In an interview on Silence

On the subject of Buddhism, your second book is written by a Buddhist. Tell us about it.

Palmo is a contemporary Buddhist, who has spent a great deal of time, including a solid three year stint, in complete silence. She lived for 12 years really on the snow line, in a little cave in the Himalayas. This book is a collection of her thoughts on Buddhism, and a practical guide in how to be silent. She has this commitment that ties with me, because she is interested in finding about the place of the female in the Buddhist tradition. She is a very modest writer. When she was asked what three years in silence was like, all she said was that ‘it wasn’t boring’.

That sounds like a lonely experience. Is silence inevitably connected to solitude?

It is quite likely to be, but no, not inevitably. There are very few people, and I’m not one of them, who are good at communicating silently. The Trappist monks live almost entirely silently, but at the same time very communally (they sleep in dorms and don’t have any personal privacy). In theory it can be done, but in practice I think that silence will usually be accompanied by solitude. I don’t like the popular idea that solitude is a retreat from society though. It’s one of the reasons I choose this book actually, because I don’t think that is what’s going on. It’s like saying that you go on holiday to retreat from work, which is just not a useful way to look at it. The solitary life is similarly not a retreat.