When Silence Speaks

Take a moment and think—at the end of the day, you'll find peace with no one. The peace you search for everywhere, dying a little each day in your quest, simply doesn't exist anywhere in this world. When you get the chance, visit some beautiful, scenic place on earth; taste the most expensive foods the world has to offer, or try on one of those priciest, most gorgeous outfits; if you feel like it, spend some time in your leisure with a spiritual person or a truly honest human being. You'll see—it feels wonderful for the first few days, but gradually it all becomes tedious and monotonous to you.

None of the parameters we've created for peace are truly eternal. The sources of peace change with time.

So whenever you need peace, return to yourself for a while at day's end, carrying a world's worth of weariness. You'll discover that the peace for which you were ready to turn the world upside down actually lies only within you.

The idea that there's no peace anywhere in the world is sometimes wrong in a particular sense. When the peace within you is intact, even hundreds of external disturbances, anxieties, or disappointments feel light. But for that inner peace, one must keep trying. It may not be possible in a day or even an era, but when that effort gradually becomes habit, the inner peace slowly begins to form. Then no person, place, or circumstance around you can disturb you anymore. Not a trace of complaint remains against anyone or against this life. Then one empties the house of expectations. One keeps oneself at some distance from all these worldly things. Then one learns to understand that all worldly things are merely instruments—to be used when needed, but nothing can be obtained from them selflessly. Because even in exchange for love, people expect some love in return. Even the person who gives you peace daily for two moments, with reason or without, may grow weary at some point, and then they'll ask something of you that they believe will bring them peace or comfort.

Better that you turn inward instead. Except in one's own soul, there is no peace anywhere else in the world.

Sometimes happiness, peace, love, desire—these are merely mental positions. When you seek these from others, a kind of dependency develops toward them. Sometimes you have to remain hostage to that person for these things. Then you have to do things you dislike just to please them. What's the need to sell your soul so completely?

The more expansive one's inner vision, the more vast the sky appears. When inner vision weakens, even the vast sky seems narrow to oneself. Then it becomes very suffocating.

I prefer silence to clamor; from childhood until now I've learned so many words, yet somehow silence remains dearest to me. Everything can be said without saying anything. Everything can be known without wanting to know anything.

When thousands upon thousands of word-processions fail, silence speaks. Silence then teaches that sometimes life's thousand gains fail to bring even a little happiness, while some small loss brings a person life's greatest joy. We've learned to lose by gaining; we still haven't learned to gain by losing.