KEEPING

Speech is not silver and silence is not gold. Gold is instead the right amount of speech and silence. When the situation demands that we speak, we should not keep silent. Every situation requires its own exact weighing of words and silences.

When we are silent our feelings and thought should also cease, settle themselves. It would be dishonest to oneself if we keep on talking inwardly keeping one’s lips pressed together the entire time.

Silence opens a space of containment and leisure within us that we should seek to protect.

The space of silence within us must be so consolidated that words and silences weigh and order themselves organically within it before emerging. Only then does silence become a force as strong as words and deeds. And only then is speech not the destruction of silence but its fulfilment, just can silence can fulfil speech.