Читать книгу Painted Oxen - Thomas Lloyd Qualls - Страница 21

The monk was chosen for this path. Not because he is a great adventurer or a storied discoverer of mystical lands. Not because he is a master tracker, nor a student of plants and forests. He was chosen because of his ignorance of these things, an ignorance that forces him into a closer relationship with the land, the water, and the sleeping goddess who inhabits them.

His master taught him that knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. Ignorance is different from unawareness. And awareness is more essential than a hundred skills. To be aware is to be open. And to be open is to know the path of every master who has roamed the earth. A master sees the illusion. A master understands the illusion. A master shapes and molds it, adds and subtracts from it, crafts its layers, and provides tools for its unveiling.

Though he has studied the teachings of the masters until they have become second nature, he is not a teacher. He is a tertön. It is his dharma to discover the teachings that remain hidden and to give them life. These teachings, known as terma, can take many forms. They may be writings. They may be ideas, insights, or even dreams. Or they may also take the form of a physical place or object that triggers a teaching in the mind or heart of a tertön.

So evolved was the relationship of his master Rinpoche to the elements, the Dorje, universal oneness, that he veiled 108 sacred valleys from humankind. These valleys are a part of the terma hidden by the Rinpoche, along with the cryptic maps for the valleys, each written in ancient symbols and codes. The Rinpoche timed the revelation of each, even naming the tertöns who would one day reveal these treasures.

Each of the hidden valleys is a paradise unto itself, a cathedral of nature. Each one waiting patiently for its time. Of all these mystic places, there is one considered most sacred. This is the land he seeks.

The Dorje is a sleeping goddess who inhabits this land. She is one with it. She is a master dakini, a sacred muse, a shape-shifter, a guardian of the mysteries of the self. With grace she walks in all worlds, assumes all characteristics, is female and male, visible and invisible, fierce and protective, omnipresent and nonexistent. She is the guru and the consort, the Enlightened Buddha and the Void.

The river is the blood of her veins, flowing through her chakra centers. It begins in the exalted purple mountain of her crown, descending over giant boulders into her throat, where it sings the most beautiful song known on earth. From here it enters her heart and encircles the peaks of her breasts, which are covered in flowers known for their honey-sweet nectar. Then it continues down through her navel in the valley of sweetgrasses and into her secret place, the mountain of crystal lotuses. It is written that upon entering the threshold of her secret place, all human veils will be lifted and the karmic entanglements of thousands of years will be erased.

Each of these centers is a lotus, unfolding with four layers of petals. To enter fully into any one center, the tertön must move through the four layers: the outer, the inner, the secret, and the hidden layers. And to find the Dorje’s secret heart, he must enter through the crystal lotus mountain and into the heart of hearts of the land.

The Dorje’s resting body bridges two lands. Her lower half, from her feet to her navel, is in one land. Her upper half, from her navel to her crown, lies in another.

He, too, must bridge these worlds, in order to find her. In order to unlock the door to her heart. In order to bring her sacred fire to the rest of humanity. And to use that fire to light up the starlight locked in everyone.

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There is a sacred marriage between water and earth, Rinpoche taught. Their relationship binds everything we know and trust. Earth holds space for water. Water nurtures earth’s dreams. Their collective desires make life possible. Without their marriage, this world could not be. And we could not be of this world.

Their story is our story, as well. We are the begotten ones. Our flesh is made of clay. Rivers run through our veins. Our lineage stretches from the ocean floor to the mountain crest. This is the beginning of knowledge.

The story of the union of earth and water is coded and kept hidden. Unless you know how to listen. Unless you know where to look. Then, each page of the story is revealed. Through the layers of earth and rock and fossil, on the leaves that fall from the trees, in the crystals that form in winter. Their messages are the maps that guide his journey.