I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

If only I listened to my own rhythm, and tried to live in accordance with it. Much of what I do is mere imitation, springs from a sense of duty or from pre-conceived notions of how people should behave. The only certainties about what is right and wrong are those which spring from sources deep inside oneself. And I say it humbly and gratefully and I mean every word of it right now, though I know I shall again grow rebellious and irritable. 'Oh God, I thank you for the sense of fulfillment I sometimes have, that fulfillment is after all nothing but being filled with you. I promise yet to strive my whole life long for beauty and harmony and also humility and true love, whispers of which I hear inside me during my best moments.'

Silence is the highest form of music ... Music of the infinity, referred to as the music of the spheres, is often heard in deep solitude or reflected in natural sounds -- the wind, the ocean, the melody of birds. The single note of a temple gong is far more powerful than an orchestra of one hundred instruments. The clear sound it produces reverberates deep within our mind and body, conveying a sense of infinite peace and bringing us close to the melodious silence of infinity.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with your quire of Saints
for evermore, I shall be made you
Music; As I come, I tune the
instrument here at the door.
And what I must do then, think
here before.

No voice;
but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.

Music ingathers all, yet takes one only
into its secret when the chimes begin.
When that great rain of sound comes down,
the lonely of spirit is elect and enters in.
One evening shines with bells; alone, apart we listen, awed,
to the antiphonal pealing of our hearts.

Music by right is for the solitaries
whom a long silence trains to the profound.
The bells are ours; we come at the first airy
rumor to drench our deserts with their sound.
Yet anyone who listens may become
hermit or anchorite under the shower
when the great chimes -- tree shakes its leaves of light.

I experienced in myself a curious phenomenon: I was listening with the heart. And if I just listened, through the heart, just listened, and no thinking was involved in it, then the heart sang with the violins, it was the trumpet call, it was the woodwinds, and I was the music.

... there is music even in the beauty,
and the silent note which Cupid strikes,
far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
For there is music wherever there is a
harmony, order, or proportion: and thus far,
we may maintain the music of the spheres.