Essential Silence

 Kathleen Dowling Singh

Contemplatively orders of nuns and monks, Eastern and Western, often take vows of silence to nurture their inner life. It is an additional practice of renunciation and removal from the world. Sufism the esoteric teaching of Islam, has adopted the practice of "essential silence" for centuries. Here, one only speaks  what absolutely needs to be said. It is interesting, in the practice of this discipline, to observe what the ego considers needs to be said. Essential silence is a powerful transformative vehicle.

Silence engenders a capacity encouraged in Taoism: "the fasting of the mind". In this "mind fasting" there is a purification of the mind stream: the incessant flow of thoughts and images with which the ego so busily occupies itself.

The Grace in Dying