From Tiziano Terzani to Pustinia: the sound of silence in books

Tiziano Terzani, Martin Luther King, Mikhael Ainvanov, Peppino Impastato: all the values ​​of silence and its importance in our life (and in books)

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Silence can take many forms: for example that, sweet and full of meanings, of a kiss, of a caress rich in feeling.





Or, more dramatically and in the opposite direction, that of silence ("the mafia kills, silence as well", he said one day Peppino Impastato) or indifference, disengagement, indifference.

It is something that not only has a disastrous social impact but affects us directly, individually, because "our lives begin to end the day we are silent in the face of the things that matter", as he pointed out. Martin Luther King.

Index

Silence… and silences

Then there is the tangled and burning silence of the envious; the tangled and restless one of those who do not have clear ideas or are ready to explode, of the angry one. There is the devastating silence of life that has gone, among the rubble, on the land, in the waters of the seas, on the bodies of men, women, children, victims of wars, of the struggles for power, fled and never arrived, never left but equally dead.

And there is the silence of conscience and oppression (in slaughterhouses, in laboratories that carry out animal experiments or in intensive farms, in the abuses of every reality - human or not - weaker) and the silence of the spirit, ridiculed and removed from everyday life by a materialistic and blindly scientific culture.

They are thunderous, violent, inhuman and therefore unbearable silences that we try to confuse with the noise of the frenzy of modern life and its multiple seductions and invitations to use, to pleasure, to enjoy, to reach the "targets" to satisfy the objectives. ; all running towards the full-bodied and heavy substance of the ephemeral, of personal well-being and technology, of social media and of appearing.


The 3 types of silence by Tiziano Terzani

At a certain point, however, for many, the urgency of quiet comes, of a space without fake noises, of true silence. According to Tiziano Terziani at least three types of wonderful silence can be experienced: the silence of nature; the rumble of the earth; the music of the spheres. To be sought because without experiencing it, silence cannot really “feel”: “Never as today the world would need teachers of silence and never as today there are so few. We should have them in schools: ten o'clock, silence lesson. A difficult lesson because, tuned as we are to the constant cacophony of life in the cities, we can no longer "hear" the silence ".


In fact it is just like that: silence is an experience that most people today are no longer used to or, at least, consider it an annoying empty space, to be filled. But things are changing: more and more there are those who are starting to look for him: for some it is taking breaks in the silence of the monks' life (since everything can do business, near Terni there is also an Eremito: a luxury hotel which was born from the recovery of a monastery of the early '300; a place "where you can regenerate by finding contact with the priorities of life, lost sight of in the chaos of everyday life"); for others it is the approach to techniques such as vipassana meditation, also called - in the language of modern psychology - mindfulness.

From Tiziano Terzani to Pustinia: the sound of silence in books

Pustinia: the communities of the desert

Undoubtedly it is true that, immersed in nature, it will be easier to find not only the variegated flavor of silence but also the concrete perception of beauty, of the concrete spirituality that permeates things. If you want, however, silence can be found anywhere, even at home or wherever you are, obtaining a simple space-time "corner", as taught. Catherine de Hueck-Doherty, which in his novel Desert (Jaca Book): a curtain is enough - even ideal, or to put it in 3.0 language, virtual - to cut out the rest of the world. And stay. Simply stay. In the here and now of the present. Letting thoughts flow. Listening in a new way.


At first it may seem devastating, irritating, there may be bewilderment, the desire to go back, get out of the "tent". But if you let go, if you begin to breathe "through" the resistances, habits, dissonances, thoughts of escape or uselessness that emerge and the discomforts of the body that manifest, then something new can arise.


Silence.

Mikhael Ainvanov, The sense of silence

It is another silence, more authentic, which with time, will and practice opens worlds: it puts you back in contact with the Self, brings you closer to the Spirit. And therefore it becomes a space for change (one will necessarily return to the world with its noises but with a different awareness, an attitude that is no longer predatory, aware of the connection between all things). That's when, as he explains Mikhael Ainvanov in his book "The sense of silence”, Silence becomes active, expression of a profound harmony, quality of interior life. The one we are called to.

Read also:

  • If you have nothing more beautiful to say than silence, shut up
  • The daily practices to rediscover the magic of silence
  • The benefits of silence to heal body, mind and spirit
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