Silence is Already Present
How do I quiet my mind?
Seemingly, this is the most pressing question when it comes to meditation: how do I quiet my mind?
It’s an interesting question: how do I quiet my mind? That’s a little bit like asking: how do I relax?
Paradoxically, the act of trying to relax is what prevents you from ever fully arriving at that imaginary point in the future that your mind is creating, that fictitious place called “relaxed.” It’s not the act of seeking, but rather the act of letting go that allows you to drop down into that sense of Being, not Doing, that you associate with being relaxed.
Relaxation doesn’t come from acquiring something else; it comes from letting go.
Silence is similar.
One way to approach silence is to try to create it, to try to quiet your mind through some kind of discipline or technique. For example, you might focus your attention on your breath with a quality of love and patience, and without judgment. You’ll be instructed that the mind will wander countless times and each time to bring your attention back with love and patience to your breath. Gradually, the space in between thoughts starts to lengthen and you deepen into a space of quiet that expands more and more.
This is the kind of meditation where you train your attention to anchor on an object like the breath. These are techniques like mindfulness of breathing and bodily sensations. These are powerful techniques definitely worth practicing.
But it’s important to be on the lookout for stories that sometimes build up around meditation practices: it’s not always explicitly stated but it’s there, lurking in the background. It’s the idea that one day, with enough training, enough concentration, enough effort: you’ll be able to achieve some kind of deep state of one pointed concentration that will silence your mind.
At its core: it can cultivate the idea that what you’re looking for is some place other than Here and Now. It’s also another story that your mind is creating to seek pleasure, to get to some to some imaginary point in the future that might be better than whatever is happening now, that place where your mind would be still, where you would feel more calm and more at ease.
Ahhh yes...that underlying feeling of more, more, more.
But what if the thing you’re looking for is always and already present, right here and now, and your very effort to look elsewhere is what prevents you from seeing clearly what’s right in front of you?
Against the backdrop of all of the mind’s chatter, in fact against the backdrop of all of your conscious experience, there is an unfathomable depth of stillness that’s ever present. But we miss this in meditation because we’re always trying to look for it somewhere else. We’re trying to create what’s already here. In fact, it’s everywhere and yet it’s nowhere in particular.
It’s the ever present silence from which sounds emerge and into which they all die, only to be born again. It’s a truth towards which classical composer Claude Debussy was pointing when he said:
“Music is the space between the notes.”
Debussy was pointing towards that underlying ground of awareness from which all of experience is born and into which it dissolves, over and over and over again. Consciousness vacillates between expansion and contraction, a dance between dynamism and stillness. It’s easier to notice the noise than the silent backdrop against which all of experience unfolds.
Stop searching for that silence as if it’s somewhere else, and just notice the silence that is always and already here and now. It’s here when the mind is quiet. But it’s still there even when your mind is narrating over it. It’s the space in which the notes rise and fall; it’s the space in between the notes.
The Maitri Upanishad describes it this way:
“There is something beyond our mind
That abides in silence within our minds
It is the Supreme Mystery beyond thought
Rest your mind and spirit on That
And nothing else.”
You can call “That” silence, awareness, consciousness, Presence, Being. But this Mystery is always and already happening all on its own. It’s happening whether your mind is trying to grasp after it, to pin it down, to possess it, to understand it--or when your mind lets go and effortlessly abides in that stillness.
What’s it like when you rest your attention gently on that thing that is everywhere and yet it’s nowhere (in particular)? If you try to look for it, you’ll miss it. You can not rest your attention on awareness because awareness is not an object. But you can abide in awareness, as awareness.
Allow the energy of your mind to move thoughts through your consciousness. You can simply notice the thoughts without getting lost in the content. Resistance to your experience will only move you further from that which you are seeking. Let go of any and all of your attempts to manipulate or control your experience, starting with abandoning the absurd, futile idea that you can stop your thoughts.
Welcome sounds, sights, smells, sensations as they come and go. Rest in that silent presence, in that vast space of awareness, the groundless ground of all experience, against which all sounds and thoughts and other phenomena come and go.
What happens when you start to pay attention to the space in between the notes, as Debussy described it?
What happens when you stop trying to silence your mind? What happens when you let go of the seeking mind, even the sense of being the meditator, and drop down into the depth of your Being? When you rest in that infinite stillness that’s always happening: inside, outside, everywhere and yet nowhere in particular?