Sounds of Silence

An amalgamation of two contradictory words. The word sound signifies motion, a probing into the heart and stirring of the soul, whereas the silence depicts serenity, peace and an immense amount of tranquility of the mind.

The connotation “Sounds of Silence” has been attributed to the stirring of our soul which occurs to every one of us earlier or later. A celebrated song in the Lalita Vistara , the biography of Buddha says Buddha was born as the saviour of mankind but he forgot himself in the luxuries of his palace. Some angels came and sang a song to arouse him. And the epitome of the whole song is that we are floating down the river of life which is continually changing, with time, space and causation, with no stop and no rest. So are our lives, going on and on without knowing any rest.
Every ripple every turbulence that is formed in a lake needs a ruffle; similarly every act of our surrounding creates an impression on our mind. Whether good or bad every external sound causes a ripple in the Lake of mind leaving an impression. The sounds of the inner soul helps us to tame our mind and directs us towards realization. As pointed out by Swami Vivekananda, there is an immense difference between sounds of nature and sounds of silence; there is a great difference between talking and realization. Even the fools and the parrots can talk but talking and realization are poles apart. The sounds of nature can claim religious faith but sounds of silence can help realize the true religion of a man.

But how do we hear such sounds of silence? How do we imbibe and apply that in management. Management is nothing but managing people, in other words understanding the minds of other people to arrive at a concrete and amicable solution.
We are all after Golden Fleece. Every one of us thinks that this will be his. Every reasonable man sees that this chance is, perhaps one in twenty millions, yet everyone struggles for it. The sounds of silence helps us to distinguish between the Good and the bad, between the Light and the Dark, between ignorance and practical realization and between the Real and the Unreal. By realizing the truth and by listening to these unspoken words of our heart and soul we tend to follow the Ethics and principles which are the very root of our own existence. The story of the mighty ruler Ashoka says that the sounds of crying of thousands of Human Hearts couldn’t reach his ear but one day when he met an Old Woman who failed to recognize him, he claimed to be the mighty ruler Ashoka who has won the Kalinga war. The Old woman said she considers him to be mighty only if he can return a single life he has taken during the war. Sounds of hatred towards his own deed stirred the silent Lake of his soul and he became Dharmashoka from Chandashoka.

The Basic Business Ethic states “ Make Profit with the customers, and not over the customers.” The ethic moves around the golden thought that “then alone a man loves when he finds that the object of his love is not a clod of earth but it is the veritable God himself”. An immense hatred for a person can cause a stirring of the soul by the sounds of Silence and transform it into endless love .Then this prison-house where we everyday struggle and fight and compete for a morsel of bread will become a heaven.


I would like to conclude my discussion with the Golden words of Vedanta- “A question was once asked of King Yudhisthira “What is the most wonderful thing on this earth.” The King replied “Every day people are dying around us and yet we think they will never die”.
Sooner or later it happens in our life that out of sheer desperation we hear a voice playing the strings of our souls and we become capable of distinguishing the real and Unreal things around us. Sounds of silence are nowhere else to be found. They are within us. They help us to move from perdition to eternity. They guide us towards the path of life which can lead to eternal peace and serenity, the prelude to NIRVANA.

Thank you,
Hari Om