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Regards,
Meng-hu
The traits of the solitary bird are five: first, it seeks the highest place;
second, it withstands no company; third, it holds its beak in the air; fourth,
it has no definite color; fifth, it sings sweetly. These traits must be possessed
by the contemplative soul. It must rise above passing things, paying no more heed
to them than if they did not exist. It must likewise be so fond of silence and
solitude that it does not tolerate the company of another creature. It must hold
its beak in the air of the Holy Spirit, responding to his inspirations, that by
so doing it may become worthy of his company. It must have no definite color,
desiring to do nothing definite other than the will of God. It must sing sweetly
in the contemplation and love of its Bridegroom.
--St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love
Only in silence does hearing begin. The ear is freed and no longer merely
instrumental in communication in code. Relieved of its usual function, it
begins to search and research.
--Philip Groening, producer of the film Into Great Silence
submitted by Michele
Now, my real wish is to remain in a remote place, like a wounded animal, and
[using] all the energy, all the time, concentrate on spiritual practice. And use
my brain in a maximum way in spiritual field. Without much expectation. If
too much expectation, then [on] last day, I may regret [dying]. So without too
much expectation, but [I still want to live for] some years!
--Dalai Lama, Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama (live interview in
English)
If we are to think positively of the One, there would be more truth in
Silence.
--Plotinus, Enneads, 5.6
Non-action is the real action. One hundred acts are not as good as one moment
of silence. One hundred exercises are not as good as one moment of standing
still. ...
Big action is not as good as small action. Small action is not as good as
non-action.
--Wang Xiang Zhai, Chinese Xingyiquan master
God is the mirror of silence in which all creation is reflected.
--Paramahansa Yogananda
submitted by Michele
Once you experience the inner silence you never feel empty,
because in the inner silence you can hear the stars speak, you can
hear the voice of the water, you can hear the voice of the great Self.
--Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Resonate with Stillness
submitted by Linda
Great things are done when men and mountains met.
This is not done by jostling in the street.
--William Blake
You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait,
be quiet, still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
--Franz Kafka, Senses
Hell is other people.
--Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
You, too, may have met your hermit, or perhaps something else equally
marvelous. Maybe it was a rock, a tree, a star, or a beautiful sunset. The
hermit is the Buddha inside of you.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Hermit and the Well
And speaking of solitude again, it becomes clear that solitude is always at
bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude
ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much better
it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 8
Solitude, silence, the admonishing presence of grand, fair, and permanent
forms, and the gentle allurements of pure air, flowers, and clear streams --
these are valuable in themselves
-- Basil Willey, literary scholar
If you want to perceive and understand objectively, just don't allow yourself to be confused by people.
Detach from whatever you find inside or outside yourself and only then will you attain liberation.
When you are not entangled in things, you pass through freely to autonomy.
-- Zen Master Lin-chi
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light the mightiest of agencies;
for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it along.
-- Thomas De Quincey
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language? ...
-- Edgar Lee Masters: [from his poem] Silence
To drift like a dead leaf fallen from the tree and taken up by the wind,
knowing not if the wind carries you or if you are carrying the wind ...
-- Michel Jourdan (French hermit writer)
submitted by Michele
About three hundred years ago, an Indian chief said to the governor of
Pennsylvania: "We love quiet; we suffer the mouse to play; when the woods are
rustled by the wind, we fear not." Silence is part of the traditional way of
living for the Native American. It is an easy way, for it gives the soft
distance between spoken words, body signals, and action choices. To live with Indian people is to
discover a beautiful enhancement of the spirit through silence. Unless they have
succumbed to the rush and noise of the mainstream style of life in this country,
Indians still reveal this gift of silence. . . .
-- Mary Jose Hobday (Catholic nun and Seneca elder)
submitted by Michele
How do I talk to a little flower? Through it I talk to the Infinite. And what
is the Infinite? It is the silent, small force. It isn't the outer physical
contact. No, it isn't that. The infinite is not confined in the visible world.
It is not in the earthquake, the wind or the fire. It is that still small voice
that calls up the fairies.
--George Washington Carver
submitted by Lhachö
The city does not take away, neither does the country give,
solitude; solitude is within us.
-- Joseph Roux (18th century France)
Life is ample for those who keep themselves detached from involvement. None of their time is transferred to others. None is frittered away in this direction and that, none is committed to Fortune, none perishes of neglect, none is squandered in lavishness, none is idle.
God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a translation.
--Thomas Keating
submitted by hermitess
A hermit, aware of such unworldly joy, finds truth from scenes of rock walls,
sunset glow, mountain caves and clouds. ... A decent person needs to empty his
heart for room for newly realized truth as well as to fill his heart at the same
time, leaving no room for worldly desires.
--Choi Joon-ho, Korean art
historian
Solitude and nature are absolutely necessary for the proper development of a
human being. It is an admixture of natural life, lived in solitude, amid
beautiful surroundings of nature and what we call an arboreal life, which is
absolutely necessary for the poise and harmony of the human mind.
--Gopi Krishna
submitted by Steven
Every man who delights in uttering a multitude of words, even though he says
admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. In
the beginning we have to force ourselves to be quiet. But then there is born
something that draws us to it.
--Isaac of Ninevah
Silence is not native to my world; more than likely it is a stranger to your
world, too. If you and I even have silence in our noisy hearts, we are going to
have to grow to it. ... We will do so on silence's terms for growth -- terms
which are not yet your own.
-- Wayne Oates, Nurturing Silence in a Noisy Heart
The present state of the world, the whole of life, is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply: "Create silence! Bring men to silence. The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. Create silence."
--Soren Kierkegaard
Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you must have the quiet.
--Wendell Berry
It is a good discipline to wonder in each new situation if people wouldn't be
better served by our silence than by our words.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart
Far back past deep, dark, silent trees
where no city's seed has e're been sown,
in a forest by the crashing seas,
there lives the hermit all alone.
Wouldn't leave if, per chance, he could;
the slightest change would raise his ire.
Content to wander in the wood,
to dream alone beside the fire.
-- R. Logue
submitted by Robert
The Tao cannot be sought from others; it is attained in oneself. If you
abandon yourself to seek from others, you are far from the Tao.
-- Huainan-tzi
Outwardly go with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true nature. Then
your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, and your thoughts will not be confused,
while the secret within you will expand greatly to roam in the realms of
absolute parity.
-- Huainan-tzi
The sage who wanders alone is like the wind that is not caught in a net, like
the lotus not soiled by water, leading others but not led by them.
-- Sutta-Nipata (Pali)
Forgetfulness of black-printed books comes of itself to one who realizes that
all things are holy scriptures.
--Milarepa, Songs (44)
There are two great forces in the universe,
silence and speech. Silence prepares, speech creates. Silence acts, speech gives
the impulse to action. Silence compels, speech persuades. The immense and
inscrutable processes of the world all perfect themselves within, in a deep and
august silence, covered by a noisy and misleading surface of sound ...
-- Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin
I know that I went from the brief before to the eternal afterward of everything, but I do not know how
--Antonio Porchia (1886-1968), Argentine poet
submitted by Timothy
It is necessary not to be "myself," still less to be "ourselves."
--Simone Weil, Decreation
I have never found the companion that was so companionable as
solitude.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden
If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us
to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a
pilgrimage to the self. There is no place to hide and so we are found.
--Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
submitted by Michele
Solitude is sometimes the best society.
--John Milton, Paradise Lost
Society is the cave. The way out is solitude
--Simone Weil, The Great Beast
Every time you feel lost, alienated, or cut off from life, or from the world, every time you feel despair, anger, or instability, practice going home. Mindful breathing is the vehicle that you use to go back to your true home.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home
Never less idle than when wholly idle, nor less alone than when wholly
alone.
--Cicero, De officius
This is the truth. If hermits regard contempt as praise, poverty as riches, hunger as a
feast, they will never die.
--Macarius (from Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
submitted by l'ermita
Seeing that, for every hermit, sickness is an exhortation to virtue, without any ceremony
whatsoever, I will follow my way, sickness or death.
--Milarepa
submitted by l'ermita
I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, for this reason: What is inside
me, I don't let out; what is outside me, I don't let in. If someone comes in, he
goes right out again. He has nothing to do with me at all. I am a Doorkeeper of
the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.
--Rabia Basri (woman Sufi master)
He is a solitary figure, robed in simplicity and kindness. He sits upon the
lap of Nature to draw his Inspiration, and stays up in the silence of the night,
awaiting the descending of the spirit.
--Khalil Gibran, from The Poet
Not all who wander are lost.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: 1. Fellowship of the Ring
submitted by Derrick
I have started on a new journey which, I know, will take me further than before towards the
perfect life I was instinctively seeking. I began this journey by exploring the unmapped
territory of my own mind... This endeavour is as vast as life itself because it requires the analysis
of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being...
--Ella Maillart, explorer-traveler-writer, Cruises and Caravans
submitted by Michele
Put forth diligent effort, seeking wisdom that comes of itself, taking
solitary delight in goodness and wisdom ...
-- Lotus Sutra, 3
We live as we dream -- alone.
--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I am never lonely. A lonely person is one who is not aware of the complete
fullness within. When you become dependent on something outside without having
awareness of the reality within you, then you will indeed be lonely. The whole
search for enlightenment is to seek within, to become aware that you are
complete in yourself. You are perfect. You don't need any externals. No matter
what happens in any situation, you need never be lonely.
-- Swami Rama, Living with the Himalayan Masters
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and
what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in
solitude to live after one's own; but the great man is he who in the midst of
the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
When a grasshopper sits on a blade of grass, he has no thought of separation,
resistance, or blame. Human children prefer dragonflies whose wings and bellies
are as red as chili peppers. But the green grasshopper blends completely with
the green grass, and children rarely notice it. It neither retreats nor beckons.
It knows nothing of philosophy or ideals. It is simply grateful for its ordinary
life.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Fragrant Palm Leaves
Genuine tranquility of the heart and perfect peace of mind, the highest
blessings on earth after health, are to be found only in solitude and, as a
permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclusion.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, World As Will and Representation
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring,
murmuring, inviting the soul to wander a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose
itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
-- Kate Chopin,
The Awakening
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter: the sky, the stars, the
moon, blossoming trees, things of less value, perhaps, than the human spirit.
The value of solitude lies in the greater possibility of attention.
--Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude
The moment you don't make anything, Buddha's "right effort" is achieved.
Right effort is no effort. To get to the place of doing things effortlessly
takes a hell of a lot of effort.
-- Jane Dobisz, The Wisdom of Solitude
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on
silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and
distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation....
Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and
trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads
monstrously like a gray vegetation.
-- Jean Arp, Sacred Silence
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the
cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns
and stars.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
Everyone says Tushita Heaven is fine,
but how can it match this old hut of mine?
-- Stonehouse (Ching-hung), from his Mountain Poems
For the most part it [Walden Pond] is as solitary where I live as on the
prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my
own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chapter 5: Solitude
God's discretion invites us to silence, a silence filled with wonder, a
silence which
adores and opens itself to God, who draws closer in mystery. Adoration envelopes itself in silence, joining itself to that which draws closer.
--Daniel Bourguet,
La Pudeur de Dieu
submitted by Michele
One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the
poorest man in it. The poor rich man! All he has is what he has bought. What I
see is mine.
-- Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.
-- Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam
Truthfully, I am "homesick" for a land that is not mine. I am haunted by the
steppes, the solitude, the everlasting snow and the great blue sky "up there"!
The difficult hours, the hunger, the cold, the wind slashing my face, leaving me
with enormous, bloody, swollen lips. The camp sites in the snow, sleeping in the
frozen mud, none of that counted, those miseries were soon gone and we remained
perpetually submerged in a silence, with only the song of the wind in the
solitude, almost bare even of plant life, the fabulous chaos of rock,
vertiginous peaks and
horizons of blinding light.
-- Alexandra David-Néel [traveler and explorer of India and Tibet]
submitted by Michele
No matter what the religion, at the highest level prayer is related and emerges as a state of silence, inner silence, inner stillness. At a very high level one may believe that one is having a dialogue or directing a petition to God. Still, even this prayer is related to the tangible -- something which one can objectify. This is emphasized in the Hannya Shingyo, the Buddhist Heart Sutra: "No prayer, no you, no me ... no this, no that." It goes on until we come to "No thing. Nothing," where you can't put labels, you can't objectify. I think this view conceives of prayer as absolute emptiness, stillness.
-- William Segal, A Voice at the Borders of Silence
No need to attack the faults of others
no need to flaunt your own virtues
act when you are acknowledged
retire when you are ignored.
-- Han-shan (8th century)
Be able to be alone. Lose not
the advantage of solitude, and
the society of thyself.
-- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
submitted by De Anna
I would rather sit on a
pumpkin, and have it all to
myself, than to be crowded on
a velvet cushion.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
submitted by De Anna
I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the
butterflies of vertigo.
-- Samuel Beckett
at the crescent moon
the silence
enters the heart
-- Chiyo-ni, from Woman Haiku Master by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi
submitted by anonymous
The more than human personages of visionary experience
never "do anything." ... They are content merely to exist. …To be busy is the law
of our being. The law of theirs is to do nothing. ...The Egyptian
gods, the Madonnas, the bodhisattvas, the Buddhas, ... have one
characteristic in common: a profound stillness.
-- Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell
submitted by Bob
Whoever loves God wishes to be alone. Like newlyweds who do not want to have
their intimacy interrupted by outsiders, those who have felt the love of God
retire into silence and solitude.
-- Ernesto Cardenal, Abide in Love
submitted by anonymous
Silence is the communing of the conscious soul with itself.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 12/1838
submitted by Bob
On the exoteric level the traditions are irreconcilable. On the
esoteric, experiential level of the heart reigns an eloquent, reverential
silence.
-- Frederick Franck, A Little Compendium On That Which Matters
submitted by anonymous
Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the
whole universe.
-- Tao Te Ching, 42 (Stephen Mitchell translation)
submitted by SweetMeadow
We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is
the friend of silence. See how nature - trees and flowers and grass - grow in
silence. See the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. The more
we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life.
-- Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving
submitted by anonymous
There are moments when the silence of God culminates in his creatures. In the solitude of a retreat, we are renewed by intimate meeting with
Christ.
-- Brother Roger of Taizé, The Rule of Taizé
submitted by Michele
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-- Francis Bacon
One of the conditions of being human, and even if we're surrounded by
others, we essentially live our lives alone. Real life takes place inside us.
-- Paul Auster
Your life dwells among the causes of death
Like a lamp standing in a strong breeze.
-- Nagarjuna
Renunciation does not mean turning our back on the world. It means turning our back on the conditions that cause suffering ...
-- Jakusho Kwong, No Beginning, No End
The cultivation of justice is silence.
-- Isaiah 32.17