Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be prescriptive, just puzzling over
this. There's an alternate tradition of solitary silence, practiced by
religious hermits and various Indian subcontinent holy men. It's also
recorded in the bible--Elijah's forty days in the wilderness. In Tibetan
Buddhist practice adepts sometimes pass three days in silence in total
darkness--sensory deprivation as well as silence. American Indian vision
quests also were both solitary and silent. So the question is--in what way,
and for what reason, the communal or the solitary methods?
At 10:01 PM 11/25/2005, you wrote:
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>Here's an interesting question, interesting to me, at least. A lot of my
>>friends go on retreats to Catholic or Buddhist venues, where they're
>>silent among others being silent. I live and work by myself and in fact
>>spend many days saying very little. My favorite travel is solitary
>>walking and camping. Obviously a lot of people for a lot of millenia have
>>referred being silent in a crowd. Any ideas?
>>
>>Mark
>
>There is probably some (or are at least ten) psychological explanations
>for silence, where and how it is kept. One or ten, I don't know the
>answer. Which of course will not stop me from speculating. First, if
>someone is working alone or is walking quietly through a street or other
>public space, they MAY not fully conscious of keeping silence. How many
>of us would talk to ourselves in the street or in the subway? I know, any
>large city has enough of them. While working?--I usually don't notice
>when I talk to myself or to the task.
>
>The idea of a silent retreat for me is that the silence is both imposed
>and conscious. It's a rule: and if you don't follow it, you're wasting
>your time and the retreatmaster's. I suppose that's because the silence
>is intended as an integral spiritual discipline that be more painful than
>the cliched collection of birch twigs or a cat 'o' nine tails because the
>inner beating you can give yourself happens on the way to that conscious
>contact with God or whomever. An hour of silence has taken me places I
>had no wish to go; yet I often wished I had more time to find out what was
>on the other side of the All-Holy Me. I suspect silence is a powerful
>tool to get there.
>
>I have known several Jesuits and they share something in common: each
>during his formation has had to undergo three 30-day retreats built around
>Ignatius Loyola's "Spiritual Exercises." Actually it's four weeks. As I
>understand it, for the whole period you may not speak except briefly to a
>spiritual director about what to pray and meditate about and (end of the
>day) how it came out. In a way, I believe you're going out into the
>spiritual Desert of yourself to see who and what you meet there.
>
>ken
>
>---------------
>Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
>
> "You have to be a speedy reader, cause there's
> so, so much to read!" - Dr. Sousé
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