What is the difference between a real silence and a false silence ? ……….OSHO

Sannyas has to be a real break away. A loving surrender to the new....

What is the difference between a real silence and a false silence ? ..........

 

These two are the parts. The inner silence — the silence so deep that there is no vibration in your being; you are, but there are no waves; you are just a pool without waves, not a single wave arises; the whole being silent, still; inside, at the center, silence — and on the periphery, celebration and laughter. And only silence can laugh, because only silence can understand the cosmic joke.

 

So your life becomes a vital celebration, your relationship becomes a festive thing; whatsoever you do, every moment is a festival. You eat, and eating becomes a celebration; you take a bath, and bathing becomes a celebration; you talk, and talking becomes a celebration; relationship becomes a celebration. Your outer life becomes festive, there is no sadness in it. How can sadness exist with silence? But ordinarily you think otherwise: you think if you are silent you will be sad. Ordinarily you think how you can avoid sadness if you are silent. I tell you, the silence that exists with sadness cannot be true. Something has gone wrong. You have missed the path, you are off the track. Only celebration can give proof that the real silence has happened.

 

What is the difference between a real silence and a false silence? A false silence is always forced; through effort it is achieved. It is not spontaneous, it has not happened to you. You have made it happen. You are sitting silently and there is much inner turmoil. You suppress it and then you cannot laugh. You will become sad because laughter will be dangerous — if you laugh you will lose silence, because in laughter you cannot suppress. Laughter is against suppression. If you want to suppress you should not laugh; if you laugh everything will come out. The real will come out in laughter, and the unreal will be lost.

 

So whenever you see a saint sad, know well the silence is false. He cannot laugh, he cannot enjoy, because he is afraid. If he laughs everything will be broken, the suppression will come out, and then he will not be able to suppress.

 

Look at small children. Guests come to your home and you tell the children, "Don't laugh!" — what do they do? They close their mouths and suppress their breath, because if they don't suppress their breath then laughter will come out. It will be difficult. They don't look anywhere, because if they look at something they forget. So they close their eyes, or almost close their eyes, and they suppress their breath.

 

If you suppress, your breath cannot be deep. Laughter needs a deep breath; if you laugh, a deep breath will be released. That's why nobody is breathing deeply, just shallow breathing, because much has been suppressed in your childhood and after it you cannot breathe deeply. If you go deeper you will become afraid.

 

Sex has been suppressed through breath, laughter has been suppressed through breath, anger has been suppressed through breath. Breath is a mechanism to suppress or release — hence my insistence on chaotic breathing, because if you breathe chaotically, then laughter, screaming, everything will come up and all your suppressions will be thrown out. They cannot be thrown out in another way, because breathing, breath, is the way you have suppressed them.

 

Try to suppress anything: what will you do? You will not breathe deeply; you will breathe shallowly, you will breathe just from the upper part of the lungs. You will not go deeper because deeper it is suppressed. In the belly, everything is suppressed. So when you really laugh the belly vibrates; hence, Buddha's big-bellied portraits. The belly is relaxed, and then the stomach is not a suppressed reservoir. If you see a saint sad, sadness is there, but the saint is not there. He has stilled himself somehow and is every moment afraid. Anything can disturb him.

 

Nothing can disturb if real silence has happened. Then everything helps it to grow. If you are really silent you can sit in a market, and even the market cannot disturb it. Rather, you feed on the noise of the market and that noise becomes more silence in you. Really, to feel silence a market is needed — because if you have real silence, then the market becomes the background and the silence becomes perfect in contrast. You can feel the inner silence bubbling against the market.

 

There is no need to go to the Himalayas. And if you go, what will you see? Against the silence of the Himalayas your mind will be chattering. Then you will feel more chattering, because the background is in silence. The background is the silence, and you will feel more chattering.

 

If the real happens to you and you are unafraid, it cannot be taken away. Nothing can disturb it. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing — nothing  can disturb it. And if something does, it is forced, it is cultivated; somehow you have managed it. But a managed silence is not silence, it is just like a managed love.

 

OSHO