Moments of Silence
- PDF / 117,792 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 38 Downloads / 239 Views
ORTHOGONAL ROTATION IN CONSCIOUSNESS
Moments of Silence Jon Kabat-Zinn 1
# Jon Kabat-Zinn 2020
Gathered at the place that has come to be known as Ground Zero in New York City, on September 11, 2002, at precisely the moment the first plane went into the north tower of the World Trade Center one year before, the family members of those who died and those who survived, along with sundry dignitaries, onlookers, and those for whom it was a solemn pilgrimage, were asked to observe a moment of silence. Driving down the highway in Massachusetts, I participated in that silence via the radio as no doubt millions of others did across the country and around the world. Everybody knew what to do. We were not given instructions. No one suggested how to feel, or what to feel, or how to deal with our thoughts and emotions. It would have been absurd and disrespectful and wholly inappropriate. It would never have crossed the organizers’ minds to include any instructions for how to hold a moment like that. It just wasn’t and isn’t necessary in such circumstances. Everybody already knows what a moment of silence is. We were all one in that silence, even as we were each with our own unique thoughts, our own unique emotions, our own sense of purpose and loss, whatever our relationship to the event was. And for each of us, as we know because it is so obvious, it is totally different. When an event stirs great sadness and grief in us, after the wailing and the tears and the tearing of our hair, there comes a time when we have to fall silent. It is even beyond prayer. Prayers, which are also offered up at such moments, do not substitute for silence. Silence is the ultimate prayer. We call a moment of silence an observance. How appropriate. It is a falling into the present moment with awareness and an openness of heart that allows for all our feelings, Excerpted from Mindfulness for All: The Wisdom to Transform the World by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Copyright © 2019 Jon Kabat-Zinn. Published by Hachette Books. All Rights Reserved. * Jon Kabat-Zinn [email protected] 1
Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 02421, USA
speakable and unspeakable, reconciling and vengeful, hopeful and despairing to just be here. It is a moment of pure being. It is also a nod to something deep within ourselves that we touch only briefly and then shy away from, perhaps out of discomfort or pure unfamiliarity. It is a bearing witness. In that bearing witness, we not only bear our burden better, but we demonstrate that we are larger than it is, that we have the capacity to hold it, to honor it, and to make a context for it and for ourselves, and so grow beyond it without ever forgetting. In reflecting on my experience later that day, I began imagining what it would have been like if instead of a moment of silence, we had been asked to observe five minutes of silence, or ten, or even an hour. Would we have still known how to be in the face of the enormity and barbarity and senselessness of it all?
Data Loading...
