The voice of silence

Coming closer to the end of my sabbatical, I decided to spend a week in my favourite place to really go down to basics: Benediktushof Holzkirchen. The site used to be a Benedictine monastery from the 8th century. The charm of that time is still preserved: a long-standing place of power and silence, an intense atmosphere. Today they offer Eastern and Western meditation practices, Zen and contemplation, as well as many modern mindfulness practices, such as MBSR, independent of any culture or religion. Benediktushof was founded in 2003 by the Benedictine and Zen master Willig Jäger (1925-2020), which I had the pleasure to meet a few times in the past years.

Listening to (maybe a better word is “”experience”) silence has often led me to surprising insights – simple, fresh and thundering. So did it this time.

As Ramana Maharshi put it: “The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.”