A man is driving down the road and his car breaks down near a monastery.
He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door, and says, “My car broke down.
Do you think I could stay the night?” The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, even fix his car.
As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound.
A sound unlike anything he’s ever heard before.
The Sirens that nearly seduced Odysseus into crashing his ship comes to his mind.
He doesn’t sleep that night. He tosses and turns trying to figure out what could possibly be making such a seductive sound.
The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”
Distraught, the man is forced to leave.
Years later, after never being able to forget that sound, the man goes back to the monastery and pleads for the answer again.
The monks reply, “We can’t tell you.
You’re not a monk.” The man says, “If the only way I can find out what is making that beautiful sound is to become a monk, then please, make me a monk.”
The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of grains of sand.
When you find these answers, you will have become a monk.”
The man sets about his task. After years of searching he returns as a gray-haired old man and knocks on the door of the monastery.
A monk answers. He is taken before a gathering of all the monks.”
In my quest to find what makes that beautiful sound, I traveled the earth and have found what you asked for: By design, the world is in a state of perpetual change.
Only God knows what you ask. All a man can know is himself, and only then if he is honest and reflective and willing to strip away self deception.”
The monks reply, “Congratulations.
You have become a monk. We shall now show you the way to the mystery of the sacred sound.”
The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, “The sound is beyond that door.”