With my rent miraculously taken care of, my life went deeply inward. I hardly spoke for over a year. Many visitors came, sat in silence, and left. Sometimes I spoke, but mostly I did not. The unwritten rule seemed to be that I would not speak out of discomfort or fear of silence. I would speak only when I felt that somehow a compassionate word might help someone I was with. Fasting, silence, and reading defined my life for several years... I didn't know if I was giving myself to foolishness or saintliness.
The universe makes a sound — is a sound. In the core of this sound there's a silence, a silence that creates that sound, which is not its opposite, but its inseparable soul... Silence is a flower, it opens up, dilates, extends its texture, can grow, mutate... It can watch other flowers grow and become what they are.
