Don't Worry, Be Grumpy

When There Is No Silence

In my first year as a monk in northeast Thailand, the local village held a three-day-long party. Electricity had yet to reach the village, but petrol-driven generators, amplifiers, and huge loudspeakers certainly had. Although the village was over a kilometer away, the sound of the party was disturbing the precious serenity of our monastery.

Buddhism has always taught a “live and let live” philosophy, but when the party was still at full volume at 2:00 in the morning, we resolved to ask for a “sleep and let sleep” compromise. After all, we monks had to rise at 3:00 to start our monastic day.

We asked the headman if they could stop at 1:00, thereby giving us two hours of sleep at night. The answer was a polite no. So we sent a delegation to see our highly revered teacher, Ajahn Chah, and requested that he tell the villagers to turn down the volume at 1:00. We knew that the headman would follow whatever Ajahn Chah said.

It was on this occasion that Ajahn Chah taught us that “It is not the sound that disturbs you. It is you who disturb the sound!”

That wasn’t what we expected, but it worked.

The noise would still reverberate in our eardrums but no longer in our minds. We made peace with the inconvenience. It was only three days and soon passed.

Many years later, one of the monk’s brothers visited our monastery in Australia. Unfortunately all the guest rooms were full, so the monk asked me if his brother could share his room, just for one night. After all, they had grown up together sharing a room.

“Ah, but you are both much older now,” I pointed out. “You probably both snore.” The monk insisted there would be no problem, so permission was granted.

The monk’s brother fell asleep first and, as predicted, snored so loud that the monk could not get to sleep. Exhausted and sleepless, the monk remembered the advice he had been given. “It is not the sound that disturbs you. It is you who disturb the sound!”

So he started to play with his perception of the snoring, overlaying the sound with imagining it was a soothing melody from a famous classical composer. He could not change the sound of snoring, but he could change the way he perceived it.

When he woke up the next morning, the last thing he remembered, before falling into a refreshing sleep, was how melodious had become his brother’s snoring!

So if you have a husband who snores, imagine you are listening to the Grateful Dead or whatever music you like. When the dog barks in the middle of the night, perceive it as an interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture or something similar. When you can’t escape the noise, try changing your perception of it.