Sightings by Sam Keen

Author:Sam Keen [SAM KEEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811859769
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

In addition, there is the everyday cacophony of automobile horns, airplanes, cell phones ringing, fire engines, ambulances, police sirens, boom boxes, jackhammers, and occasional bombs bursting in air. For anyone who craves yet more noise, the danger of silence can be avoided by the portable music player. The walking wired have eliminated the risk of experiencing a silent moment into which strange thoughts might intrude.

It is difficult to estimate the toll the profane soundscape has taken on us. The omnipresence of noise and speed destroys the rhythm of meditative and contemplative thought. We literally cannot hear ourselves think. We go from word to word to word, instead of from silence to word to silence to word. Our talk is loquacious rather than deliberative. Listening is rapidly becoming a lost art.

When profane words and noise fill every nook or cranny of our time and space, the fertile silence that is an integral part of reverence is destroyed.

It was not always this way. In the beginning, silence was profane and noise was sacred. For most premodern human beings, ordinary life was altogether too quiet. Village life followed the recurring cycle of the seasons. Nothing much interrupted the sounds of rushing streams, waves breaking on the shore, spring rains, wind whistling through the trees, falling snow, the plowing of fields, and the planting of seeds.

On my many visits to Bhutan, I have sat in small villages and listened to the faint sounds of ordinary days: cows chewing, dogs barking, children laughing, prayer flags flapping in the breeze, streamlets burbling, a family chanting om mani padme hum as the morning mist lifts—modest sounds barely rising above the immense, encompassing silence of the vast landscape.

Then come the holy days, the great religious celebrations. People arrive from miles around, many traveling by foot or horseback for days to reach the temple compound where the cycle of sacred dances will be performed. On each day of the festival, the hills reverberate with the drone of the great trumpets played by the monks. The narrow valley surrounding the temple is filled with the rhythmic chanting of prayers and the hypnotic beat of drums.

Inside the temple courtyard, elaborately costumed dancers enact epic stories of casting out demons and of founding the Dragon Kingdom of Bhutan, as well as the karmic drama of human life, death, and rebirth. Periodically, raucous laughter breaks out as clowns, using a wooden phallus, simulate sexual intercourse, parody the movements of the dancers, and interrupt the “serious” ceremonies with ribald humor.

Outside the temple walls, a carnival atmosphere prevails. Small booths offer rice, chilies, yak cheese, and roasted meats. Groups of men huddle, playing games of chance with dice. Women sit on the ground, with blankets spread before them covered with weavings, prayer beads, weathered cymbals, bells, and miscellaneous ritual objects. Local liquors flow freely, and greetings and laughter fill the air.

When night falls, the dancers lead a procession down into a meadow. There, hundreds of people gather near a large pine-branch arch for a purification ritual.

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