Silence

silence

(a theater piece)

*

before we begin

silence

after we’re done 

silence

in between

some words

about silence

*

what is the door to silence?

for me, it is the clear perception that anything I might think or say is smaller than the stillness that precedes it

soaked in that silence

thoughts and words are transformed

there is nothing other than this

silence

*

I’ve invited you here so that we can sit together and enjoy the silence

you might think that the words I speak interrupt the silence

don’t think that!

these are just empty words

they are part of the silence

*

Walt Whitman says:

This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

There is no better than it and now.

*

is walking on water a greater miracle than walking?

than water?

*

P.D. Ouspensky wrote a book called In Search of the Miraculous

he didn’t have far to look

he could have noticed his own hand

*

The world is so full of a number of things.

I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

that’s the poem “Happy Thought,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child’s Garden of Verses

*

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

that’s from the poem “Vacillation” by William Butler Yeats

it’s a record of an epiphany

I’m interested in epiphanies

epiphanies come unsought

you can’t make them happen—coax them, or coerce them

they sneak up on you when you aren’t looking

and you can’t hold onto them

they leave as suddenly as they come

Blake says:

He who binds to himself a joy

Doth the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sun rise.

*

Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is a giant, non-stop epiphany

a celebration of the sacredness of everyone and everything

here’s an excerpt:

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds….

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,

Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,

I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,

Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break!

The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,

The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising, freshly exuding,

Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,

Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

*

to me those movies where everything explodes are boring

what is thrilling is to slow down and notice some simple, ordinary thing

like how pleasant it is to take a sip of tea

(take a sip of tea)

*

if you were to ask me what I’ve learned so far,

I would say this:

in silence

there is no problem

*

in India, around 500 BC, Buddha taught that freedom from suffering comes with the cessation of craving

one day, when many people were gathered to hear him speak, instead of speaking he picked a flower and held it up

one man, Kasyapa, smiled, and realized enlightenment

this event is known as “the flower sermon”

it is to this silent sermon that Zen Buddhism traces its origin

*

Buddha held up the flower for everyone to see

but only one person saw it

that’s interesting, isn’t it?

was that an especially beautiful flower that Buddha held up?

I don’t think so

it was an ordinary flower

and Buddha and Kasyapa were ordinary men

and that was an ordinary moment

like this one

*

here’s a weird thing:

until recently, there was no equivalent for the Sanskrit word dhyāna in any of the European languages

it has now become the convention that the word “meditation” is used to translate “dhyāna,” which in Japanese is the word “zen”

but “to meditate” used to mean “to think”

and dhyāna is a state of alertness, without thought

meditation, or dhyāna, is the foundation of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism

but in the West, for centuries, the possibility of sitting with a mind silent and alert apparently didn’t occur to anyone

or at least it occurred so rarely that there was no word for it

When the mind ceases all movement,

ceases judging,

ceases conceptualizing,

the deep cool essence of suchness

becomes a way of life.

that’s Seng Ts’an, the third Zen patriarch, from the Hsin Hsin Ming

*

for me, the most reliable doorway to the Golden World is silence

it’s one thing to shut your mouth

quite another to quiet the mind

or maybe it would be better to say:

“for the mind to fall silent”

that’s how it works, I think

thought falls away

and there

is silence

*

we create narratives

stories about who we are

and about the world

some people believe

that the stories they tell themselves

are true

*

when we wake up in the morning, it begins

it’s like turning on a radio inside our head:

“what do I have to do today?”

“I wish I didn’t have to go to work”

“my job sucks”

“my boss is an asshole”

“I should just quit”

“but where would I get the money for rent and my car payments?”

“my life is going down the drain here”

“I’m not getting any younger”

on and on

this goes on all day, from one worry to the next, from one daydream to the next, until night comes and we fall asleep

*

Krishnamurti said:

Thought is always old.

Thought is never new.

Thought can never be free.

*

I heard Krishnamurti speak a few times:

in San Francisco and Ojai, California, and in Bangalore, in South India

one of the things I liked about him was the ferocity with which he insisted that the idea of some kind of enlightenment in the future is a form of self-deception

because the idea of the future is an escape from what is

there is nothing to get

no one to get it

*

there is something frenetic about the way we live

our economy is a kind of treadmill

the speed of the treadmill is gradually increased, so that you have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place

when we stop running and sit down to watch television or a movie, we find that everything is edited more rapidly

the films are full of car chases and explosions

lots of explosions

the only things our exciting lives lack are slowness and stillness

this evening is a modest attempt to remedy that lack—if only for a little while

because in all that rushing around we can miss something which is very important:

our life

*

if a bird sings outside your window and you don’t hear it because you are too preoccupied with other things, you have missed a moment of perfect beauty and joy that was given to you

what if each moment of life is a moment of perfect beauty and joy and we are too busy to notice?

is that true?

how would we find out?

*

I have a crow mask that my friend Rick Bartow carved

one day, long ago, I was modeling for a photography student at an art school

I put on my crow mask and danced around

while I was dancing around, I asked myself:

“who is this guy with the head of a bird and the body of a man?”

and while I was dancing, I began to make up stories about this character that I called “Crow”

here’s one of them:

THE CITY AND THE DESERT

CROW WAS LIVING IN THE CITY.

HIS LIFE WAS HECTIC AND CHAOTIC.

HE WAS PRACTICALLY OUT OF HIS MIND, BUT HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT.

AND THE PEOPLE AROUND HIM DIDN’T NOTICE EITHER, BECAUSE THEIR LIVES WERE AS CHAOTIC AND CRAZY AS HIS.

ONE DAY, HIS FRIEND WHO LIVED BY THE OCEAN CAME FOR A VISIT.

“YOU’RE A WRECK!,” HE SAID.

“WHY DON’T YOU GET AWAY FROM THIS FOR AWHILE?”

SO CROW DID.

HE WENT TO THE DESERT.

HE SAT DOWN ON A BIG ROCK.

IT WAS HOT.

HE LISTENED.

IT WAS STILL.

HE LOOKED AROUND.

THE SKY WAS HUGE.

THINGS WEREN’T ALL CROWDED TOGETHER, LIKE IN THE CITY.

CROW NOTICED EACH THING.

HE TOOK THE TIME TO APPRECIATE EVERYTHING HE SAW, OR TOUCHED.

AFTER AWHILE THE NOISE INSIDE HIS HEAD QUIETED DOWN AND THE WORLD CAME ALIVE.

CROW STAYED THERE A LONG TIME.

WHEN HE RETURNED TO THE CITY HE TRIED TO BRING THE SILENCE WITH HIM.

BUT IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE THE NOISE OF THE CITY SWALLOWED HIS SILENCE AND HE WAS CRAZY AGAIN.

SO HE WENT BACK TO THE DESERT.

THIS HAPPENED OVER AND OVER.

THEN, ONE DAY WHEN CROW WAS IN THE CITY, EVERYTHING CHANGED.

HE LOOKED AROUND WITH NEW EYES.

UGLY THINGS WERE BEAUTIFUL.

THE NOISE HAD BECOME A KIND OF MUSIC.

HE COULD FEEL THAT EACH MOMENT OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS IS PRECIOUS BEYOND WORDS.

*

everything I touch

touches me

*

here’s Walt Whitman again:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least….

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,

I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,

Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

*

and E. E. Cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth

day of life and love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

*

have you ever noticed, late at night, when the refrigerator stops making noise and a blessed silence descends upon your home?

you hadn’t noticed that the refrigerator was making noise until it shut itself off

our mind is making noise like that all day long

we don’t really notice

until it falls silent

*

The Great Way is empty—

like a vast sky.

Silence the busy mind

and know this perfection.

Seng Ts’an, again

*

here’s a poem by William Stafford:

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,

earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.

Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That’s why we wake

and look out—no guarantees

in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,

like right now, like noon,

like evening.

*

in his book The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley has a chapter called “Silence”

here’s some of what he says:

Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous….If we pass in review the words we have given vent to in the course of the average day, we shall find that the greater number of them may be classified under three main heads: words inspired by malice and uncharitableness towards our neighbours; words inspired by greed, sensuality and self-love; words inspired by pure imbecility and uttered without rhyme or reason, but merely for the sake of making a distracting noise.  These are idle words; and we shall find, if we look into the matter, that they tend to outnumber the words that are dictated by reason, charity or necessity.  And if the unspoken words of our mind’s endless, idiot monologue are counted, the majority for idleness becomes, for most of us, overwhelmingly large.

*

living in silence

nowhere to go

no one to go there

*

John Cage has a beautiful “Lecture on Nothing”

here’s a brief passage from the opening:

I am here                       ,                       and there is nothing to say         .

      If among you are

those who wish to get somewhere               ,                 let them leave at

any moment              .                              What we re-quire                    is

silence                                 but what silence requires

                                          is                       that I go on talking         ….

*

                                                        there are silences                              and the

words                   make             help make                                          the

silences                                   .

                                                                                                  I have nothing to say

                 and I am saying it

*

in pursuit of knowledge, every day something is gained

in pursuit of Tao, every day something is lost

less and less is done

until you arrive at wu wei

doing nothing

that’s Lao Tzu, from the Tao Te Ching

*

the story goes that Lao Tzu was riding off to die on a green ox

and a guy stopped him and said:

“before you go, could you say a few words?”

and he did

and the man wrote them down

and Lao Tzu got back on his ox and rode away, and was never seen again

the words the man wrote down are the Tao Te Ching

and if you read the Tao Te Ching, you think:

“I’m sure glad that guy asked him that question”

*

(sing:)

‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free,

‘Tis a gift to come down to where we ought to be.

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

this is the place just right

the valley of love and delight

did you think it was somewhere else?

I premiered this show at Two Rivers prison

that last question had an interesting resonance there

*

Seng Ts’an:

Trying to still the mind

inhibits the experience of oneness,

for the very action of trying

is the busy mind at work.

Live in the Great Way

where action is stillness and silence pervades.

*

I’d like to give you the most precious thing I have

the problem is: I don’t have it

it’s not mine to give

I don’t know where it comes from

or where it goes

it’s here now

it’s always here

but it can often happen that we are deaf to its music

blind to its beauty

what is it?

it has no name

all I know is that mostly I have found it

or it has found me

in silence

*

we could say that there is noise outside us

and also that there is noise inside us—

the noise our mind makes

but when this inner noise falls silent

there is no outside or inside

*

how could we describe this silence that abolishes the distinction between outside and inside?

in the Bible we find the lovely phrase “the peace which passeth understanding”

it is a lake with no shore

it is Paradise—the Golden World

but we have to be careful

we don’t want to get too carried away with adjectives and metaphors

because it’s just this ordinary world

as it is

*

Seng Ts’an says:

To experience reality

stop using words;

the more you talk about things

the farther away from the truth you stray.

*

for the past fourteen years, I’ve been living in Portland again, with my girlfriend, Nancy

before that I lived for three years in a town in Central Oregon with a population of about twelve people and nine horses

people used to ask me why I lived there

I don’t know

maybe it was because of Han Shan

Han Shan was a poet who lived a long time ago in China

he was a hermit

and the simple life he lived, high up in the mountains, has always inspired me

he says:

Among a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams,

Here lives an idle man,

In the daytime wandering over green mountains,

At night coming home to sleep by the cliff.

Swiftly the springs and autumns pass,

But my mind is at peace, free from dust or delusion.

How pleasant, to know I need nothing to lean on,

To be as still as the waters of the autumn river!

*

before I moved to Ashwood, I was living in Portland and working in the maintenance department of a place called The Parry Center

it’s a nice place to work

once you get used to the sound of children screaming in pain

*

I never got used to it

after work, I would go to a teashop called “The Tao of Tea”

and enter the Golden World

I would write little poems in my notebook

like this one:

after work

at the Tao of Tea

no idea what I’m doing

now I know

I’m eating ice cream with raspberries on it

and drinking tea

*

from there I would go back to my attic apartment, cluttered with books

and sit on my futon

here’s a poem I wrote, sitting there:

2 a.m.

the sound of rain on the skylight

this pen is leaking all over my fingers

*

I wrote a lot of poems about rain on the skylight

even though I was living in a big city, I was living like a hermit

like Han Shan, I imagined:

for Han Shan

my room is a hut high in the mountains

the stairs, an icy path which no one climbs

I sit on my futon, a white cloud

and float above this world of cares

*

I used to pretend that my room was this cabin that my friends owned in Ashwood, in Central Oregon

I would say to myself:

“I don’t have to go to Ashwood; this is Ashwood”

“Ashwood” for me meant a place of serenity and quiet joy

because that’s what I felt every time I stayed there

I would go there once or twice a year for a weekend, or longer if I could

it’s off the beaten path

when I arrived, I would get out of my truck and smell the juniper and sage

every time I opened the door and stepped into the house, it was as if all my thoughts and cares just fell away from me

I felt that I had come home

*

my friends got divorced

the cabin was hers

after a year or so, she decided to sell it

I bought it, moved in, and lived kind of like a hermit for three years

I spent a lot of time reading, drinking tea, feeding the birds

and just doing nothing

wu wei

*

When the mind is still,

nothing can disturb it.

When nothing can disturb it,

reality ceases to exist in the old way.

Seng Ts’an

*

here’s another one from Han Shan:

The clear water sparkles like crystal,

You can see through it easily, right to the bottom.

Mind free from every thought,

Nothing in the myriad realms can move it.

Since it can not be wantonly roused,

Forever and forever it will stay unchanged.

When you have learned to know in this way,

You will know there is no inside or out!

*

this is nice, isn’t it?

a poem

some silence

another poem

some more silence

a person could live like this!

*

here’s a story about silence:

the summer I turned sixteen, I went to church camp for a week

our last day of camp was Saturday

that morning we all walked down to the beach together

I don’t know why, but before we went, we were told there was to be no talking

we spent the whole morning running around like puppies, hugging each other, deliriously happy

we couldn’t talk, so we looked into each other’s eyes

that night, when the time came to say goodbye, I started bawling

at that point in my life, I had gone several years without crying

that night the floodgates burst

I cried and cried

I loved everyone in that room, even the most unlikable ones

especially them!

I loved everyone in the whole world!

I don’t know, but I suspect that if we hadn’t spent that time together in silence, I would not have had that epiphany

my heart would not have opened in that way

*

the summer after I graduated from high school, I read a couple books by Jack Kerouac: On the Road and The Dharma Bums

looking back on it, I think those books changed my life

because what I did next was:

I went on the road and became a dharma bum

*

that same summer, on July 10, 1969, about a week before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Shunryu Suzuki gave a talk

here is some of what he said:

Now someone is going to land on the moon.  Actually I don’t know anything about how we are reaching the moon or what kind of feeling we will have when someone arrives there.  To me it is not such an interesting thing…..

If you say, “This rock is from the moon,” you will be very much interested in it.  Actually I don’t think there is a great difference between rocks we have on the earth and those on the moon.  Even if you go to Mars, I think you will find the same rocks.  I am quite sure about it.  So if you want to find something interesting, instead of hopping around the universe like this, enjoy your life in every moment, observe what you have now, and truly live in your surroundings.

the following year Suzuki Roshi’s great book on meditation, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind was published

*

I dropped out of college after half a year

that spring I lived in a log cabin on Birch Creek in Inyo National Forest, in Eastern California

I learned something about living in silence

because there was no one to talk to

later, I wrote a Crow story about it:

BIRCH CREEK

CROW WAS WANDERING AROUND.

HE CAME TO A CREEK.

BIRCH TREES WERE GROWING THICKLY ALONG THE BANKS.

HE WENDED HIS WAY UP THE CREEK BED.

THE DAY WAS HOT, BUT IT WAS COOL IN THE SHADE OF THE BIRCH TREES.

HE WASHED HIS FACE AND DRANK FROM THE COLD MOUNTAIN STREAM.

CROW CAME TO AN ABANDONED LOG CABIN JUST WHERE THE STREAM BUBBLED UP OUT OF THE MOUNTAINSIDE.

HE LIKED THE FEEL OF THE PLACE.

SO HE MOVED IN.

THERE WAS A WOOD COOKSTOVE AND A BED.

EVERY MORNING HE MADE OATMEAL WITH RAISINS IN IT.

AND COFFEE.

DURING THE DAY HE SAT ON ROCKY LEDGES AND READ BOOKS.

OR JUST SAT QUIETLY AND WATCHED THE WORLD.

DAY AFTER DAY HE DIDN’T SPEAK ONE WORD.

HE JUST LISTENED TO THE SOUND OF THE CREEK.

AT NIGHT, AFTER DINNER, HE SAT BY THE STOVE AND READ—DRINKING A CUP OF COFFEE BEFORE GOING TO BED.

AS HE GOT INTO HIS SLEEPING BAG EVERY NIGHT, A LOUD CRY OF JOY EXPLODED FROM DEEP INSIDE HIM.

THEN HE CLOSED HIS EYES.

AND THE NEXT MOMENT HE WAS SOUND ASLEEP.

*

when I lived on Birch Creek, I had more joy than I knew what to do with

that summer I read The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahamsa Yogananda

that book opened the door for me to a world that I didn’t know existed

I went to the Methodist church pretty regularly as a  kid

when I read Yogananda’s book I was appalled that I had lived 19 years on this earth and no one had told me about meditation or enlightenment

not once in the Methodist church had anyone breathed a word about spiritual ecstasy

Yoganananda had a word for it: samādhi

his Self-Realization Fellowship offered courses in meditation by mail

I sent away for my first lessons in meditation

and began my journey toward silence

*

in the fall of 1971, when I had just turned 20, I met a teacher named Nitya Chaitanya Yati

I studied with him for ten years

one day he said to me:

“It is difficult to silence the mind.  But it is possible.  And worth the effort.”

this is the most valuable thing anybody ever told me

*

wanting nothing

I have everything

*

after three years of living in the homesteader’s cabin in Ashwood, one day there was a knock on my door

it was Nancy, the woman I had bought the cabin from

the next thing I knew, I was living with Nancy in Portland

*

it’s different, living in the city

the city is a busy place

lots of people

like Crow, like Walt Whitman, I try to see beauty in everything, in everyone

*

living with someone is different than living alone

it’s been easy living with Nancy

we enjoy being together

I think it’s because we are kind to each other

*

after seeing this show, Holly Johnson, who reviews plays for The Oregonian, sent me this quote from Franz Kafka:

You don’t need to leave your room.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

You don’t even need to listen, just wait.

You don’t even have to wait, just learn to become quiet, still and solitary.

The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked.

It has no choice;

it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

*

here’s a poem by Emily Dickinson:

The Infinite a sudden Guest

Has been assumed to be —

But how can that stupendous come

Which never went away?

*

and here’s a poem by Pablo Neruda:

I ask for silence

Now, let’s count to twelve

and all be quiet.

For one time on this earth

let’s not speak in any language;

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a fragrant moment,

without haste, without locomotives;

we would all be together

in an awkward instant.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt

would look at his raw hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothes

and walk along in the shade

with their brothers,

doing nothing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused

with total inactivity.

Life is what’s happening!

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t so unanimous

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

maybe a vast silence

would interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death.

Maybe the earth is teaching us—

when everything seems dead

and later everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve

and you be quiet, and I will go.

*

when I first performed Silence in Portland, that’s where it ended

but I premiered the show at Two Rivers prison, where I added the following:

the word “prison” works very well as a metaphor

it is a concrete image we can use to mean something like “the opposite of freedom”

we can say that our thoughts, our worldviews, our ideologies are prisons

Hamlet uses prison as a metaphor in his exchange with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

Hamlet:  What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

Guildenstern:  Prison, my lord?

Hamlet:  Denmark’s a prison.

Rosencrantz:  Then is the world one.

Hamlet:  A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons.  Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

Rosencrantz:  We think not so, my lord.

Hamlet:  Why then, ‘tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  To me it is a prison.

Rosencrantz:  Why then your own ambition makes it one; ‘tis too narrow for your mind.

Hamlet:  O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space— were it not that I have bad dreams.

*

here’s a fable:

Once there was a man who had been in prison for a long time and had become well-adjusted to the routine of prison life.

One day his wife came for a visit.

“Don’t you want to be free?” she asked.

“There’s no such thing as freedom,” he replied.

*

prison is not just a metaphor

it’s a place where people live

I think that if I lived in prison

I would seek freedom

in silence