Silence

Silence

Inquiry is not an intellectual endeavor. It is using your awareness to get out of your head. It does not provoke thinking. It arrests thinking. Rest is the result because something is arrested. For a brief moment, thinking is arrested. In that moment, the concept we normally hold of our self is not there. It is dependent on thought. Because it is dependent on thought, it is thought.

See for yourself. Whenever you look for an "I" there isn't one. The reason is: for the brief moment you are looking, you are not thinking. There is no thought. This vacancy, this absence is what is referred to as original nature, the true nature of the mind. The true nature of the mind is vastness. This vastness is so expansive, so empty, that thought perishes without a reference point.

The realization that you are no one that you think you are is not an idea. It is a direct experience of what remains when there are no ideas. The absence of all ideas, the absence of all "shoulds" such as: it should be like this, or it shouldn't be like that, you should be like this or you shouldn't be like that, I should be like this or I shouldn't be like that, the absence of all such ideas is called silence.

Does this mean that ideas must never return? Not at all, that would fall into the category of shoulds. It simply means, as ideas, they are welcome, but they are ideas; they are not you. You are what remains. The ideas can change, and will, but see for yourself, the silence has never changed. Silence is the unchanging eternal Truth. That is the moon to which the finger is pointing.

Since it is unchanging and eternal, silence cannot be acquired in the usual sense. In its fullness, it is here now. What, then, will you do? Will you let this silence have you, or will you continue clutching at passing ideas. So long as you believe there is choice, this invitation will be offered you. However, if it is seen that silence is, in fact, choiceless, and all else are ideas, if that is seen, then silence has, in truth, already dissolved you.