As practitioners, it’s important to make the distinction between the kind of silence that liberates and the silence that imprisons. Silence has the potential for lasting transformation, but it can too easily be weaponized in service of greed, aversion, and delusion. That’s why it is so important to understand the difference between noble silence and its shadow, ignoble silence.
What Makes Silence Noble?
Almost all Buddhist traditions maintain some practice of noble silence, to varying degrees. That’s not surprising considering the Buddha in the earliest texts speaks often in praise of silence.
For example, there’s the near-total quiet of a Vipassana meditation retreat, usually sustained for short but intensive periods of time. There’s also the integrated noble silence of mealtime gatherings in the Plum Village tradition—twenty to thirty minutes of quiet eating before conversation (or getting up for seconds).
The use of silence in these scenarios has a purpose. It’s to create the right
