Merton on words, nothingness, silence and being

In the silence of Quaker meetings I sometimes approach the kinds of revelations Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, poet and social activist, shares here.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being.

From moment to moment I remember with astonishment that I am at the same time empty and full.

There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is so silent: it can’t be spoken.

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments. That is my real goal. It implies "becoming unknown and as nothing."

I looked upon what was nothing. I touched what was without substance,
and within what was not, I am.


Taken from “You Don’t Have to be Buddhist to Know Nothing” ed. Joan Konner.

Songs about Nothing

You must do nothing before you can do something. Silence surrounds and intersects sound. Darkness defines light.

Such is the power of nothing.

Joan Konner has compiled an anthology of quotations celebrating nothing. “You Don’t Have to be a Buddhist to Know Nothing” has a busy title, but the book is packed with trenchant notions about nothing.

Dip into it anywhere and discover the power of nothing.

Examples:

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely to nowhere.” Frank Herbert

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being — like a worm.” Jean-Paul Sartre.

“The deepest you is the nothing side, is the side which you don’t know.” Alan Watts.

“With chess, as in literature, you can’t fill all the spaces because there would then be no game to play, no story to tell.” Timothy Walsh


The book often presents familiar words about nothing that you are forced to understand in a radically different way.

Some of the most familiar are lyrics.

“Nothing from nothing is nothing.” Billy Preston

“Nothing’s going to change my world.” Lennon-McCartney

“I’ve got plenty of nothing and nothing’s got plenty for me.” George Gershwin

“He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” Lennon-McCartney

“And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dare
Disturb the sound of silence.” Paul Simon