Silence, the Basis of Existence

It's more--a lot more--than the mere absence of noise

You’re in your backyard, enjoying a book, a drink, or a conversation; heck, maybe all three at the same time if you're hanging with a mannequin.

Everything seems fine, but then the leafblower next door stops and you're suddenly like, "Man, everything sucked a moment ago and I didn't even realize it." A calmness rinses your neurons, like you've just received news that your maniacally scorned ex-girlfriend with a castration obsession has moved to Australia.

The relief you didn’t even know you needed feels great.

Now, swap out that leaf blower for the tornado of thought that funnels through your head.

You get the same sense of relief when that tornado evaporates.

It’s that rush of silence you get when you sit with the first drink on Friday after work. Or maybe when you collapse into a lawn chair on a nice afternoon (without that jack-off with the leaf blower next door). I often get that rush when I plop into the pew for Mass, knowing that I can't go anywhere for the next hour, so I might as well relax and be resigned to whatever comes (endless announcements; bilingual detour; a rogue liturgist hijacking the Mass).

This thing I'm describing--this thing everyone except the American Psycho-ish among us experiences--ain't just "silence." To call it "silence" is like coming out of the Sistine Chapel, nodding knowingly like Michaelangelo needs your approval, and saying, "It didn't suck."

The word “silence” doesn’t cover it any better than a bikini covers that body positive woman at the beach. “Silence” implies the mere "absence of noise," like "evil" is merely the privation of being.

I'm talking about more than silence, something more manifest--a presence, a thing with its own existence and merit. Just as the devil is the manifestation of that (otherwise philosophically-correct) notion that evil is merely the absence of being, this thing I'm describing is a presence, a thing with its own existence and merit.

There is no word for it in English, which is shocking, given English’s versatility, depth, and spectrum—from sublime genius to hellish moronic (Shakespeare to Nicki Minaj).

The Japanese call it ma, and someone lacking in ma is called a manuke, which loosely translates to “fool."

My Uncle Lao-Tzu wrote about it in Book 11. He says the spokes of a wheel don't matter as much as the hub of emptiness where they join, and the clay pot is worthless if there's no empty place to pour the liquid, and a house without empty space is unlivable.

It’s from empty space and silence that all things emerge. Things and noise come out of space and silence, which means space and silence are generative: primordial for all other things that exist. To think of them as mere “privations” of matter and noise is a flip-flopped perversion that would make Aleister Crowley cackle with glee.

It’s in space and silence that relations are formed, and from those relations comes the world of explicitness where we spend our everyday existence.

"Relations are primary,” says McGilchrist, "and form the bedrock of our experience." It’s a truth that quantum physics has discovered.

"It isn't the atoms and molecules that are at the hard core of reality. It is the relations between them and the relations between them and things called processes which are at the core reality of the real world." Don Mikulecky.

Silence isn’t a dog that noise condescends to let out of its pen occasionally.

Rather, at least in a properly-ordered mind, noise is the dog that silence condescends to let out of its pen occasionally, like a Trappist monk is provided occasional recreational times of speech.

It's a fitting analogy. The cloistered have known for a long time what quantum physics has only recently discovered: Relationship is primary and it is found in space and silence. In the words of the popular nun, Mother Natalia:

“The primary reason, the only reason ultimately, that we pray is to be in relationship.”

She refers to prayer as "entering into silence," which acknowledges that silence is "a thing," not just "an absence." She then goes on to point out that the relationship found by entering into silence leads to peace, feeling grounded, greater virtue, and responding better during the day.

This silence is harbored in the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere is that thing that produces the tornado of thoughts: what comes next, what if this or that, how can I win or get more money, I hate my jack-off neighbor. Its M.O. is explicit thought. It appreciates the chapel of silence as much as an ape appreciates the Sistine Chapel. It's not the ape's fault, and it's not the left hemisphere's fault.

But that doesn't mean they should be allowed in the chapel, and we sure as hell shouldn’t let them defile it or insist the rest of us not appreciate the chapel’s importance.