CHRISTMAS SILENCE
The celebration of Christmas is a
celebration of God’s presence. It is meant to herald the advent of inner peace
and stillness. Though we celebrate this event by the singing of Silent Night
and other traditional carols that speak of peace, stillness and tranquillity,
our present world is defined by signs to the contrary. Christmas becomes an
annual ritual, a kind of comic relief, giving us the much needed break we need.
Even as we put on a happy face, we might often feel empty. We just want to put
behind us, to blot out from memory the unpleasantness, the hurt, the anger; and
get on with life, hoping that things will change eventually.
In
our anxiety, we tend to take refuge in silence, but it is a silence that is
burdensome, enforced by circumstances, a silence born of despair, of a sense of
powerlessness, of our inability to change the situation. It is also the silence
of the eccentric, the naïve, and the gullible, the exploited, and those of us
who live at the margins. Nevertheless, it enables us to get on with life,
allowing us to keep our daily routines, while our energies are steadily
depleted by underlying fear. Silence is often mistaken for resilience.
There are some who are silent because they
have long since understood that words lose their meaning when they become
endless chatter. They have experienced first hand that words, whether written
or spoken, are often meant to conceal more than they reveal. And when there is
a genuine attempt to reveal what we experience deeply, we find words
inadequate. We are often misunderstood and misquoted and our intentions twisted
out of context. For the sensitive, silence is a defence mechanism, aimed at
damage control. We might be misunderstood but never misquoted.
A
silence that is imposed by external conditions is unproductive, because it is
rooted in the experience of ourselves as non-being. It is the very antithesis
of presence. It masks the inner turmoil, the noises within us that clamour for
attention, giving us a false sense of security. The other is seen as a threat
to our existence. It is one ego battling for survival against another at every
level of our personal and social life. It is a recipe for internal and external
war and violence of varying intensity.
The
inner silence that Christmas promises is not a commodity that we can seek to
possess. Possession supposes separateness. We want what we do not have.
Possessiveness presupposes a dualistic world, in which we can at most have
working relationships but never an enduring peace. Presence, on the other hand,
is rooted in non-duality. It is the experience of the dissolution of the self
into the larger Self which enfolds us. This ‘kenosis’ – emptying of the self –
that makes Christmas a sacrament. It is not only a sign that God is with us,
but even more an expression of the reality that we are one with God and as a
result one with each other.
Christmas
is a journey to our centre where we experience with us, God within us. The
daily practice of meditation is seen as re-enactment of this event with us. It
dispels the anxiety of our ontic obscuration by rooting us in “Being”
itself. It disposes to receive the gift
of true inner silence. We make a paradigm shift from relationship to union.
This is the harbinger of a peace, rooted in non-violence because it is grounded
in non-possessiveness. It is the silence that brings inner security and with it
he dawn of the kingdom of peace and justice, truth and love.
-
Christopher Mendonca
“A Wonderful
Silence Free of Burdens” in Times of India,
23rd.
December 2008
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