own. And this silent awareness remains as our natural ground of Being.
Thus we see that instead of looking for a method or some technique to still the mind or be silent and free of incessant thinking which can have only a temporary effect, the realization that our silent awareness is the true ground of Being renders the very seeking of any technique irrelevant. Any seeking for a method or a technique is based on the false identification of “I” as the seeker of silence and the very separation hides the true nature of our Being as Silence itself. That is to say, the act of seeking thwarts the realization. When we thus recognize that all seeking is distracting from abiding as our basal state of silent awareness, then all seeking drops off. All questions drop off. Then there is only the flow of life itself. Life demands its own needs to think, speak and act as necessary. But all the distracting thoughts, questions and conflicts drop away. And the ground of Silence alone abides.
The talk below goes into the insights discussed in this article and guides through the process of self-inquiry that leads us to our true nature as pure Awareness.
