by Alison

Chapter 24 - Silence: Stillness

saying nothing:
the guest, the host
the white chrysanthemum

-  Ryota Oshima

A Japanese tea ceremony is silent, I learn from Patricia Donegan in “Haiku Mind”.  Different from my own tea parties which are filled with chattiness and gossip, a Japanese tea ceremony is about “silent communication.”  Silence?  Imagine that.

I think about silence in my life.  I enjoy silence, I crave quietude, but somehow it has gotten harder and harder for me to embrace.  Between Facebook, email, two different phone lines, my favorite t.v. shows, Twitter and the Blogosphere, I often notice that my mind is searching for a quick fix of activity.

Even outside of technology, silence can elude me.  Americans are chatty and I love the banter of casual conversation when I talk with my friends, neighbors and the woman at the checkout counter at my favorite produce market.  When we talk there is barely a pause.

So I have been thinking…amidst all this activity, both virtual and live, where do I allow time for stillness?

Patricia Donegan is attune to this dilemma.  She aptly states “we are becoming creatures who can barely stand the sound of silence, of nothing happening.”

So how to embrace silence?  For me, writing haiku has become a practice of silence.  The silence that I had as a young artist who never owned a television until the age of 29.  The silence of sitting quietly with my evening cup of tea or of looking skyward to notice the ever-changing branches and leaves.  I love that silence cannot be ordered off of Ebay.  I love that silence does not rely on happiness and is not hindered by sadness or anger or any emotion.  Silence is simply there if we allow it to be.

Find Haiku Mind on Amazon:
Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

Silence: Stillness haiku excerpted from Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan, (c)
2008. Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.
www.Shambhala.com.