Monastic Vows of Total Silence Don’t Really Exist
Monks taking a vow of silence have been a staple of pop culture for any number of years now. There’s even a Buddhist monk in Hangover 2 who’s played for laughs that doesn’t speak. It’s true that some devout monks or nuns may choose periods of silence, but no monastic order fully practices this. Moreover, when individual monks do choose silence, it’s not an all-encompassing and unbreakable practice. Instead, it involves choosing to “speak with silence” and become closer to their faith. Time is still set aside for conversations, typically at the end of the day.
For the most part, the idea of a vow of silence is to prevent one from speaking without care. It allows for introspection and a better understanding of one’s self. This can take place between designated prayer periods, for several days or weeks at a time, or possibly longer if someone chose. But it’s not enforced and it’s also not expected. The Chinese calendar and the Aztec calendar are occasionally mentioned because people from different cultures have different understandings of concepts like time. The Julian calendar was in use prior to the Gregorian calendar.
When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian calendar, which had issues, it dated back to 46 BC. A Julian year had 365.25 days in it. similar to the Gregorian calendar almost identically. However, almost doesn't matter. Things had become out of whack after 1600 years of a year that was just a little bit too long, especially the equinoxes and solstices. The Gregorian calendar had to just disappear since the old calendar was off by a day every 314 years.
