Science of silence

“I was neither reborn nor dead. It was only that I was revived,” my friend grinned as he was dusting the bench for both of us to sit.

“How do you feel about it?”

Just as I was judging whether to ask that question or not, it jumped out of my mouth as if someone else outside asked on behalf of me. Abruptly, I felt worried if it was somehow an insult to him. Only after I did not detect any trace of reluctance or anger in his face, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“You mean about my family?”

“Yes”

“You know, what they say, it is karma. My father was destined for that, so were my brothers and I don’t want to put all the blame on my mother. As a fragile woman, how could he bear it? It’s good she ran away. Perhaps that’s what she is destined for. She would settle down with a new family. I’d rather like it than seeing her all day crying.”

The April sun was producing as much heat as it could scorching everything in our vision. Despite being under the shade of the banyan tree, we were the victims of the burning sun, too.

“So how long have you lived here as a monk?” I asked.

“For almost six years. As soon as my father and brother were killed in a car accident and my mother abandoned me, my father’s best friend took me here. I was too naïve to decide anything or stay alone.”

“How could someone who took you to a monastery and make you study boring prayers be your father’s best friend? I am here because my father wanted me to. I’d hate this place unless I made a friend with you.” resentful, out of consideration, I told him.

“You could not take it that way. People have their own problems,” he said, his voice full of serenity and maturity. I did not say anything. He did not say anything. We were just sitting in silence. His eyes were at somewhere distance. Maybe he was seeing the birds on the boughs of the tree. Maybe he did not watch anything at all. There was prevailing silence that relatively seemed an hour or two between us. Then we left the bench for the building where we had to practice meditation.

On the way to meditation centre, I said him sorry for what I said. He said ok. There were a lot of monks and nuns in the centre. Most of them were temporary monks but there were monks who left all the things they belong to and seek refuge in Vipassana. I was the first type. I will not be a monk when it is time for Thinggyan, the water festival.

Not until I started to meditate, did I not really know how it was really like. Under the massive silence, no one moved, nor they spoke, all concentrated on the language of their mind –how every bit of the mind was created and then destroyed-, such a difficult task, each inhale or exhale done with consciousness, started to feel something calm and mellow in the innermost part of my consciousness,…

I could not keep the stability of my mind more than a half hour. All of a sudden, it broke out. It was as if the old reservoir did not have enough durability against the endless bombardment of the roaring storm of the current of the droplets of water and finally it pumped out everything it had stored in it creating monster waves.

 “They are nothing,” I said to myself in silence attempting to detach from the impure states of mind in vain.

I am sure I will not pass the matriculation examination because I did not answer anything at all. My father will kill me if he knows it. I said him I will get at least four distinctions in the exam. I don’t want to think what will happen when the exam result comes out. I should do something before it.

“Well, I should put my mind in the complete inner serenity.”

And my girl had gone. I heard she’s got a boyfriend. Oh, my! I am so stupid and pathetic. Why don’t I have the courage to face her and tell my feeling instead of waiting silently? Why can’t I grab the chance when it is for me? She is…

Her appearance was conjured up in my mind, recalling everything from my memory somewhere deep in the cells of my brain. Both are sure –I will fail the exam, lost the girl, lost everything- I am such a loser. Is it worth living?

“That’s just my past life. Now I am a Buddhist monk. I have to do what a Buddhist monk do, not what a boy do. I must keep it in my mid. They are nothing but sensual pleasures that will only leave pains when they are gone. Concentrate on breathing, come on! Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…”

I can’t let it happen when my friends pass the exam. I will fail. They will be happy and I will be sad. And my angry father………….. Everybody will look at me like an idiot! It is me who has to be blamed for. Why haven’t I studied enough? I am afraid of my father. Mother, where are you? I want to see you! You had left us too soon. I want to see your face. You will protect me from my father if you were alive, if you were alive… She will press me to her bosom and I could cry like a baby. If only she were alive…

I started to sob uncontrollably. I tried to swallow my sobs but it became louder. I felt everyone looking at me. I heard monks coming to me. I closed my eyes. I felt one hand on my shoulder. One warm hand.

“Are you ok? I think you must take some rest,” my friend sat behind me and asked me.

I followed him leaving the crowd practicing meditation. He took me outside.

“It is normal,” my friend told me as I was gazing at the blue sky with some tiny clouds. “When I arrived here, I cannot keep up with it. Only later, I was used to it,” My friend had been a monk for a couple of years so he knew it. We had been friends for a week but we were having a conversation with much more intimacy.

“You know, there’s a lot of things I have to worry about,” I said. “When I closed my eyes for a certain amount of time, they appeared. I can’t help it. I am just scared to meditate again.”

My friend looked at me, his eyes revealed his understanding. “If you feel reluctant to do it, don’t do it. I will tell other monks your problem. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, please don’t do that. I am alright. I just missed my mother who passed away.”

“I know your feeling. Two of my family members passed away. I can’t still believe this.”

“Yeah, I just can’t accept it too,” I said. As the sun went down gradually, there are monks bathing. Some people were entering the monastery to donate cold drinks to the monks. There was a small pagoda in the monastery compound with a few monks saying prayers to the Lord of Buddha.

“I don’t know what I want to do in the future,” I said. “Buddy, what you gonna do in the future?” I asked him, “I mean are you just going to be a monk or you, uh…,” I could not find any words to go on. I wanted to ask what his ambition is but I was not sure if it is appropriate to ask a monk what his ambition is.

My friend answered in short, “I would like to be a good monk who can follow Buddha’s teaching.”

 “You really want to be?”

“Of course, I do, why not?”

“It’s great.”

There was growing darkness outside. All the monks in the building were falling asleep. I got up, took a coil of rope and a three-legged stool, and went out of it. I went to the banyan tree, which seemed like a ghost sitting in the dark. I asked myself what I was doing and I was scared, I was like sleepwalking. I sat in the dark to decide carefully until I noticed someone was beside me –my friend.

“What happened to you?” he asked, his eyes inspecting around, and he comprehended the situation.

I was trying to explain something about it.

 “Yeah, I know. You don’t need to mention. We are just…”

“I was depressed and I just want to let it go.”

“I understand. I had tried to do it when it was so dark for me but I have just sat for a while in the dark. That’s all”, he sighed.

I nodded turning to him and said,

“It’s dark for me now. I am hopeless.”

 “See around. It’s dark but it doesn’t mean you are blind, are you? You might stay in the silence; it doesn’t mean you are deaf. They are only the influence of your surroundings. You are in it but it is not in your body.”

“Maybe,” I said. We both left for sleep.

After a week, my father came to take me home. After paying homage to the abbot, he said, “Is everything ok with you these days, son?”

“Of course, I was very happy, such incredible experience.” I answered.

“Are you ready to go?”

“I guess I am not.”

I wanted to say good-bye to my friend. I went to look for him. To my astonishment, I could not find him anywhere.

“We don’t know him. There’s no one in our monastery with this name. Maybe you got the wrong monk,” the old monk said.

After asking a couple of other monks, I accepted what the old monk said. He just visited me. I had no more words to say. I just returned home with my father.

“So please share your experience with me. How does it feel like?” my father asked me while driving.

“I was neither reborn nor dead. It was only that I was revived,” I said. The car was running home."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.