Fast Asleep And Snoring
Osho,
Many people are in silence now. Do you recommend this? What is the purpose? Can it be helpful?
I don’t recommend, but they understand. I don’t recommend anything in particular – except understanding. But if you understand, you would love silence!
I don’t say, “Be silent,” because then it will become suppressive. If you understand me, if you look towards me, you will see silence before yourself, and you will have a deep desire arising in you to be silent. Because in deep silence all that is beautiful and true becomes available..
But you are in a constant chattering, inner talk continues. And you are talking with people or you are talking with yourself – you are talking the whole day. Even in the night you are talking, in dreams you are talking. This continuous talking functions as a barrier and you cannot see through it. It is like a fog that surrounds you, densely. Your intelligence is destroyed because of this constant talk.
I don’t recommend anything, because then it becomes a discipline; then because I say “You have to be silent,” you force silence.
A forced silence is already ugly, a forced silence will not give you the right taste of it. No. Just understand. Try to understand me, feel me and then you would like to be silent. And when you would like to be silent, only then can it be beautiful. When it arises from your own heart, with a deep understanding, by and by you become silent. In fact, then you don’t become silent, you by and by drop the talk, the inner talk, the outer occupation. Then silence is not the thing; you just understand that the whole talk is nonsense. Why go on talking? For what? There is nothing to say and you go on saying.
In the Chinese language there is an ideogram which means two things together. Chinese language is really something totally different from any other language, because only pictures exist, no alphabet, and each picture means many things.
One ideogram, pi, means two things. One meaning is “to explain,” the other meaning is “in vain.” To explain is to explain in vain. Isn’t it marvelous? There is nothing to explain, nothing to say really.
Excerpted From The True Sage CH: 8
