Are you receiving me? - Silence, Noise and Communication

As I’m writing this I’m listening to the city. The background noise here in Nottingham has changed drastically since the start of the shutdown. There’s a quality of sustained quiet that we normally only get on Sunday mornings or for a few night’s in Christmas Week, but now it’s the new norm, it’s every day. There are few people coming in to work or study, no revellers roaring on the square, little traffic even. The days are bright and blue-skied and it’s easy to believe at times that the whole world is on retreat. 

Some sounds come to the forefront at times like this:

The tram distinctive shearing rubble, the black birds nesting in the gutter.  The drips, the ghost-ship creak of the centre, settling. The town hall bell, which sounds more spacious with less accompaniment. Even the honk I heard earlier, which I think was a passing goose, sounded somehow plaintive. And if I listen closely everywhere, a faint electrical hum.

Because of course in other ways the lock down has meant more communication than ever. More texts, more emails, more messages of all kinds. We are all trying to keep in contact with our loved ones, work from home, entertain ourselves in limited circumstances. I recently decided to leave my phone on silent as it was vibrating so much. That little vibration feels like the emblem of something sometimes. What could more perfectly stand for the anxious activity of the times than something tiny spinning rapidly in your pocket, releasing that small dose of excitement and apprehension at what the message is going to contain.

In the community we’ve just introduced a minute’s silence before we eat dinner.

Sometimes that space feels expectant or bubbly, sometimes slack, sometimes tense. Overall though it feels like it increases my appreciation for the food, the actual sensations of eating and for the work it took to prepare. 

So of course I value silence, if you’re reading this on a Buddhist blog you probably do too. And I know I’m not alone in experiencing my constant availability through technology as a kind of burden at times, a tiring obligation to everyone and no one in particular. That’s the tension we know, silence and noise? Spiritual practice and the world which calls us away from it (possibly over Whatsapp). 

That dynamic felt very stark to me when I first started meditating. I remember sitting quietly in the union at the university, the speechless room around me, trying to tune out the noise from the drama club down the hall, and the blessed, indescribable relief the first time the internal chatter died down.

But I think these times put that simple opposition into a new light and ask me to reconsider some prejudices and perhaps come to a clearer understanding of what silence really is. 

The centre, where I work and volunteer  has been broadcasting it’s classes, which you can find on our YouTube channel (‘please like and subscribe!’). At first it felt very strange to bring that world into the shrine room, into the sacred space that is set aside for silence. It felt perverse to bring facebook and YouTube into a contemplative setting, associated as they are for me with compulsive states of mind, the endless scrolling of proliferating thought. And yet livestreaming the metta-bhavana feels profound and meaningful. 

Sitting there speaking into the camera you have to imagine the strangers on the other end, the difficulties and aspirations that have brought them to practice, the things they may need to hear at this time in particular. To broadcast the sessions feels like throwing open a window into someone else’s life, opening a door and saying come in. Isn’t that close to the heart of what we are trying to do in the metta practice? 

So it has been wonderful, and it has been anxiety inducing and provocative of uncomfortable thoughts. What do they think of me, will I be liked? Will I be criticised, admired?  How do I look? Thoughts like moths reeling round a lightbulb. The kind of thoughts social media tends to create whenever I engage with it. If I’m really honest, they are probably the kind of thoughts people tend to create in me whenever I engage with them!

And yet because that space is consecrated to mindfulness all those tendencies are clearer to me. In fact sometimes I think the shrine room is the only place I should go on YouTube! It’s there that I have  the opportunity to speak and act out of silence, where the conditions are strong enough to support me in watching the play of reactions and then try to choose the deepest words, the ones which you can say without breaking silence, like something emerging from water without a ripple.

While that fear of ‘contaminating’ the sacred with the mundane is valid there is also an opportunity in the meeting, the opportunity to bring something of the sacred to everyday life. How can I look at those platform’s the same way when I have tried to bring my highest ideals to bear in them? 

And there is also something subversive about meditating over the internet. So much of our media is designed to avoid dead air at all costs, periods of emptiness, inactivity, and every Wednesday night the Sangha tunes in to 40 minutes of silence, televised silence! A silence which is not awkward and apologetic but shared and full.

I can understand that avoidance of dead-air. As much as I value silence I also fear it. Silence can also be a place of pain. It is of course the place of boredom, ‘boring’, the word conjures up drill bits and mining machines, headaches and barren rock. It is where you come face to face with the noise of your own thoughts, the objectionable detritus of the mind. 

For me in particular that means dealing with Tinnitus, I experience ringing in my ears which I can hear in quiet places and have done for about ten years. That means being aware of illness and the bodies decline. To be in silence sometimes is to be afraid of what will come, what will happen to you, what is already happening to you all the time. And I know that if I broaden my mind, ground myself in the full spectrum of what I can experience, trust that this is also the place where I will grow, the fear passes.

It is not possible to be apart from all stimulus: the blood in our ears, the very thoughts in our head can be enough noise to overwhelm us. What changes those things from noise into silence is receptivity. The city is still full of sounds when I have the mind to listen, but they are beautiful to me because I have chosen, somewhere inside myself, to receive them. They speak of stillness when that’s what I meet them with.

I’ve been reflecting on the Culagosingha Sutta  (MN31) and noble silence. Noble silence is the term used to refer to the state of meditative concentration in which discursive thought ceases. In the sutta Anuruddha and his brothers in the dharma Kimbila and Nandiya are able to live together keeping that silence as they work because of their deep understanding and receptiveness to each other. This is expressed partly in a close attention to the fundamentals of daily life:

‘whichever of us returns first from the village with almsfood prepares the seats, sets out the water for drinking and washing, and puts the refuse bucket in it’s place. []  Whoever notices that the pots of water for drinking, washing or the latrine are low or empty takes care of them. If they are too heavy for him, he calls someone else by a signal of the hand and they move it by joining hands, because of this we do not break out into speech. But every five days we sit together all night discussing the Dhamma.’ (p, 302, trans. Nanamoli)

At first this might seem to reinforce the distinction between noise and silence I spoke about before but reading it now I think there are other layers to it. The Anuruddhas don’t speak but they do communicate, they can get by with hand signals because of the deep receptivity they have towards each other.

Presumably they were surrounded by the sounds of the forest and by those of their tasks, the slopping of buckets, the clatter of furniture, the almsbowls coming down and being taken up, the slosh of the washing up. But they remain in silence attending to the task at hand not by withdrawal but by bringing a state or receptive, even compassionate awareness to each other. They maintain acts of loving kindness bodily, mentally and verbally both in public and private so the sutta goes. As Anuruddha says ‘it is a gain for me, it is a great gain for me, sir, that I am living with such companions in the holy life.’ Cherishing those around him he acts in harmony.

For us the daily routine of our lives, for better of worse, includes technology. And though there is much about how it’s currently implemented which encourages unskilfulness there is still the space for creativity. Whether we experience technology only as a distraction or as a space for connection depends on the mind we bring to it, just as all things do. 

Silence is not just the absence of sound, the absence of activity, it implies the positive presence of receptivity and of love. It’s the heart as a resonant space, like the blood red inside of a drum. That’s what’s sacred and must be maintained, if I can bring those intentions, those forms of awareness to my communication whatever means it takes, the small movements of the hand that send my words out into space, I will be speaking from silence and I am sure good will come of it. 

But that is a tall task when there are so many clips of cats I haven’t watched yet, so it is a gain for me that there are others maintaining the same intentions. It is a great gain for me that the sacred space has been swept and tended by so many people, metaphorically but also literally, down to the brick dust in the shrine room. The silence has been deepening there for 24 years, no matter how loud the city has been. Though it seems like a burden at times, our being at the world’s beck and call, I’m sure that together we can lift it just as the Anuruddha’s did. It is a great relief to know, to trust, that I too have companions in the holy life, people I know are on the other side of the window, receiving me, in every sense of the word.

Gareth Austin