Silence - the space of truth

Being in Japan and visiting the Edo energy of the Samurai, a connection is being made with a silence that is very different from the silence one can talk about when travelling in another part of the world. Zen is the word that comes up here. Zen, the place of nothing, but not empty.

Here there is another stillness. The Japanese people are wired in a different way to their minds, and they live with much more stillness than anywhere else experienced. It is a bliss to walk in this country, although it is a mixture of robotica, automatisms and deep stillness and comprehension of the fields of emptiness. The human world is filled with work, activity, running to places and being polite. The world of stillness, once it is really found and felt, has a deep quality that reveals something mysterious.

It is not very easy to make one feel what this stillness generates. It is like the Zen Masters want to convey in the language of noise : the empty fullness, or, going through the gate of no-gate. Being in the mind of the no-mind. The stillness can only be reached when the noise has been put aside, when one slows down the motions, even the physical, and when one becomes very aware in the here-now space.

When one enters the space of true stillness, the silence becomes apparent with another type of message. It reveals a depth that is not of this world, yet is empowering this world. Ah, words are a mere reflection of what is meant. But a tree knows, and the rocks conveys the same message.

aka Komaya-san

July 2010