“Noble Silence” in the pali text means “Ariyo tuõi bhave” ariyo means noble tuõi bhave means silence.In the Mahayana call tantari silence. Noble Silence means no talking or non-verbal communication of any kind. And noble silence is the foundation of mental development. Noble Silence is a term attributed to the Buddha.
In the kolita sutta: “Venerable Mahamoggalana said: when I was in seclusion this thinking and pondering occurred to me, ‘It is said noble silence. It occurred to me, here one pacifies thinking and pondering and with the mind internally settled and in one point, without thinking and pondering and with rapture and happiness born of concentration, one raises the mind to the second jhana. This is called silence.
We can see or use many kinds of silence in Buddhism. There are: silence of morality (sila), silence of concentration (samadhi) and silence of insight meditation (vipassana or pa¤¤a) etc. Some people lived in with silence of morality; some people live with silence of concentration or insight meditation.
The Buddha and Arahanta live with noble silence or silence of nirodha samapatti, and silence of jhana. Noble Silence is very healing and supports the Buddhist approach to liberation from samsara and meditative training.
Now I would like to tell about noble silence of saïgamajji thera. He was the son of a very rich setthi of Benares. When he came age of 16, his parents married him and he had a son. One day he joined a party of his friend going to Jetavana, and at the conclusion of the Buddha's sermon, asked the Buddha to ordain him. But the Buddha wished him to have his parent's leave. This he obtained only with the greatest difficulty and with the promise to visit them later. After ordination he lived in a forest grove, and soon afterwards attained arahantship.
When he returned to Savatthi, after having paid homage to the Buddha, he spent the noonday under a tree. His parents hearing of his arrival went to see him. Their efforts to persuade him to return to lay life were too insistent, and he would not even speak to them, so he stays with noble silence. They returned discomfited and sent his wife and son to him. His wife appealed to him with various arguments, but he refused even to look at her and then he stays with noble silence also. She then placed the child on his lap and went away. When she discovered that Sangamajji would not even talk to his son, she took him away, saying that her husband was a useless man.
Noble Silence–a technique use by a lot of Buddhist monks and nuns in which a person refrains from speaking as a way to help quiet the mind and condition the body in the discipline of right speech. By learning to
keep from speaking every word that comes up, we can censor or even omit harmful speech, and thus keep from causing harm and suffering to others and ourselves.