Silence...1
The Maharshi seems to have been the first human being to use silence deliberately and to have rendered such use comprehensible. At any rate if there is a trace of its use in the East or the West, in the distant or recent past, such use seems to have been unrecognised and nowhere understood or expounded.
Nor was the use of silence immediately understood in the entourage of the Maharshi. It was and still is said that he gave no upadesa (instruction), because he did not lecture. In fact he did give considerable verbal instruction, probably against his better judgement, in order to placate the exigencies of his followers, but his real upadesa was given by means of silence.
The Zen Masters never ceased to make it clear that verbal instruction, since language is necessarily dualistic, is useless and does more harm than good. Hence their mondo and koans. The Buddha denounced 'discoursing'. And the transmission of the Dharma, from Patriarch to Patriach, was given by silence.
What, then, is this method or technique of silence? It uses silence rather than is silence, and, no doubt, only by, or in, silence can it be explained.
A key to its understanding would seem to lie in the notion of 'grace', and the chief thing that we know of it is that it is more potent than speech. Those who have had long experience of it can make us realise its immense power, but little of its mechanism.
At least we can open our minds to its reality, and seek to understand it. We find ourselves in an unknown land. The vistas that open up before us exceed all expectations. Silence, which we thought of as a negative state, devoid of interest, is seen to be a positive and dynamic mode of being.
The Suddenness of Satori
There exists an elementary confusion about the 'sudden' character of satori - the so-called 'sudden' as opposed to 'gradual' schools of Zen (those of Hui Neng and of Shen-hsiu).
But there is not, never was and never could be, anything sudden about satori except the event itself, i.e. the 'turning-over' (paravritti) of the mind - and that is necessarily instantaneous - a seizure of the present. Its preparation may be considered to require untold millions of our years. Regarded within the framework of our lifetime that preparation may be short or long, may be fulfilled in youth or old-age - on the rare occasions on which it is fulfilled at all. There is nothing sudden about the preparation of satori, but the event itself appears to be both unexpected and immediate.
Suddenness is a function of Time. Satori is an intemporal state. The time-factor (our notion of time) is quite inapplicable to it.
Preparation for Satori
There is no Path to Satori. It cannot be attained. As we have seen, all the Masters tell us that we cannot seize Reality: it is Reality that seizes us. And we must not strive for it, because Mind cannot be reached through mind.
But we can prepare ourselves for it. This preparation consists in attaining - attainment is on the plane of phenomena - a state of consciousness in which as many hindrances as possible are removed, a state of relative dépouillement, so that we shall be en disponibilité, so that Reality may be able to seize us if It will.
Let me put it like this. In the hierarchy of the Catholic Church there is only one Pope among many million members, and he is chosen from among many dozens of cardinals. There is no path to papacy, direct or indirect, but there is a path to the condition of cardinalcy. Arrived at the state of member of the Sacred College a man is no surer of the papal state than he was on the day he was born , but he is papabile - he could be chosen.
Nothing he himself can 'do' will lead him to the papal state: that depends on factors outside his control, largely imponderable and innate factors. And, to make the parable more exact, there have been rare instances when the Pope has been selected from outside the cardinalcy and even from outside the priesthood.
But is not the status of a cardinal an end in itself? Is it not already much? Is it not to a great extent its own reward?
Neither the papal state nor the realisation of the state of satori is generally our lot, though both are available to all men. We do not strive to become Pope, we must not strive to become Jivan Muktas. But we may attain the state of disponibilité by striving - and that state is its own reward (even if such reward does not include the ego-affirmation of wearing a nice red hat).
I have said that the state of 'papability', of disponibilité, may be striven for. What is it, and how?
Surely it is just understanding, intellectual at first, transmuted into intuitional knowledge. When we have sufficiently disposed of ignorance, knowledge may take its place, and when we have knowledge the artificial ego evaporates, dies of inanition, and our relative Reality is ready for integration with Reality Itself. Then we are at the disposal of the Absolute.
