SILENCE IS THE LANGUAGE OF GOD
















Pic.: Kenrick D'Cunha

“Among my most prized possessions
are words that I have never spoken.” 

Often, I remind myself, that, what man – be it Buddha or Jesus, Rumi or Tagore – discovers ‘had been always there’. Man only wakes up to what he discovers… call it reality or truth, whatever.

And, the reason why - of the billions  who come and go on this planet - only a handful become a Buddha, Jesus, Rumi or Tagore is, that most of us have never learnt to delve into the  realm of silence…

Whoever has discovered whatever truth, he has done it only in the stillness of his mind. Rumi himself had said:

“Silence is the language of god, 
all else is poor translation.”


My 23-year-old son has just returned from a week-long trip to Jeeling (Nainital district). Of all the scenic pictures he has posted, I loved this simple one the most:




The quote was hung there, prominently, on the brick-wall of the farm house where my son and his friends had spent their holidays…

Many years ago, when I had first come across this quote, I was told that it was an Arabic quote. It read this way:

“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say
is more beautiful than silence.”

Why do we take a break from this maddening city life? Almost all of us have left our villages and come to these mega cities only because we wanted to be prosperous.  And, then, we go back to the remotest villages… lush mountainsides and dry deserts… to experience the silence and beauty of snow, forests and backwaters… Here, in our cities, we become desperate if there is no net-connection even for a second. The irony is: the very thing that we hope to connect us through – only disconnects us…  It adds more clutter to our lives, more noise…

This famous quote comes floating back to us, again and again, on social media:

“There is no wifi in the forest,
but you will find better connection.”

So, the thick forests and the lonely mountains, the quiet deserts and the winding rivers are the places we go to with the hope of finding answers for our questions…

All answers come from silence…

All solutions emerge from silence…

All truths are revealed in silence…

All connections and re-connections happen only in silence…

Orson Scott Card was right. For, among our most prized possessions are words that we have never spoken!


GERLD D’CUNHA

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