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Life long projects · a friendship with silence

Silence is a word

Silence is not empty. It is a word the mind keeps trying to talk over.

I sit in the morning, before the house wakes. Nothing to fix, nowhere to be. The breath goes out, and I follow it to the end, and wait.

The mind fills the quiet at once. A list, a worry, a small argument with someone who is not here. I do not push it away. I notice it, and let it pass, the way you let a car pass on a road you are not walking.

What is left is not blank. It is the room, the fridge, a bird, my own pulse. The silence turns out to be full. It was only my talking that made it seem empty.

Then the day starts. I carry a little of the quiet with me, and lose it, and sit again tomorrow. That is the whole practice: begin, lose it, begin again.

Written from the cushion, on an ordinary morning. The first post authored in the editor. Living in motion →