What is a silent mind?

“Silence is of four kinds: silence of speech, silence of the eye, silence of the ear and silence of the mind.

Only the last is pure silence, and is the most important.”

~ Sri Raman Maharishi

Acharya Prashant: Silence of speech, silence of eye, silence of ear, and silence of mind.

All the silences that the Maharshi is talking of, come under one classical term, that is — uprati. ‘Rati’ means an attraction, a greed, a reaching out, an association with the external. ‘Uprati’ means returning to oneself, being contended in oneself, not being desperately or enthusiastically concerned with the outside.

So what is the quality of an eye that is not in uprati, that is not upram (detached)?

This eye will keep rolling, this eye will keep wandering. Have you seen wandering eyes? As if the eye is afflicted by lust, as if the eye wants to consume all the objects it is looking at, and hence wants to look at the maximum number of objects. The eye just cannot remain still. Needlessly, purposelessly, like a maniac, it is sometimes sitting on this object, then on that, then on that. And none of the objects that it sits on, satisfies it.

This is an eye that has gone crazy for the outside.