The Silence of Nayanaya in Cebuano Songs

• Main Author: Velez, Amosa L.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol22/iss1/3; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/budhi/article/1418/viewcontent/Budhi_2022.1_203_20Article_20__20Velez.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The article is part of the chapter “Silence in Nayanaya vis à-vis Silence in Zhuangzi” in the author’s dissertation entitled Phenomenology of Nayanaya: A Filipino Philosophy of Survival Interpreted in the Light of Silence in Zhuangzi.” 1 The meanings of Nayanaya and the different ways of doing nayanaya were extracted from the questionnaire accomplished by respondents from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Interview was also utilized. In its strictest significance, nayanaya is a whiling away of the time amidst a crashing limit-situation (to borrow Karl Jasper’s term), a taking time-out, a distancing, until one is able to face it, unbroken. Nayanaya is both an end and a means. As a means, the ways are many; singing or humming a song, being one of them. The pinnacle of nayanaya is wu-wei, that is, doing nayanaya by not doing nayanaya. As an end, while it aims at silence, nayanaya is actually a will to be happy and ultimately, a will to be.