Beyond Words

A long silence had settled between Janaka and Ashtavakra. Neither felt the need to break it. Finally, Janaka spoke from a place of deep stillness.

"Master, we have shared many words. I have asked questions; you have answered. Yet I sense that the most important thing cannot be spoken."

Ashtavakra nodded slowly.

"You have noticed what most miss. Words are boats—useful for crossing, but not the other shore. The other shore is silence, and silence is what you are."

"Yet words brought me here. Without your teaching, I would still be lost in confusion."

"The words were like an alarm clock in a dream. They did not create the wakefulness—they interrupted the dream. The wakefulness was already here, prior to the words, waiting for the dreamer to stop."

"And now that I am awake, what use are words?"

"None and all. They are no longer necessary for your liberation—that was never real anyway. But they may continue as play, as expression, as the Self celebrating itself through language. Speaking happens; it is neither helpful nor harmful to what you are."

"I find I speak less now."

"Because words arise from silence and return to silence, and you rest in the silence. The one who needed to speak—to explain, to defend, to assert—has dissolved. What remains speaks when speaking is called for and remains quiet when silence is natural."

"Is there a teaching beyond words?"

"Every teaching is beyond words. Words are sounds; understanding is not a sound. The gap between hearing and understanding is infinite. Something happens in that gap that cannot be described—a recognition, a seeing, a falling away. This is the real teaching, and it happens in silence."

"Then why do sages speak at all?"

"Compassion moves the mouth. The Self, seeing itself apparently lost in form, speaks through one form to wake another form. The speaking is love in motion. It does not accomplish anything—nothing needs to be accomplished—yet it happens, as birdsong happens, as wind happens."

"I feel words failing now. What I want to express cannot be expressed."

"Then do not express. Let the inexpressible be inexpressible. Let it radiate from your eyes, from your stillness, from your presence. Those who are ready will see it without words. Those who are not ready will not understand even the clearest words."

"Is this why you sometimes sit in silence rather than teach?"

"The silence is the highest teaching. It transmits what words cannot. In silence, the mind has nothing to grasp, so it falls away. In the falling away, truth reveals itself. This has always been the secret of the sages—they speak to exhaust speaking, so that silence can do its work."

"And what is its work?"

"It has no work. It simply is. And in its presence, all that is false dissolves. The ego cannot survive in pure silence. The questions cannot persist in the absence of a questioner. Only the Self remains—radiant, peaceful, complete."

Janaka fell silent, not because there was nothing to say, but because saying felt irrelevant. The silence between them deepened, becoming almost palpable.

After a long while, Ashtavakra whispered, "This is the real conversation. All our words were leading here—to where words end and only being remains."

"I understand," Janaka said, knowing the words were unnecessary.

"You are the understanding," Ashtavakra replied. "Not someone who understands, but understanding itself. Rest there. There is nothing more."

The silence embraced them both—teacher and student dissolving into the one awareness that had always been speaking and listening, questioning and answering, seeking and finding, in the endless play of words and the infinite peace of silence."