The Mute Gods
A lot of times, my friends had said to me that I should take a vow of silence once. Of course, it is always intended as a joke and a dig at the fact that I can always sexualise any conversation with my overtly pervert, wry humour. However, I decided to give in and try out the same once. This article is about my journey through my vows of silence and the epiphanies that I had because of it.
So it all started because of this book that I was reading. ‘The Ethical Slut’. It’s a book on polyamorous and for the poly curious or for the ones who are monogamous but their partner is polyamorous. The book goes to massive lengths to discuss how to make any relationship work, poly, mono, or an amalgamation. This book really helped me circumnavigate through that part and also inspired an article on jealousy out of me.
In that very book, it was mentioned that some tribes in Native America used to ritualistically wait for one minute after the person has spoken something, before starting with their own monologue. Anything other than that was considered to be something that would anger the Gods. At first, I dished this idea as a primitive and a baseless one, but then, upon cogitating about it, I realised that this is actually an ingenious way to combat something that our generation suffers from severely, short attention span while listening. How often do you speak only to find yourself interrupted right in the middle of your words because the opine listener just can’t see themselves in a position where you contradict them and they just are filled with this sudden urge to tell you that you are wrong or your opinion is so much more different from their own opinion. Apart from that, remember the last time you narrated an incident and the other person followed it up with their own incident and the topic suddenly shifted from you to them.
All these are very common traits in our society, and not the best ones to exist, I feel. Maun Vrat (vow of silence) is a smart way to train yourself to not be that person. Even if you think you are a good listener, there are a few more lessons that can be learnt from this practice that I think are essential for your self development.
Now, before I get to the lessons, I wish to explore the various types of vrats I had kept.
Vrat 1: No communication (electronic included) from 12 AM to 12 AM the next day. This was the first maun vrat I took. In this, I allowed myself to use hmm, ummhmm, and other such monosyllabic words in order to make life a bit easier and get out of sticky situations if they were to arise. Apart from that, I did not express myself to even myself. Whatever thoughts I had, were kept in my head and in my head only. I killed all means of expression for me, including writing anything, even if it was for my eyes only.
Vrat 2: No communication from 10 AM to 6 PM for the next 2 days was followed. This was done to accommodate some interviews that I had scheduled and a call with my grandparents who are a little unwell off late.
Vrat 3: No communication from the time I wake up to the next time I sleep. Similar rules as the above ones. However, this one was more difficult because the vrat 1 allowed me to sleep after letting out some thoughts out of myself. In this vrat however, all my emotions need to be bottled up within yourself and you have to sleep with all of them inside you. All the thoughts you have, all your pain and suffering, everything that has troubled you thus far, you don’t do anything about it, but gulp it down your throat and digest it yourself, rather than vomiting it out. This definitely was the hardest of them all and I would really recommend that you do not start off with this one if you decide to give it a try.
Coming now to my observations from this very meditative experience. I realised, apart from the expected lessons involving me becoming a better listener and me being more accommodating to different perspectives and opinions, there were other things that made the experience harder than I had imagined it to be.
Now, when you stop expressing, you strip yourself of the ability to change the things happening around you. I particularly remember this one incident when, as we were cooking a coleslaw and one of my friend did something that I consider to be a criminal offence. He decided that other than salt and pepper, the salad could use some desi ground spices as well. ‘No, not how you make a coleslaw you buffoon’, I said to myself in my head but that’s all I could say. So I let the incident run past me and let the thing carry on the way it was going. In the end, the final result was not a coleslaw, but it was something good. Everyone who ate it, relished the same and in the bigger picture, that’s all that matters.
Thus, I concluded, when you take this vow of silence everything else becomes like weather. It exists all around you, but there is literally nothing you can do to change it. The weather might make you feel good and soothing and nice, and you won’t be able to tell anyone how good it makes you feel and the weather can be uncomfortable and hot and barren, and even in that case, all you can do is do what you do best, because, nothing you can say will make the sun disappear. Thus, you let things be. Similarly with a Maun Vrat. You let things be.