I Remember of once hearing of a Buddhist monk who had spent
nine years sitting facing a wall staring at it. At first,
like every other person who would have heard it, I found it
very strange. A bizarre idea, sitting next to a wall for
nine years, isn't it?
A wall. What can a wall tell a person that he didn't know
beforehand? What can a wall tell a person at all? I thought
about it. I thought about my wall. I had trouble finding it
at first. I looked around me in my room and saw no walls.
Then, I looked inside, into my room inside of me. I found a
wall. Not one, but many.
I found a wall of knowledge. A wall that was all it was
supposed to be - a wall. It created a boundary. It made my
room for me - it created my world. This is a strange wall -
it doesn't set a boundary between my room and yours, like
other walls do, this wall isolates me from more than my
neighbor's room, it isolates me from the world. I feel
detached, alone. I am here. The world is there.
I live in this room. I like it. I am it.
My room is my world. I have no other. My room has no
windows, no doors. I wouldn't know that there was a world
outside my room, if it wasn't for the fact that my walls
aren't soundproof. To live, to be, I don't want to hear. The
music I listen to is sometimes there to serve only one
purpose - to cover the sounds that keep creeping in through
the walls. The books I read are sometimes there to transfer
me into another world. A world of illusion but nevertheless
another world where I can't hear what my walls don't
silence. I don't want to hear, I don't need to. I don't.
My walls aren't soundproof. I'd like to make them such - buy
new ones. To do that, I need money - new wall don't come
cheap nowadays. I learn, I study, I write, I do it all to
earn money. I want to change my walls and buy soundproof
ones. My walls are made of thought, of me. I am thought. My
walls are unbreakable. They are there and will be until I
will no longer be there to look at them. To make them
disappear, I have to stop. To stop thinking. To stop
living.
To break my walls seems hardly possible. I think that this
is what that Buddhist monk was doing - trying to look for a
way to break that wall. Breaking the wall makes you feel
free, makes you eternal, turns you into 'all', into
'everything'. Nine years that monk spent trying to break it.
I don't think he succeeded. He should have looked for a way
to make the wall soundproof.