Silence In Religion

In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie struggles to create a voice for herself and learns when her silence is more powerful than her words. Janie uses her voice at times when she feels powerless or when someone is silencing her. When Janie is in situations where she is being silenced or confronted, she chooses to be either speak out or stay silenced. When Janie is silent, she is able to set herself up in a position of taking her power back from those who try to make her feel powerless. As the novel goes on Janie learns how to be silent at times when her words aren’t as powerful as her silence.

For he declared that “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak out and remove all doubt”. Lincoln illustrates that the less that is being spoken the more ahead that person is. When speaking without thinking, it often leads to saying things that weren't meant to be said. Silent people observe by listening to what is being argued so that when they get a chance to speak they can voice what they were thinking. People argue that the quiet people are the ones that don't think.

Karen Armstrong and Robert Thurman wrote their essays, “Homo religiosus” and “Wisdom”, respectively, describing two words, “being” and “void”. These words, although have opposite meanings, describe the same spiritual experience that come about through different means. By definition, “being” is a kind of fullness or completeness of existence and “void” is emptiness or a negation of existence. Armstrong believes that “being” is the equivalent of the Buddhist’s “Nirvana” while Thurman believes that “void” is the equivalent of the Buddhist’s “Nirvana”. Although these terms seem to be opposite in the literal sense of defining them, they lead to the same outcome: not being at the center of one’s own universe.

Finally, Clint Smith’s TED Talk “The Danger of Silence” is all about speaking up, saying the truth, whether individuals want to or not. In it he said, “We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don’t” (Smith). This is also hinting to willful ignorance.

I do not agree with Thoreau’s ideas of solitude, he speaks as if friends and family were nothing more than just objects in a person’s life. This essay reflects Thoreau’s lack of social interaction. Life is hard and sometimes companions are

Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The Jews were persecuted, tortured and slaughtered in concentration camps. Night by Eliezer Wiesel illustrates his struggles as he is faced with silences in its most profound and tragic form. This stunning memoir provides a conceptual overview of four types of silence Eliezer experiences throughout his journey. These specific types of silence include; from the world, within Eliezer himself, the Jewish people and from God.

Throughout The Chosen, Chaim Potok frequently incorporates silence, portraying it as a path to self discovery and realization of the world surrounding an individual. Initially, Reuven and Danny, who are the protagonists of the story, do not comprehend the true significance of silence. However, as both characters grow as individuals, they begin to understand the importance of this idea, “You can listen to silence, Reuven. I 've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

When people follow their own truths, they are “safe at last” meaning they are living the way they are supposed to live (Emerson 31). In other parts of his essay, Emerson says that the soul is light, that the relation of the soul to the divine spirit is pure, and that the soul “becomes.” Emerson consistently provokes a positive connotation for the word soul because your soul is the most important part that makes you who you are, as it contains your

28) Suppressing emotions does not lead to virtuous behavior, it leads to a vice of deficiency. Furthermore, by suppressing emotions and emphasizing emotional detachment, one may lose a sense of compassion or empathy, which are important virtues in their own right. “but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way is what is both intermediate and best and this is characteristic of virtue. ”(Aristotle, p.27)

We should practice controlling our countertransference that we show to others. If any, we don’t always have to express them. We should be considerate to know that others have feelings and the way we look at them or communicate with them won’t always be positive to them. Everything we do or say should be done with

“Cathleen Ni Houlihan”, a play that William Butler Yeats co-wrote with Lady Gregory, in 1902, is about Ireland’s fight for their independence. According to Nicholas Grene: “What is at issue [in Kathleen Ni Houlihan] is the political meaning which the play generated and the potential for such meaning which the text offered.” (Grene, 1999) The play is set in a cottage kitchen and centres in the 1798 Rebellion. The play: “stages two conflicting narratives of Irish peasant womanhood. Mrs. Gillane and, potentially, Delia, her son’s pretty, well-dowered bride-to-be, represent a realist, maternal order, the values of hearth and home; the Poor Old Woman, Cathleen, also dressed as a peasant, represents a contrary order of being – symbolic, nomadic, virginal, sacrificial rather than procreative (…)

Introduction Mystic traditions are at the core of each civilization. These beliefs and traditions form the root of conscious awareness of self and divine and in turn the knowledge of self and other. Man has always been fascinated by his relationship with the numinous. Over thousands of years he has formulated many different methods for invoking these experiences with the numinous. For the purpose of this paper I will compare two such methods of mystic tradition, namely Buddhism and Judaism.

“ The Sounds of Silence” by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel presents a deep understanding and meaning of the topic that people lack the ability to communicate. Peoples thoughts are ordered by the media and forget about the true meaning of their own voices. Simon and Garfunkel represent this through the use of figurative language and poetic techniques which served really well to their song. Darkness is sometimes described as a depressive state to those who can't confide in no one and are all alone.

Mindfulness & Power of our thoughts A strong impact is made on our health and overall well-being by what we think and feel, how we talk to ourselves, and what view we take about what is happening to us, and around us. Mindfulness, in its simplest form, means to be able to pay attention to the present moment, without judgment and criticism. To the things that actually “are”.

Many religions incorporate the question of whether the mind makes reality or vice versa. Even quantum physicists such as Schrodinger have discussed the outcomes of quantum mechanics that are not observed. Also important is the discussion about sound and if it exists solely within our brain. After analyzing reality, religion, and science, the answer to