We could say that we are immersed in a world of sounds. If you pay attention, almost every minute of your waking life is filled with some form of sound: most prominently the ambient sounds in our natural environment, including music and radio, conversations and messages, and the cacophony of thoughts in your own head. Considering all of this, we have to ask ourselves: How frequently do you get genuine moments of silence in our everyday life?
If we reflect, it seems that we have the inclination for filling moments of silence or stillness with noise and distraction and all other activities in between. What is the reason for this? Why do we have this inclination towards filling up moments of silence with some type of activity?
Because it seems that silence makes us feel uneasy, and since silence makes us feel uncomfortable, we will automatically try to fill it up. Why?
In moments of silence or stillness, we return to ourselves, which is not always an easy thing to do to stay with ourselves. Silence invites us to stay in what is happening right now in its rawest form with no form of inhibition to it. Silence exposes and brings our deepest hidden emotions to the surface, including all the fear, suffering, and discomfort we've been trying to escape. According to Thich Nhat Hanh,
Having plenty of stimuli makes it easy for us to distract ourselves from what we’re feeling. But when there is silence, all these things present themselves clearly.
Silence also exposes who we really are. To know our true awakened self, the Buddhist approach to enlightenment entails stillness of the mind through the practice of meditation. And it is through this inner quiet cultivated through meditation that has the power to softly leads us through our fears and apprehensions, returning us to the calm and the deep-seated innate wisdom and understanding that lay at the core of our being.
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