دار بيبليون
Preface by Pierre LORY to the book Maqamat al-Samt of Lwiis Saliba
مقدمة المستشرق البروفسور بيير لوري لديوان د. لويس صليبا “مقامات الصمت” 2008
The reader of this book will quickly realize that he or she is encountering texts that are by no means ordinary. The reason for this decentring is the central theme – namely, silence. The reader will quickly realize that he or she is not dealing with considerations, reflections, or poems about silence, in the sense that silence is an object of study here. Rather, the pages of the present work are inspired by meditative silence, they originate in it. The magnificent Song of Silence (Unshûdat al-samt), for example, is not a poem written to evoke silence as one would describe an object. It is a canticle of silence in the sense that it comes from that inner space, that it is itself born of the experience of the stillness of the soul; it expresses a state of mind where words no longer have their ordinary function. In everyday life, words convey common experiences: “I had a beautiful dream”, “the meal was excellent”, “this philosophy is pessimistic” are sentences that convey information known by the speaker as well as by the listener. Both dream, eat, and think often.
For this book, the situation is different. It is very rare in our big, busy cities to find people who have experienced a dimension of inner silence, so it is not a common, shared experience that one can easily talk about. Dr. Lwiis Saliba has been searching for spirituality for many years. This path has led him to frequent true masters, and to experience periods of silence and prolonged retreat with them. Here, he testifies precisely to certain moments, certain experiences lived during these interior pilgrimages:
“O my source, my creator and my support
grant me just one of your graces
Let me immerse myself in You at least for a few moments. (“Yâ manba’î, mukawwinî wa-mu’înî…“, page 61.
This lived aspect gives all its interest to these pages; which requires from the reader, in his turn, an attention, a very particular listening.
The first text is a lecture on the experiences of silence in the great religious traditions. It does not have a
academic. Although he is a specialist in the field of religious sciences, Lwiis Saliba does not attempt to draw up a comparative picture of silent retreat practices. He simply provides a sampling of great spiritual figures (Jesus, Mary, Muhammad; Charbel Makhlouf, several great Sufis; Chandra Swâmî) as well as quotations from Christian and Muslim texts (hadîths in particular), Hinduism and Buddhism. What is suggested is not a purely conceptual analysis, but rather an evocation of the immensity of the role of inner silence. This, in the agitated and noisy atmosphere of contemporary societies, is in itself a challenge. Most of our contemporaries do not see the “usefulness” (!) of remaining silent; and if the opportunity arises, the absence of oral relationships weighs heavily on most of us. This book invites us to learn about another possible life:
“In the silence, I live as twice
in action and in contemplation – a spiritual state in two” (“Fî al-samti la-ka’annanî ‘ishtu marratayn…“, page 65.
The publication of this book reminds me of the unexpected success of Philip Grôning’s film “The Great Silence” (2006). This feature film (2 hours and 40 minutes) offers the public images of the life of the Carthusian monks, who are dedicated to complete silence. It offers no explanatory commentary, just sequences showing monks at prayer, liturgies, the nature of the surrounding mountains; no music is given either, just the real sounds of the monastery (bells, wind)…Yet this austere film was sold out, attracting more than a hundred thousand spectators in France, Germany, Spain, Italy…There is food for thought. The need for inner life is not expressed until it is shown (by a film, or here by a book) that access to it is possible, that some men have actually satisfied it.
Of course, silence cannot be described or praised as a wellness technique. There is no one form of silence; each person, at each moment of his or her life, can get in touch with his or her own truth in his or her own inner calm.
Boutens
What Lwiis Saliba’s book suggests in writing, or Ph. Grôning’s film visually, are testimonies among others, experienced by certain travellers of the absolute. The reader is free to dispose of the transmitted message as he wishes, and to listen to the particular voice that rises within him, to which Chandra Swami alludes (page…). The purpose of this silence, particular to each one, was evoked in the last century by P.C. Boutens :
“Silent, be silent; silence, with silver steps
advances in the night.
What cannot be said from soul to soul
in the idle chatter of the day
pronounced from the air,
clear as a star breaking in the light,
away from the defilement of language or sign,
God in each of us”.
It is also from this source that Lwiis Saliba’s two poems written in and dedicated to two holy cities, Benares and Amritsar, draw. These cities may seem distant, foreign to those who have never been there, including myself; perceived in the silence of meditation, they cease to be mere earthly cities, or even religious sites in the ordinary sense of the term. They become identified with a reality that is not only external, but also internal. They become places in and for the soul. As another poet in the Western tradition, O.V. de Milosz, has written:
“O Jerusalem!
You are not a desert of stones bound with lime, sand and water
Like the real cities of men,
But, within the Real, in the silence of the head,
The mute glide of inner gold.”
This deep inner calm, this wondering silence, we cannot take it for ourselves by our mere will or our effort. What we can do, however, is to respond to those calls transmitted by Dr. Lwiis Saliba, to bring forth in us the aspiration, the deep desire, calling with him: “May I now know” (“Yâ layta-nî al-âna a’rifu!”).
Pierre Lory
Paris, February 10, 2007