On Silence

"Do not speak unless you can improve on silence."

I don't know who said this. Google search produces a plethora of sources- Buddhist Philosophy, Lawrence Coughlin, Chinese proverb, New England proverb etc. Doesn't matter really. I find an approximate corrollary of the same in the last line of Tractus:

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".

Though this must be of immense philosophical importance and spiritual significance, I've a bit perverse, but more pragmatic reading of this. Given the social class ( in a loose non-Marxian sense) to which he belonged, Wittgenstein must have been tired of "words".

I often wonder about ourselves, people who are nothing but "words", perpetually talking and writing- writers, academicians, activists, journalists, executives- full gamut of educated, enlightened and voluble members of intelligensia. Don't we ever get tired of "words"- of self and of others? "Words" can be so tiring. It's not that we can't escape from it, but we don't want to. We are attached to it. We depend on it. Though we tend to think that it's just the other way around.

This is not about our day-to-day utilitarian communications. It's more about "profundity" of thoughts and ideas, supposedly achieved via our language, interactions and communications. Probably true, but I wonder why I feel so drained out and claustrophobic when I walk this path to profundity. One of most gifted speakers of our times, Swami Vivekananda, probably suffered from this fatigue at the end of his life when he gradually withdrew from active social interactions and started to spend more time with his pets. I got this impression from Sumit Sarkar's brilliant treatise on Ramakrishna: ""Kaliyuga", "Chakri" and "Bhakti": Ramakrishna and His Times".

I have always been a reluctant talker- reluctance often bordering on pathological shyness. I've been admonished too many times by my elder relatives for this, specially during my childhood. Though these days I've bettered in this resepct, still I nurture a yearning for silence. All these metaphysical speculations, may just be my way to find "words" for this yearning. It's ironic.

It's ironic that someone's first post on blog is on silence, wasting so many words. :-)