Reminder: Speech is headache itself
Indeed, speech, even when it adorns itself in the garb of intimate supplication and veils itself behind a curtain of secrecy, is headache itself, and to the soul a grievous exhaustion. It weighs upon the ear as though the voice were a hammer striking against thought; it wearies the heart until words become a dust that blinds insight. How often we imagine that through speech we draw nearer, while in truth we drift away; we think we clarify, yet we obscure; we suppose we revive meaning, only to kill it through ceaseless repetition.
Knowledge is not begotten amid clamour, nor nourished in noise. It is brought forth with difficulty in the womb of perplexity and reared in the dimness of questioning. Perplexity, though painful, is the road to certainty; yet it cannot abide in a soul laid open to every sound, nor settle in a heart accustomed to fleeing silence. When tongues are raised, minds are lowered; when words multiply, thought retreats, and that subtle light which the wise call insight is extinguished.
Silence is neither incapacity, nor muteness, nor defeat. It is the strength of the self when it holds its reins firm; it is the dignity of the intellect when it refuses to squander its treasures in the marketplace of clamour. In silence, an idea is refined, a meaning tested, and the soul’s flaws revealed before they are proclaimed to others. As for loquacity, it is a luxurious heedlessness, intoxicating its possessor with the illusion of eloquence, until he awakens to find in his hands nothing but fatigue, and in his breast nothing but emptiness.
He who grows in intellect grows in silence, not because he lacks words, but because he knows their worth. He understands that once a word departs, it does not return, and that it is either a light that guides or a fire that burns. Thus he restrains it until it ripens, guards it until it is purified, then releases it gently and calmly, like a small lantern in a long night.
No soul has been purified that lets its tongue loose without reckoning; no heart has grown tender that has grown fond of din. There is a dust upon the soul that only silence can remove, and a rust upon the heart that only long contemplation can polish away. Nearness to the Most High is not in the abundance of supplication nor in the raising of the voice, but in a humility that fills the inner being, and in a sincere attentiveness that listens to the subtle call in the depths of conscience.
When the soul grows still and the lips close upon futile speech, another horizon opens within: a horizon of clarity untroubled by voices, and of certainty unshaken by crowds. There, in that silent moment which most people fear, truth is born and knowledge dawns. Thereafter speech becomes a noble necessity, not a vulgar habit; a message, not a clamour; a light that cleaves the darkness, not a headache that weighs upon the head.
(by: Dr Mohammed Akram Nadwi, Oxford, 15 Ramadan 1447)
