Silent Retreat 2024
It is the pauses which make beautiful the music of our lives. It is the empty spaces which give richness and significance to them.’
Sangharakshita: ‘Pauses and Empty Spaces.’
I have been thinking that a silent retreat is much more than a retreat with silence. It draws us into a particular, deeper way of being. What is our experience when the meditation bell finally fades or when we catch the pause between the birdsong? What is it like to relax and live within a deeper flow of quietness? We glimpse the inner resonance of silence in meditation, while silence is also an outer presence and atmosphere. We can feel as if we are moving in a different rhythm and ordinary life resembles ritual. We can loosen our deluded fixed view of self and so feel less substantial and more connected with everything. We can glimpse that ‘form is only emptiness, emptiness only form.’