Questioner: While writing the questions about our lives, we were silent and it feels very peaceful right now. But how to maintain this silence? How to make sure that this silence holds, that it is not momentary?
Acharya Prashant: It is apparent that this silence is conducive to understanding. It is actually simple. Do you know what brings about, what you call an ‘environment of understanding’? Have you all tried to understand what brings this about? It is very simple and direct. Is it an external threat, a coercion, a compulsion? Is it some kind of gloominess that makes you fall silent? Is it an expectation or is it out of respect that you have fallen silent? None of that!
It is so recent, so close to you that you must find out, it is available to be found out. If you investigate you will find out that it is nothing but that you are writing questions that are relevant to you and each single individual is doing that. The moment you go inwards, there is a beautiful silence that nothing else can bring about. You experienced that silence. You are experiencing it right now. It did not come about because of the persuasion or influence of an external agency. The external agency might have just helped initiate it but ultimately it was because each single one of you was going inward and writing questions that are pertinent to your life.
That is a great meditation.
If you look carefully, nobody else is very much relevant in this. All disturbance ceases to affect you. Nothing matters but your own mind and your own awareness. That moment this mind that is habituated to travelling outwards starts looking within. You are using the same faculties right now that you use in at other times of the day. You are using your eyes, you are using your ears, you are using your limbs, and your mind, all of that is being used.
