THE STRANGER IN THE GARDEN

What We See in Silence

There are visitors who arrive with questions, and others who arrive with silence. I once met a man who brought only the latter.

It was late one autumn. The maple leaves were crimson and the ginkgo trees glowed golden in the afternoon sun. The temple grounds had emptied of the last of the visitors and summer pilgrims. The paths were carpeted in leaves which crunched underfoot. Preparations for winter were underway: sealing the shoji panels against drafts, gathering root vegetables from the garden, storing the robes of lighter cloth. There was a quiet to the days that matched the stillness in our practice.

While I was sweeping leaves on the path near the moss garden at the edge of the woods, I saw a figure standing in the shadows of the cedars. He stood motionless, gazing at the temple. He wore simple clothing, neither the robes of a monk nor the clothing of a typical visitor. His stillness was what caught my attention. It was not the momentary pause of someone admiring the view, but the rooted immobility of one who has found his place.

At first I thought he might be a traveler who had lost his way, or someone uncertain whether visitors were still permitted so late in the season. I raised my hand in greeting. He did not respond. Not even a flicker of acknowledgment crossed his features. He simply continued his silent observation.

I returned to my sweeping, but my awareness remained partially with this motionless figure. The broom's rhythmic sound against stone seemed louder in the presence of this watching silence.

That evening, as the sun fell behind the mountains and the chill of the autumn night hugged the valley, he was still there. He had moved closer to the temple grounds. A young monk said that the man had no pack and had not spoken. He now sat on the ground near the old camphor tree and looked toward the main hall. He was as still as the stone lanterns lining the paths.

When the sound of the bell for evening meditation filled the air, I lifted my broom and proceeded to the meditation hall.

Later, I told the abbot about the man. His response was simple: “He has not asked for anything. Let him be.”

Some of the monks looked troubled. We were accustomed to structured routine and order. To a known rhythm. This stranger did not fit.

One monk whispered that the man might be of disturbed mind. Another said he could be dangerous. A third thought he wanted to join the community but was afraid to ask.

Watanabe spoke more forcefully than the others. “It is unsafe to let him stay without knowing his intentions. He could be a thief, or worse. We are responsible for the safety of this place.”

I listened. After a moment, I said quietly, “We do not know who he is. We do not know what he wants.”

“Exactly!” Watanabe’s voice sharpened. “We must act before something happens.”

I looked at him, holding his gaze without turning away. “What has happened?”

He frowned. “Nothing yet. But there is risk in waiting.”

Another monk, Ishida, folded his arms and spoke with a softer tone. “It is unsettling, yes. But perhaps we should wait a little longer.”

The room held a quiet tension, the kind that rises when fear and duty meet. I let it remain, without forcing resolution. Outside, the wind stirred the bamboo, a soft rattle in the dark.

The next morning, he was still there.

Frost covered the grass and fallen leaves. It looked as if he had not moved at all through the night.

I noted how quickly we moved to ascribe an identity, a purpose, a narrative to this silent figure. How uneasy we were with the emptiness he presented. He was a person without a stated intention.

The monks went about their customary tasks but I observed small changes in their activities. They took paths that kept them at a distance from the stranger. They glanced toward him as they worked. Some spoke in whispers in his vicinity, as though his silence expected quiet in return.

I was alert to the stranger's presence in the way one is aware of storm clouds darkening the sky. Not immediately threatening, but heavy with possibility. I waited for him to come forward. Would he ask for food, or request shelter, or seek conversation? He did none of those things.

On the third day, as the morning mist moved like smoke through the valley, I approached him. He sat cross-legged, hands resting on his knees. His clothes were dusty from travel, his worn shoes streaked with mud. Though the morning was cold, he wore no outer garment. His eyes were open but unfocused, as though not seeing the temple before him but looking through it to something beyond.

I bowed, in acknowledgment of his presence. He did not respond. I placed a small bundle of rice and pickled radish wrapped in a leaf on the ground nearby. He did not look at it. For a long while, I simply sat beside him. Not in inquiry. Not in welcome. Just to be there, sharing the silence. The wind moved through the bamboo grove nearby, creating a soft rattling sound like distant rain. Leaves scraped across the gravel paths. A crow called from the forest's edge. The man's breath was steady, neither shallow nor deep, the breath of someone completely at rest within himself.

After some time, Watanabe came down the path, his steps heavy. He paused, looking at me, then at the man. His voice was low, edged with frustration. “You sit here, while we do nothing?”

I turned my head slightly, my eyes meeting his. “I am here.”

He let out a breath. “We should not wait forever. If he is still here tomorrow, I will speak to the abbot.”

I nodded, offering no argument.

While I sat in this shared silence, I ceased to be concerned about his identity and motives. These questions were replaced by a different awareness. There was the rough ground beneath us. There was shifting light as clouds passed overhead. There were changes in temperature as the sun warmed the air.

By evening, when I returned with water, he was gone. The food remained untouched.

Some of the monks were relieved. Others were curious. One asked if I thought he had been a ghost, or perhaps a manifestation of Kannon come to test our hospitality. I said, perhaps.

He was not a ghost. He was a visitor without a story. He was a presence without an introduction. More than any appearance of mystery it was this that was disquieting. We assume that the people around us will tell us who they are. That they will explain their intentions and their identities. If they do not then we invent stories to replace the unknown. Confronting that man's silent presence, I found myself in dialogue with my own uneasiness. My mind sought to name him: wanderer, madman, fugitive, threat. But there was no evidence to ascribe any of these categories. I was left with my own projection resulting from my need to classify in order to understand.

The encounter with uncertainty is the most difficult challenge in resolving conflict. When we meet a person whose motives are inscrutable, whose behavior does not conform to our expectations, whose silence offers no basis for our understanding, we must then decide how to react. Do we impose our story? Do we demand explanation? Do we retreat into suspicion? Or can we remain present with the unknown, neither reaching for hasty understanding nor retreating in fear?

For three days, our community engaged in this internal struggle. Some monks responded with wariness, creating physical distance. Others constructed explanations to make the stranger comprehensible. Still others approached with offerings, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship. Each response revealed the nature of the monk who offered it.

In our daily lives, how often do we engage in conflict with our image of the other? With our assumptions and fears? We believe we are responding to words, actions, and intentions, when we are reacting to the story we have created about who they are.

Resolving conflict must begin with the understanding that the person we face is a stranger who is unknown and unknowable. Even those closest to us possess depths we can never fully fathom. Their actions may be driven by motivations we cannot entirely understand. Conflict arises because we have filled the spaces of uncertainty with our own projections.

After the stranger's disappearance, the monks began to speak of their responses to his presence. One disclosed his fear. Another described his irritation at the interruption of routine. A third spoke of the tension between the responsibility of hospitality and the security of boundaries.

In sharing these internal struggles, they discovered how differently each had perceived the same silent figure. This is the heart of many conflicts. Not the objective reality of what has occurred, but the variety of ways we understand and react to that reality. Two people encountering the same event may construct altogether different meanings from it. A word spoken with one intention may be understood with another meaning. A boundary drawn for self-protection may be perceived as rejection. The most challenging conflicts are those in which we cannot even agree on the nature of what is being discussed. Encounters where our perceptions differ so fundamentally that we strive to identify common ground from which to begin.

About a year after the stranger's visit, late one afternoon, a traveler arrived at our temple. He was gray haired, perhaps in his late sixties, dressed in worn dusty clothing. In a quiet, halting voice he requested shelter. He told us that he had been walking a pilgrimage path to visit temples and shrines in the region. While in a remote forested area, he had developed a fever with dizziness and overcome with exhaustion, had collapsed on the side of the road. A man found him and carried him to a small one-room hut in the forest. He cared for him for several days until the fever broke. The man had not given a name or spoken more than a few words. He had mentioned our temple and suggested that it was a place where he could find rest on his journey.

The description of this man matched the stranger in our garden. This story, however, did not solve the mystery but heightened it. The stranger had not been lost or homeless. He had not needed help. For reasons known only to himself, he had decided to sit at the edge of our community, neither fully present nor fully absent.

The stranger mirrored each person's assumptions. Those who were inclined to be suspicious saw an impending threat. Those inspired by compassion saw the embodiment of suffering. And those searching for meaning saw spiritual purpose. It is as if, in his silence, each monk encountered his own reflection.

When our constructed stories and beliefs about the other are dismissed, a vast space opens for mindful engagement. In this space we engage simultaneously with our counterpart and with our own need for explanation and resolution. One method to address such conflicts is to pursue clarity. Insist that the other precisely define himself and his intentions. This approach, which provides the comfort of understanding, closes the door to deeper connection. Possibilities existing outside our categories then become unreachable.

A more challenging path is to remain present with the unknown. Allow the other to be, at least for a time, undefined. Observe without interpreting. Wait without demanding. This path involves confronting our own discomfort. We must make peace with ambiguity. There are conversations that confront you with the inexplicable. A partner's unexplained withdrawal. A friend's uncharacteristic anger. A colleague's incomprehensible resistance.

When this occurs, observe your internal response. Are you creating a narrative to explain the behavior? What identity are you assigning? What motives are you attributing? It is as if you are meeting not only the other, but also a stranger within yourself.

Set aside your interpretations. Face the other as you would approach a stranger sitting silently at the edge of your garden. Can you express curiosity rather than conclusion? Can you meet him with presence rather than projection?

This requires the creation of a space for the other to be more than your explanation of him. It means recognizing that what seems to be rejection could be fear. What appears as anger could be pain. What casts the shadows of a wall of indifference could be uncertainty. In each meeting, there is an invitation to expand beyond the boundaries of your beliefs, to discover something new not only about the other, but also about yourself.

The stranger in the garden offered nothing. No words of wisdom. No insight. No instruction. Yet, in his silence, he revealed how quickly we move to frame the unknown. Self-discipline is necessary to allow the unknown to remain unknown long enough for a deeper truth to emerge.

In this he became a teacher.