Aren’t we really voluntarily shutting off our left brain by meditating? There’s the joy we can access anywhere and any time.

For a complete talk of Jill Bolte Taylor on at TED, watch this.

There is more beyond being in a state of oblivion for oneself though.

The “sound of silence” is NOT an oxymoron; it is an actual high-pitched sound that can be heard relatively easily when we quiet down. In this extemporaneous response to a question about the stages of listening as a practice according to the Shurangama Sutra, Reverend Cheen elaborates on the stages of emptying the sounds of movement and stillness, emptying the sense faculty, emptying the awareness, and emptying emptiness.

In the meditation practice of listening to the sound of silence, several stages come after listening to the sound of silence, according to the Shurangama Sutra. Here is my blog post that includes a PPT outline on the stage of emptiness, explained with the parallel and metaphor of numbers, zero, and empty sets.