Word, Silence, and Understanding by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

The great religious traditions are not complementary but inter-dimensional.  Each contains each, though with the greatest possible differences in accentuation.

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A Trinity:  Word, Silence, Understanding 

Silence, in this sense, is not the absence of word or sound. Silence is not characterized by absence but by presence, a presence too great for words.  When we have some little joy or pain we are apt to talk about it.  When joy or pain grows strong we rejoice or cry.  But when bliss or suffering become overpowering – we are silent.  Any encounter with mystery is hidden in silence.  (The very term “mystery” comes from muein: “to keep silent.”)  Mystery is not an empty emptiness but the incomprehensible Presence that touches us and renders us speechless as it imparts to us meaning.         

Only by the tension between word and silence is meaning upheld.  (Both “word” and “silence” are taken here in the most comprehensive sense, as two dimensions of all reality.)  The moment we relax this tension meaning escapes us: the moment we break the tension meaning is broken.  Failing to see the distinction between word and silence – a distinction greater and more basic than any other – would mean relaxing the tension: yet, pushing the distinction to the point of separation would break the tension.  The point is that silence and word are distinguished as well as united by a third dimension of meaning: that of understanding.         

After all, how do we understand?  I would say, by allowing the word to lead us into silence until we truly hear the silence in and through the word.  But more concretely, how does understanding come about in a dialogue?  A true dialogue is more than an exchange of words: the “more” consists in an exchange of silence.  This is where understanding comes in. For true understanding it is necessary that the silence within me should come to word and so reach out to you until it touches not only your ear and your brain but your heart, your still point, the core of silence within you.  Thus, understanding is communication of silence with silence in and through the word.

Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism 

As soon as we re-establish Understanding in its proper place, we have gained a new horizon within which to view the relationship of Christian spirituality to Buddhism and Hinduism. If we can accept that our quest for ultimate meaning is the tap root of all spirituality, and if it is true that Word, Silence, and Understanding together constitute the sphere of meaning, we can see the possibility that three different traditions within humanity’s quest may focus each on a different one of these three dimensions of meaning.  Of course, we are not speaking of three water-tight compartments but of dimensions which though distinguishable, can never be separated from one another.  Yet, we have seen that in our own tradition the focus on the Word is so strong that Silence and Understanding are almost crowded out of our field of vision: We have to make an effort to rediscover their proper place.  Thus we should be able to appreciate that in other traditions Silence or Understanding may hold a place of pre-eminence comparable to the one which the Word holds in our own.         

If we now consult the data of comparative religion, we find verified what at first sight would seem too good to be true. Jews, Christians and Moslems find ultimate meaning in the Word.  Buddhists (as we have already briefly indicated) in Silence, in the emptiness which is fullness, in the nothing that gives meaning to everything.  Understanding in turn which yokes together Word and Silence is the central preoccupation of Hinduism.   “Yoke” and “Yoga” stem from the same root and Swami Venkatesananda gives voice to the deepest intuition of Hinduism when he states succinctly: “Yoga is simply Understanding.”  Admittedly this sketchy scheme allows for about as much detail as a stamp-size map of the world.  The obvious danger is over-simplification.  Yet there are advantages to a reduction of scale.  For one thing, we shall be less apt to overlook the forest for the trees.         

Hinduism for instance is so vast and varied a jungle of religions and philosophies that one cannot blame anyone who despairs of finding a unifying principle behind it all.  Yet, if there is one, it is the ever-repeated insight that God manifest is God unmanifest, and God unmanifest is God manifest.  This is Understanding in our sense, understanding that the Word is Silence – Silence comes to itself in the Word; understanding that the Silence is Word – Word brought home.  “God manifest is God unmanifest” is the Hindu parallel to Jesus’ word: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).  Word and Silence are one and it is in and through the Spirit of Understanding that they are one.  Hindus have spent five thousand years or more cultivating, not a theology of the Holy Spirit (theology belongs to the realm of the Logos, the Word) but what must take the place of theology when the Spirit is accorded the place which the Word holds in our approach.  Should this not give us hope that the encounter with Hinduism may tap new springs in the depth of our Christian heritage?         

In a similar way, Buddhism concentrates on a dimension which belongs to the Word, but has been somewhat neglected in Christian tradition.  In what would correspond to a theology of the Father (since theo-logy can only be about the Father), silence would have to replace the medium of the word.  Maybe Buddhists could teach us something in this field.  When Buddhists speak of a door, they do not mean primarily frame, leaf, and hinges, as we do, but the empty space.  When Christ says, “I am the door” (John 10:9) we are free to take this in the Western-Christian or in the Buddhist sense.  Why should the latter be less Christian?

Each Tradition Contains the Others 

It would fall short of the truth to claim that the great traditions of spirituality are complementary.  In fact, it would be wrong to think that they could add up, as it were, to “the real thing.” They are “the real thing” each one of them.  They are not complementary but inter-dimensional.  Each contains each, though with the greatest possible differences in accentuation. Each is, therefore, unique.

Each is, in its own way, superior.  And what of the Christian claim to universality?  Rightly understood, this is not some sort of colonial imperative: it points toward inner horizons.  It makes demands of us Christians, not of others, challenging us to rediscover again and again the neglected dimensions of our own tradition, so as to become truly universal, truly catholic.         

Not some theory, but our own experience must be the key to an understanding of the spiritual traditions with which we are confronted.  For, if our search for meaning in life is the root of spirituality, and happiness is its fruit, we should be able to gain access to all its forms from the vantage point of our own familiar and very personal moments of happiness.  What happens, then, in those happy moments when something really becomes meaningful to us?  Say, the smile of a child, unexpectedly, in the midst of a crowd.  Or a moment in which nothing happens while you sit in a parked car (when Nothing really happens to us!), or dancing.  We are overcome.  All we can say is:  “This is it!  Here is the answer to all my search for meaning, insignificant though it may seem to anyone else.”  But listen to what we are saying: “This is it.”  “This” stands for the smile, the moment in which nothing happened the dancing – for trifles, “tremendous trifles,” as Chesterton would say: and “it” stands for meaning – ultimate meaning in the last analysis, for whenever we truly open our heart we open it unconditionally (to drink from the stream is to drink from its source).  I can never decide which is the more amazing paradox: that “this” trifling thing or event should reveal to me “it,” ultimate meaning: or that “it” on which all my happiness depends, should reveal itself to me in “this” trifle.         

And so we go from meaningful experience to meaningful experience saying: “This is it, and this, and this!” – so many words of the one Word in which meaning is spelled out to us. Maybe our Buddhist friend says the same with a different emphasis: “This is it, and this is it too!” and for this and this and this there is only one “it,” the one great Silence that comes to word in every word the great Oneness in which all multiplicity comes to rest.  But our Hindu friend can wholeheartedly agree with both versions (there lies the unifying power of Yoga): “This is it – fine!  This is it – fine!   After all what really matters is that this is it.”  This is understanding.  Only when we can truly say this is it, have we understood.         

Our own confrontation with mystery gives us thus, the key for an understanding of the relationship between the spiritual traditions.  Just as silence, understanding, and word imply one another so do the Buddhist, Hindu and Christian traditions.  The Understanding which is the life-breath of Hinduism cannot be separated from Word and Silence which it dynamically unites. The silence into which Buddhists drop down their thoughts can be separated neither from the Word to which it gives birth nor from the Understanding through which the Word is brought home.  Thus a true Buddhist is Hindu and Christian, whether s/he knows it or not.  A true Hindu is Christian and Buddhist, whether s/he knows it or not.  And let us add: a true Christian is Buddhist and Hindu, whether s/he knows it or not.  To know it becomes increasingly more timely and more important.

Originally printed as "Christian Confrontation with Hinduism and Buddhism" in Integral Yoga, Vol. VI, No. 2, pp. 7-12.