Torture of silence

What’s a word or phrase that annoys you?

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to inaction.”— Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47

The word torture annoyed him because it was not just a word.It was a sound.

At 8:30 in the morning, the drilling began again beside the house.The walls shook.The metal vibration pierced through the air like sharp needles entering the ear. He pressed both palms tightly against his ears, then slowly removed one hand just to check whether the other ear could still hear his own voice properly.

For two hours, the sound continued.The more unwilling he became to confront the workers, the louder the drilling felt inside his head.His irritation turned into helplessness.His helplessness turned into anger.

Finally, he climbed the staircase to the renovation house and told the workers politely to stop for a while.Moments later, silence returned.He walked back home and told his mother, “They stopped.”

In the silence, he could hear both ears again.Yet inside the silence was another irritation — the faint cricket-like ringing inside the ears and the gust of wind brushing against his cheekbone as if mocking the tension still trapped in his mind.

Then another realization came.If the soul is only an observer, then perhaps the mind must also learn to observe instead of constantly reacting.

Because the drilling outside had stopped.But the drilling inside the mind continued.

The mind replayed another story — the story of stealing.Something once left in the house had gone missing.No proof.No evidence.Only suspicion.The mind immediately created its own movie reel.

“This person stole it.”

“He is pretending to be innocent.”

“He has done this before.”

“He knows how to cover his tracks.”

Again and again the mind replayed the accusation until the accuser himself became violent inside.He imagined threatening the thief.Imagined chopping off the thief’s hand.

Imagined revenge.

Then another thought appeared:

“Just watch out.”The accuser slowly became something else entirely —like invisible monitoring spirits lurking silently, reading every typed word, listening to every movement, watching every expression without ever being seen.

And he wondered:

Why can’t the mind become empty like the observing soul?

Why must the mind capture everything like photographs stored endlessly in dark rooms of memory?Why can’t it simply see without recording?

Hear without reacting?

Witness without creating stories?

If voices came from the other side, why respond at all?

If strange feelings, smells, or gusts of wind touched the skin, why must the mind immediately turn them into meanings, fears, or images?He wanted the mind to become like pure observation itself.

No need to react.

No need to defend.

No need to keep every memory alive like old photographs stacked endlessly inside invisible shelves.

Because even memories could become clutter. And if the dead are already gone, perhaps the suffering comes from dragging their memories endlessly through the living mind until both the dead and the living become trapped together inside the same endless replay.

The drilling outside the wall had stopped long ago.But the deeper drilling was the mind itself — endlessly carving stories, fears, suspicions, images, and shadows into silence.

So he sat quietly and listened.

Not to the workers.

Not to the thief.

Not to the invisible watchers imagined by the mind.

But to the stillness underneath all of it.

The observer that simply watched everything come and go.

“When a man gives up all desires of the mind, and is satisfied in the Self alone, then he is said to be steady in wisdom.”— Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 55