Thomas Moore writes about the sounds of silence

Today Barbara Figge Fox quotes Thomas Moore's Meditations (1994) in her answer, "Why I like Gregorian chant". Moore recites some of the selected passages on the CD, Music and the Soul, recorded with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on 16 April 2000.  In Meditations, the full passage about silence is:

"Silence is not the absence of sound. That would be to imagine it negatively. Silence is a toning down of inner and outer static,  noise that occupies not only the ears but also the attention. Silence allows many sounds to reach awareness that otherwise would go unheard — ­the sounds of birds, water, wind, trees, frogs, insects, and chipmunks, as well as conscience, daydreams, intuitions, inhibitions, and wishes.

One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and the soul." Page 68

This passage about silence is insightful since Moore also writes about silence for Resurgence Magazine.