The Monk Sitting By The Side Of The Road

How many times had he been down this road?

It was the same road; he was sure of that for he recognized the monk sitting by the side of the road who he had already passed almost a dozen times before wearing the same saffron robes and sporting the same shaven head and who he had even, thinking him a different monk, said hello to a few times in passing.

Otherwise it could have been any stretch of the road; the birds and flowers were more or less identical to those behind and further on; the fields on either side and the cows grazing in them more or less identical to those behind and further on.

Only the monk must have been the same monk unless he had a hundred brothers, all identical and all sitting on the left side of  the road.

And then there was the picture that the monk was drawing in charcoals onto a pad of the fields to his right; the past four or five times he had passed the monk he had looked and seen the picture and watched it advance a little further, from a blank page into a very neatly drawn and intricate landscape.

It was because of the picture that he knew time had not stood still; time was still moving forwards, only he was travelling down a straight road but managing to go in circles.

He stopped and looked at the monk sitting peacefully with his sketch pad.

Did the monk know?

The monk must have noticed him pass by in front of him again and again, surely, but he hadn’t said anything; not even a “Nice to see you again”.

But perhaps the monk had been too intensely concentrated on drawing his picture and on the landscape to notice that the face of the man walking in front of him was the same man who had walked in front of him ten times before.

Or perhaps the Monk was somehow to blame; perhaps, and now his imagination was running wild, perhaps the picture was some kind of magic picture that he had been charcoaled into and now couldn’t get out of; perhaps that was it.

He went over to the monk and looked down, over his shoulder, at the picture again.

No, he was nowhere in the picture; the Monk had drawn nothing but field and cows and sky; not him or any other passer-by.

But he had to talk to him, he thought. Perhaps he knew something and, even if he didn’t, he needed to talk to someone.

“Haven’t you noticed me”, he asked, “Passing down this road in front of you a dozen times already?”.

The monk smiled, not looking up from the picture he was drawing.

“No”, he said, in perfect English, “I’ve been too focussed upon my drawing. Have you passed in front of me many times?”.

The man laughed, incredulous and a little exasperated.

“Yes, I have”, he said, “Many times. Many times within the past hour or so, I’ve walked down this road for about a mile only to end up where I started a mile behind”.

“Oh”, said the Monk, smiling politely but only half listening, the way a parent does when a child is pestering them with some foolish question or tall tale, “I didn’t notice”.

He sat down beside the monk, the dust and gravel of the road crunching underneath him and mopped the sweat off of his reddened face with his handkerchief.

“But don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”, he asked the monk; his voice now becoming slightly accusing like the voice of a detective questioning a suspect, “Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that a person should walk for a mile, down a straight road, but end up back where he started?”.

The monk looked at the yellow flowers growing near to his sandaled left foot.

“This is a lovely view”, replied the monk, flashing a glimpse towards the man, “Don’t you think? There are some lovely flowers. I’ve always liked those flowers; the yellow ones but I’ve never picked them because I’ve always thought that to pick the flowers would be sort of selfish. Why deprive other people of their beauty, I always think and so I never pick them”.

Had the Monk listened to what he had just said or was he being deliberately obtuse or evasive? He seemed like a nice enough person; not the sort of person to play mind games with passing strangers
but the man just didn’t know what to think.

“Did you hear what I said?”, asked the man, becoming angry, his brown eyes glaring and his face becoming a shade redder, “I said, I’ve walked down this road nearly a dozen times; a straight road and every time I’ve just ended up where I started. Now isn’t that strange? Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Doesn’t it defy the laws of nature?”.

The monk put down his sketch pad and gave the man his full attention.

“I think I understand your problem”, he said, thoughtfully, “Your problem is that you thought you were going somewhere and now that you realise that you’re not, you are angry and upset. You are upset because you think you are on a road that is supposed to lead somewhere but it doesn’t”.

The man thought about what the monk had just said and his face screwed itself up with bewilderment.

“Is this monk an idiot?”, he wondered.

“Are you an idiot?”, he asked, becoming even more incensed and starting to bark out his words, “This is a road. It’s not some airy-fairy metaphysical concept. Roads go somewhere; they connect one point to another point. You understand what a road is, don’t you? If a road doesn’t go somewhere then that’s something bizarre; that’s unusual; that’s a break down in reality. This is absurd”.

“So you think there is a road?”, said the Monk, “And roads lead somewhere. They must lead somewhere. I hear what you are saying and I understand you perfectly now try to listen to what I am saying. I do not see your road at all. I see the fields and the birds and the flowers and the glorious sunshine. Try looking again and you may see that there is no road connecting here and there; there is only here”.

The man turned his head away and was about to laugh because what the monk was saying was so ridiculous but then, suddenly, the road…how could it be? …suddenly the road wasn’t there at all…it had gone and all there was was all the things that the Monk had described…the fields, the birds, the flowers and the sun.

Then the man remembered that he was not on a road, that he had sat down to meditate and to make sense of his life in this field and…perhaps… his mind had wandered off into a dream.

“So life is not a journey towards something?”, said the man.

“Whether you choose to walk or to stand still”, said the Monk, “It is all the same. Life is not about where you are going to but where you are”.