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Story · Ajahn Brahm

The wall that disappeared

As told by Ajahn Brahm in The Nature of Your Mind | Ajahn Brahm | 8 May 2020

1 min read

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

I usually bring up this experience I had when I was a lay person. when I was meditating wherever I could find a place to meditate and this was in a Zen monastery in the north of England and in this Zen monastery I didn't know what I was supposed to do they just you know in the little hall which is a converted cow shed that we sat down and we had to meditate with our eyes open it one of the first times I'd meditated with my eyes wide open I didn't know what I was supposed to do but I just meditated. But because I'd done some meditation before and I knew how to be in the present moment and stop this inner speech, as I was just with my eyes open, just being very peaceful, very calm, a strange thing happened. One of those weird experiences which show you there's more to this world than you'd thought. And at this time I was a theoretical physicist when I just looked at this wall just a whitewashed wall. Then suddenly without warning the wall disappeared. It vanished. It just wasn't there anymore. Which was so weird. One minute there was a wall solid and now there was nothing there. And of course instead of getting scared or think I was going crazy I used know what we do in Buddhism called insight. What's happening? And it soon became very clear to me that this is just the nature of the physical senses especially the sense of seeing sight. If you watch something, put your full attention on watching and what you observe doesn't move or change. It disappears. The sense of sight turns off.

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 7:29 (to 9:41)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A young physicist sat in a converted cowshed with his eyes open, and the whitewashed wall vanished. Instead of panicking, he got curious. When the senses are left still, they switch off like a screen saver. Rest your attention on something simple and unchanging, and let the mind quieten in its own time.

In brief (our summary)

As a young theoretical physicist, Ajahn Brahm sits at a Zen monastery in the north of England, in a converted cowshed, told to meditate with eyes open. Calm and without inner speech, he gazes at a whitewashed wall — and suddenly, without warning, it vanishes. Rather than panic, he investigates, and sees it is the nature of sight: watch something that doesn't move or change, with full attention, and the sense of sight switches off.

Teaching point

When the senses are kept still they turn off by themselves; that is how meditation uncovers the mind.

When this story may help

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in The Nature of Your Mind | Ajahn Brahm | 8 May 2020 · 2020-05-08 · ▶ watch from 7:29 to 9:41 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

4 other tellings of this story

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions: unpunctuated, words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

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