Silence

These are some of the guidelines regarding talking on the mat that I use in my own training:

If I'm talking, I'm not training.

If it's more than three words, it's a conversation.

Is what I'm about to say more important than maintaining the silence?

Rumi says:

There is a way

between voice and presence

where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk it closes.

Pema Chodron says:

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

Kangeiko Poetry, Thursday 1/14/2010

The mystery cannot be answered

By repeating the question

Nor can it be bought

By going to amazing places.

Not until the eye and desires

Have been stilled for many years,

Not until then,

Can I cross over from confusion.

— Rumi

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

— Mary Oliver