A man is driving down the road and breaks down near a
monastery. He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door,
and says, “My car broke down. Do you think I could stay
the night?”
The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, even fix
his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange
sound. The next morning, he asks the monks what the
sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a
monk.”
The man says, “All right, all right. I’m dying to know. If the
only way I can find out that sound is to become a monk,
how do I become a monk?”
The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how
many blades of grass there are and the exact number of
sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will
become a monk.”

The man sets about his task. Some forty-five years later, he
returns and knocks on the door of the monastery. He says,
“I have traveled the earth and have found what you have
asked for. There are 145,236,284,232 blades of grass and
231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth.”
The monks reply, “Congratulations. You are now a monk.
We shall now show you the way to the sound.”  The monks
lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says,
“The sound is right behind that door.”  The monks give him
the key, and he opens the door. Behind the wooden door is
another door made of stone. The man demands the key to
the stone door. The monks give him the key, and he opens
it, only to find a door made of ruby.
So it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald,
silver, topaz, amethyst.  Finally, the monks say, “This is the
last key to the last door.” The man is relieved to no end. He
unlocks the door, turns the knob, and behind that door he is
amazed to find the source of that strange sound.
But I can’t tell you what it is because you’re not a monk.

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