Into Great Silence

"Into Great Silence" paints a picture of a place almost completely opposite to the world most of us live in. Where we live in a world where people like Stuart Sim have gone so far as to suggest that there is actually a conscious assault on silence, the monks in this film have chosen to seek an almost entirely opposite environment. Where we live in a culture of noise, where silence is difficult to find, even when it is sought out, these monks live in a place where silence is the norm and noise is the exception. I don't normally thikn about the degree of noise everywhere around me, but it is all too evident when compared to the silence that these monks live in, especially when we can't even watch the film without hearing the noise from the hall, or the noise created by the scince lecture hall itself. It seems absurd to think of a room creating noise on its own, however it seems that this is becoming part of the world we live in. While most of us live in a world where noise is nearly unavoidable and silence is naerly unattainable, these monks live in a world where noise is almost entirely avoidable and silence can be found at almost any time.