On Silent hours

On Silent hours.

The human spirit needs some silent hours to meditate, to contemplate on the divine, to return to it's source everyday. It needs time to relax, to be with itself, to recharge itself, and to gain inner support. Such spiritual food is essential to nourish the spirit, without which the human spirit would feel restless, 'empty' and tired about life.

Many spiritual practitioners, noble poets, humanitarians, reserve a period of their time everyday for spiritual cultivation.

Indian spiritual master advise their disciples to reserve 10 % of their time everyday for spiritual cultivation. ie. meditation, reading of scriptures, devotion to God.

Swami Yogananda advise his disciples to "Read one hour, Reflect for 2 hour, meditate all the time."

The Himalayan yogis, spend the most part of their life in meditation.

The Buddha spend long hours meditating and teaches meditation to his disciples. He also holds yearly 3-month long retreat with his monastic disciple during his Life time.

The Taoist Master, Lao Zhi practices 'zhuo wang'- "Sitting and forgetting about the world."

Kong fu zhi, Confucius states in the one of his books that "If you see someone sitting in silence, do not disturb him, he is cultivating himself."

The ancient christian tradition reserve 10 % of their time for study of the bible and deep prayers. They also reserve 10 % of their wealth for charity.

Master Ching Hai advise her disciples to meditate for 2.5 hours everyday. [Which is 10 % of the 24 hours a day.] and hold 3,5,7-day retreats now and again. She advise that meditation time is the most precious time a person could ever have on earth.

Mother Theresa lead her order of sisters to pray deeply for few hours a day. She says that such deep contemplations give them the strength and support to carry on their work to take care of the sick and the poor in India.

Rabindarath Tagora, the first indian who won the Noble prize for literature, use to sit still and contemplate on the divine for 3 hours in the wee-light before dawn. That is his source of inspiration and enables him to write very beautiful spiritual poetries.

Sufi masters from the Muslim tradition, such as Hafiz and Rumi use to utter beautiful spiritual poetries in praise of the divine after deep prayers and meditation. The poetry just flows from them and their disciples write them down into words.

These silent hours are a source of inspiration, and a source of spiritual strength that sees us through the toss and turmoil of human life. It is an essential part of human life.

In this modern age, we seem to forget this need of silent hours. Perhaps that is why our moral values are not that strong, our trust in the goodness of life is wavering and our spiritual conviction is lacking.

It is little wonder that many people find life uninteresting, and resort to many different [often harmful] means to try to find some happiness in life.

Perhaps it would be good to return to the good' O times, where we reserve some silent hours in our days for meditation, prayers, deep contemplation.

When we could find peace within ourselves, we could find peace and happiness in the world. :)

May all have peace :)