Читать книгу The Yeti Society - Martin Sexton - Страница 7

The Universal Soul exists in every individual,

it expresses itself in every creature,

everything in the world is a projection of it.

—The Shevetashvatara Upanishad

The Story of the Great Ape, how the wisest of men, the first Buddha, was once born as a great ape and lived as a recluse in the Himalayan forest. He did not look like nor was he like other monkeys, nor did he behave as such. He was kind and virtuous. A time later, a shepherd got lost following his goats into the mountains and reached the secret forest in the hidden valley. He was exhausted and hungry and climbed to the top of a tree to rest and be safe from the tiger that roamed these mountains. From his vantage point he spied the answer to his appetite, a fruit-rich tree. He moved very carefully, almost like a slow monkey, through the great canopy of the forest towards the fruit tree. Coming closer, the chatter of the birds, insects and other animals of the forest fused with the sound of the great river that carved through the valley. Eventually, he was at the tree and when he reached a branch laden with fruit to pluck them, his eyes were bigger than his belly. He took more than he needed for his fair appetite or for his good balance. What's more, he had overlooked the roots of the tree, which had grown out of a sloping cliff over a waterfall. The branch he held with his free hand, sustaining a good part of his weight, gave way. He lost the fruit and none fell into the pit of the crevice where he lay. He was sore but no bones were broken and he was still hungry. It would make no difference to try again as where he had ended up was deep with sheer hard earth and rock walls and no exit seemed possible. He cursed his goats. Then when he looked up, to his annoyance, one of them stared down at him. It was the longest time he had ever looked directly into the face of one of his goats. Even when he had held a ram down forcibly to castrate it, or kill one for meat, he never really looked at his animals or considered them in any way other than as a means to an end. He knew what a goat looked like, of course, but today he seemed to see it for the first time, for he saw much he had never ever noticed before—that the goat did not have a round black centre in its eye, but a horizontal solid black line as a pupil. This goat stared at him for so long that it left him pondering, was it just these goats or did they all look like that? Then he wondered why did his male and female goats both have beards? He had never ever really considered his goats worth looking at, but rather more looking for, if he lost them. Goats after all, he reasoned, would become feral and return to the wild at the first opportunity. He cursed his goat to get him out of his predicament, for he did know goats were as good at getting out of things as getting into them, having once found several of his goats bleating from the top canopy of a very tall tree. But at this, the goat was gone. It was then he remembered that he was chastised by an old woman who told him not to beat his goats so harshly, that the goat was a Vahana, a vehicle of the gods. A black goat, ridden by Kali. This was her realm. He would never have a wife or siddhi (special powers) granted, as the female Shaiva that follow Kali would know, and curse him back tenfold. The shepherd began to feel sorry for himself but still managed to be angry at his goats.

Then he smelt something, not unlike the stench of a he-goat, but this was a far more powerful odour. Then to his amazement he saw a creature, a Great Ape, but not simply an overgrown monkey. It was large, it stood upright, covered in hair, apart from its face, and was taller, more robust than any man he had ever seen. When the Great Ape saw the distress of the man and his predicament he decided, against his better judgement, to free the man. With difficulty, as the pit was deep, he managed with arduous exertions to rescue him.

The Great Ape ingeniously fashioned a stretcher from two large branches and smaller ones that he elegantly weaved and he hauled the man out and rolled him to the side of the rock fall. The next part was only marginally less difficult than the first—not for the Great Ape alone—but as he was carrying the man, who would have most surely failed by his own effort, even if he had fallen just to the precipice before the rock pit. Finally the man was in a place where he could eventually make his way back to the village. Dusk fell and the Great Ape was exhausted and wished to rest. He motioned to the man to sit beside him and clearly signed that he take first watch and warn him of any tiger in the night and wake him from his rest—for as long as he was not surprised whilst sleeping, he could guard the man against the tiger.

But the man was still frightened and disturbed by the size and strangeness of the beast. He was ungrateful and wished not to remain vulnerable on the ground at night and to hide high in the tree canopy until dawn. His heart was hardened and he remained resentful despite his rescue. He decided he would take his chances on his own, without the Ape. A panic and darkness entered him and at once he decided he would kill the sleeping Great Ape. He found a large heavy stone and held it swaying above him to let it drop silently and crush the skull of the beast, but his cowardice skewed his aim and the weight of the stone slipped and merely grazed the Great Ape. It was a little dazed and struggled more from the deep slumber of its sleep than the blow, but it was more hurt by what the man had done. The Great Ape held the man fast and gave him a liquefying stare, of anger and pity. Unlike the goat, the Great Ape's gaze flashed the entire animal kingdom as a prism from the crystal sapphire blue and whirlpool black centre of its eyes—it happened like a lightning flash—it was far too overwhelming for the man to contemplate. The shepherd shook in terror and broke out in a sweat of guilt from every pore.

The Great Ape released him and it spoke to him for the very first time:

Brought back from the mouth of Death

When you reached the other world.

Saved from one precipice

Thou has now fallen into another

Upon what ignorance is man driven to such vices and cruelties and chooses to bathe in such miseries.

The delusions you fixate that fall on the false hope of a misguided prosperity.

The pain of this blow does not aggrieve me as much

As the thought that on account of me

You have struck it

and plunged yourself into greater evil

From where I or no one else can rescue thee.

Nonetheless, the Great Ape did not kill the man; in its compassion and mercy it escorted the man to the edge of the forest so he could return to his fellow beings.

Time went on: the man suffered, he neither washed nor bathed nor cut his hair or nails. His goats that had remained chose to humiliate him. They no longer went feral and broke into his home and slept there. He became so miserable that he was shunned and expelled from society.

Excommunicated he ran from his world and back to the dense forest, where what remained of his dishevelled clothes dissolved. Naked, he skulked in the forest and hid from any disturbance, but still a coward, he clung to his life and barely slept, remaining fearful each night that a tiger may slay and eat him. One day a retinue of the king's hunters came across him in the forest hunting. Thinking they had found a strange beast, they wounded him and brought him before the king, who had camped nearby. Shocked, both he and his entourage thought they had been brought a strange monkey, until the naked, broken man spoke. Fatally wounded and near to death, the unrecognisable goat herder finally found the courage to repent and speak in the hope that, in his remaining breath, he might find some peace and redeem his soul. The king listened, astonished at his sorrowful tale, and was so moved he ordered the hunt to cease. He declared the forest and mountains a sacred sanctuary to the supreme mystery, to all its gods, to the wise and compassionate Great Ape and all that lived in its range. For any tree that was cut down, he ordered a strict sanction that ten must be planted in its place. He sent out a decree that large stones be set around its natural boundaries of rivers and plains and any and all trails that led to it, and that on the rocks should be carved images of the Great Ape. He did this so no man in the future could excuse himself of ignorance and insult this intermediary of the gods and thus defile this place again.