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The Sound of Silence

Had lunch with a colleague yesterday. It was more like he ate and I ranted. Long story. Point is that amidst my rants he also told me about something that he was reading. It involved a Frenchman visiting the Buddhist monastaries to learn from them and their way of living. The author is struck by the novel way in which the monks can go through daily chores and not say a word. Silence it seems is pervasive here and yet there is no discord or ambiguity or chaos. How can that be? My friend then took it on himself to experiment it for himself. Quite Gandhian I say in his experiments with truth - that of trying to emulate the Buddhist monk and going through his weekend without speaking with his roommate. I think he came out of it feeling profoundly pleased and more aware that we as a species create a lot of noise that is just that. NOISE. Clicking incessantly on our multitude devices to ask this and that or download and upload meaningless bits of data in turn churning out more data to fill the ether. Now that the planet is on the brink of extinction with all the hot air being contributed from bovines (with their flatulence) and humans (with all their gabbing) it might be worth looking at non-technology that actually lets people simply detach from the cord and go native. This could involve abolishing transit of all forms for the day and using the hind legs to get from A to B (for food etc) and using speecch where absolutely necessary. All of this would cause a serious impact on humanity as they will suddenly hear foreign sounds like bird chirps, cricket calls and other phenomenon like wind rustling leaves. Then they could go back to their blogs and continue to yammer about what they heard to make up for lost time adding more data to the cosmos.
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