The Great Silence

Perhaps one of the things that first drew me to Zen was the fact that it was a silent practice. Of course there is the silence of the zendo and the silence one encounters when the monkey mind stops a-chattering, but it is more than that. It is the silence of the apologia that were never written, the sermons that were never delivered, the hymnody that was never composed. It is the silence that after a three sentence interchange says, "Enough talk! Let's have tea." It is the silence of Gutei's finger, Hakuin's one hand, Nansen's circle on the ground, my daughter's cut toe, the oriental lily in the vase, the traffic jam on the Ryan, and the time spent with an old friend.

Ah!