The Two Silences: A Contemplation on The Sound of Silence

In homage to Paul Simon and the song that still sings across generations

Some songs do more than linger in memory—they deepen with time.
Paul Simon wrote The Sound of Silence as a young man, yet its meaning seems to unfold like scripture, revealing new layers to each listener, in each season of life.

For some, it speaks of loneliness. For others, protest.
And for those on the contemplative path, it reveals something more:
not just silence as emptiness,
but silence as fullness.
Not absence, but presence.

This is one such reflection—offered in reverence, not explanation.
A glimpse into the two silences
hidden within one timeless song.

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There are silences that ache with absence—
the hush of the ordinary mind,
lost in its own echo chamber of thought,
surrounded by words, but void of meaning.

This is the silence of the crowd,
of “people talking without speaking,”
“people hearing without listening.”
A silence that grows not from stillness, but from disconnection—
and yes, like a cancer, it spreads.

But there is another silence.

The mystic’s silence.
The silence not of emptiness, but of fullness.
Where thoughts dissolve, not into numbness,
but into presence.

This silence is a friend.
It is “hello darkness”—not as despair,
but as womb.
It is Buddha-nature beneath the vrittis,
the Word unspoken, still vibrating in the unseen.

Paul Simon’s song—whether he knew it or not—
opens the door to both.
It begins in longing, in disillusionment,
but ends in revelation:
the words of the prophets
are not lost.
They are whispered in the sound of silence.

We do not need to fill the silence to find meaning.
We need to listen more deeply.
Not to the static of the mind,
but to the sacred hush beneath all things.

In the silence of tenement halls,
in subway walls,
in our own aching hearts—
the message is still being spoken.

Listen.

🙏🕊🙏

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