Silence is simply a state we reach when, like a fire deprived of fuel, distractions and restlessness naturally fade away. When a desert monk complained that he could not control his wayward thoughts, his teacher answered “Keep on sitting in your cell and your thoughts will come back from their wanderings“. In a way then there is nothing to achieve in prayer; we do not have to try to be quiet in order to be silent, we just have to be. Silence is a state of non-being that is being itself.

Nicholas Buxton, Tantalus and the Pelican