High on a hill stood an old fort, and inside it lived a sage named Maitreya
who had once been the fort's commander. In his fighting days he had posted
guards at every gate, every wall, every tower — and all day long they had
rushed out across the plain, chasing rumours, chasing enemies, chasing
anything that glittered on the horizon.
Now Maitreya was old, and he wished only to sit and find the quiet Self
within. But he could not. His senses were like those restless guards. His
eyes ran out the eastern gate after a flash of colour. His ears slipped
through the western wall toward a far-off song. His tongue remembered
sweets; his nose remembered jasmine; his skin remembered the cool of the
river. From every side, something pulled a part of him away.
A young pilgrim climbing to the fort found the old man sighing.
"I cannot hold myself together," Maitreya said. "Each sense escapes through
a different gate, and by evening there is nothing of me left inside."
The pilgrim, who had walked through many forts, understood. "When you
commanded soldiers," she asked, "how did you settle the fort for the night?"
Maitreya's eyes brightened with an old memory. "I would climb the central
tower at dusk and sound the horn. One long note. And from every gate and
wall, the watchmen would turn and come home, until the whole fort was quiet
inside its own walls."
"Then sound the horn now," she said. "The tower is your mind. The watchmen
are your senses."
So Maitreya sat very still and, in his mind, sounded that single long note.
He pictured each desire the mind had dreamed up — for sweets, for praise,
for far-off songs — and one by one he let them go, keeping none back. Then
gently, from every direction, he called his senses home. The eyes came in.
The ears came in. The restless tongue, the wandering nose, the reaching
skin — all turned inward and grew quiet.
For the first time in years, the whole fort of himself stood still inside
its own walls. And in that stillness, Maitreya at last felt the quiet
Self he had been seeking all along — not out on the plain, but right at
the centre, where he had been the whole time.
