How would you like if I answered your question by being silent? [Laughs].
We may be silent with our mouth, but whats happening in our mind. Its not very silent. Sit in silent meditation and what happens in your mind? So many voices, so many things. Real silence is when the mind is quiet. Now, scriptures describe it in different ways. One is material silence. When we are chanting God's name, when we are speaking about God, when we are speaking for the benefit of others that is also silence. Because we are not speaking things that bind us to material existence, we are not gossiping, we are not fault finding, we are not talking just about political matters. Silence means no material vibration. Spiritual vibration is material silence.
Now sometimes, [this is an example] if a small child is in school and they just keep talking,and they keep screaming and they keep yelling and keep disrupting the class, what does the teacher do? Says "Sit in the corner, don't say anything and don't do anything." I know because that happened to me once. I was very shy, I hardly talked, but one class the teacher was real joking person and I was talking and then she said "Sit in the corner , don't say anything". So that's better.
Is it better to be silent in the corner of the room than to be disrupting the whole class? But is that the perfection to remain in the corner of the room silent. The perfection is to participate in the class in a constructive way.It is better to do nothing than be destructive. But better than doing nothing is to be constructive. Another example is if you are really sick you are told to fast , don't eat anything.
Its better to fast than to make yourself sicker. But when you are healthy the best thing is to eat healthily. So similarly the scriptures talk about silence -not to speak things that agitate our minds and agitate other people's minds. But the perfection of silence is to be absorbed in the remembrance of God and the easiest, most powerful way of being absorbed in the remembrance of God which creates complete material silence is to chant his Holy Name.
Lecture: Chetana-Power of Sound Vibration
