What is Noble Silence?

[follinge@gmail.com]

This morning, I was reading the Wikipedia page for Noble Silence, and it seems lacking to say the least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Silence

Noble silence has been defined as Buddha's refusal to answer any of the 14 "unanswerable" questions.

I did some of my own research, and it seems that a better definition is actually related to jhana:

 But what is noble silence?' Then the thought occurred to me, 'There is the case where a monk, with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations, [1] enters & remains in the second jhāna: rapture & pleasure born of concentration, unification of awareness free from directed thought & evaluation — internal assurance. This is called noble silence.'"

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn21/sn21.001.than.html

This seems to be pretty cut and dry.

However, I thought this might be an interesting topic of discussion here; I might learn something.

I'm fixing the wikipedia page now.

I'm not going to revert the change, but I will add the second definition on jhana.

(I'm username: ItalianRake on wikipedia, btw.)

[Jhanananda]

This is a good topic for our discussion.  I have traditionally heard noble silence used in the sense of keeping silent, especially at a meditation retreat.  I had not heard it in the sense of 14 "unanswerable" questions.  I had not considered it in reference to jhana, but I like the idea.  Although I am not fond of Tan Jeff's translations.