Silence

Through the open windows came a confusion of sounds : the loud talk and quarelling in the village, an engine letting off stream, the cries of children and their free laughter, the rumble of a passing lorry, the buzzing of bees, the strident call of the crows. And amidst all this noise, a silence was creeping into the room, unsought and uninvited. Through words and arguments, through misunderstandings and struggles, that silence was spreading its wings. The quality of that silence is not the cessation of noise, of chatter and word; to include that silence, the mind must lose its capacity to expand. That silence is free from all compulsions, conformities, efforts; it is inexhaustible and so ever new, ever fresh. But the word is not that silence.

Commentaries on Living from the notebooks of J. Krishnamurti ©1956 Harper and bros New York

But the word is not that silence.

But the word is not necessarily the enemy of that silence.

It might be the friend of it. It might be the small child of that silence. The word might be the hole, or the shape floating around. The word can utter a sound hanging on that silence. It might be a fruit, it might be a small silence hanging on a branch from that silence. The word might be a newborn silence crying its lungs. When silence is, everything is music, everyone is an artist, or: art might begin, and it would be creation – not creation of the mind –, creation.