Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication.

To hear, one must be silent.

SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, “Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over. 85.

Q: What is silence?
A: Silence is an austerity. You control your desire to talk. By talking, people try to impress others, which you can't do if you are in silence. In silence you have to develop tolerance. At first it is difficult to do because you separate yourself from others by not expressing yourself. But gradually the mind reduces that ego and an aspirant accepts the situation, which develops tolerance and reduces anger.

We watch a sunlight dust dance,
and we try to be that lively,
but nobody knows what music those particles hear.

Each of us has a secret companion musician to dance to.
Unique rhythmic play, a motion in the street we alone know and hear.

We live in a country that is wearing a veil of silence.

By dancing we could remain in the moment. By dancing we could avoid talking, dwelling on the past, or thinking about the future. We were connected in a way that was neither threatening nor complicated; just circling and swaying, following the oldest rhythms of breath and heartbeat.

It is sometimes enough that one places one's voice on the silence... [S]ilence too is powerful. It is the dimension in which ordinary and extraordinary events take their proper places. In the Indian world, a word is spoken or a song is sung not against, but within the silence. ...[S]ilence is the sanctuary of sound.

But above all, silence is the dissipation of our language. ... In the silence of a walk, when you end up losing the use of words because by then you are doing nothing but walk, ... in that silence you hear better, because you are finally hearing what has no vocation to be retranslated, recoded, reformatted.

Silence is a learned practice that requires far more than just not talking. Not talking is not silence; it's just not talking.

Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do. But it is not the same with words. What you do not say can haunt you.

I feel you move me in such sweet silence always dancing, always dancing never ever getting tired

Le silence est une musique qui parle à l'âme.

We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.