The Beauty of Silence

At six in the morning, the campus is almost empty. Walking through the small woods, beneath the dim streetlamps, everything is extraordinarily quiet. In the teaching building all the classroom lights are off; only the corridor lights remain on. I love moments like this: after a night's sleep, the mind is utterly clear at this hour. Walking alone into a classroom, switching on the light, and quietly reciting for a while—more than an hour later, people begin to drift in one after another. That first hour or more is extraordinarily precious, because it is completely undisturbed.

At nine in the evening, the people in the classroom gradually empty out, leaving only one or two others together with me, and the world grows quiet again. I love moments like this too. Though after a day of study one is already somewhat tired, the midday rest and the evening exercise have left the mind sufficiently clear. In such a state, a person can still carry out mental work efficiently.

Compared with noise, silence has a beauty that is hard to put into words. I love moments of silence. Although even among crowds I can shut out the clamor around me, a noisy environment is, after all, somewhat inferior to silence; silence makes it easier to sink into one's own world.

But in this crowded world, silence is a luxury, and most of the time we are inevitably influenced by the outside world. Yet compared with external noise, inner restlessness may affect a person even more. Laozi said, "Excess leads to confusion, insufficiency yields gain." Those who fixate too much on the outside easily fill their hearts with all sorts of things and ultimately cannot help being swayed by the world.

Only by truly concentrating on a single thing can one move away from the clamor. When our world contains only ourselves, or even when we are so immersed in what we love that we ourselves seem to cease to exist, we enter a state of wonderful spiritual enjoyment. If a life has such an experience, it can be said not to have been lived in vain.

To keep sinking continuously into this enjoyment, one must be drawn by a strong interest. Personally, I think self-discipline is a false proposition. All those who can keep being self-disciplined are, in the final analysis, simply powerfully drawn to the work they love, which keeps them from being distracted by other things.

China's three traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism all pursue a common goal: self-forgetfulness. From my shallow life experience, I have found that when a person is completely absorbed in something, he can truly forget both self and world and never tire of it. The outside world scarcely exists for him; his world is at once silent and rich.