Togetherness in Silence
People come together in many different places for many different reasons. For most people it is traditional to gather on a Sunday morning or a Saturday morning. Through religions we have done this for many years on this planet; and while this is not a religiously-oriented place, people still like to gather. And one wonders, what is it that brings people together to be in silence for forty-five minutes? It is unusual, really, for people to gather unless it is for some tradition, or for the purpose of getting better, or for some religious purpose (Sunday services, etc.)
But when one doesn’t present a definite purpose for people, but just offers a space, a physical space, one wonders why people still gather, especially when there isn’t a priest or preacher or someone with a robe, or with some significance—a title, or authority to lead them. Whatever it is that brings people together in this format, one wonders if it isn’t the same reason that they gather in churches or clubs, or at sporting events.
Is there an unexamined force, is there something beyond appearances that brings people together?
We do not gather in a traditional way. I don’t know that there are too many groups that get together to just sit for forty-five minutes and then dialogue, without some promise of getting something, or reaching something. But just to come together to converse about whatever comes to us on this particular morning....I do not know too many groups that do just this.
When we are together in silence, it seems there is a kind of communication that is not found when the brain is very busy with some kind of desire to achieve something, with some definite purpose. When all that is put to one side, and one does not have to improve one’s life, or one’s spirit or personality, there is a specific, special kind of silence that occurs. It is not something that a person can explain or prove, obviously, but it is in the action that takes place. It is within that which is left with the person, inside. There is some kind of communication which in silence becomes more obvious. Perhaps this common something, that unexamined force that brings human beings together, becomes more easily experienced in silence.
All over the world people are getting together. There are not too many people who want to be hermits. And usually hermits have a purpose, or they are just so sick and tired of everything that they can’t tolerate society anymore. But it is unusual to find people like that. Sometimes people become hermits, like in India, to experience their idea of “God”, as if that which they called God was not humanity. So being hermits is not what we do.
So the kind of communication we look for must be very basic—at the root of being human. Is that love? Is it love that brings us together to simply be?
By being in silence there are no pretenses anymore, no “put-ons” or necessity to be any other way than we are. We don’t have to “be” whatever we do during the week. We don’t have to be professors or house cleaners or professionals of any kind. We don’t have to be anything or to have an identity as a separate person.
When we are together in silence, we are more like a mass, a mass of energy in movement. And each mass, composing the whole, has a particular movement of energy. But when we are together in silence, there is no distinction, and there is an opportunity for a different experience — not the kind of experience someone tells you that you should have, but the kind of experience that you, as a total human being, are capable of having.
That mass over there (pointing to a person) is the same as this mass over here (pointing to a flower) but different, unique. The flower is unique; she is unique; you are unique. You are like that little flower, especially when you smile. It is like the flower smiles too.
What gathers us together, then? If it’s love, then what is love? Is love something we find in silence rather than in the busy-ness or in the superficial relationships we have? What kind of caring is it which brings us together? The caring of survival? Or the caring beyond survival? Is this the usual love we feel, with the emotions going up and down? No. The ususal way is to love somebody when they’re nice, but when they’re not, we have nothing to do with them - right? We begin not to like them. Is it that kind? Or is it a sense of caring as we care for a flower that we like and enjoy its perfume, and we continue to like even as it begins to disintegrate? We don’t feel any differently about a flower that gives perfume and one that does not; we may have a little preference, but we don’t have that much judgment or evaluation about it. But when it comes to human beings, we have a lot of preferences.
In silence, preferences begin to dissolve. You can imagine what it would be like to live a life of silence. It would be to love without preference.
It would really be a meditational life. To live a meditational life; to live silence; to live love, is a blessing that any of us can have.