Читать книгу Painted Oxen - Thomas Lloyd Qualls - Страница 13

The monk wakes from a dream into a world of mists and thunderclouds. The clouds play children’s games with him. They show him dissolving images of yaks and sheep, serpents and hawks, angels and dragons. He closes his eyes and the clouds count to ten. He opens his eyes and they look for him. He breathes in the outside world. He breathes out the song of himself.

A fog envelops all that he cannot see. Above and below are confused into one. The clouds are made of roots and rocks. The land is air and water. The whole universe is a kind of living foliage. One that shapeshifts from deciduous compost to dragon lizards, from a muddy terrain to a marsh of leaches, from painted flowers to poisonous frogs, from sinewy roots to slippery eel. The rain is the master of all these illusions.

His physical body and all that it carries are rain-drenched and heavy. He has traveled for many days, protected from these elements only by the woolen clothes he wears. The long journey, filled with every hardship imaginable—swarms of insects, poisonous snakes, impossible terrain, hostile natives—has made his legs strong and his back sturdy, though it does not deter the pack he carries—an awkward appendage he has gradually grown used to—from its clumsy way of being.

The fog mandates that he see no further than the tree just before him. He moves in deliberate, steady paces. As if only his feet know the way, and they must direct his eyes, his mind. His master reminds him, Life must be taken a step at a time. All else is madness.

A crescendo of birds and beasts and wind and water fills every crevice of space around him. Still, his mind finds room to shelter a faint echo. A sound so slight it could be imaginary. A ghost who remains just out of sight, ready to disappear at the threat of being seen. The sound is the voice of a great waterfall. A bridge he must cross between worlds. He moves faithfully in the direction of its call.

The difficulty of his journey cannot be overstated. And he knows it is useless to dwell on such things. He knows that holding a focus on hardship only exaggerates its pain, gives it more attention than it deserves. Always beauty must be held in the heart, his master’s memory reminds him. Filling the mind with trouble leaves no room for beauty there either. We think our world into being.

Holding onto misery only brings more misery into focus. All possibilities exist. But the mind has only room for one thing at a time. He focuses on his gratitude for the shelter of the fog and the coolness of the rain.

Though this journey is the reason for his incarnation, he travels not simply for his own transformation. When he gets to where he is going, he will unlock a door for others. He will create a passage through which all generations may step into a new age.

****

He is interrupted gently by his master’s voice. What do you dream? His master asks. I dream the land and I are one, he answers. He finds a crack in the fog and holds the light that slips through it. For the moment, this splinter of light is his stillpoint. It is his foothold on this murky passage.