Silence is the answer to fourteen metaphysical questions according to the Buddha. Postmodern thinkers would largely appreciate if not necessarily agree with the tenor of this “answer.” Silence that was punctured by the Word is primordial; it corresponds to the state of supreme speech as it is originated and yet unclothed in thought. The Silence is the argument of arguments against all those who judge, who have ideologies to sell, grand narratives to impose, beliefs to be anxiously guarded or attached to. Silence is the doctrine in Zen Buddhism and constitutes the essence of all theological answers. What Is is God, so runs a scholastic formulation. And what can one do but be silent with respect to it? God is the Mystery according to the Quranic opening verses and the mystery of existence resists all attempts at decoding by interpreters and scientists. So what do we do in the face of the Mystery? Silence, the best of poets would advise.
We may note the story of Buddha and birth of Zen Buddhism in which flower is exchanged to indicate the point that truth is best experienced and exchanged without words, in silence. “He who speaks becomes silent before the Divine Essence.” (Abdul Karim al-Jili) “Be silent that the Lord who gave thee language may speak.” (Rumi) “The furthest from God among the devotees are those who speak the most of him.” (Bistami)
Mysticism seeks that primordial silence which preceded God’s speech or word, where all contradictions are resolved. The sacred scriptures for him always try to transcend words and everything that has to deal with words with speech and they’re signified in terms of meaning, truth, telos, God distorts and falsifies religion. Authentic Religion escapes being simply a textual product by emphasizing being and silence. The scripture always points beyond itself, deconstructing itself, always asking us to go beyond or transcend scripture’s textual reality and find God in silence and void. The best way to speak of God is not to say that he is nothing or emptiness of emptiness for even this could be seen as an assertion, a truth claims, but to be silent and not to commit oneself to say at all. It means pre-linguistic witnessing of phenomena. Suchness can’t be thus deconstructed.
Bedil, a great mystic poet from India writing in Persian, has especially been brilliant in articulating the theme of silence.
A text, even if it is entirely full of meaning, can be edited or added to Silence
Is a text from which one cannot pick and choose (S. R. Faruqi’ s trans.).
Were the silence-theme to blossom, The floret with unopened lips
Could become the bulbul’s teacher (S. R. Faruqi’s trans.).
As long as silence reigned (i.e. as long as there was no verbalization of Reality) all was calm and undisturbed, it is the tongue of a man that has given a hot-bed of stormy waves to the ocean (of life.)
Very few know that the most compelling argument for God/Absolute/Sacred is the silent presence of the saints and attuning to the silent depths of being within where all queries dissolve. Being, our very ground, has no sound but it has the first and the last word. Mysticism asks one to tune to the silence of the universe which emerges to be the most eloquent and even hauntingly musical. Great music and poetry are said to approach silence. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy King Lear offers the gift of silence as the answer to a tragic lot of men – ripeness is all; the rest is silence. Auden has put it well in his poem “The Sea and the Mirror”:
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.
