In my second year of middle school, at the suggestion of an acquaintance, I began practicing meditation to calm my mind. I started with five-minute sessions of seated meditation and gradually increased the duration.
One day, as I sat quietly meditating while gazing at the wall, I noticed that the wall before my eyes was gradually fading away—as if it didn’t exist at all. The saying “Form is emptiness; emptiness is form” became something I understood through direct experience in that very moment. The solid wall felt as if it were actually completely empty—as if it were nothing at all.
After that experience, whenever I entered a calm state of meditation, I began to see the world beyond the walls and doors. The very moment my rational mind thought that this was strange, that ability vanished in an instant. As this situation repeated itself several times, I began to understand the saying that to attain the Way (Dao), one must first empty one’s mind. When I emptied my mind, the truth of the world was revealed—just like in the movie *The Matrix*. The world we believe to be real is, upon closer inspection, nothing more than empty void.
Then, people might think, “That’s just your imagination and your thoughts…” But that’s not the case. I even proved it to my older brother. One day, after we finished eating, my older brother asked me at the dining table to prove that I had the ability to see right through objects. I told him to put his hand under the table, out of my sight, and choose one of rock, paper, or scissors. Then, I began to breathe slowly and deeply. As my mind calmed, the surface of the table I was looking at gradually blurred, and I began to see my brother’s hand. I told him what I saw. He looked surprised and asked me to do it again. As I began to guess correctly over and over, he grew increasingly excited and eventually let out a cry of astonishment. By the tenth time I guessed correctly, he looked at me as if to say, “How is this even possible?” It seemed as though the world he had known up until that point was crumbling. His expression resembled that of “Neo” in *The Matrix* when he first realized he was in a virtual world.
Many people believe that the world they see and hear is all there is. But that’s not true. Yet no matter how much I explain it, what’s the point? Unless you experience it for yourself, it’s just a hypothesis you can’t be certain of. They say the probability of me guessing “rock, paper, scissors” correctly ten times in a row is about 0.00169%. Do you still think it’s just a coincidence?
Since then, I’ve experienced countless similar events, and many people have witnessed such miraculous occurrences right before their eyes. Yet they still find it hard to believe, even when they see it. Just when it seems they’ve briefly awakened to face the truth, they return to the world of the Matrix and go on living thoughtlessly, driven by greed.
Phoenix