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Transcript of this talk: How to Appreciate Silence
M: Hello everyone! And welcome to Ted X gateway’s webinar series the world has changed. Before we begin, the session here are some house rules as always for attendees on zoom please type your questions in the question-and-answer panel in the screen below. The session is also streaming to you live on Ted X gateway’s Facebook page which is www.facebook.com/tedxgateway/live. We will be taking questions from the comment section there as well. I’m doc man your champion of well-being founder of the human edge and today I am really excited to have with us Mr. Dash. Mr. Dash studies human behavioral patterns at depths and at scale insights emerge at the intersection of patterns and these insights shape the design of self of leadership strategy and policy. As the head of design and strategy at quantum dash has worked with leaders of hundreds of companies in the global 1000 to unlock human insights that have shaped the design of brands of products of innovation of growth and corporate purpose as well. He is an executive coach have encouraged hundreds of senior executive leaders and entrepreneurs the world over to unlock their story and achieve purpose authenticity and meaning incredibly excited to have with him. Here with us today Mr. Dash welcome over to you.
R: Thank you Marcus. It’s a pleasure to be here. And it’s a pleasure to be talking to you all. It’s sort of paradoxical that I am using words to, to speak about a subject called silence. Some concepts can be explained but not experienced, like events in the world of quantum physics. And some concepts actually cannot be explained but experienced like silence so, it’s slightly challenging to be talking about silence but you know the Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu spoke about Dao and he said that which can be expressed in words is not the Dao. And yet he went on to write a book about it called Dao the Tzing using words so I shall attempt to try at the cost of not making much sense but there I go. So, let me start by saying that I speak on the subject of silence as a student and not as an expert. I have a very long way to go to understand the, the idea myself but I speak as a student of this profound thought called silence. This starts with a story from my past where some years back when I was travelling across Himalayas, I met a Buddhist monk and I asked him so how do you know how spiritual you are I mean how do I how do I figure out how spiritual I am and he smiled and he looked at me and said I will ask you a question. He said how long can you remain absolutely silent? I thought for a bit and I said oh! For a bit long time. And then he paused and he said I will ask that question again I said how long can you remain absolutely silent without thought? And that hit me hard that sort of truth in my life where I sat back and I said wow! There were two simultaneous realizations at that moment. One was that oh! I have a very long way to go to become anything called spiritual. And the second who was profound was that the true silence is really not the absence of sound it is the absence of thought and that’s where this journey of exploration started to understand word called silence. Now over the next few minutes I will talk about three things one is this idea called outer silence. Then I will talk about inner silence and I will conclude with this idea called; what is the connection between inner silence and this idea of self-awareness. Let’s start with outer silence. Now there is noise everywhere, you get up in the morning the city is noisy, that you go to office the transit is noisy, you land up in your office open offices fill of noise, come back home work and home collide there are no lines wrong today, home is noisy and above all of them our bodies noisier today because with watches and phones and, and our bodies are beeping all the time they are thinking all the time they are vibrating all the time as a constant buzz. So, we live in a noisy world and it is getting noisier by the day. So, what we do to run away to find some silence we run away to find our retreats to finance silent spaces we switch off the mobile phones for a bit but the silence but the noise comes back. So, the thing with this outer silence that you can’t avoid it. It exists. You can’t escape it. My thinking on that is that the outer silence isn’t going to go away so the goal should be not to fight it. But to understand it. The problem with the outer silence is that it’s sort of it gives you temporary relief also maybe you know gives a bit of switch off for a bit but it comes back. And so, you might will get used to it. And the other question with the outer silence is that we mix solitude with silence. Solitude and silence are two different things in fact being in solitude can be very noisy. Now if we remove the outer silence or if it happens the inner noise floats up and, in some ways, the outer noise is a therapy because the noise of the inner noise is much harder in our head. And let me state something at this point that we should not, we should not try to find silence out there. That’s what I am trying to say here so we let’s not try to find silence out there. Let’s look at how we can work from silence and it’s a significant difference from thought how do I work from silence and not find silence somewhere outside. Now when I say from silence I have to look within. This is what brings me to this idea of inner silence which is how do I, how do I find space within me that is silent. Inner silence has a synonym with a word called tranquillity. You can use word tranquillity you convert stillness they all mean same. They all mean inner silence. Now a good metaphor to explain inner silence is, is imagine your mind as a surface of a lake and I throw a stone into it and you see it ripples. Now how long does it take to settle back to stillness how dark it takes to be silent again? That is the question. Inner silence is species of no resistance it’s also not a wall it’s a flexible space. It’s also a space of no conflict. Now that’s the space that one should be searching for the still centre in the middle of the chaos, the still centre inside of us. And now the noise inside us the noise of thought the monkey minds and the ripple on the surface is the thought colliding on the world and there’s anxiety. Now we need to keep going back to the center. Now if you look going back if you look at all the spiritual practices, they would all have reference of this inner silence. If you go to Turkey and look at the dancing dervishes you will see that in the middle of the twirl it’s silent. If you look at the Tibetan Mandala you know they draw the Mandala and, in the center, it just goes dark and silent. All the spiritual practices have one way or the other of pointing at the still center of silence. The word yoga by the way we all use we are familiar with yoga and we associated it with stretches of the body and breath control and all of that but if you go back to the original text of yoga, yoga sutra written by Patanjali, the first verse says the goal of yoga that says to still the mind that is really the sort of the highest goal of yoga is not for you to build of course there is a need to build a strong body and, and a calm but a calm and a still mind is the highest goal of yoga. You go to any religion a Christian pick up a Rosary a Muslim picks up the Tasbih, a Hindu picks up a Japa mala. They all what they are trying to do is all rituals try and guide you inwards to that still center. Now we should be operating from that still center. It’s not just a spiritual practice it is a life practice it is a life skill. Now operating from that stillness, you avoid conflict. Now if outer silence is the absence of noise, inner silence is the absence of conflict. Now whereas conflict arise it arises in thought and how do we negotiate this noise of thought. Bring me to the third part saying if the inner silence is what it should be looking for how do we find that still center now that’s a big question that has been the quest of sages and saints for-for centuries if not more. There are two ways, there are two ways in which you can, and you can find your way to that inner center. One is that difficult part as I call it. It is profound, it is amazing but it is difficult. Now that is the part of meditation. I am not an expert at meditation. I am like I said I am student of meditation but I know how powerful it is. Now meditation is a space where you get your mind and you observe the mind.
You observe the mind. Am giving you a logical explanation. You exit your mind. You are watching mind sitting in a bus stand. You pop out of your mind. In the state of meditation, you are out of your mind. Many say that I did 15min of meditation, half an hour of meditation but you don’t do meditation. That is a practice you get mediator. That is the goal .it is a frame, which you carry wherever you go. Is or how I relate to meditation that meditation is operating from that skill centre as you do everything else. Of course you can sit for a bit of time quietly and look at your breath concentrate go inwards but that is just a small act of meditation. Entire structure of meditation when you are in the middle of your life operating from that system space. Now that’s but meditation is very difficult. To control the monkey mind and to be able to harness it, to be able to let go of thoughts is as a huge task but worth trying .now but that’s the difficult part and there’s an easy hack as I call it to that still center. I’m going to talk about that now that hack is called coming authentic operating from our true nature that is a space that you can find within your mind .now what do you mean by becoming authentic or authentic in a nature there’s a word in Sanskrit called swadharma so is me and dharma is you can use it as nature or order it is not religion. People mistakenly talk about thermals religion is actually order our nature so swadharma is my inner order. So the question that is what my short term when I operate from there is I offered from my appendix which is also my center. Psychologists and so think of true scientists and actor on this stage of poet in you know in doing poetry ,writer, players thinking of them in the act of doing what they love to do, then that’s meditative , that’s true nature when they’re operating from that truth yourself. Psychologist Carl Jung how to how to word for it. He called it your archetype it says you should operate from your archetype .now what is your rocket that’s a very big question .once you ask oneself .what is my architect now it is that hidden part of us that needs to be unlocked to find our true selves he referred to the space when asked for the personal unconscious buzz line conscious is the place where all your drives and you’re in your tendencies decide. That is also the space where when pressed it is in conflict. The one needs to find access to that personal unconscious to be able to find your center. Psychologist Mihai wrote a book and a concept called flow. Incredible thought, that also knocks on the door of the idea of the archetype. They said when you lose what does that state at which you lose a sense of time and space .when your highest grade of self where you are deeply in focus and there is a there is a cessation of conflict .so finding this place of true nature inside of us, our operating from their you find a state of calm a state of stillness estate of silence. Being sync with that and the psyche the root word of the psyche means the soul and it truly means that said are you able to operate from your true psyche and not fight against it . Now that is where you find your archetype and operating archetype on balance you’d be operating in a space of stillness .You will be a little more silent inside no how do you access your archetype not through personality tests and not through Zodiac signs and not by looking at looking at all of those horoscopes what you need to do is self study. Another Sanskrit word called swadhaya which is study yourself, when was the last time you looked within to look at yourself, how you behave how you think how you operate self study is the key to unlocking your true nature. All spiritual practices, all spiritual practices ask you to look within .some directly say go study yourself .psychologists ask you to do that, teachers will great teachers ask you to do that. Self-study leads you to self-awareness, self-awareness leads you to space what’s called your true nature or architect that list space of inner silence. Now you could be in the middle of war it could be the middle of office you could middle of COVID and yet you could be you could be upgrading from a quiet space call your silence. I’m going to sum up what I’ve been trying to explain as an esoteric concept .silence is not the absence of sound or noise, it is the absence of thought that’s true silence we must operate from silence the inner silence is more important in our silence and we should not try and find silence, we should operate from silence, we should operate from our archetype, which is a space of no conflict and self-awareness is a path to archetype and still center and finding out flow. Going back to my first question saying, all how spiritual are you. Now one way to look at, it is to go into the temples in the mosques in the churches the other place to visit is your own inner self your psyche, and to find your true nature. To find become self-aware to find your soul .that’s another kind of spiritual life. Silence is probably the most important skill nobody taught us. So it’s time that we teach the skill to ourselves. Wish you silence. Thank you.
M: Thank you very much for that Chrissy and I would say it’s probably one of the more complex conversations that I’m having with a guest on this platform which is thoroughly exciting for me. Before we really deep dive and try and sort of get into it doesn’t matter and go through this conversation Dash you and I would have known each other for many years. I want to say I’ve known you when you had more hair on the top than you did on the chin.
R: This is a compensation for that.
M: And loves for you to tell us all ,how did you get to this space .your journey, what led you from being this corporate leader and working with so many incredible brands that a lot of us know in love with use and that journey to get you here.
R: Marcus and they say it takes a crisis that will answer, it always takes a crisis to turn inwards so at the age of about 32 by I failed as an entrepreneur I added out of personal crisis, I had health crisis so it was sort of that perfect storm. I was too successful to zoom in the corporate life .Now I understand what ignorance means but at that point I think it was it was a profound sense of self that I had and so when you break from that and you fall pretty deep into the value. So do dig myself out of that I reached out to few teachers. Teachers are being guided. So some of the teachers said why don’t you head out and go within. I mean when they said go with and I couldn’t figure out what it meant .go within. And uh like what do you mean that didn’t find it up in some monasteries and some schools. But actually I met a psychologist who gave me these two books, a man search for meaning by Viktor Frankel and columns undiscovered self. These two books were literally the buttons that switched on this journey of mine. I vividly remember the day I got these two books in my hand I need to. So I met this word called the psyche and till then it was it was all, psychology is all about disease and you know it’s all about neurosis to move you from a negative neutral but I realize there’s another part of psychology that when you understand your everyday behaviour you’re the way you process like your wardrobe you want to people I mean the way you spend your life your home everything psychology there’s enough data. So I started, thanks to that gentleman in the books and some other thinking, I started looking within but not in a spiritual ,but more from psychological and anthropological standpoint and there’s so much to learn and realize that I didn’t know myself at all . So I think that journey led me to where I am still on the journey but at least I’m calmer today and I think that was the switch in my life, that has put me on the spot.
Alright. So a lot of us celebrate this idea of being busy, show folks signing in right now with entrepreneurs, we got corporate leaders, homemakers etc and we wear this as a badge of success in modern day life. Right .I’m busy then I’m successful and we always think and idolize people who are just doing so many different things seemingly at the same time. The first step on that journey is to slow down. How can we help people that take that first step what’s that first step then we needs to take to slow down?
M: Take to slow down
R: Take to slow down I think a first step is you know what I call as a pit stop as you know we start creating stops it’s like you stop to drink water and for me a pit stop is a moment of observation it’s not a meditative it’s just where am I , what I’m doing here how I’m thinking it’s just like I pull back a bit, it’s like I’m in the office you see are you able to observe yourself in that action and then you quickly recalibrate saying am I going overboard so you can’t stop acting I mean there’s no way that one can sort of we will all be busy but in that business is there a moment of observation where you’re able to pull back and say I’m going to sit back a bit and observe this thing happen for a bit that itself is a way of reordering life saying oh I’m home can I pull back a bit so I said pause now each individual must have their own way of finding that moment in that space. It’s not prescriptive you should not be prescribing people so please every three minutes it’s none of that it is about what time in your day do you want to develop a perspective of where you are on that date or month which is why sort of taking stock, that’s how I do it and I’m sure others have their own ways but developing perspective is a good way of slowing down because it automatically brings you back to the geometry of self where you’re reordering yourself that’s what I talk about.
M: That’s a beautiful idea of perspective when you draw you have to literally take that step back and look at things and almost like..
R: Absolutely and that tells you which way are you headed and even in a day you need to pull back a bit and say how many times have you developed perspective on this journey same with the third 80year journey of life with a 18 minutes whatever so perspective is 80% IQ and as someone as Alan kay said.
M: Alright so sticking with that same of perspective we know that there’s a lot to be said about empty space and you mentioned it in your discourse as well if it’s designed right you know in a busy park an empty space a sonnet that empty line a Symphony just that pause that comes even in a heavy conversation sometimes the best moment that is the silence that happens before it then goes into another realm, the problem I find and I’m sure a lot of folks following also this space that we’re just always in hurry that sometimes when that pause occurs we feel that we need to just fill it with something or we need to move on to the next step so with that in mind we’re almost scared of that emptiness we’re scared we’re anxious when we get to that silent pause conversation how can we become more comfortable with this idea of emptiness?
R: I spoke to you about solitude and silence and why we should keep treat them separately this brings me back to the same point in fact what are we most scared of is Marcus in my judgement we are most scared of meeting ourselves that is the biggest fear so now if I take you to an empty space what happens is it’s not empty its full of you , it’s full of your fear, full of your anxiety, full of your troubles with the day so it’s not empty it’s full. True emptiness is a different space so when you say oh I took it you know I pulled back a bit so it’s actually fill it up with negative or thoughts or anxieties because that’s when your inner anxiety surface up so which is why we then run away and watch switch on the TV or we quickly look at Facebook or we start jumping on our Twitter feed because you know the true pause is when like I said you’re on that bus stop and you let that buses go by, it’s that truly empty where it’s empty behind empty whether you saying oh that’s where my story is today that’s how it’s happening is it I’m fearful of this of this event Kobe is driving me nuts oh and I’m observing me getting nuts, that’s the second order of emptiness acquired as I call it and I try hard to operate from the second order of emptiness where I got quite where I’m saying oh I’m fearful of that’s what’s happening and I observe myself being fearful of what’s happening when you move to the second order you find yourself slightly calmer metaphor I give is there’s a play you’re acting out there you remember there’s green room at the back so green room is really a empty space are you able to visualize yourself think that’s the stage I’m on in the stage that’s covered in the stage there’s drama in the stage trauma in this space stays as good and evil but when you step out of the stage you go to the green room and wash your makeup off that’s empty but you know if that explains to you what it means to be to find that Little space of quite it could be the park but think of it as a green room versus the stage when the marks go off
M: I was immediately imagine as you were saying that remembering that movie Interstellar with the Matthew McConaughey character and at the end where he was in this parallel dimension watching himself, trying to interact with his daughter at that young age and that’s sort of metaphor that I’m seeing in my mind when you’re talking about temporarily disconnecting ourselves. You sent me a whole bunch of stuff to read prior to this conversation and one of things that really grabbed my was this phrase which I’ll read out ‘ if I really want to change my life I need to start by changing my mind ‘ and a lot of us and understand the importance of mindset but perhaps we don’t allow ourselves to get into that but as I was thinking through this problem and this idea of stillness and being comfortable with silence, I also thought well the stoics didn’t really have to combat, having 100emails being sent to them every day or Buddha didn’t have WhatsApp forwards every evening to sort of delete it out of his phone etc. We’re bombarded by this cacophony of this distraction through mobile technologies and a lot of us watching this event today we’re it via our mobile phones which can bring good things but it also brings a lot of distractions. How do we recalibrate that relationship, how can we bring it back so that we’re in control and we can create silence amongst the chaos?
R: Great question, I don’t know if I have a perfect answer to this question because that’s my own personal struggle as well, I keep forgetting where I’m but simple answers is pick up activities that force you into space of meditative stuff like for me it’s running, for someone it’s music, for someone I spoke about this thing called flow that’s a great answer to that saying you don’t have to run away, you don’t have to resist. Now the thing with the stoics was that they would create a wall, It doesn’t mean that they were not going through hardships the Buddha that mean that maybe there were issues we don’t know what the equivalent of the knocks on the door where but you must understand that I think in each era we’ve had our equivalent of what the noise is. now our era is little more frequent and noisier in our heads but I think this act of being in flow is a beautiful way of re-engaging like for me it’s music for someone is running for someone it’s swimming, for someone it’s just sitting quietly and playing for someone it’s a puzzle, to solve a puzzle, for someone its chanting. I feel each of these activities and you can pick a spiritual practice, you can pick up a physiological practice but I feel that engaging with some form of active engagement to the state of flow. Journaling is a Powerful force of centring ourselves just documenting what happened that day generally one of the worlds’s most powerful way of centric. Now you don’t have to general any the morning or late in the evening, you can jump any time saying what I am feeling, why I’m feeling like this , what should I do about it there’s three columns nature is scientifically proven to still so if you just turn around and look at green I mean sitting in my balcony is a lot more calming so there are a lot of simple hacks I’m they’re not complicated stuff, you don’t have to meditate all the time but these are all meditative ideas too, I keep saying try and be meditative through day rather than find meditation these are all meditate. Running is a meditation, listening to the music is meditation, writing poetry is a meditation, taking pictures , walking around with a camera is a meditation, everything is meditative if you think of it that way.
M: Very powerful, if you strap an erg a set of electrodes onto a person’s skull you’ll see that beta and gamma waves, beta waves slowly starts to go towards alpha which is the state of flow and one of the powerful studies I read recently is about when you’re disrupted from your state of flow it takes 20-22mins to then come back in and we can imagine how many WhatsApp message and emails we get every day and therefore how challenging it is to get into back in the state of flow, I’ll remind people who are watching this that we have an opportunity to ask questions, I’ll taking questions I see a lot of them coming into the panel already so please put it in comments I’ll be taking them in a few minutes. There’s one question that’s useful to bring it up right now is a question dash from Sunil Lodha and he ask is you can remind us all of the two books you mentioned one was Victor Franks bad search the meaning and other one is Carl Jung, the undiscovered self.
R: I Highly recommend to read this books my search of meaning is one of the book you should be carrying with you wherever you go, it’s constant reminder to me in my life that you can be in the middle of suffering and yet find meaning it’s I can’t say any more than that I like to be that sort of mind Bible.
M: It’s on my bed side as well, it’s one of the few books that I keep with me all the time, it’s a fantastic book.
R: Today more than ever when we’re faced to the crisis today that how do we find we’re in some of concentration camp, so how do we find meaning in between this is a question.
M: That’s a perfect bridge it does as if you knew what my next question gonna be. My nest question is about the lockdown we’re physically locked in that’s the reality all of us right now the world over various degrees but we’re all living in lockdown you feel however there’s an opportunity here right for us perhaps for travel inward and get to know ourselves even amongst the chaos and uncertainty and this noise that is just going on around us how can we do that Dash?
R: That’s a great question Marcus I’ll start with Sufi sort of proverbs and I’ve been knocking on the door and you’re not opening it and you’re lick why aren’t you opening the door and at some point you realize that you’ve been knocking from outside you were never locked in so the idea of being caged is psychological idea so are you locked in? what’s locking you in are the doors locking you in or your space locking you in is the question so we’re always knocking from outside we’re not locked in because we think we are locked in so I’ll give two stories here one Mandela 27 years inside us in itself was he locked in? He wasn’t we was producing stuff he was thinking, he was building swami aurobindo, 26years he stayed inside one room, 26 productive years of his life he didn’t move out of a room and he wrote and preached from there so this idea of being locked in is one must question this to saying what locking mean it’s never space it’s something else maybe it’s our thoughts so I feel it’s an opportunity, I found the last year an opportunity to come back home to sort of re-engage it’s an opportunity to go inwards so I would urge that we use it as an opportunity to not get locked in but to travel within.
M: Let’s take that one step further in fact it’s not our experiences that make our life it’s what we do with it that matter another great quote that I was inspired by from the material you sent ‘ it’s out response it’s not the reaction. We react too much in life we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to respond to it enough’ so what’s is that you’ve taken away from this and how are you changing the way you respond to the struggles and challenges around?
R: Lot of times I failed in this practice but the formula that I carry is this was taught to me directly by Steven covey in one of the workshop I’ve attended many years back he was a fantastic teacher he said ‘ how mature you’re is directly correlated and is also comes from victor franks ‘the last freedom you have is freedom of how you know your ability to respond ‘ in the face of this crisis now victor frank now Steven covey said ‘ what’s the gap between stimulus and response?’ what’s the gap that you create and so that the pauses is when you say here’s a stimulus and then here’s my thought and here’s response so that gap is filled with what I know is my thought and that thought is about pleasure and pain all the time essential manifestations of pleasure and pain there’s nothing else if you do laddering exercise of all your thoughts they would ladder up to pleasure and paint there’s no third reality so when I look at a stimulus coming in it could be a stimulus of joy or negative stimulus but there’s middle thickness called thought so I try to work hard to observe what’s my nature of thought there so if you observe your thought then the response is slightly easier saying oh you see above it I’m angry so I keep saying that Dash is angry I’m not so it’s fascinating that one of the people I look up to is Ramana maharishi, I’m not that a religious person but these people are scientists because they would look at the human condition in fantastic ways , he was struggling with bone cancer and he disciple would come to him and say Ramana are you in pain or you must be in pain so he said there’s pain but I’m not in pain so he removed the eye from the pain but you see it’s a very high degree I mean that sort of you know so 100 sort of skill set, I’m not in pain that’s pain so he said ‘ my body is going through the pain so similarly my thoughts can drive me nuts ‘ so this ability to pull back and say that between the stimulus and the response markers if you can say, what’s the construct of my thought is it anxious or is it happy or is it insecure? Hopefully our response will be slightly more intelligent and mature.
M: For the very Astute folks they may have picked up that Dash Actually himself in third person when he was talking about himself being angry so he said Dash is angry and even last week we had a professor of psychology and he also reiterating this very similar sentiment which is when you look at yourself in the third person and actually call yourself out by your name then you’re doing what you’re precise is saying which is you’re allowing yourself to create that space to disconnect and see things from different perspective as you mentioned lots of questions coming in, I’m gonna take one from the ladder and then I’ll come back again , Sanjana bakaira ask this question can you please what’s archetype is?
R: That will take days and months to discuss about it but I really can’t give an easy answer but what I can say is let me try and explain it in a simple way so there’s an explicit, explicit us, explicit is what’s conscious visible to you, to the world, the person that you put out there but mirroring that as a implicit itself, implicit means inside of us think of us as iceberg, only 5% is visible to you and the world the 95% is inside your drives your fetishes your fantasies your fears all of them are locked in and they all get built in through the experience you go through but we subdue and you suppress them so that’s kind of where the archetype lives there’s this structure of an idea that gets built over a period of time with your childhood experiences with all of that and you sort of suppress it we most of us a society because it’s also called the conditioning that sort of suppress it now an archetype lives within that implicit itself so that’s also the self you respond from which is your limbic sort of who do you want to fall In love with now it’s not a rational idea or a book that you like a color of clothes that you choose to wear all of them come from that implicit self which you can’t explain much it sees through images not words which is why when we understand archetype we go to images because they’re irrational stuff so the irrational side of us if you go to inwards you’ll find a lot of irrational aspect of us you start mapping that and within that you’ll see certain patterns within those patterns there will be a formation called the archetype there’s a lot more to be said but that’s the simplest way that I could explain but there’s a lot of literature out there on the concept of the archetype
M: so folks would know that I love this idea of Biomax and you mentioned hacks a couple of times as well you have been very honest is saying you’re a student of this is a humanity which A great degree of testament how much you respect the space you’ve been doing this now there are probably two or three things I imagine that you’re doing every day which is maybe become unconscious to you now but was a conscious action that slowly ingrained itself to become a habit or a behavior in this search towards finding inner silence in your work could you help us to understand these two or three things that you mentioned finding something meditative like running or painting or walking out in nature but a couple of other really simple small practical things that we can literally start today if we wanted to all the people watching this.
R: Just create , I create a note digital dairy like simple note, apple notes Like I record my day like I’m observing it all the time just gather data about your life and next to that how you felt and what your thoughts were so I just record data that this happened then big data small data all of that I continuously record data I spoke with my son he told me that I went to office that happened nothing it’s very simple you do that next column you see what did I feel at some point create a third column. Why did I feel in that way! That’s all we need to do is called introspection. There is a word used in our practice called ethnography. Ethnography is where an anthropologist observes your life and culture and document that. We can do self-ethnography where we can observe ourselves, record and document that and learn from it that what patterns we can see. That’s what I try to do as much as I can.
M: Ok. Anything else? Have you done any other small practical things?
R: Journaling is a simple and powerful practice. Any form of journaling you want to do. You may ask questions. It’s a quiet time. I don’t call it meditation. It’s just a form of relaxation. It’s all about sitting back and does nothing. It is beautiful. Anything which is irrational, encourage it. I don’t put so many things into it.
M: Ok. It is interesting. Karan patel wants to ask you a question. He asked whether it was possible to have excitement and silence at the same time.
R: Lovely question. Let me tell you one thing again. I have met many good teachers in my life and I asked them that what is a good action? One of my teachers answered me that any activity that leaves you with more emotional energy at the end of the day is the right action. So it is very simple rule that leaves you more energized at the end of the activity and yet it makes you silent. For me it’s running, which energized me and makes me silent? For others it could be playing with their child. Silence is all about feeling compressed. You have to feel released. These are the metaphor of silence. So all of these activities draw your joy. There is a place called Ananda, rapture. What is your rapture? Highly energizing and yet it is silent.
M: Ok. Fantastic. Arun Ray asks this question and I think it’s really interesting. There is a conflict that arises among the people working in an organization or in a team. Silence or stillness, if I paraphrase them as individual, is seen as a weakness in a noisy world that tries to show that everyone is busy. It is a cultural thing for this part of the world as well. How can we deal with that?
R: Yes. The only answer to it is that just strike silence and you will see the transformation that’s take place. Start with quiet and end with quiet. Before you put an argument, think about it. We are allowing silence to come in our workplaces. It starts with the space design itself by the way. I am not fond of open offices because they don’t allow you to gather the geometry of yourself. At a very basic level one would start by the act of amply, talking to each other creates a degree of silence. Because again you reduce the degree of conflict. The opposite of silence is not noise, it’s conflict. There are different ways of looking at it. When I know you, we will fight less. Workplaces are riff with conflict. At a fundamental level if you dial up the quotient of empathy in your workplace, the workplace will become quieter. You will understand each other. There will be less argument. There will be more empathy. There will be more listening and hence there will be silence.
M: Very interesting. I was reminded that before we got married, my wife and I went for a trip and I remember that we were on the beach of Goa .There was an old couple, seemed to be above 70 years old, sitting silently on the beach and having a glass of wine. She and I were talking about that. We really don’t need staffs to talk about. We are married for 10 years and it makes a sense now while I am listening to you that silence is not about conflict .It’s about the comfort that comes through that.
R: One of the biggest gifts we can give to a friend is just sit quietly and say nothing. Silence is the lovely space to share.
M: Ok. Kamalesh Jain asks that vipashana teaches us about noble science. Do you recommend it? Have you ever done it?
R: I have done a short version of it. I have tremendous respect for Vipasana as a science. I have read about it. I have followed Goenkaji who has been the founder of vipasana practice. It is a profoundly impactful space but you have to be prepared for it. I encourage people to prepare themselves for Vipasana, Because it suddenly throws you in a space where you may not be prepared for. I would recommend that operate from where you are. Vipasanais a powerful space but you have to be prepared for it. So start from where you are and climb up from then. Two minutes over ten days. Those two minutes are important. In 44 kilometres of marathon, the first step is important. I would start with 5 minutes of science at my home. If you can find yourself doing vipasana, I would highly recommend it.
M: I find a very good question made by Haribi Taruman. She asks that how do you manage silence if it gets tefrin which I think happens during time of vipasana.
R: Like I said that thought float up all your anxiety. Who is the person, what are the experiences. They start with sensation. They start with body sensation, they talk about thought. It is an intense practice. It invariably means that vipasana in solitude. They allow the story to show up. You have to live in your story. It is a highly stressful space if you are not ready for it in the capacity to handle that. So it’s difficult if you engage your life, vipasana can be a struggle.
M: There is a nice question by Ajay Sorey. May be he is an entrepreneur. May be he is from the creative space. How do you leverage silence to ideate effectively? Do you use silence to come up with different ideas?
R: Silence is my factory actually. So I recede back into silence. In the beginning, In the middle and at the end of every work I do, I remain silent. That show I put things together. In our work we have a thing called shape stable which is you come together but before every meet I spend a little time with myself and I am obsessed with the people who know me. I skip drawing and scribbling and making the sense of it. I am always doodling to organize my thoughts. I keep drawing Mandalas in my head. That’s my practice. I keep drawing to create an order of an idea till it hit inside. Always something powerful shows up. So silence creates the space of order like Mandala I invariably find inside. That’s my work. I am lucky to work in a space that allows me to do so.
M: Ok. Jay Nesons asks a very interesting question. If solitude doesn’t create silence, then why do monks go and live in remote hills and mountains?
R: That’s a great question. The monks don’t go to hills to find silence. They go there in search of answers. They are scientists. They are seekers. If you are running away from your life, you are not a monk. If you escape from your life, you are not a monk. If you go there as a scientist to figure out how the microcosm works, then you is a scientist. You will find observatories of two kinds. The observatories who look into the sky and the stars and the others in the monastery. Both of them seek for the biggest answer of the question of life. They are not seeking for solitude.
They are deep thinker.
M: Doing daily rituals, is that also silence, and I ask this because when we met last week, you were saying about surgent in state of flow or conductor orchestrating orchestra, that’s a sort of ritual that someone is doing in a very natural state of flow, how does it interweave into archetype and silence creation and the benefits as well?
R: Archetype is a word use in geometry, architecture in the reference. Rituals are the gridwork around the archetype. Rituals are unique, there is no prescriptive ritual for someone, during a ritual I don’t want to go and thought even for a break, that is I think a good ritual. Rituals are not route to the A thing or other and in basis of that archetype you will realize that these habits and patterns that you draw a grid around you like if I do these 7 things, I feel calm or I feel more organized. Let say, in my day at 6 o’clock I do a ritual to step out and do something physical. In the morning to spend an hour with myself is a ritual. Now, for some, coming back home and playing with their children is a ritual. It depends on what your archetype is. In Kolkata, there is a ritual called Adda, means hanging out with friends, people go out there, whatever happens, they go out, meet friends, having a cup of tea, that’s a ritual. It is a way of ordering your life, ordering your day, as you live your day so you live your life. So, organizing a geometry of your day, so, finding your archetype and then designing it around that is a way of harmonizing your archetype and all of us have those rituals. Now, some rituals will cross fiction and some rituals will come it up, just follow that because that is in this nature. Rituals are very useful to practice in a day.
M: So, we got perspective, archetype, geometry that sits around it. Suresh M asks this question, which I think a lot of us are probably thinking to ourselves having tried. I tried a lot of things to silent myself, but after a few minutes that silence breaks and I come back to reality. Is it normal?
R: You don’t come back to the reality; you come back to the world. Reality is outside of that. if you call that reality, then it’s troubling. I don’t call that reality; I call them the playground. Reality is when you step out of that playground, but yes, I mean that’s what I have spoken about when I started talking about outer noise. I think I used to be playing the game, imagine you are playing a chess game and you are out there; you are playing with all your wealth to win absolutely. So, don’t escape it, but balance it off with your personal silence. Don’t find this silence, find your silence. That is the best way and carry it with you in your pocket. You should carry your silence with you wherever you go. Don’t use a meditation room or a puja room to design silence. I think silence must be carried as if sort of a perspective, sort of a mental model so that, you are always working from silence and trying to at least, so that you don’t go out there and come back with silence, because that cause a lot of transition trauma. So, you can take a break, my answer is carrying a bit silence with you, be quiet as you do the work and not at the end of work.
M: As you spoke about playground versus reality, I was wondering whether it is going to be the red pill versus the blue pill and have some fun.
R: It is in some ways that, you have to at some point pop out of your mind, because you are battling your thoughts, the entire story floats around thought. So, Krishnamurthy talks about it, intelligence above thought. It is absolutely right. There is intelligence above thought. That you think top rating only other level of thought, you are at one level, some point you will pop out and sit on the bus stop and look out that play itself out. Think of yourself playing which game and observing the play and play it, that will be beautiful.
M: Falgunal Kumaran, I hope I pronounced that correctly, one can be silent but not listening. How do we develop active awareness to listen without prejudice?
R: That’s a beautiful question. The highest way of listening is silence. Where you don’t put yourself out there and this place is filled by the other person, empathetic listening is when I am listening becoming you. That is the highest degree of listening where I silent myself and my thought. Every time I hear you, in a second, I start thinking about my response. Now, that’s not a silence. So, I am listening to myself as I listen to you. To be silent to oneself is to be say listen. What am I listening to that person right? So, empty myself of me, my thoughts and I will only listen to that person and might not have an answer at the end of that to that question. That is empathetically, it’s a binary, either you were there or that person is there. So, when we are listening, we should switch off me, and that’s silent. Silent listening is the most powerful listening, it’s the highest and empathetical listening where you are in that person’s frame of reference.
M: Dash, this is really incredibly deep, incredibly, we are almost at the end of our time together. Before we close and I update everyone during what else is to come over the next few weeks, one final question from me which is, what next for Dash? Where do this silence lead to?
R: I guess it would be the state of observation I want to operate from a piece of silence. I am just about learning and I am so excited about seeing myself grow in that place to be able to. So, one is to observe myself and to care more, space of observe is also space of care and compassion so, I want to grow within and be more silent within and observe myself more. Slightly more detached, I mean that’s my next job to be done. It’s to be slightly more detached from my thought that needs a lot of hard work and as a part of that process, to be slightly more compassionate to people and slightly more caring. I have not been the best of it so, I feel that there is a long way to go. So, lot of inner work for me ahead, so, work in progress.
M: All right, thank you so much for the honest say and there are literally hundreds of questions left, we just don’t have the time to do so. I imagine people can reach up to you on your social handles and ask questions and engage, find out more about the journey begin, right?
R: Yes, absolutely, they can. I have a personal website, my twitter, facebook, Linkedin, so, they can connect with me, I will try to answer all the questions as much as possible.
M: Fantastic, thank you Dash for being with us.
R: Thank you, Marcus, my pleasure.
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