Gareth’s in ability to cope with the sound of the electric saw disrupting a contemplative prayer retreat resulted from his spasms of preference for only sounds that pleased him, such as birdsong, the rustling of leaves, or rain. Apart from his inner contortions during this one hour of outrageous disruption, there was nothing else going on just then except a saw making the sound saws make when they’re switched on and sawing through timber. The more he allowed the noise to be present, without fighting the fact that it was there, the more he could simply sit in the midst of it. He would have preferred, and with good reason, that the noise not be there (and ideally it should not have been), but he was amazed that, after this deepened release into his practice, his mind no longer hopped around like drops of oil on a hot skillet.
Gareth’s breakthrough came when he was sitting there during a period of silent prayer as the electric saw squealed. He said later to the retreat guide, “I do not know how to put this into words. My commenting mind simply fell way. There was only the sound of the saw, but there was no commenting mind listening to it. There was only the sound of a saw. Now that this is in the past, and I reflect upon it, it sounds silly. But I know that when the mind is still, sound is as silent as no sound.”
Gareth’s experience was a real grace but should not be considered exceptional to the dynamics of inner silencing. Saint Isaac the Syrian says, “Love silence above all things, because it brings you near to the fruit that the tongue cannot express.” He encourages us to practice silence diligently; “then, from out of this silence something is born that leads to Silence itself.”
Meister Eckhart says, “The noblest attainment in this life is to be silent.” By “silent” does this fourteenth-century Dominican friar simply mean physical silence? He means far more than this and calls it being “in the right state of mind.” Eckhart illustrates this in a provocative way in an address to young people who are training to be fellow members of his Dominican Order. In characteristic fashion, Eckhart shocks his audience a bit. He says, “I was once asked: ‘Some people like to withdraw from company and prefer always to be alone. That is where they find peace…. Is this the best thing?’ My answer was ‘No’!”” Why would Eckhart say “No”? He is fully aware that physical silence is the preferred environment for prayer and that it needs to be valued and cultivated.
But deep prayer is not about a physically silent environment, but about the Loving Communion that is Silence itself, and Silence itself is deeper than the presence or absence of sound waves. A silent environment is the opposite of a noisy environment, but the Silence Eckhart wants to lead these students to has no opposite. It grounds all that appears and disappears in awareness, all that comes and goes. Eckhart is trying to nudge his audience toward this discovery. The realization of this silence that has no opposite is what he calls being in “the right state of mind.” This “right state of mind” is a silent mind and is always present within us. Therefore, Eckhart says, “if he is in the right state of mind he is so whether he is in church or the market place.” Gareth made good use of what disrupting noise had to teach him.
Not all the retreatants had the same breakthrough Gareth had . On the second to last day of the retreat, as soon as the neighbor’s table saw began its daily squeal, one man got up from his place in the oratory, stormed out of the retreat center, and rampaged over to the neighbor’s garage. He then yanked the saw’s electric cord out of its socket, overturned the neighbor’s table saw, and shouted at a volume all could hear, “What in the name of God do you think you’re doing sawing wood when all these people have paid good money to have a week’s peace and quiet?” A brief interchange between the two men ensued. The level of language was not especially elevated. But the saw ceased its daily hour of buzzing squeal, and for what was left of the retreat the only sound was birdsong, the mooing of distant cattle, rain fall, and the “sound of a gentle breeze” (l Kgs 19:12). We each make our way on the pathless path of contemplation along different trails, each trail thick with tangled vines of Providence.
~Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
