Garrett Olney

I’m semi-retired and have the good fortune to be able to spend two months each winter in a little hamlet in Mexico. I’ve been doing that for about a dozen years now. One day in my first winter there, I happened to be going for a walk on a street above the town and I was able to look down onto a number of houses. A well-known local elderly lady had died. As is the custom in Mexico, chairs had been set out in front of the house under a canopy. About half of the chairs were occupied by mourners from the town who were attending this wake. They would sit in vigil for one or more hours until the funeral the following day.

I did not know the deceased lady; I only knew of her. As I was walking along, I suddenly heard an extremely loud explosion. It sounded like a very large firecracker. Calling upon the experience of my youth in California, when I was familiar with those kind of devices, I guessed it might have been what we called an M80. When we think of firecrackers, we usually think of those strings of things that go “pop, pop.” This was not like that at all. It was like a small bomb. It must have rattled windows.

The immediate thought popped into my head: How dare someone set off such a large explosion like that right in the middle of a wake? Had they no respect for the dead? Had they no respect for their neighbors? I taught English to the dozen or so students who attended the local secondary school. I thought of two or three of them who would be excellent candidates for such mischief. I thought of the most likely vendor in town who would have supplied them with this loud explosive device. I found myself growing more agitated. I tried to push my angry thoughts away and focus on the nice hike and the lovely scenery. This effort was unsuccessful.

About 20 minutes later, I was returning on the same path when yet another equally loud explosion went off from close by where the wake was taking place. Before, I had been just a bit agitated. Now, I was quite upset. This was outrageous! Shame on those kids, or whoever they were, who were setting off those huge explosions. I started walking more rapidly. I could feel my face flushed. Something needed to be done.

I knocked on the door of my landlady, who lived on the ground floor below me. Had she heard those explosions? Weren’t they incredibly loud? Was she going to do anything about it? She smiled at me just a little quizzically and said she planned to go to the wake in about an hour. “But what about the explosions?” I asked. She then explained to me that such explosions are commonplace during a wake. Their purpose is to “crack open” the gates of heaven so that the recently departed can enter.

Oh.

It seems to me that noise can be quite effective in creating fear or anger. For me, strange noises coming from the motor of my car, the sound of a falling tree on a dark winter night, the all-too-frequent phrase ‘Breaking News’ on the radio can all create instant fear in me. The barking dog, the squeaky door, the pesky critter trying to attack the garbage can at night, and the sound of firecrackers can all make me angry.

But a noise is a noise is a noise. That’s all it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a firework, a barking dog, a snoring spouse, loud talking in the library, flatulence, or a creaking meditation bench. It’s just noise. It’s our head that interprets the noise. We think it is the noise that is somehow ‘at fault’, or ‘the cause’ of our anger/agitation/distress. “Each sense gate and its object altogether enter thus into mutual relations, And yet stand apart in a uniqueness of their own, depending and yet non-depending both.”¹

If, as I sense my emotions being aroused, I can say to myself “It’s just a noise,” and take a deep breath, then I can remind myself how embroiled I had become with non-existent mischief-makers. The current noise is just a noise. Sense sensations are just sense sensations. I can accept the noise, and I can let it go. I can then return to my breathing. Like so many experiences in life, the noise has then wonderfully transformed itself from a mere sense phenomenon into a meditation tool.

Notes

1. 1. From Sandokai by Shitou Xiqian (Sekito Kisen, 700–790). Available in Scriptures and Ceremonies booklets at OBC temples and meditation groups. A number of translations are available.

This article is available only as part of the Autumn 2020 Journal of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.  

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