Mauna

Ramana Maharshi taught only through silence like God Dakshinamoorthy. 

In continuation of the subject, wish to point out the existence of an effective, simple and powerful tool that can be exercised at any time spectrum and at any place  in everyones daily life to quench the element of anger, and it is nothing but 'mouna'- observing silence and no doubt our religious Heads-Acharias adopted it quite often and the ways and means of adhering to this faculty of silence is elucidated below.

There are so many systems we talk about tackling the external conditions including global warming, but when one is getting heated up inside, the internal warming, how can we tackle ? The scriptures do talk a lot about this. Among various disciplines, the scriptures talk about utilizing one faculty that we all are endowed with, all of us human being are endowed with one faculty universally uniformly, using that faculty intelligently we can have inner growth and inner refinement drastically. Do any one know what is that faculty ? We generally don't notice, and that faculty is, the faculty of silence. The faculty of silence is universally available and it is very powerful faculty we have, we know that we have the faculty of speech and we talk a lot about using the faculty of speech, but we generally don't think of the other counterpart, the faculty of silence.

Our scriptures point out that we can use, the faculty of silence very effectively to develop inner growth. All our sages have uniformly and effectively made use of this faculty, the very silence is called in our śastra by the name mouna. What is the meaning of the word mouna ? It is derived from the word munihi. Instead of using any sanskrit word, the scriptures translate silence by the word mouna which means munihi bhāvaha mouna. A state which has been used by all the sages uniformly not only for internal growth, but also for spiritual wisdom, they have used this faculty.

Therefore, Lord Kṛṣṇa also talks about this mouna in the Gīta, in the 12th chapter one of the titles given to a wise person is, "tulya nindā stutiḥ maunī santuṣṭaḥ yena kenacit aniketaḥ sthira matiḥ bhaktimān me priyaḥ naraḥ".  We will think what is greatness in mouna, but Kṛṣṇa gives the title mouni for a sage or a wise person. Therefore, we can effectively use mouna or silence for our internal growth, inner refinement, maturity, spiritual growth. By developing this maturity, the way we perceive the world and respond to the situation will drastically change. By that change, we can change the very quality of our life. If we have decided to use mouna or silence effectively for our inner growth, we have to follow different principles.

The first principle Kṛṣṇa mentions in the Bhagavad Gīta is, "vivikta deśa sevitvam aratiḥ jana saṁsadi". We all enjoy the company of people and we all enjoy talking to people all the time whether necessary or not which is called Janā śaṃsati ratihi. All the time reveling in companionship, all the time talking to people directly, if nobody is there, of-course there is cell phone, all the time we are interacting and communicating, it has almost become an addiction. Kṛṣṇa says, may you drop that addiction and once in a while, get out of your need to talk, learn to spend some time in solitude, in which you don't interact with anyone, you don't communicate with the world.

In the 18th chapter also, "ekākī yata-cittātmā nirāśīr aparigrahaḥ" following silence along with solitude. By solitude, we don't mean going to a forest, forests are not available around, solitude means any setup in which we need not talk much or we cannot talk much.