There was once a gatekeeper named Veda who guarded a great house with nine doorways. From dawn to dusk the doors swung and clattered. People came and went, carts rolled in, baskets rolled out, voices rose and fell across the courtyard like birds.

A young helper named Tila found all of it exhausting. By midday his head ached. "How do you stand it?" he asked Veda. "The noise, the coming, the going — it never stops. I feel tossed about like a leaf in a stream."

Veda smiled and kept his place by the window. "Watch with me a while," he said.

So Tila watched. He saw a merchant arrive and speak loudly. He saw a servant carry a heavy jar out and set down an empty one. He saw a child snatch a sweet from a tray and run laughing into the lane. He saw an old woman open her eyes wide at a peacock, then blink as it flew off.

"All of this is happening," Veda said softly. "Speaking. Letting go. Taking hold. Eyes opening, eyes closing. The doors are busy. But notice something, Tila. I am not the doors. I am the one watching the doors."

Tila frowned. "But your eyes move too. Your hands move. You spoke just now."

"They do," said Veda. "The senses move among the things they touch, the way fish move through water. That is their nature, and I let them do it. But I hold one quiet thought behind all of it: this moving is theirs, not mine. I am the watcher, not the wave."

The afternoon wore on. A cart overturned, spilling melons; a dog barked; a flute began somewhere. And Tila, sitting beside the old gatekeeper, found that the ache in his head had loosened. The doors still swung. The courtyard was still loud. But now, instead of being tossed by every sound, he watched it the way you watch rain from inside a dry room.

"It is only the senses," he whispered, trying the thought on.

Veda nodded and said nothing, because the boy had finally heard the door behind all the doors — the still one that never opens and never shuts.