Into Great Silence

Into Great Silence

"A prize winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, director Philip Groening's study of the Grande Chartreuse monastery introduces a world of austere beauty, following the daily activities of the resident monks, whose silence is broken only by prayer and song. With no other sound save the natural rhythms of age-old routines being carried out, the film captures the simplicity -- and profundity -- of lives lived with absolute purpose and presence."

I found this on Rhonda Prince's blog.

"There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny." Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

I spent much of my Thanksgiving break alone. I did this because I was tired. I was invited to stay with my friends in California for the week. They have a house inside Yosemite National Park, a lovely place where I go every summer. But I couldn't muster the energy. I was just worn out. I've worked too much and worried more, and work and worry have isolated me from most other parts of my life. I am not alone in this. It is going around. The upshot is, though, that while my isolation this Thanksgiving was voluntary, it was also inevitable. My social life, for various reasons, has become non-existent.

During my break, I watched the movie "Into Great Silence." Whenever I get world weary, I think of going to live in a monastery. When I was a young teenager, I saw an hour long special on one of the big networks, say CBS, about a monastery. It was phenomenal, literally. What I remember most about this documentary was the faces of the monks. They owned a power and certainty that made them more beautiful than a movie star. I don't think that any of them blinked. When asked by the reporter if after all the years of contemplation and meditation they had any direct evidence that God existed, each and every one of them said "No." Beautiful. The follow up question was, of course, did they ever wonder if they had wasted their lives cloistered there away from the outside world. One monk answered yes. He said that he had thought of that, but then again, he didn't know if life could have been any better. One of the old monks was dying, he said, but he couldn't imagine a lovelier place to leave the earth, nothing greater than to be surrounded by people who cared for and loved you.

It was the honesty and intelligence of the monks that impressed me, the certainty and thoughtfulness and directness.

When I watched "Into Great Silence," the lack of those qualities in the bearing of the monks struck me most, the oppressive rituals and routines of one of the most ascetic monasteries in the world. And I got the horror.

Still, I am trying to find something sacred in every act. I don't have time for wasted actions any more. And, perhaps, it is easiest to find this in solitude, easier to concentrate on every movement and morsel, to see and to hear what is not you and to attempt to make some. . . connection. I put the ellipses in there because the statement sounds so pukishly corny and mundane, something straight out of a self-help course. I don't want to be cynical, but I can't say spiritual or artistic without a hint of a smirk. I need another word that will transcend self-deprecation.

That is what I'm working on. In solitude and silence.

Or was. Today I must return to the world of worry and of work.