

The Bent Tree and the Sleeping Tiger

by Christopher Dutton

All contents herein are the sole property and copyright of Christopher Thomas Dutton and are not to copied except for individual personal use. Quotations are allowed for other written, video or audio works with written permission. No commercial use is allowed except with written permission of author. Alteration of contents is not allowed. For further information or commercial requests contact the author. Thank you.

Smashwords Edition

Dedication

For Brenda, my wife, my companion of the Way and fellow wanderer through destiny's odd little trails.

I call her " Laughing Cloud" because in her soul there is a great nurturing of love, tears, happiness, joy for those lucky enough to be touched by her heart. And a cloud is ok because I love cool days and the hovering of a little rain perhaps..and if it comes, then perhaps I can go back in indoors (leaving behind my labour or canoeing or walking) and read a good book and have a cozy nap....

In other words with "Laughing Cloud" I can have it all...moment by moment...

if ever I had a song it was the wind

if ever I had a god it was love

if ever I had a friend it was her.

Introduction

I self-discovered Taoism while on a three day retreat in New York state in 1991. I was wandering around the side of a small mountain while "camped" in a tiny six by eight foot hut.

I was working on a large novel full of angst and the human conflict of ideologies. I needed to write but I also needed to let go of the analytical parts of my brain. I needed to laugh at my own thinking. Hence Chapter one...Din-din. I even remember laughing at it in that tiny hut. It reminded me of an old man farting loudly at a very "important" political or social function.

I needed to learn to be absurd, to be ridiculous again, to play, and thus to love more fully. To let go. To think.. one moment.. Then forget.. Then love, the next moment. Then let go. I did not know then that Taoism was to think, forget, let go, feel, think again just for a moment, forget again...

The rest of the stories came in time. Learning to live them has taken much longer.

But at least...most times... I never forgot to forget...
One should not struggle to

straighten the bent limb;

for who but the tree knows

the best Way into the Light;

rather one should pursue

perfection through the flawed;

calling perfection: flourish
Index

Chapter Title Page

1 Din-din 7

2 Name this Hair 11

3 Tea-llusions 18

4 Soul Searching 32

5 Martialling the Art 86

6 A Lost One 149

7 The Twelve Monkeys 171

8 At Last 206

Din-Din

An old monk has travelled far to the edges of the near desert. Hot and tired, he spies a great solitary tree; a tree thick and strong yet semi-barren with limbs and trunk turned and twisted, fixed in a wrestle with the mighty arms of Wind. Only one great branch held a multitude of needles in its grasp.

This began in the great thickness of the lower trunk, carried itself straight out then sharply curved downward turning outward. Its thick wrist splaying into a web of many fingers, the shade of their green burdens holding a dense foliage five or six feet above the ground. This gave an abundance of shade, of cool shadow in the sun of the long grass.

This is the way of prophets and trees, the hand carries what the back can never enjoy...peace.

Towards this peace, the monk turns off the centuries old path trodden through the swaying grass, for the tree is upon a small hill that appears as a wave of dirt held eternally at its crest.

As the monk walks up to the Tree he notices the grass is shorter here..and in that grass he spies a large creature sleeping beneath the tree. A tiger.

Being flesh, the monk knows fear and thinks to hasten away. Being old, the monk knows weariness and that sleep and death creep nightly closer to each other like cousins in the same house. Being human, he has the capacity to resign into the inertia of the moment rather than take Caution's impelling new directions; being monk, he knows that Death is not in the tiger's paw but rather is found in the Wind. Though one should not spit into it, it can be best to just turn your back to it.

So the old monk laid down in the shade, turned his back to the sleeping tiger and fell asleep.

A little time passed and a caravan approached with many people, making that noise which makes travellers believe that chaos mixed with bravado will keep danger far away... far into the long grasses beside their trail.

They spied the bent tree and sent a few men with axes to chop it down for its flesh may likely bring a few market coins. The men with their axes strolled brave enough indeed through the grass towards the tree and up onto the hill. One sight of the old man and worse, the tiger and those brave fellows turned as one and fled like mice back to the caravan.

"Is he dead?" "Was he moving?" "Were both breathing?" "Did the tiger awaken?" "What shall we do?"

These were the questions which spilled upon the men's panting explanations.

It was decided to extend help towards the old man via a distant compassion. That is to shout at him to make him aware of the necessity ,indeed the haste, necessary for his own salvation.

With that, a dozen shouts travelled across the long grass but a man standing upon a man perched on a cart espied no awakening. Of either man or tiger.

" The old man is alive, though. I saw his hand move across his head as if brushing flies from his ears."

Further discourse amongst the travellers blossomed further action. The caravan gathered up all its pots and pans. Thus a great din of tinnish uproar spilled over the long grass, under the beat tree and into the ear of the old monk.

He awoke, rose and glared out from the shadow " What do you want will all this din?" he angrily spoke to the crowd. They of course answered in a chaos of whispers and gestures;in a mimicry of tigers and sleeping men. A dance of both warning and encouragement done by awkward mimes.

He answered them " When the tiger sleeps there is no hunger. When the

man sleeps there is no fear. When both sleep, there is peace; only when the world drums on its own emptiness does both fear and hunger awaken. Go away and let sleeping men and tigers be."

With that, the old man laid back down and turned his back towards a caravan of astonishment.

Name This Hair

On another day a vast army passed within sight of the bent tree . Out of the army came a lone warrior, a very large man under a very large hat, both atop a very large horse.

It was the commander of the army coming towards the Bent Tree to contemplate his next stage of movements. As he rode up to the Tree, the monk raised his head from a prolonged study of his navel. The monk saw now a dark broad face with a very long mustache. He saw, too, within that face, dark eyes tunnelled into a very long history.

The General dismounted with a thud as both feet declared the earth as conquered. The look, the shoulders broad and uncompromising; the way cliffs turn back even the sea.

The soldier-king said nothing; simply removed a sword from its scabbard, its point declaring to the monk 'Yield and live.'

The monk smiled and spoke " It is the place of the priest to offer shade unto the world while he, himself, drinks of the dust of the sun. Yet one must not be too hasty and give a place of worthiness onto what is worthless or will not worthiness wither in forgotten corners? Who are you to replace a priest at the roots of a world's rest?"

To this the General was amused for he knew the mystic ways that riddled a monk's tongue. He replied in a voice travelling as thunder " At my name a city of a million knees bends into the earth."

The monk shrugged " Then what need of thee for the carriage of war or the steel of its tooth to flail away the frail tongue of a priest? Break up that sword in three and send your horse in the fourth direction. I am naked; you see no weapon and the fingers of your mighty hand are but an arm's length from call. "

The General accepted the challenge, broke his sword and sent his horse away with a slap to its rump. This done, the General strode closer to the monk preparing to bodily cast him out.

The monk held up a hand of thin fingers and smiled "A little more of this name, my Command.

I have erred. I have forgotten a weapon which lies close by. It is as much your weapon as mine." he pointed into the deeper shadow directly below the heavy branch.

In the ripple of still grass, the blend of animal stripes could just be seen. Even with a general's keen vision for danger it took a moment to assemble the full likeness of a sleeping tiger.

The monk spoke again "Fate and sleeping tigers is a funny thing. Your name, this powerful name, is indeed, as you say, your weapon, your worthiness. Before it I am told to yield.

Let's think on this, however. At your name's shout, the tiger may erupt in four directions or no direction. It may awaken and devour you. It may awaken and devour me. It may awaken and devour both of us. It may even awaken and simply go away, devouring neither of us.

And yes, I spoke of a fifth direction. Or rather no direction.

At the shout of your name, the sleeping tiger does not awaken.

That may be your worst fate. I, on the other hand, or with a hand for that matter, can reach out, with fingers as frail as dried sticks and pluck from fate, or rather the sleeping tiger, a single hair.

There is a strong possibility that the sleeping tiger will awaken.

It may indeed devour you. How then has it become that a single hair is greater than your name; the shout of your name?

If we have need of greater proof let us take that hair to the city of million.

What will happen when I tell them the story of single hairs, names and a sleeping tiger awakening to devour a name?

If thou art a feared man, which I suspect, will not a million pairs of joy lift hair and I onto the shoulders of rejoicing?

To be paraded for days, taken to the finest exalted place of honour?

Tell me then, oh General, if Fate so easily counts first the hair on a head, then the name, how am I to know worthiness to give way beside the sleeping tiger?"

The General-king pondered this gauntlet of words knowing that a physical force used here would only serve to lessen his own stature.

Instead he replied "A hair before a multitude turns no eye. Even a sleeping tiger is a rock turning no stream from the sea. But Fate climbs on a vastness of limbs, through the throat of a name and perches valiant on the single swaying hair.

That the sleeping tiger devours is of no awakening. What the sleeping tiger devours, if the name is immortal, gives the hair immortality.

The multitude sees a god of a single strand by its stature raised upon my Name.

Hairs, old fingers, tigers and flesh are but circles of fate, such fates known in the path of wind hawks, in the flee of a river minnow.

It is upon the giants of Name that fate is seen as Something.

That my Name is defeated by hair and hand and tiger does not lessen its greatness. Only that hair and hand and tiger have become greater.

The man who does not know he can be devoured by such fates is a man who does not know life is the hot breath of the tiger.

He does not understand that to be the greatest rabbit is still to be a rabbit.

To you, Monk, I state my name again. Still worthy for it is not the name which is devoured which is heard too weakly, but the name which bows before any hunt of the teeth.

Pluck, priest, pluck. If my name is devoured,Fate breeds an enormous jaw; if thy name is devoured , then let us just say, the tiger was not so empty of belly. With the hair of thy death, I can turn no multitude. At best it will now serve to cleanse my teeth of a sinewy feast."

The monk gazed at the General-king for a long moment then spoke " A fool gauges a mountain by it's height, the wise by it's climb. The hair in an eagle's nest may be the spine of a worm but the man who holds one is not the man who holds the other. You are right. It is the mountain which grants worthiness. A man on a mountain holding a hair is all of the same mountain, the mountain is no less worthy. Worthiness is not something to be yielded only summed. Even the conqueror cannot conquer life, only rise with it. In life's death, no mountain sets, only our vision of it. Worthiness is not lost, simply given back into the mountain. "

Thus spoken, the priest shifted over and gestured for the general to sit beside him. Then the priest closed his eye, folded his limbs and in a long exhale transformed into a round stone about an arm's height.

The general-king came to the spot and for a moment made as if to sit upon the stone.

He declined, smiled and sat beside it, gazing now upon the sleeping tiger.

Around the tree, the grass stirred with changing winds.

Tea-llusions

A middle aged man travelled upon the grass carrying a large burden so heavy that his head bowed in the manner of a broken branch.

The burden was the sorrow in his heart. So lost within his own shadow that he did not see the bent Tree till he came upon its larger cast of shadow; did not see the old monk till he had sat within the distance of a whispered voice.

The old monk opened his eye from a place of meditation having sensed the turmoil drifting into the shade.

He spoke to the traveller "What the young have not yet found and the old have forgotten the middle eye sees with the clarity of a full sun; with the journey of the long turtle's neck. What do you carry, middle man, that cannot be lifted from your shoulders by even the six palms of the Wind?"

The man lifted his face and in the way of society took from it's features those expressions of despair and despondency; replacing such with a demeanor of less ragged commerce.

" The business of the world and the love in a family do not always give a man an easy inheritance. I have a younger brother who has always dwelled at my home since the death of our parents. He is , what others would call, a fool; that is he is of a mind both unexpressive and simple. A man's body carrying the thoughts and eyes of a child's soul. Gentle and loving; as loyal to me and my family as any pet raised by a good master.

What tasks he can do, he does well and quick. Too quick. For I run out of tasks to busy his hands. He will play with the children for endless hours, delighting always in their laughter and attention but they grow older now and have other companions, and school studies, which my brother cannot be a part of.

It is this idle time which has brought such grieve upon my heart. For my brother does nothing but sit or kneel in the dust before the home and draw endless circles and lines there.

It does not seem to matter that the night wind or the eve's rain removes all traces, he simply begins again the next day. What does matter very much is that he will tolerate no one save the family to tread on or near his scratchings. He threatens and even chases them away with his stick; and he is not a small man.

As our home dwells above my business, my store, our very livelihood is in decline.

I have tried to persuade him to go elsewhere, to the backs or the sides of the store but the minute my attention is diverted he returns to the front.

I have waited too long, and with my dwindling of my capital, I can no longer afford to purchase a place to be separate as a store.

To afford such a move I must sell the building which has been in our family for at least a half dozen generations. Even if I did such a thing, how can I guarantee he will not do the same thing at the next store for I could not bear to lock him away in the home away from me at the business.

Yet the way of the world and its cares seems to demand of me something harsher than this way of a brother's love.

What am I to do?"

The old monk replied " Let me tell you a story I know. If of no use, it at least will be of no harm. Besides, sometimes the mind diverted is the mind at its best ponder.

Centuries ago, near this very spot, the caravan of a very rich merchant stopped here to pass the night .

In the merchant's possession was a very beautifully carved clay tea pot , priceless in both its worldly worth and its owner's eye.

Now it so happened that as the teapot, full of hot water, was being carried to the Master's tent by a servant; the servant was bitten by a scorpion upon the foot.

The tea pot fell from his pain and landed upon a rock, just as the scorpion scurried across it. That fateful collision both crushed the scorpion and broke a large hole out of the bottom of the pot.

Now it so happened that this servant had been in the Master's service for many many years and was much loved. So much so that the Master grieved as much for the now deceased servant as he did for the fractured pot.

Thus he ordered servant, scorpion and teapot all buried together under the rock as Fate had so irrevocably joined them together in the breaking of his own heart.

Now it came to pass a few generations later, that a low man, indeed to say, a common thief and vagrant, wandered into the same place. Fortune Wind had lifted some of the sand so that the thief easily saw the intricate lid and dug up the pot.

Seeing its beauty he thought it might bring some value in the city despite the large hole in its bottom. Down the road he trudged carrying the pot in his cupped hands.

Shortly a caravan passed him and within its assembly was a dealer of art and jems. Upon seeing the teapot, the dealer of course stopped and hailed to the thief to bring the pot over for his inspection.

Now this thief was crafty and although he would allow the merchant to look at it, he declined to set it in his hand, declaring that he had been given the task of selling it by certain monks. These monks had claimed that the pot must not be touched by another's hand for one month after its sale or evil magic would awaken from it. The pot must sit in its box untouched till it had learned to trust the voice and presence of its new master.

Now the merchant was no fool and did not believe the story yet his eyes were filled with a near obsession that such a treasure should not be taken from them.

He agreed to a dear price and called for his servants to bring money and a strong box. At the same time , he begged the thief that he could not bear to wait a month to drink tea from such an exquisite pot. Would not the thief mind pouring him a cup? Even as he asked he beckoned to other servants to prepare a fire for hot water; indicating to the thief that he had no choice but to honour such a plea.

Soon hot water was poured into the pot held by the thief but before even a little tea could be added, the thief declared his guilt in a red-handed howl! The pot dropped to the ground; the liquid stain ample evidence of a cheat but the gaping yaw in the upturned bottom declared a full guilt.

Disgusted, the dealer ordered his guards to throw the empty but red-handed thief and his false wares off a nearby ravine. The thief survived the tumble but unfortunately rolled into the awakening jaws of a sleeping tiger lying in a rock's shade. So, though the pot remained no more harmed than it was before, that could not be said of the thief as well!

Now a few generations later, a well-to-do artist , a potter happened to be wandering about the bottom of this same ravine. He was collecting chunks of a particularly rare type of clay which had been deposited here centuries ago.

He, of course, came upon our same tea pot. With a gasp he both appreciated its rare beauty and its flaw with an expert's eye. Using his own spit and the clay he had found, he flawlessly repaired the hole in such a way that from the outside no fracture could be detected.

He was overjoyed for not only could he later sell the pot for a handsome price but as well, that very night, he was planning an adulterous rendevous with the wife of a close friend. A tea ceremony with this exquisite pot would greatly impress the object of his years of craving.

In fact, so excited was the potter, that he scurried almost to the edge of town before he thought to lift the lid and examine inside the pot. It was then that he saw the jagged lumps of his unhardened, untooled work inside. His hand could not reach inside for the repairs so he went over to a large bush bent over a creek and broke away a branch. With the help of such a digit and repeated dips in the flowing water, the potter easily smoothed out the cavern of the pot.

Unfortunately for the potter he was not as skilled in knowledge of plants as he was in their beddings for he had used the branch of a very poisonous herb. Its deadly sap now a coating over his delicate repairs.

That night, he and his would-be lover met at an old hut near the edge of the forest. The pot was produced to the candle light appraising of seducer and betrayer. Tea was made but no sooner was it sipped when both experienced a violent tremor in their stomachs. Table and chairs were knocked over by convulsing limbs, the pot falling and the repairs breaking away.

Fleeing outside, the man and woman vomited onto the ground in loud retches of pain. Such a noise to awaken a sleeping tiger nearby which leapt out and devoured both, leaving not a trace behind.

The pot lay in that hut unknown for a decade till it was happened upon by a wandering fool, a simple gentle man much like you described your brother. It was at the near eve of the day that the fool discovered the beautiful tea pot; its bottom once again having a gaping hole. This fellow was not, however, so discontented with the flaw as delighted with such a greatness of belonging; his first save the clothes on his back.

With one hand he held up the pot; with the other, he held a small stunned rat he had captured in the hut. Mimicking the motions of some men he had seen in the village making tea( where the custom was to bind the tea in a tied bag and repeatedly dunk it in hot water) he proceeded to raise and lower the rat up and down in the pot; its body going in and out the hole in the bottom.

Now at this moment a sleeping tiger had awoken and was staring at this fool making 'rat-tea'. It was about to pounce on the young man but it became fascinated, hypnotized by the sight of the rat being lowered in and out of the bottom of the pot, for its tail was too long for the body to be enclosed in the pot.

Our fool, having completed this ridiculous ritual now cast the 'rat-tea-bag' away and proceeded to pour tea into his free hand now cupped upward as a bowl. It so happened that the rat fell directly before the tiger who immediately snapped up this tasty grain-fed delicacy. So sated, the tiger fell back to sleep; all the while, the fool drinking in the airs of a profound 'rat-tea'.

Now for two weeks , the young man returned for this ceremony, each time uncovering the pot he had hidden. Once the beloved tea pot was cleaned and polished, the fool would capture a rat. Thus would begin the same ritual and miraculously the same tiger came also to 'tea', waiting always patiently for the toss of a delicious plump grain-fed 'rat-snack'.

Now in the village where this fool lived was a gang of a dozen thugs and gangsters who bullied the entire town into a state of constant fear, extortion and blood money. Though the fool had kept secret his doings, he had mumbled of a 'treasure' and the gang noticed his pattern of leaving the village each evening; returning home hours later.

They decided to follow him to see if, in fact, there was some treasure. If not, the fun of this fellow at the end of their fists would amply reward their trouble.

Coming up to the clearing, the gang watched the young fellow catch a rat and enter the old hut. Out he came again in a moment now carrying the pot and rat. They watched the 'tea-making' ritual barely able to contain their laughter and when they saw the fellow cast away the rat and begin to pour a fantastic brew, it was too much. They emerged from their hiding place in a surge and a roar bent on a fool and his pot.

Unfortunately for them, the tiger, about to partake of his evening pleasure, made the assumption that this threatening mob was intent to steal its daily rat. With a bound it was upon the gang and though there was a dozen of them, they had brought no weapons to hunt only fools.

In hardly more than a twinkling, the gang members were torn in shreds and pieces, their dismemberings strewn as crimson petals around our foolish centre still calm at his tea. None were eaten for the tiger did not wish its appetite fouled by such greasy fare; instead it returned to its plump rat and then fell asleep.

As for the fool, so engrossed was he in his ceremony that he had noticed nothing of the fight , simply tilting up his hand with the sip of a connoisseur as bits of gore had flown above his head.

When he had returned and the gang never did, the village elders tracked the prints of all to the hut the next day. They saw where the fool had sat in the circle of gangly gore.

Here indeed was proof that some demon god does indeed protect both fools and the insane alike!

No questions, no pursuits were ever raised again. The foolish young man now treated with a deference and respect as never before; both for his help in getting rid of the gang and out of caution for his demon-spirit protector.

After a long pause the old monk spoke to the man "What do you think, friend, when so much can be found in one cracked pot?"

The man shook his head "Master, the story is well, but my mind cannot find in its depth any light for my heart. I still have a store and a foolish brother and much trouble between them."

The monk smiled " When you return you must look about your brother's feet with a little less of your eye and a little more of his."

"I still do not understand"

The Master spoke "Tell me, what did your father do?"

"He was a successful actor, even to writing his own plays for his stage. It was with such inheritance of money that the store has lasted this long even."

"Yes, a place to sit to observe the lines of life" smiled the Monk.

"Pardon, Master? I do not understand your meaning."

The monk grinned again "Nothing. In your store you sell the furnishings and luxuries for households do you not?"

"Yes, Master, but how did you know?"

"Your father's house is divided but is not as yet conquered. There is still time to mend all."

The man looked doubtful "What? How?"

"Friend, when you return, do this. Into your brother's hands replace stick with ink and brush. At his feet replace dust with white board. Let him do as he wills but when he is finished and seems about to move away; that is, to start again in the dust , replace the board he has drawn on with a fresh one.

The troubled man rose up " Master, I am not sure I understand but I will do as you bid. What else is there to do, anyway? But before I leave, answer me one question, what ever happened to the fool and the teapot and the sleeping tiger?

The monk did not answer but as the eve darkened the shade of the One Tree threw dark and light stripes across his face. With a cattish gleam in his closing eye and...a foolish grin...the monk simply shrugged his shoulders. As a state of meditation came upon him, the man could see the monk's hands moving in a strange ritual. The one palm held upward, the other hand above it moving rhythmically up and down.

When the man returned to his home, he did as the monk instructed.

The strange yet hauntingly beautiful forms of paintings were left to dry propped up against the store. Very quickly, these paintings were bought at an increasingly more handsome profit.

The paintings' wealth brought an end to care but more importantly they brought no end to the brothers' love.

The one remained timeless and innocent, his happiness equal in his child-like task and in a caring brother's attention.

The older brother just as happy in all this as he marvelled of such care-free genius and its salvation of love.

Soul Searching

"Soul is all things in motion; soul is the language between all things; soul is grasping ungrasping, letting go of letting go, soul is desiring undesire."

Now it came to pass that a very rich man became at an age such that with riches amassed, titles and ranks secured, he began to ponder the emptiness, the unknown of his soul, his own spirits.

For ten years he studied the religions of the world. Building churches, hiring countless oracles, having great teachers travel to himself or himself to isolated revered mystics.

In the words and decrees, through the smoke of incense and whirl of coloured airs, he would sometimes glean a little understanding, a flutter of unworldly wing.

These sensations, these thoughts would not fill the well of his dryness for long however.

One day, after a fit of anger when he had a particularly noxious group of vocals get paid exodus from his home, one of his servants came to him and spoke of an old mystic monk his own uncle had heard of.

This monk dwelt at the edge of the desert, his abode being the shadow of a large old tree where the sway grasses end and the drift of sand begins.

So half in hope, and half to rid his eyes of old views, the man travelled to this monk.

Upon coming to the bent tree, he spied the old monk and without delay immediately sat down beside him and said "Old man, how do I find soul?"

So gentle was the reply that one would have thought it carried on the lips of a soft wind." To find a soul, be a soul."

"Now how can I be what I don't understand? What is soul?"

"Soul is stone."

The rich man replied " You mean to say soul is hard and impregnable?"

"No. I mean soul is not hasty. When the stone is thirsty many years will it take its fill in the stream. When the stone is hungry many years will it perch on the mountain feasting upon the scents of the wind. When the stone chooses to sleep, who can awaken it? When the stone journeys, who can follow its trail? What man's life years are long enough to see the prints of a stone's step?

To be your soul, do not be so hasty."

The rich man nearly laughed so simplistic was this answer but the stern eye of the monk spoke of no foolish riddle.

The monk spoke again " You are hasty because you run to fear. Be still. Let fear come to you."

The monk beckoned him to stay; then the monk

rose and walked out of sight into the desert.

For about a half an hour, the man sat in the shade. Then the flies crept upon his skin, his throat became dry, the wind lessened, thus increasing the heat. He was about to rise when he saw a figure, four legged, emerging out of the close shimmer of the desert's heat.

It was a tiger.

It was too late to run or cry for help to the waiting servants about a mile away. For even as he was contemplating any action, the tiger's breath was yards away. So the man remained perfectly still even as the tiger entered the shade of the bent tree.

Without hesitation, the tiger came right up to the man, sniffed and then promptly curled up and went to sleep right beside the man! It was either oblivious to the man or desired the extra shade he provided!

For eleven and a half hours neither man nor tiger moved. Though the tiger slept, the man did not, the entire time his mind a cauldron of fear, horror, hope, despair.

Suddenly, the tiger awoke, rose and trotted back into the desert; not giving the man even a glance backward.

Weak, exhausted, the rich man stumbled back to his servants. Oddly enough, however, he was drawn to return to the bent tree the next day.

There sat the old monk again. This time as the rich man sat down, the old man put his finger to his lips to signal for silence. Then he got up and walked away , leaving the rich man alone once more.

An hour passed and just as the man was about to rise, the tiger appeared. It slept for eleven hours and then left the rich man alone as before.

For two months , this continued. Each morning the old man leaving silently. Time would pass, the tiger would appear in an hour or three or more or less, each day it varied.

Gradually , however the time between the disappearance of the monk and the appearance of the tiger lengthened. Till one day, the man sat perfectly still for the entire twelve hours waiting for the tiger to appear; that is actually, not waiting any more for the tiger to appear.

A shimmer in the desert sun did appear, a figure did draw closer. This time it was the old monk who passed through and came up to the bent tree.

He sat down beside the perfectly still man and spoke " Hah! What do I see now? A man? A soul? Onto this stone, the rain comes falling within its cup. Onto this stone, the wind brings its feast. And most important to this stone, fear comes but can find no print to follow its track and spring onto the heart!

Return Man-Soul-Stone and sleep in your garden.

The rich man did just that but he found the task not as simple as he thought it would be.

The world of the village was not a world just of tree and tiger, wind and rain. Noise and confusion, interruptions, bedlam interrupted him constantly. The tigers that came upon him here did not sleep.

In despair, he returned to the old monk begging that he be allowed to stay and dwell with him below the bent tree.

The monk shook his head no " No tiger sleeps between two stones, only around the one."

The rich man replied " You are skilled in meditation and no doubt could be still in the teeth of a hurricane. Their noise will be nothing to you. Let us then trade places for awhile that you may have the freedom of a little luxury and I, the freedom of a little hardship."

The monk answered " This is not your garden. You must seed your garden with the sowings of your own harvest. That is what one finds at the heart of all stone."

Reluctantly the rich man returned, the old man's words adding no peace to his misunderstanding.

For awhile he tried again, to be still amongst chaos, but it was of no use.

He contemplated running away but he would always remember what the monk had said about 'running to fear'.

In exasperation one day, as his heart cried out for a single hour of peace, he called all his servants together. He granted all an hour break in the day that all would leave the house for a holiday and thus grant him his one hour peace for meditation.

It worked!

Oh sublime was that hour, when the rich man would gather only the treasure of that silence to the bosom of his home.

He had hoped that from that peace of purchased hour he could dwell at soul's ease amongst the other eleven but it was not to be.

No sooner after the hour when the servants returned, would the hustle and bustle and chaos drive serenity out of the man's grasp leaving only frustration.

Taking a different tack, he ordered no servant to enter his garden for one hour after their return from their break. To there he fled in hopes of having a full two hours of silence.

But alas his neighbours of close-by maintained a continuous rancour of argument; its volume remaining unshuttered from the rich man's ears.

Calling for one of his servants, he demanded to know what was the matter. That these neighbours were as if sticks living amongst drums.

The servant replied that these two were man and wife who quarrelled every waking hour. It seemed that both being somewhat elderly and lacking both outside duty or interest, their eyes had no focus but each other faults. To that feast, their tongues circled like crows.

" Ah yes, I recall them now" spoke the rich man. " Seems to me the old fellow was a bit of a games man when he was younger and the old lady was always the centre of any flower arranging festival." He pondered, then instructed his servant to organize a free chess playing and flower arranging hour in the town gardens. Then the servant was to specifically go next door and request the assistance of the old couple as judges/teachers, with of course, free transportation and lunch provided.

The old couple were both astounded and then delighted with the offer, each accepting with a grace the servant was a little surprised to see them capable of.

Each day then, precisely at the time arranged, as their rich neighbour would enter his garden to continue his meditations, the old couple would discard their blacker looks and set out arm in arm for more lighter judgements.

Thus the rich man had two hours of peace.

From there he would go sit in a small park but at precisely the time at which he sat down, a great mob (or so it seemed to himself!) Of children was let out of a small school. Of course his meditation suffered. Upon inquiries it was discovered that the school hours were so short as there were few books, even fewer supplies to offer any length of knowledge to the children.

The man immediately offered a goodly donation of such that the school was able to buy a good load of books and writing instruments. Even, too, art supplies came into the hands of the eager children.

Oh, to be a giant of the twin eye that in that in that third hour one might see both the soft intensity of a man's unthoughts and the bright candle of a child's eye as both gave their attentions to their arts.

After that third hour, the rich man went elsewhere for meditation.

To a small hill by the river he went, but just below was a mill using the river as both engine and transport for its feast of logs and lumber.

Obviously the whine of the great steel teeth into wooden flesh , of logs tumbling, the raising and lowering of voices and machinery, all these gave the wind a song of nails.

Again inquiries were sent. It seemed the season of the work was short and fierce with the river's swell.

The work toiled by the light of the sun and with the lantern of the moon.

Surely a rich man would understand the roar of commerce and move away from its thrashings. However, one of the rich man's servants was a man of studied mechanics and design and brought to his Master's ears a problem which he had heard mentioned by the workers.

It seemed that a good portion of the river was diverted to move the great wheel through which the mill turned all its muscles. In time this caused a lowering of the river upstream where the logs rode over the lips of the jagged rocks.

Blockage and jams resulted, men were sent out, both a dangerous and inefficient occupation to constantly pry loose the logs.

This servant had calculated that if the mill would shutdown and close the sluice to the wheel even for an hour a day this would give the river time to return to its full rise. In this way this rest would let the river better the wooden burden upon its back. And, too, a lessening of its fill of tragic slips.

The suggestion was carried to the mill owners, who after argument as owners will, were not persuaded to attempt this hour break.

This being so, it angered the rich man that so many in commerce were inert to better ways of both money and men. So, he bought the mill and set up his servant as manager. Changes began immediately to the good including that one hour break.

That hour being assigned at mid-day break when the river was at its ebb, granting the men a needed dinner for the previous owners had forbidden it. Noting the ineffiencies of one hand to the mouth while the other was at the wheel of wooden commerce and so did not allow food upon the work site.

This hour was, of course the same as the arrival of the rich man seeking meditation.

So it was that at such a time, the workers ate, the river rose gently and the rich man across the bank settled into his deeper breaths.

From there the rich man travelled to a park but here he always found that the larks and jays, the crows and gulls, were all in a tumultuous vocal set-to upon each other. Squawks and squeaks, screech and pecks; cry, hackle and uproar; these were not easy bird songs for an ear resting beneath pine boughs.

'What' he wondered 'stirred the creatures so? Was it a prod or stones which flung them into such discourse?'

Again his ever-faithful servant became a wandering eye and the next day reported on what was the cause.

In the hour of his Master's arrival to the park so also came an old beggar woman (or at least dressed so).

Despite the meagre of her habit and diet she found enough crumbs amongst her own crumbs for the birds. Being only a little, the offering each day did in fact result in all these flocking squabbles.

The old woman stuck to this offering because in her religion, dead ancestors or relatives often returned as animals to visit with their loved ones left behind. She believed that some of these birds were indeed the frolicking, rambunctious spirits of two of her sisters who had passed away due to sickness at a young age.

At first a solution seemed easy enough. Give her enough coin that she could buy ample bird seed for all. There was , however a danger of crime to consider. Knowledge of her new wealth in the Market would easily lead robbers into her path. She would be harmed. As well, how was the old woman to drag about ten or fifteen pounds of seed to the park every day anyway? Bones have broken over such thoughtless generosity.

Then it occurred to the rich man that he could daily have a servant bring enough bird feed to the park for the old woman to hand out?

Surely then if there was more than plenty, the birds would not make such a raucous?

Then the rich man thought 'Why a servant, why always a servant? What do the rich lose that there is always another set of hands between theirs and the society?

Why is money always thrown where perhaps the heart is unwilling or afraid to go?'

'Define charity' he wondered. 'Is it a bridge? Or a wall? Here we have a man seeking a spiritual path, should not that path include some kind of sharing...a sharing of something with others?

What of the old hermit? When he went to see him, did the old hermit shun him and demand he leave immediately so as to not weave a disharmony into a tapestry made of silence and grass?

Perhaps he should get the seed himself, offer it himself, then meditate.

This was a novel thought to the rich man. Though not unkind or cruel to his fellow beings, he had spent all his life either in the markets making wealth or using servants to help control that wealth. He did not view everyone as a 'means to a gain' but admittedly, if they weren't...than well....they hadn't been of much interest to him. He did not treat the common man with disdain but he had not been unable to consider any real value outside of gold.

Until, that is, he had begun this spiritual awakening, this new journey. On that path, however, he saw that he had used the 'money means' to pursue that. It was not really false to try and buy the best teachings but it had been an error. Gold does not exclude soul but it cannot hold it either.

He remembered the old hermit and how unlike so many, no coin had been exchanged. The rich man realized he had not even thought of doing so let alone insult the hermit with it. Their dialogue had instantly left that world behind, he had never thought of it again.

So the rich man gave this problem a little of his money but more of himself this time.

Though he did 'fib' he couldn't very well tell the old lady he was offering her bird feed to get her flock to shut up long enough for him to meditate an hour.

She might move away instead and after all, it was a public park. Did his 'insights' demand everyone else 'out-of-sights'?

And, too, she might be offended.

That bothered him more. It did not seem right that a 'spiritual path' should tread upon innocent toes.

'One must' he thought ' be willing to argue and stand up for one's beliefs but that is a different thing.'

His own path had taken so long to begin, was even now at times such a fragile thing. Why would he wish to inadvertently or deliberately cause another to lose their own way?

But also for his own growth he realized that to be one hundred percent sure of his own path would not allow him to grow.

One doesn't approach another with the idea of 'picking their soul' for tidbits but one does approach with something.

He realized he had approached the old hermit with something...doubt. Not necessarily doubt about spirit or god or soul or whatever but doubt as an open mind. He was not closed. He would not call it...not complete for that suggests there is a goal , something towards completion. That is one is un-whole before completion.

He already felt whole. What he also felt was...wonder. He sought to discover spirituality but seemed to be discovering all kinds of other physical, mental and even worldly stuff.

And everything he looked at...or felt..had a sense of some wholeness to it, yet, also a sense of continuum.

Like a day. Or a sunset. Orlaughter. or a task. Whole. Yet continuing.

Doubt in his own daily conclusions allowed him to wonder....and wander forward.

Doubt had become an exercise of opening and re-opening his mind the way the hands and arms move in tai-chi.

Thoughts, conclusions, theories, meditations, probings , writings...moved in and out of his mind like...breathing.

Somehow Doubt seemed to be the lungs for this.

So he had approached the old woman not in doubt that she was wrong about her sisters' souls but rather doubt as to his conclusions of what is or isn't logical or possible.

What if there were souls? Being immortal perhaps , being infinite perhaps. Being then a little playful perhaps whose to say that for this old gal her sisters have decided to stay close till she can join them?

Souls may have their own reasons for doing things...just as people do a great many different things.... probably as erratic and puzzling to each other as to the living as well.

He never asked the old woman of her belief though he overheard her many times speak to two special birds by name.

He never asked her of it because there was no longer a need to believe it. He believed her. Her belief became his by inclusion of their friendship. Love does not separate a person from what they truly are in their own wholeness.. He had heard it said that 'If you are in harmony with someone than your circle of beliefs must grow large enough to include their circle of beliefs as well.'

Everyday he brought the feed. She never asked why. Probably assumed he was an odd character like herself who just liked birds for his own reasons.

Sometimes he would help feed the birds for a little awhile, then go off not far, and meditate while she carried on. Most times he stayed.

Reality was that the gentle casting of seed, the soft clucks and coos , the gentleness of his friend's words, the personalities and peculiarities of each species and each bird in that species hypnotized him.

"Not really hypnotize" he thought " but an hour or so of gentle feeding and motion and contact between beings makes time both slow and fleeting.. When the hour is up, the bag is empty, yet, it seems as if I have only taken a single breath. Yet in that breath there is an eternity held for a moment; the way a small waterfalls can appear still and shimmering before your unfocused eyes.

She always thanked him each time on behalf of the birds, he accepted such with grace though at first it was hard not to mumble objections about it being nothing.

One day at that reply from him, she replied " Before you came I had so little for them, it seemed to be nothing. With your appearance, there is now contentment inside my soul for them. I knew that as birds they would get food anywhere ; they would not starve because of my meagreness.

But my lonely heart would not bear to see the bond weaken between them and I. So I prayed. For something. Now I have that bond and our bond ,my friend, if you don't mind me calling you that. I know so little of you. I see by your clothes that you are wealthy. I say that not because I want any charity for myself. I need nothing for myself truly. Want you have already done here is a great thing for me.

But I would wonder why a rich man comes daily to help an old woman with her birds?

Then I remembered that I prayed and you came. I wonder then if you prayed and I and my birds appeared?

It does not matter. Everyday, you came was and is a miracle. Someday you may not because of your time or other things. Don't worry. I still pray. Not to make you come everyday but that you are able to come everyday wether you wish to or not. If you never come again I want it to because someone needed you more and you were able. Even if that someone is yourself."

From the park the rich man moved the village square. Here, however, silence was drowned by the creaking of ropes and pulleys, the thudding of wood against stone , the splash of falling echo.

For here was the village well and here around it was the continuos labours of up and down buckets in the long deep stone hole. Here was gathered the necessary daily water for each home by the inhabitants.

Though the rich man could not completely lower himself into an oblivious state, he could , at least study the scene calmly.

A breath very slow, then brushing mildly out his mouth, his lips the oval of a soundless flute. As he did so he pondered that such noise as he heard came out of an unnatural pursuit. Water does not flow uphill. Spirit is not so easily reversed in its course. Sometimes, however, with a little nudging, a gentle hold for a brief time is often fruitful. In the way the wind is briefly diverted through a man.

In the hills coming towards the river were many small streams of a purity equal to the well. This being true as their source is as distant as the well's from human contamination.

A little nudging by small dams placed in the mountain and the contours of the hills could empty this water to a holding place. For Up easily comes down and can even be 're-directed' a nudge as it does so.

For that plan, the trunks of a certain pulpy tree found in the valley could be used. For its centre is easily removed leaving a flexible shell which remains water tight. Sewn and caulked together, these logs made a long flute to bring the music of water down to the village.

Through the day the pipe was allowed free-flow; at night, the tank allowed fill.

The cork popped, the splash came; laughter, dance and mud circled the new town 'well'. Within the next day, the noise fell away to the easy filling of a bucket. The old creaking days of labour were not missed and the rich man, of course, having purchased a drink of deeper spirit once more.

An hour in the centre of the town at that time grew rather hot so the rich man decided to move away to an empty lot. Here was a tree of thick greenoffering the rich man shade, comfort for his meditation. It was, however, abandoned of silence. For at the same hour there would gather upon the lot, a religious sect, though poor in means ,they were rich in faith. At this hour they would assemble in the lot, begin their worship and in soft vocal chantsrevolve in circles in both group and individual journeys. This flow of eddy within eddy all the while accompanied with the tinkle of bells, the slight echo of drums, the whispers of wind upon silver strings. Now at first the rich man admonished himself that such a soft throat of god should hardly break upon his own meditation. In fact, he felt it should enhance the depth just as the murmur of the cool stream lengthens the sensation of filling draught.

But this in fact was just the fault. When the travelling hermit thirsts for mountain snow, it is the music of the cool descending dream in the valley which becomes his temptation, his enemy.

What would he do? Buy the lot and have the sect caned from his peace? Answer yes to the lonelier pages of his soul and join the circles of community, that being a comfort without the frightening steps of spiral? Take up his shadow and flee elsewhere ? Fleeing as a refugee from the War of peace against peace?

This time it was the elders who came upon him for they had noted the strain that their Faith had given cause to.

" Reverend Sir" they spoke " We see the intrusion that our services have caused. A noise into the ears of such a holy one as thou. We know we are as rude children playing near the mouth of an immortal's cave. We beg forgiveness that our path should stumble such graceful feet but there are so many places that we have been driven from.

Our sect is old , but unloved, for it decrees peace above duty, charity above taxes, grace above following, love above fear. We look to God for our sole and soul authority seeing Man's gold and sword only as the waning and waxing of moons.

These are motions set by a Hand long before history leaned against the Wheel. We worship the Hand not its motions. We do so by emulation of the motions thus seeking the ever caress of the Hand.

Thou seeks the heart, the eye, the mind of the Hand.

What are we but 'small birds dancing in the dust'? That is our way , a good way. Our circles around you hold a great Crane from flight. That is not as it should be. Sparrows must scatter before the lift of white clouds of wing. When the Crane holds breathless its wind to save the sparrows, how will the rain come? How will the earth drink; the tree cup its wine; the stream grow pregnant with living? Will not then the sparrow die? We shall depart and give to you the Great Emptiness you could not purchase from us."

The rich man replied " This is a dilemma and perhaps here is the answer. I will purchase the lot and build you a church to worship within. I will have my tree, you will have a roof and the walls will grant us a separation in silence...."

Even as the rich man finished the sentence he saw the folly of such a remedy in his heart and their eyes.

The Old Ones answered " Sparrows do not sing so well in cages though their masters can hear them better. Nor do true hermits keep them there. We go. You stay. We know this is not a light burden upon your soul. When a rich man thirsts at a well, can the bowl of a kind beggar be lifted careless in his hand? What we have bountiful is faith and we have faith in your hands. Take the bowl of silence, its emptiness, though heavy in gratitude, we do see it makes you lighter in soul."The elders left with their flock, the rich man stayed beneath the tree, the hair fringed at his ears now a little whiter.

He left there after an hour and came back towards the village. He wandered along the streets he had so little travelled before this. For here there were no shops, no business, no arts that a rich man normally entered or sought.

Upon a old sagging bench he sat down and began another hour of meditation but again a noise interrupted. A strange one. Not so much in his ear as in perhaps in his mind. In the way a sound permeates that one cannot locate its source or direction, so discounts its reality at first.

This was like a slow wind, mild but steady. Curving in and out of empty caves or the mouths of jars. Like a breath which never seemed to inhale just perpetually exhale.

The rich man spotted a child across the street. Girl or boy he could not tell, the ragged hair, the dirt streaks masking the facial features. The clothes too, so torn and worn that the gender was lost.

The clothes.

He shook his head. Looked again. The child was not moving. Simply standing; looking blankly

ahead , at him, not at him.

The clothes.

The wind through the holes. Its fingers plucking the ragged edges like the strings of broken harps. In one hole, out the other, like flutes. A wrap of cloth on the head had a piece dangling down to the cheek. The wind fluttered it, lifting it softly up and down with a rhythm. From the hollow of the cheek, from the taut skin, the rich man heard the drum. He could hear the drum echoing so faintly, crossing the street. This was the song he could hear.

The music of this neglect, this poverty, this want.

Still, so still in the cold wind, filling the air, an emptiness, this child.

A jar, an empty jar, wrapped in the fingerprints of the wind constantly looking inside.

This was a song the rich man was pained to hear but no longer because it denied him peace.

In that hour he went home and piling all but a few of his clothes in a cart, he wheeled about the streets giving away all the clothes. To the poor, the neglected, the forgotten.

The wind followed him awhile and then seeing its old instruments being discarded, it took to its more natural trees instead. The children watched it play upon those limbs and could not remember to shudder, for their music came sweetly now from out of their laughter...and their eyes.

The rich man ( a little less so now)returned to that sag of a bench and closed his eyes to meditate.

Time came and went, passing his still form in circles but not disturbing till an hour or so had made its revolutions and came to stop near him.

That new hour brought with itself a new sound. Again wether of the ear or a mind's ear he could not distinguish.

It was the sound of water filing into a cave then emptying again. Just the rise and ebb, no splash, no lapping ripples.

The sound of rain falling into half a cup, the bottom broken away.

It was the sound of sand filling a hole being emptied by the wind.

The motion of reaching, of taking away, it was that sound without anything reached or taken away.

It was the sound of drinking from a cup in a dream.

Again the rich man looked around but could spy nothing which might make a noise.

Yet a turn of the corner, an alleyway pulled at his eyes so he walked to there.

In the shadows just out of the street he saw an old beggar huddled in rags, squat upon yellowed papers.

The larger piece of a broken bowl lay in front of him. The rim of it faced the street, the resulting shadow painting a wholeness which wasn't there.

The old man was hideous; at least, gave to the viewer a scent of hideous for his half shredded hood draped down to his upper lip and thus let the darkness and the shadows of dirt ignite imagination.

His hands moved. Constantly. In a rhythmic motion. One hand was cupped, though empty as if balancing a feast of a few grains of rice. The other hand, a claw, its fingers pinched in the way an eagle might grasp a flea. This hand moved constantly , plucking from the cupped hand to his mouth; to the cupped; to the mouth; to the cupped; to the mouth.

This was the empty filling the rich man had heard. A song sung of no words. The language of a mute begging, pantomiming the beginning and ending of any sense of humanity. Within the next hour, rice, meat, coin filled this beggar's hand as it did also a great many others of the city.

From this work the rich man returned to sit across from the beggar and began again his meditation.

No sooner had an hour climbed with the sun when a new sound seemed to move along the interior of his skull.

The sounds, even echoing in his own mind were still near inaudible. They likened themselves more to strange images than as sounds of a usual form.

A petal falling into dust. A bud broken from the limb. A green stem splintered at the waist. Plucked root reaching back into earth. A yellowing leaf cupped eternally for the rain. The breath of grass, its gasp shortened as it is turned under plow. The despair of branch yet fresh upon the severed trunk; their whispers not so much telling of this end as like the hairs quivering on a wounded hide.

The rich man looked about the street but nothing had the look of spilling this sound towards him.

He began to walk but the sound did not increase or decrease as he moved from his place. It did, however, beg his feet go gently on their soles such that the press of them did not disturb more this sound.

For it seemed this sound could never be stilled but it could be made go softly, go gentle. A flute or a harp let free, dangling into Void only by a tip of a finger or touch of lip, plays also this way.

At a corner, he turned, walked a little more.

He stopped in front of what appeared to be once a warehouse, abandoned and recovered many times for many uses. The sign above its door proclaimed its last: Abode of the Benevolent Hope.

The sign was not a lie, though there were careless jests made of its meaning.

It was a hospital for the terminally ill; the dying of the street.

Its benevolent hope was for the next world, not this one.

It was a passage of some comfort and much dignity, not a prevention.

In the small bit of earth between the door steps and the harder dirt of the street about a half dozen bundle of rags were laying or leaning into the sunshine. Their coughs, their mumblings were being attended by a young nurse, a female dressed in the full gray gown of some Holy Order.

The rich man's eyes swept over the faces coming quickly to rest upon the healthy girl's; the way a rose is noticed best amongst weeds.

He spoke something to her about a donation, upon which she smiled and instructed him to enter the building and ask to see the Mother.

A bodily revulsion came upon him but he denied its urging to leave and moved towards the door.

He had almost entered when the brush of a damp hand stopped his ankle. He looked down into the disfigured jaw of a woman. It spoke " Go with God."

He smiled and nodded, his eyes shifting from her half chin to the door. Upon opening the door, the smell was fetid and corrupt; the light from a few low lamps crisscrossed like long beams supporting the air. The shadows below them were filled with sounds, with neatly separated bundles everywhere. Through this moved the Sisters, carrying food or cups or pots or more rags or prayer books but always carrying words as well.

Almost every step it seemed words passed from their lips into the eyes, these being the hands of the weakened acceptors.

A Sister came up to him to inquire his need. Again he could but whisper of a donation. The sister bade him wait and in a moment returned with the Mother.

If one has ever walked along a country road just the edge of town and there came upon a small cottage which has settled all about it a marvellous garden of ivy and rose and vegetable and herb. Peopled there is an elderly woman amongst the song birds and watering can. She tills in the evening light with the grace of hands gentle with experience; wisdom gathered from life's own sorrows.

She is knelt in this task of prayer to the living as you pass so that you would not think to disturb such peace with your own voice. Yet a bird

changes its pitch at your presence and she knows the difference by years of their song.

Rising up a little, the hand catches the sun at her brow even as you see this face add itself easily into the serenity of the garden. Her smile and her gesture of welcome resurrects all that was ever human in your heart and for that moment you would have believe again that there is some likeness of a good creator in some men, some women. This is such a face which came into his eyes now.The rich man spoke a few words, handed her his purse of money and then turned to go with her thanks in his ear.

She, however, insisted on giving him a tour of their hospital which included two floors of patients and a third floor of kitchen, laundry, chapel and the Sisters' living quarters.

They started at the top floor which the rich man found rather interesting; it being a perfect example of utilitarian efficiency and cleanliness.

As they came to the second floor, the rich man assumed the Mother would simply gesture at its sights from the doorway since it was but a single dormitory the full length of the old warehouse. There were no walls or rooms to separate the many small beds lined up in row after row with a walkway of a foot between all. "Once" she said "curtains had separated the patients but they were in the end needed more for bedding and bandages. It was just as well for they found the patients preferred the open social, though hectic, view of things.

Then taking the rich man by the arm , she led him to each patient, one by one.

Those who could consciously speak thanked him for his gift (word spread easily here esp on the wings of glad tidings) and after such introductions, the rich man could not avoid looking into their eyes.

For the next hour, he looked into dozens, perhaps into hundreds of these eyes. Pain. Anger. Acceptance. Serenity. Fear. Despair. Joy. Blank. Crusted. Closed. Laughing. Weeping. Giving. Soul. Human.

All were human. Though what encased them was near dust, the eyes always remained human. Lit and re-lit again again by that benevolent Hope. Reflection of the true soul. The eyes which shone daily into the dying rekindled that life.

That is charity.

As the rich man left the Benevolent Hope, a damp hand once more touched his ankle.

"Go with God" the wretched jaw spoke again. His eyes came up to hers, they were blank grey; both iris just a blood smear. Totally blind.

Her hand touched his leg again. He knelt down and held it in his two hands. He could think of no words, nothing to say.

Slowly a smile came upon the old woman'sface; at least a physical attempt to smile, he knew it as a smile as her face seemed to change...lighten.

She spoke softly "I hope God is a bit like you."

He walked in soft tears a long long time. Emptying himself. Somewhere finally he sat down to meditate again although he no longer even felt the need. He felt as if every moment, every step, every look or thought was a meditation but not a meditation. He felt now, no separation....he knew he had meditated before to "separate" ...now..... he seemed to seek the world but through , not a veil of meditation, but rather through the clarity of silence where one can really hear the voice of heart, of soul . That voice was not alone his. Others spoke it, sang it, whispered it,...he could only hear his own through theirs. Meditation had not made him hear his own inner peace...it had allowed him to hear the inner language of others, wether at peace or not...that music did not so much calm or sooth him, as awaken him.

Walking he thought on much of this. As he walked, this time no sound, no strange voices came upon him. He settled well into the task but the silence was not a stillness.

The silence was empty in his mind but gradually formed the image of a hand grasping. Before his eyes a hand rose as if emerging out of the street, rooted in the packed dung and foot press of the passing. It did nothing but stay there, the wrist but a few inches extended from the ground.

Some people came walking down the street, the rich man pointed at the hand, telling them to beware this beast emerging.

The people looked and laughed, seeing nothing at the rich man's point but the emptiness of his wits' end.

Thus they trod over the hand, it bending, twisting, laying flat in the way grass rends its spine before the flat lumber of a bear. With that, what it was faded away but for the emptiness in the man's eye only adding to the rising noise of the silence.

When the hammer does not strike the gong but is seen to swing, this is silence emptying itself. The hand began to sway; to move gradually away from the middle of the road.

To disappear, reappear down the road. Not as a moving object but rather like something stationary at sea yet fading in and out of the dawning mist.

Each time he saw it appear, he approached it; then it would reappear further away; guiding him along.

In a little time, he found himself entering a graveyard. A small gathering of souls was off to one corner. The rich man , thinking death itself was the cause of his wandering pursuit, quietly came within the circle of their grieve.

Yet, strangely, upon looking into the fresh grave he heard no 'un-noise', no 'un-silence',like that which had disturbed his meditation.

There was no broken harp within that grave.

Two men stood across the grave from each other. They were obviously brothers by their likeness, both physically and by the loss both bore hidden strangely beneath their faces.

It was between them that the air would not stir for broken strings; silent upon words that could not pass out between resigned lips.

As the burial filled to its completion, the rich man turned to some of the others gathered and asked "who had died here?".

He was told the tale of a good man passing away from a broken heart over his own two sons. Sons who had fought a long time ago over a business transaction; and years of pleas and entreats, even at his own death bed, had proved fruitless for the father to gather his sons renewed as true brothers.

The rich man turned back to the grave side, there now remaining only the two brothers still denying any speech. Yet they remained this vigil, perhaps neither one willing to turn away and rend a final shred of hope; to let fall broken and unrepaired that instrument called love and let it drown into the dead earth.

Between the two of them, the rich man stepped up upon the fresh mound of consecration. Undoing the front of his robe, he made as if to pass water upon the very freshness of their father's grave.

In a mutual shout, the brothers roared and grabbed the rich man; demanding to know the purpose of this detestable crime.

The rich man smoothed out his robe and replied " Over the father, upon this body, let the blows of the brothers unite! For it is said, where hate is sown, hate must reap; only then can the season of love begin renewed."

One brother stalled his own raised fist...and with the first look in his brother's eyes for years...spoke to the rich man " What do you know of our family, did you know our father?"

The rich man replied " I have learned that the sounds of love and hate are never silent even in their silence.

A man; a woman may cover their ears and flee into the lowest valley and there with great sums cover their heads with giant clouds of nothings.

Or a woman; a man may hold a hate ever far in the back of their heart shielding from that view great miles of giving or charity or humility.....

Yet, still the one will hear of the other...the one will be seen of the other...indeed for in this family has the dense earth silenced the father from speaking?...no.....

I do not say of these things to bring upon you shame for shame is only a stick and does not play a high note anywhere.

In any land there is always the best of the musicians and in his or her hands does not one always find the best of the instruments?

Yet, let one string break, remain false and what will the rest hear?

How absurd would it be if this great musician would play to the unheeding of that ever-jarring note, while even a child flinches when it is struck...esp a child flinches.....

Can one speak of 'it cant be fixed' in the hall when all are saying 'why not fix such as it can be fixed' in the hall?

That I myself can hear the broken string is still not good reason for musicians or brothers to re-tighten the strings. After all , first we play for ourselves, or none would begin play towards the true note at all.

Ah, tis only that face of pride then. Do not kick that sad old dog as I parade it in the streets.

How can the Master grin like a sheep, laugh and re-tune away the agonies so simple of his following?

The Shepard is lost and has fled before the needs of the flock. Will he listen to the fox who tells him he is now in the land of the wolves?

To admit a fault is to instantly correct it, just as a listing boat is sound when the rower returns to the centre.

No captain can see this staring into the fathoms.Though sometimes laughter can raise a neck, for that is the second song of the child.

Weep if you must for there always much in the world to weep of. Do not , however dry up there.

Laughter must follow. Laughter like the dog of a tail whirling as a god servant dusting off precious old things, so glad he is of his good Master's homecoming!

Then be wise in your weepings, and be as a child in your laughter, give both well and true....but there is no room in this play for the false solemn of a bent man.

You have both now risen above this strange thing between you even upon your father's death. But the father is not dead , here lives his two halves ...yet with the stranger, Hope, between them.

When the stranger is gone, let not the brothers' hands falter but continue their reaching."

With that the rich man left the brothers; they, in a moment, grasping hands and clapping backs in tears and laughter.

From there the rich man wandered again for a place of meditation in this final hour of his city.

He followed the paths down to the river, then followed the bank to a cool glade shaded by a bridge built high above the fast deep flow.

Settling here he began his meditation but again a disturbance fluttered to his mind. Not a noise, not even an emptiness as an intended noise, this was the whisper of eyes which will speak of anything but this whisper. A gaily lit window through which one can see inside a broken shadow huddled in the corner.

This was the voice of something departing from man, from god, and worse, from itself.

This is the sound a soul makes as it sheds the raiments of its own will and leaves, dissolving into utter void.

Harp strings woven by gentle distant hands, the hands of a ghost pushing out from a breathing body, the white fingers of a task now so purposeful from a once haphazard wring of anguish and turmoil; a noose is made from the sounds of the living; death is welcome like a wreath of repainted woes. A lost self begging to come home yet unknowingly orphaned from any recollections.

`The whisper took his head up, his eyes followed the craftsman curve of timber that held up a wooden road above the watery froth.

There perched as a crimson wrapped crow squatted a young girl. Her eyes were plunged into the beacon of the river's open palms. Her body perfectly still, only her lips trembled between breath and decision.

The rich man rose and came to the bridge.

Selecting a place just away from the girl, he laddered himself up upon the same beam.

She felt the tremble of his ascent, her body tensed to give flight away from his unwelcomed approach.

He did not approach, however. Instead he crouched to give his ears closer to the river's song but his face turned towards the girl.

" Go away" she spoke "leave me alone."

" I shall" he replied " I have only come up to replace you in the river. In a moment this place of bridging shall be all yours again."

A hand pushed some loose wisps of hair from her brow. " What do you mean, replace me? Are you mad?"

A smile crossed the rich face " No, not mad. Just old and content to be of one last use. The path you have taken appears now to demand a life. If it be so, let it be mine. The debt paid, youth is reborn, and better, for it knows karma as a fresh teacher. There can be no despair when the close of the past is opened with chance and the sill dusted clean with experience."

" Your joke is cruel, sir. Is it not enough that I have been driven to this altar, yet even now the shred of that dignity is snatched away by a fool, old at that!"

The rich man gazed at her in full seriousness. " No. I do not jest. Where there is grieve in the court the jester's bangles are held still. For I see by your dress that poverty does not break such a young heart; nor by your empty hand has some cruel marriage driven your spirit into this nest.

Only love can do such as this. That I guess. But love can undo what it has done. If given time. Your steps have led you to the end of this path, if you believe that fate is irrevocable, then I shall feed the yaw of that karma; plugging its appetite from your own descent."

She shook her head " But this makes no sense, the beginnings are mine, the path was mine, the end shall be mine. What good will it do now for you to thrust yourself before me?"

The rich man held up his hand " You are right, but the dying can ask favour. This I ask of you. Merely that in that time that my old body shall barter from karma, you retread your steps to the place of such as this unavoidable ending. There to take the left if this is the right fork or to take the right if the left led to this place."

She looked out further down the river " It is of no use. The results will be the same, this ending must come."

" No matter. Does the comrade in arms debate the future of another even as he steps forward to take the spear thrust intended for his friend? Does he know wether that friend will live a minute, an hour, a full lifetime of the wars?

No, instinct has no reason; love is a reflex from something nobler than the logic of a market.

The gift is given; being priceless, it has no cost. The taker is free to waste or not, the giver gave for chance, not certainty. That is what an old man has learned after a life of too little love."

She looked again at the rich man, "Perhaps you are as you say, you seem earnest in your kind. Yet listen, old man, it is no use. Your life is only one, I am two. I am with child."

"Then I shall jump twice. Once for you. Once for the child."

Anger rose in her face, she was sure now of his mockery.

"No. No. Wait" he pleaded. "I can swim a little. Perhaps I will live for the first time for can I deny the reflexes of my will to survive. But I promise that if fate beaches me the first time, I will crawl to its teeth again. I will not survive that with my old limbs."

"This is nonsense" she replied. "I have told you that I am with child. But without husband. Without honour. Soon to be without home or parents. What can I do to retrace such a path? There are places a woman crosses which provide no return, there are some she would not even if she could.

The father of this child is an orphaned servant and though I love him, marriage will never be for my father and my brothers would kill him. Flight with him yields the same. They would find him. To await the obvious signs of our forbidden love would surely result in as like a horror, for my family would torture all of the servants till the secrets came out.

I love him, old man. He does not know I am here. He thinks we are preparing to fly. But I know it is useless. My family is too powerful to be denied revenge by distance and disguises.

If I jump now, he will live. Sadly, yes. But live nonetheless.

It is as you say, I shall take the spear thrust of karma. And give onto my love; his life."

The rich man paused in a thought. "What of a nunnery, then? And your young man flee into a monastery? Surely there is safety there?"

"Safety!" She choked a half cry. "Yes, safety, but what of the living? For without inheritance or dowry no nun can keep an illegitimate child. If I had the faith that my family would do right by the child, I would offer my son or daughter onto them, but I fear they would at best ignore it or worse, do it great harm.. How could I live with both the love of a woman and the love of a mother separated by an eternal gulf of unjust walls.

What woman would throw her child into such an abyss both motherless and fatherless?

"No, this is the way. If there is god and if that god forgives, I have soul and the child has soul. There, beyond, death will suffer at least no wall between mother and child. I will have only to wait a single lifetime for a completeness of heart".

The rich man replied, "Then I shall give my life for the child's father."

"Why do you say such? What good is that? Your death will do nothing to hold the patriarchal revenge."

The rich man grinned, "But who said I must die!? Perhaps I should be clearer to say I shall give life to the father's child. Give life as a father to a son."

The puzzled girl replied, "How can this be so? Cease these riddles, old man, for there is something in them that tastes of hope. That morsel cast is a cruel falsehood in this hour of resolve."

"No, No. Not cruel. Not false. I am rich. Wealth grants a power, right or wrong, which is not easily coined with.

I know you as a noble young lady. Your speech, your bearing above death for the life of another tells this.

Can what you love be less than that noble? And even if it is not so, which I doubt, what of it? Time can elevate as well as heal. And if instead it flounders, what of it? I shall have gained two lives as was my original attempt."

"But... how Sir, what do you mean?"

"I shall adopt your young man as my son. You can marry and live in any splendour or solitude as you and your husband and of course your child desire."

"But my family, I doubt I could ensure their consent."

The rich man looked at her a trifle stern. "Now woman, er if I may, Daughter, the very will of your love did not ask of the social convention to journey this far. Life and deaths hang in the balance. Shall you now weaken at a wrath which I divine has helped to drive you to hang over a bridge rather than cross it?"

"But their revenge...?"

"What of it! Throw those thoughts into the river. If I were to simply use my money to hide the both of you, then maybe they may dare to steal such away; for that is the business of such business.

But when a man openly before all gives life onto his own son, no one shall dare interfere. For they know the result of such would be a wrath both eternal and terrifying as well as fully in justice. Nor can they revenge the stealing of their daughter since she is only my daughter-in-law, it is their choice only wether she is lost to them. This is as much a choice for me as for thee my daughter; for death was an answer to my loneliness and I was ready. Now fate turns from there and grants me a little more time, perhaps even, oh marvellous thought, to call a child 'grand' in my own weakened arms.

For that turn, like a traveller who is more beguiled by the view than a destination, I can only answer why not?"

Joy was embraced between the old and the youth. They left the bridge and walked easily in the whispers of their happy plans.

A few years passed after the tears of the bridge, the heart of the rich man was filled with a son and daughter-in-law, and of course, the constant spoiling of a grandson.

The peace and joy he now knew turned his thoughts at times back towards the old monk. One day he returned to express his gratitude. As he came upon the bent tree, he saw the monk sitting in his poise of contemplation.

The rich man bowed and sat before him. He could hardly contain an outburst of gratitude but out of reverence he waited for the monk to speak first.

After a little time, the monk did speak. "Peace has grown another acre."

The rich man replied "Yes, Master, I am grateful. Yet, I am still puzzled. I sought to flee from all the world, yet in that stillness, I regained much much more of that world, how is this so?"

The monk replied, "An empty heart is not the same as an empty mind. The lack of something does not create nothing, but rather becomes a greater lack".

The rich man pondered, "But how does an empty mind gather what the empty heart yearns for?"

The monk answered, "When the belly is empty, it is full of itself; this is a different ache than when the belly is full and empty of itself."

"But how do I know if the ache is of the mind or the heart?"

The monk shook his head a little. "When you have something in your right hand, do you call the left hand full? Above rock is mud; above mud is sea; above sea is sky. So, too, above body is emotion; above emotion is spirit; above spirit is mind. Do not look for birds with your feet; neither should one assume the sky contains rock."

On this, the rich man pondered but he could get nowhere. Finally, the monk spoke out of pity. "When you first came here, your mind knew only fear of itself. It was that turmoil which incessantly broke upon any silence. Over time that fear of itself both awakened and slept, as if a hand opening and closing. In such a way, that exercise strengthened and gave trust to the mind's grip upon silence, upon its own self.

But that is not the way of the heart. Out of the serenity of calm, the heart does not reach within itself but will always reach outward to grasp all to itself for the heart is a place of community; of man within men.

Just as one would say, hate brings no peace, so too one can say, stillness must yield love.

When one speaks of a 'holy person' one knows the cradle of their peace, their palm of their love.

This is as a ying and yang. As the mind reaches 'in' , the heart reaches 'out'.

This motion of sky into sea into mud into rock is as mind through spirit through emotion through body. This is a circle much the same as breath. This motion is called soul: Soul is of each part and is the whole of all. The heart uses body to act. The mind uses spirit to will.

There is an old saying:

The farmer is asleep;

the ox content

with their yawns of full hay;

Now is the time to steal

into the barn

and set the yoke free!

Tell me, Friend, what do you think these things are?"

The rich man answered "The farmer runs the show but is now at rest, in meditation so to speak, so that must be the mind. The ox are full, at peace, that must be heart. The barn is body and the yoke which binds heart to mind that is spirit or will".

"Good. What comes in and sets the yoke free?"

The rich man curled his brow "I do not know, Master, tell me."

"Soul".

Martialing The Art

Now it came to pass as the old monk gazed out into the heat haze of a mid-afternoon, that a young man came across the long grass. Walk he did not but rather his form of advance was done as some form of exercise of martial forms.

Kicks, jabs, thrusts, cart wheels, somersaults and flips; his hands and feet all a blur like butterflies orbiting a cloud at the centre.

As the young fighter came near to the bent tree his show was paused by the appreciative applause of the old monk, something rare indeed!

The young man bowed humbly or at least in the form of it and expressed gratitude.

He then inquired if the old fellow knew the whereabouts of a certain monk who was said to be a disciple in the fighting art called ' the paw of the sleeping tiger'?

" Why?" came the reply.

The young fighter was a trifle annoyed, being unused to anything but a respectable, even servile attitude by most in his presence. He spoke a little quicker " I have come to challenge his skill against mine that I might know which is better?"

"Know what is better?"

" Old fellow, goad me not. Just tell me of the whereabouts of this monk if you know of him. I've no patience for the idleness of a toothless banter."

The old monk indeed did grin without the necessity of ivory " Oh, I know where he is, but he'll not fight even a lame locust without my nod. I'm afraid even you must make sole application with your mind, not your limbs, to receive what you treasure."

"Very well then" and the young fellow sitting down beside the old monk under the bent tree.

The old monk spoke first" How does one defeat a mountain?"

"Climb it!"

The old monk stirred a little dust with his heel "But has it not been said that the man who climbs a mountain is but a little stone perched on a larger one?"

" But the climber has elevated himself, tested himself. To his success."

" The world is as a lever, my son. When an end is found, another is lost. Up yields down. Tell me: while the man goes up, does the mountain sink down?"

The young man pondered. " No. For they do not meet. It is the climber which catches up with the mountain."

" Then if the climber stopped, sat still, would the mountain continue to run away?"

The young fellow threw out his hands in disgust " Look old man you are just being an ox with these words. Chewing them this way and that. It makes no difference. I say I defeated the mountain by climbing it, what do you say?"

" Hmm" came a reply " What is a mountain made of?"

" Rock. Stones."

"How many" asked the monk.

" Eh? Well, many, countless, I suppose." the young man retorted.

" Ah, but that is a desert. Many pieces. What is the difference between the mountain and a desert?"

" That is easy, old fellow. The pieces of a mountain are held together, the pieces of a desert are not."

" You are quite right, little son. The wish of a mountain to be a mountain holds all the pieces together. When the mountain no longer wishes to be a mountain, it becomes a desert."

" No" shook a young head "What of the wind, the rain? They wear away the mountain, do they not?"

"Tools of the mountain, my friend , not the desert's...these things are guided by the wish of the mountain, not the desert ; for the desert doesn't even exist yet. The desert is only the grave of the mountain, not its defeater."

" What are you saying? Is nothing defeated unless it wishes to be?"

The monk smiled " So much of this word, defeat. Little enough of life is an actual combat, my young warrior. Say instead: changed, transformed as it wishes to be. If a mountain is a string of stones so too is a man a string of his own likenesses.

If you were to combat the stone mountain, you may succour a few stones; so too in combat with a man; one, wether in defeat or not, is simply extending generosity to the wisher."

The young man argued " Ridiculous. The man is down. I am not. Like the mountain climbed, I am above him."

The monk shrugged " He was up. He is down. You are up. Are you more? Is he now less?"

" Yes. Defeat is such in all things, of man or not."

The old man shifted to a cross-legged poise " I am sitting, am I less than when I am standing?"

" But you have chosen to sit. That is a different thing than being forced by another to sit."

The old monk nodded " Choice is an excellent word. Say to come upon you was a weak chubby of a fellow. This fellow has the wind of a broken stem,the poise of an empty sack, the speed of a mother-in-law's praise. Nonetheless, he demands of you, combat, in such a way that you must oblige if only from exasperation.

In seconds, he is down. He, untrained, unskilled, was defeated. Who defeated him, his own insistence or your skill?"

The young man replied " You cannot argue that I defeated him because I was better."

" Or he defeated himself by ensuring he was worse!"

" Ha!" came the young retort " Who speaks of defeat now?"

The old grin came " True, you have me there but let us say the challenge went another way. This weak slouch demands the test of who can bear a wild boar on his back to cross the river? The rule being the boar must remain living! Tell me, young limbs, how many days do you think it will take to catch such a beast and accomplish this thing?"

" I doubt it can be done, old man, at least, not without nets and traps."

" So true. In a way. But even a journey of only a hundred steps has a hundred ways to go about it. While Industry roams the hills, Slow has a long since meandered down to the river ( for that is the way, the Eager look at the start, the Lazy wait for the end.)

Hot being the day and cool the kiss of the river, Slow wanders out to the middle between some rocks and sits down. His idle eyes watch the currents, the weeds, the small fishes, his own naval.

So still, in fact, that a boar leaping from rock to rock to cross the river uses Slow's back as a stepping stone as well!"

The young man shook his head " But that is a fate. Luck could have helped me just as easily."

" Ah, true, but you said YOU defeated the mountain. How much was you? How much was the mountain? How much fate? How much luck?"

The young man answered " All right, but, nonetheless it was I who solely rose up the mountain."

" Or the mountain tucked its shoulder under you and lifted you up!"

The young man shrugged in annoyance " What difference does all this nonsense make anyway?"

" Just this. Look at this bent tree. You could climb it but remember it is the strength of its limbs which holds you up into the sky, not yours. When you fight a man or a mountain or a tree or a thought or a fate or a tear it is its strength which raises you up not your own. Do not speak of defeating these things for they will remain as they are before, and after, your encounter.

For a time they must change. To raise you up or down or along your way. But then after they are unchanged. If they are unchanged, then you too must be unchanged.

This is not a riddle. The man in the tree will be the man before and after the tree.

If he goes up the tree and comes down the tree, can it be said that he defeated the tree? When the tree held him up?

Yet, you can ask, who is the man after the tree compared to the man before the tree?

Did you not say yourself that there is a difference in will between a man who chooses to sit and a man knocked down?"

" I did but you have argued that the man knocked down did in fact choose such by some pre-arrangements."

The monk nodded " Indeed, yes. So the man in the tree is the result of the will predetermined by the man before the tree. It is most important to understand that there is an exchange of place between the tree and the will.

If the man climbs up the tree then climbs down or if the man climbs up, the branch breaks and the man falls down neither the will nor the tree are particularly astonished. For all such was expected in possibilities before the man even came upon the tree!"

The young man questioned " if it is known, why bother?"

" Because it is not known."

" But you said..."

The monk interrupted " That it was expected. This is not to say" known. It is not known until the will changes places with the tree."

The young man looked very puzzled " What does it mean for the tree to replace the will?"

" Not replace, my son, change place. To say 'replace' suggests that something that was no longer is; to say 'change place' suggests the same things look at each other from different corners of the room.

As in the tree and the man; where the man has climbed up, does not the man have the view of the tree; the tree, the view of the man?"

" In a sense but what..."

" When you defeat the man, have you not exchanged places?"

" Certainly not." retorted the young warrior " I..."

The monk interjected " But coming upon him were you not in earnest for combat to proof your skill? And is not that which is unproven or untested less in your view than that which is proven?"

" Yes. The difference between an unhoned sword and a tested one."

The old fellow grinned " Perhaps. Or perhaps like an uncut gem; the beauty, the rarity as much in the hands of the cutter as in the eye of the jewel! No matter.

Being unproven, then proven, then re-unproven, then proven, again and again, is not your skill like a family heirloom which becomes precious or forgotten in an ever cycle of inheritance , treasured or indifferent by the possessor....having little to do with the treasure itself?"

The young man pursued " What do you mean?"

" The son hates the father, would he treasure his father's chair? A child adores the grandmother,

tell me, will her ring be cherished? A loved brother is lost at sea, will his pipe left accidentally behind at home be thrown into the rubbish? Ah, but will the boots of a tyrant be?

Your skill shall pass through many places, many hands, many limbs, a thousand hooves of the boar.

That being so if you come upon all such places as in the 'state of unproven' when shall you ever be proven?"

The young fellow replied " when I have defeated each one at that moment I am proven."

The old monk shook his head " No. For at the moment of defeat, the thing is done and the will moves on to the next place. Thus upon defeating one, you are instantly unproven for the next."

" What of this?" I have defeated the one, thus I am proven yet having not tested upon the next I am also unproven to it."

A grin crossed wrinkled cheeks " Proven of one, unproven of another; does that not assume the latter is more than the former?"

The young fellow smelled a trap and evaded with " Not necessarily so. Some things ahead might be lesser than those left behind."

" Then your skill could be becoming less and less from the first encounter of your unproviness!"

The young fellow objected " But surely one knows..."

The old man interrupted with a lift of his hand " The only way one would know is to watch all things combat all things! Then one would know the order of things in combat. Yet how would you think the stone would combat the mountain; the mountain against tree; tree against stone?"

The young man answered " Which one lasts, lives the longest?"

The monk laughed "Daresay, the coward usually outlives the mightiest warrior! That is no test of skill. Let me ask you a few questions: what if I sat the mountain on the tree?"

" The tree would be crushed."

" And if I planted the seed under the stone?"

" In time, the sapling would overturn the stone?"

" And if I carried the stone to the top of the mountain and placed it upon a steep incline?"

" An avalanche. Half the mountain would come down."

The old monk nodded " All these things defeated each other. How was this done?"

" Different forms of combat?"

Again the monk grinned " Seems to me that a weight of fullness was used or fought against in all cases."

" What of that ?" replied the young man.

" I" returned the monk.

"What?" the young man looked a little disgruntled.

" Through ,I, each thing was allowed to test itself against another self."

The young man replied " But you said I cannot test myself against all things, how can all things teat themselves against me , through me."

The monk "When you sought to test 'self' against all things, the will was as if a net cast into the sea to gather experience.

Now when you haul the net up into your boat will you say ' Look at all there is in the sea?' or must you in fact say ' All this did not escape my net but is this all there is in a sea?'

And how does all the world react to such as this diminished net?

The one in his experience will think to make the net larger, unravelling it. His thinking that the larger the hole, the more it will ensnare! Till he but casts a single thin strand around the world and dreams he has ensnared all!

Another goes the other way, seeing the holes as a lost experience; so he makes the holes of the net smaller and smaller.

His net becomes a small sieve, then a square foot of impregnable, a wall to encircle everything, yet a dense door that leaves his senses closed to even this handful of living."

The old monk looked at the young warrior " Tell me then, Eager Limbs, how would you solve the riddle of seeing all there is in a sea with a net?"

" Looking through the net is as looking at a framed window. One thinks it is the frames which obscure the vision but in fact it is all of the window itself. It is the walls of the window itself, those walls holding up that window which deny the view."

The monk interrupted " So, it is better to have no window?"

" No. It is better to have no walls! Windows are the seducers of the caged, giving an impression of freedoms. Hence one stays within the room. It would be better to have thrown oneself through the window. Then once outside one can see the sides of the house, behind ; all around."

The monk looked pleased " Then the net and the sea?"

The young fellow replied " One should throw away the net and plunge into the sea!"

" Quite true, young friend, but the world decrees experience as plunging into the sea. Yet this differs being beyond the self-experience. How so?"

" Old man , it would seem that the you, I, the world differ in the way of experience by what does the experiencing. Is it : I? Or self? Or will? "

" Perhaps it would seem that self' is to ' I' what 'window' was to 'vision'. The lessor of something is no ally to the greater of that something."

" Self is less than I?" replied the young fellow.

" As foot is less than limb, limb less than body. What has been beguiled, indeed as we see now, cheated, into casting that net, that will for experience is indeed, Self."

" But old man, what is Self that is so less than I? For that matter, what is I as this greater than Self?"

The old fellow answered "For example look upon the burning candle. Call wax: body. Call flame: I. Call wick: Self. If

the Self is too far from the wax, the flame cannot sustain itself. If it is too close, the flame drowns in the liquid Body.

Harmony achieves light. Indeed if you peer quite closely you will see the foot of the wick is very much as the pool of molten wax. As you go up, the wick darkens, charred. Near the tip begins a fiery glow which ultimately passes into the flame. Being in its use: pure , these imperfections are of the wick to make its 'wholeness' , its perfection.

Thus too is a Self bridging between body and I in such that I is sustained by body."

" But, old man, to digress. Does this mean that 'I' ends with body as a candle's light ends with the consumption of its wax?"

The old monk smiled across his distant eyes. " 'I' is a thing of flame and, therefore, a thing of light. The flame ends. But has the Light which has been sent forth in the life of the candle ended?"

The young man answered " It is something yet, included in all light."

The old man nodded. " And remember , too, the source of the waxen body. Think also of I in another sense. It is not the traveller. That is the Body. 'I' is the Road. Upon it Self travels from the beginning to its end."

The young fellow interrupted " You said Body was the traveller, how is this now Self as the traveller?"

" Self is the seeing, the vision, the experience, of the traveller as is Body the physical means of that travel. Without Self the body travels blindly, yet nonetheless upon ``I``. Just as the cat has body and I but no Self.`"

" Self ends?"

The old man answered " Does not the journey end? Yet if one looks back has the Road ended? My journey upon it is done yet Road remains."

The young man questioned " Is this then reincarnation? That many selves travel the same 'I'?"

The old monk shrugged " No, it is not reincarnation , though many selves will travel the singular ' I'. Even as an expression is 'seen to happen , felt to happen, remembered to happen', there is already three 'selves' on that one foot of the road.

What is to be known is that the Road leads to the tree, up the tree, down the tree, away from the tree. Then has not 'I' already experienced the tree as the tree has experienced 'I' as well?

Self will come IN TIME and experience the tree. Self is that traveller in time, 'I' has no such confinement."

The young man pondered " Why must self experience or see what I has already experienced?"

" When Self has only an obscure, vague sense of I, let alone the knowledge of 'I' , how can this be otherwise?

Thus as you say, the Self is chained to the 'proving', it must measure its travel solely in moments of proven worth or defeat. Self by haphazard presume will find its own stick to detect the shift of landscape. For you, it is the flesh of combat, for others the skin of gold, or the scraps of power.

Self has no sight beyond this experience, that is, its focus remains in the 'proving' moment, and each of these moments pushes up against the other, after one after one after one like the breath of waves upon a belly of sand.

The sensation, the vision, will it not become the cast of just one long smear across the eye; of an unrisen day; how does one compare gray to gray? Shadow to fog?

If Self must prove itself, it does so in this grayness, what can ultimately the proof be but to prove itself alive again and again.

In a room of total darkness, there are only two ways to determine a living state.

The first is of Self: motion.

A great sister of mine once said of this " Come , be ready to beat on your own tin plate fiercely". **

** M.M.Germain

You would call it the mind of a madman that would to hear his own living breath, that would collide from wall to wall to know the motion of his undeath, that ritually slaps his own face to ruminate the path of consciousness. Yet this motion in that darkness of the living proof of Self. What is that man in the tree? What are you in that combat? Does it make any less sense to better your fist against a man, against a tree, against a mountain?

What is this test of wills, where you say a defeat is not desired?

Have we not said that will is the urge of Self for this experience, this incessant proving?

Thus to say things exchange places is to say that each Self exchanges will at the meeting place.

That things remain after the exchange is now understood.

For the Selves are again each in its blindness of unproven whereas the 'I' of each is laid across the eternity exactly as it has always been!

Nothing has changed!

Can such a thing be called a test when the master tears up the results and will not return to the school? What does the foolish pupil do but wander to another school? And another?

Is this learning?"

The young man held up his palm " Old fellow, I see a little of what you argue. Yet I am still confused between this 'self' and this 'I'. Are they at odds with each other?"

The old man replied " Self can defeat I just as charity can be destruction of dignity, yet compassion can raise up the humiliated.

We have said Self is the bridge between the Body and the I. The Body has in itself no evil though it is assuredly: imperfect. It is called imperfect because like all natural bodies it will decay and die. It is destructible. Yet it is of no evil since as the tree or the tiger it is in perfect harmony, exquisite balance with the Natural.

For by its construction, its destruction, it is both created, then reabsorbed by the Natural. This is harmony as much as the music which leaps from the string, resounds the ear then dissipate into Void. Without the destruction of the note, no harmony is created.

'I' knows nothing of death.

Body knows nothing of death at least the assumption of time and death. Body knows only survival, an urge balanced with other social or domestic instincts.

But Self, as bridge, knows of death, yet only a little of I, a little of Body.

Self is as if a bridge between two banks so far apart that a traveller has only vague distance outlines of either as they stay between. It is as if the wick of a candle was a hundred feet between the flame and the wax!

Self in its near darkness, confused as the protector-will, hears only a noise of death which will drown all out!

This then is that ' charity' of self-will, its wings beating heavily to lift like a kite strung to a tree.

Here is the imbalance which yields the source of all evil, all trouble in the man-self

world.

We must always remember that unlike the confused wailings of man-Self, the Body does not fail in Death, it succeeds.

It seems at first an absurd statement yet : All things are free to live, and free to die.

The fly dies in a season, the man in 70 years, the turtle in 300, the tree in 600.

Who decides this but the fly, the man, the turtle, the tree?

When we give Choice, we give Power.

Body knows nothing of death, yet it contains, carries that death, its own death. It chooses to die. For by its nature it could choose to regenerate. For cannot shin heal, bones mend, muscles reform, blood clot...yet the body chooses not to replenish indefinitely."

The young man looked doubtful " Is not death imposed upon the body, how is such a thing... choosing?"

The old man replied " You would call death, a defeat? Just as the man whom you fought and knocked to the ground, you call: defeated?"

The young man answered " But just as you say the man knocked down is the man choosing to be unprepared, is not the body likewise with death? Death comes upon a body unprepared?"

" Unprepared? For what? For the living or the dying? The body unprepared for the living ,diesor the body unprepared for the dying, dies?"

The young man shrugged "Which then?"

The old fellow shrugged back " Cannot a thing be both prepared and unprepared? Like sleep, a thing is done but need not be remembered. The thing is done, and if done well need not be redone. It may be forgotten even. When is the last time you 'remembered' how to block an attack?"

The young man answered " I do not know the last but I would be defeated upon the next. In martial arts one does not remember to block...one just does it without conscious effort even."

" Exactly. The body has prepared its death. It has done this well for surely it has never been defeated in that destiny. Thus it forgets it will die. In that sense it is as unprepared as the man who is greeted by an old friend on the day they had agreed to meet over a year ago. He is surprised but then only so at the forgetfulness of his own memory; he had prepared then allowed himself to enjoy a long relaxing period of unpreparedness.

For if you, like the man, have an important date fixed ahead, do you spend all waking moments from now till then constantly recalling the date and time? Surely, no. You prepare, then the mind andthe body can go about its other business unprepared.

When death comes it awakens the body to remember.

This is the fruit of that seed sowed by the Body.

Let us look at the other beyond of Self, 'I'.

I knows nothing of death, yet brings death."

The young man looked surprised " You mean I is a corruption of Body?"

The old man shook his head in reply " You say that because you have not seen the river enter the sea, the seed lift from the flower, the dust come down with the wind bearing the mountain back into the earth.

These things are not corruptions. If 'I' brings about such by bringing death than I has brought the beauty of change, of creation into the landscape."

The young man disagreed " No, death is an ending , not a beginning. Creation is a beginning. Death and Creation are opposites."

The old man answered " A mirror creates opposites of the same thing. When you look upon a mirror, you are puzzled to see the opposite of yourself. If you are living, then is it dying?

You cannot call creation only the beginning. For to exist you must allow a little beyond the beginning, some growth if you will, something from past coming, emerging to create: present.

Thus , too, the mirror must have a little more than past into present....present into future, perhaps. What is ahead but Death. But how can you call yourself only living and the mirror only dying?

For if you do, will not the image of death appear each time you step in front of the mirror?"

" Hah!, but old man, if I step away do I not remove Death?"

The old fellow answered " When you step in front is it only Death itself you see...or the living dying?"

The young warrior crossed his chest "Is there a difference?"

"On a journey, the inn is not the road. The Self does not know the way of the road, only the partial look of it. Looking ahead, it sees the road ending in the shadow of the inn's walls.

Thus the Self talks of an ending; and if you do not agree with the Self, why would you call the inn: a defeat?"

" Old man, your tongue bends and weaves like that long grass over there. The inn is no defeat as it is the destination...but that makes it: the end, right?"

The old man answered " The road goes on and does not everything of the world meet along the sides of the road? And where do the travellers meet but at the inns?

Everything of the world gathers about 'I' , for remember when we spoke of each Self coming upon other Selves thru 'I'?"

The young fellow replied " Yes, where the mountain crushed the tree and the tree overturned the stone."

The old man nodded, " Then let us figure....how many Selves does a person have do you think?"

The young man shook his head " I doubt we will get away with one for an answer, that might be too pleasant a relief! As to the limits, I shall not guess."

The monk grinned " Nor could I. Exactly right. It is limitless."

" How so, old man?"

"The road has many turns. The road is laid down upon many paths. The road is curved by the land. The road is dug by many feet.

The emergence of 'selves' is given by the mother, the father, the ancestor, the times, the circumstances, the constant touch of humanities wether by word or deed , by calamity or joy.

The Selves are actions to reactions, reactions to actions. A movement to an intimate music from outward and inward.

The Selves are the 'poises of the dancer'."

The young man replied " I have heard the word 'voices' used in the same way...in meditation "

" This is so young man. A still man will hear many voices, voices carried in his heart, in his blood, in his loins, in his mind.

He will not think himself mad for he knows he is not of any singular voice.

All voices are allowed to speak from the drool of the lost to the whispers of the close.

Nor will he be mad in such a multitude of tongue for the still man knows the spine of his height. 'I' prevails , indeed, only a strong I can allow more and more voices to come welcome and unhuddled from the Void, just as only a strong trunk will yield the greatest flourish of green whispers.

The still man is not the puppet master of his Selves; he is the elder of their village."

The young man shook his head " But what man or woman can move, can act in any direction with such a tyranny of numbers?"

The old man moved his hands in graceful gestures much like a martial artist, much like a dancer " See the dance. The fingers point in one way, the elbow another. The palm is up, the shoulder forward. Then they change. Can one move without the other? Can any shift the poise without the consent of the others even though many do not even move? Is not the movement, the non-movement combined as the poise?

Yet all these entities point in different directions, lean towards the four possible ways, the left ignorant of the right, the ends oblivious to the beginnings.

What then gives the poise when each self gives but a movement, a non-movement; each self gives but a note or a space, not a melody?"

" It is the mind, of course."

The old man asked " When is the last time you instructed your legs to remain still; erupted thought into action as you rub your chin just now?"

The young fellow replied " These things are done by the mind but without knowledge."

The monk raised his brows with a gesture of his palms " Ah....knowledge. The skin of the fruit."

" I do not understand this...skin of the fruit?"

The old man nodded " It is confusing. Sometimes the skin is discarded, sometimes it is eaten with the flesh. The dance is the fruit; the tree is the mind. Knowledge may be necessary to the growth but not always so for the horizons of the seed. Some men would rise in only one place, others would rise in many places."

" Many places?" the young man asked.

" My son, you would travel a river. A living river. In the clear spirit, movement, change is seemingly effortless. In that you sit, breathe, walk without thought, would the fish itself be less?

But for the mind there appears a shadow. In life this is the beginning of understanding, the spirit appears as condensing to shadow, a thickening. Not so unlike the emergence of a thought from its natural habitat of Void.

And see how the shadow thickens in spirit even more.

In the river the image becomes rock. In the mind we have emotion, sensation, intuition. The fish flicks around such knowledge, seeking again the dazzling openness of spirit.

The man-mind blunders into it, as nose first as any other cumbersome thing anchored to its own rudder of inertia.

Surely there are many such men who are hypnotized by so much less than the grace of their own movements?"

The young man argued " But there are many who seek knowledge as a way out of the clutch of ignorance. It may not be an end, old man, but it is a means. Just as in the martial, one must learn a skill, then one may progress into the art."

The old man scooped up a little dirt in his hands, then let it spill with the beginning of these words " There is a tale the ancients tell. That long ago when man had first begun on earth, he had not learned to even walk, let alone speak or dwell in civilized states pursuing civilized arts.

So the gods took pity and took out of that dust, three men.

Each they placed in a room upon a chair. Surrounding the man were walls on which were painted or drawn all wonders of art, pictures, mathematical formula, engineered constructions, secrets of the vast universes...indeed the full knowledge of all the gods.

These the three men studied for years and then each was sent back with his chair to sit amongst the dust of his fellows.

So the first returned. Into the place, he sat upon his chair. What do you think he saw?"

" I suppose he now saw his lesser fellows."

The old man shook his head " No. He saw only his walls. He remained there wishing to see again only what he was not. The walls he remembered separated himself from what he now is from what he once was.

The second man came into the dust and sat.

Here you are right, this man did not see the walls, he saw only the other men crawling in the dust and the dung. But this man also saw that he was higher, by means of the knowledge. And using that knowledge he constructed his chair higher and higher; calling his distance: example. And not calling it : fear or abhorrence. By this height he became not what he is or what he was before the chair but something to be known as higher. Indeed he measured himself by the distance between what he was and what he used to be.

Now the third man re-entered the dust. This man discarded the chair and sat cross-legged amongst the crawling peoples. His hands constantly stroking at their skulls and backs enticing them to stop. This man did not see with his eyes for he held them shut. He did thus because he found the memory of the walls and his fellows too grievous a comparison. He feared he might love them less.

Days and nights endlessly he touched till some became still beside him. In time sat as he did.

Thus the third man began the vision of the gods, began that fulfilment amongst the dust.

Each of the three men had knowledge. Knowledge of a difference. Love is about a knowledge, as is hate or fear. But they are more than just knowledge. Knowledge does not see, it merely measures. The other things are about a blindness as well."

The young man looked at the monk " It is curious in a way that all the third man learned was how to sit up and be still."

" No. No. His mind gained a knowledge much greater, much more. But it does not matter if one finds a long road ahead or a short road. There are men with 'long eyes' and men with eyes only the length of their arms; men who are blind before their widespread hands; men whose eyes are emptied by yawns; there are sockets as empty as bellies; there are in some eyes things which erase all else.

The road is about distance, young man, and it is about eyes."

The young man replied " I agree that to one man a yard is a mile, to another a mile is but a step. Is that what true knowledge does? Show a man the best way? For himself?"

" The Way? Here is a way, Young Limb. Seek the town of Lost Hope. From there go left, go right. Follow the town's foot and into the dust. Gather that road under your arm and divide the hills with your footsteps. Flee the sun but not the eve. Go past the bent labours of peasant where mercy cannot spare a wave.

You will find a hut or huts. You will always find a dog chained to a hut.

The dog will bark. Then he will not.

You have entered into his eyes. Then you are not. Look upon the dog in the dust pulling the hut into a slight stoop closer towards the dusk.

That dog is chained to all he knows.

You have journeyed to him. His knowledge is wider. Does he see more?"

The young man thought for a moment " Yes, but he still remains chained to all he knows."

" True....and the only thing he does not see is the chain. That he feels. The peculiarity of knowledge is that it never helps a man to see his chain."

The young man replied " Surely then, you will speak of a wisdom that allows to see the chain, the chain of one's feelings;....and break them?"

The old man shook his head " It is as much wise not to see as to see; the peaceful man can tell the time more than the tale."

"What?"

"If the Queen should see the King's fault will she speak before the full court? If I should know my own fault, will I tell such before my enemy or before my friend? If the dog "feels" the chain and "sees" the hut, what will he "see" when he breaks the chain? What will he "feel" when the hut and the earth under it suddenly fall away leaving the dog and a half a chain rattling over nothing?

What is forgotten is that the chain does not belong to the dog, it also belongs to the hut. Before the dog can truly break the chain, it must learn to 'feel' the hut just as if the chain was still attached. Thus neither the dog nor the hut will be lost to each other."

The young man interjected " Forgive me but this is wrong to me. The point about dogs and huts and chains is freedom. The dog wishes to be free from the hut, as like any man wishes to be free to move about the world."

With a shake of his head, the old man replied " What a dog chained is to, wether a hut, or a rock, or a post, or a street, or a cloud, or a mansion, or a twig, or even another dog, it still remains a chained dog. If you go now and loosen the chain from its neck, it runs around and round the hut a thousand times in joy. If you unchain it at the hut, it will not even rise. Tonite, either way, the dog will sleep by the hut, one spent of joy, the other spent of will.

The dog wishes to be free of chains, not what it is chained to."

The young man replied " How does a dog break a chain itself without pulling upon the hut? Freedom is sought by the action of withdrawal from that which is restraining. What is at 'ends' will suffer as part of the 'means'."

"If the dog pulls, the master will come out and strengthen the chain. If the dog does not pull, the master will forget to strengthen the chain.

To break the chain, one must not pull at it. 'Un-use' will corrode the chain, then the chain will break itself."

"Old man, forgive me, but this seems even more ridiculous. How does one tell the first dog from the second? One has no will to break the chain and the other waits for the chain to break. Neither moves; the chain will break or not break, none the less for their lack of efforts. What's the difference?"

" The one dog will know when the chain breaks, the other will never know."

The young fellow looked farther past his toes " You mean at that instance, the one will get up and leave, the other stay?"

The old man answered " Neither will leave. For one yet believes it is mastered whereas the second knows it now has no master. Why should it now flee?"

The young fellow replied " Well, tell me this then...the one who is free but does not move...how does it know the chain has broken?"

The old man looked at the young man " Once when I was at your age, I came upon what appeared to be an ancient monk sitting in a park. Before him, sat a small bowl of water, the water at the halfway mark.

I sat down beside him and queried with my usual rudeness at the time..' Well, old man, is your bowl half full or half empty? '. He didn't answer. I asked again. No answer. Again. Again. Then I fell to silence.

In a little time, he leaned forward and spit back the water he had been holding in his mouth.

The bowl was now full. He looked at me, in the way a turtle might glance over a sparrow, and said " In order to participate in the philosophy of your discussion, I must be empty and the bowl must be full. Debate is about contrasts. Stillness is the sole noise of harmony`"

To speak of chains broken or unbroken is to speak of contrasts. That is a thing between one dog and his chain compared to another dog and his chain. We wish to speak of something between a dog and the things of just that dog. Of what can we compare that we may speak of the broken or unbroken or even of chains at all"

The young man replied "Are we not now amongst the dog, the `I` of the dog; the `selves`of the dog?"

Half a smile came with the answer " Exactly so. How does one know what is not known? Discarding

knowledge is not about lack of knowledge, it is a journey passing through a room of knowledge. It is again our tale of the body remembering its own death yet not continually recollecting that future date.

One learns to play music with practise upon the guqin. One learns to discard knowledge with practise upon the guqin. To discard knowledge one must practise NOT playing the guqin!

To break the chain one must discard one`s knowledge of the chain.

This is not easier than it sounds. The guqin player gathers knowledge from his teacher and instructs his fingers, his ears with the painstaking falter of an infant`s walk.

Over time the conscious mind plays less and less, the knowledge is forgotten as the skill improves.

The young man interrupted " Not so true. for if I ask the master player how he plays a certain note surely he will be able to tell which fingers go where to accomplish such?"

The old man shrugged " Say you were in battle against three men with spears. After you have defeated them, someone may ask how you did such a thing?

Step by step, you consciously construct the battle; where the one moved here, your block went here, your feint opened here, you attacked at this vulnerability then on and on. The question comes again "But how did you do it? How in ten seconds did you accomplish what it has taken ten minutes to reenact?"

" By reflex, by instinct" replied the young man.

" But that implies the body already has the knowledge of what must be done? How can this be, that something is known and unknown ...and then becomes known and then re-unknown?" queried the old monk.

The young man answered " That mind below mind, in there dwells the speed of the cobra, the strength of the tiger, the curve of the mongoose. When a movement becomes as natural as breathing or the heart beat behind it, it can be then said that the movement 'acts' without consciousness"

The old fellow nodded " From the conscious to the unconscious, the place of dreams. From , shall we say, the self-conscious to the I-conscious. What is known is given into the cycle of energies which some call the 'chi'. No matter.

It is a river. Knowledge carves a little from the bank. Turns a little of the flow. And then the task is forgotten, the river is changed, it bears new things, it discards old things.

In the river, there are those things given into the river, a knowledge like names upon the limb, the sand, the rock.

They are lost, forgotten to the giver but they lie within the river, they are of the river.

Thus the river has music, has strength, has a grace in its passages. Thus the river has its failures, its bitterness, its rage with which it claws in angry upheaval against the sky.

In you, that river flows and circles and divides itself over and over gain.

Where the mind, where the Selves turn against river, there is strife, there is island. Yet out of that island, the river's flow, its very spirit is called Search even within the river itself.

Along the river, onto the river, the many Selves journey just as upon the road of 'I'.

What is placed into the river, taken from the river..is the river less..is the river more?

The river is a circle, the road is straight.

The road is a circle, the river is straight.

They are the same. Some Selves can dwell on water. Some cannot.

Some are in the spirit, some are above. There are gatherings where can be done wondrous tasks. There are hermits which know the taste of Beginning.

Every tale, every mystic whirl, every childish whim of some fantastical being has its eye, one of these Selves.

Dream and imagination is the contemplation of journey, whispering into the mirrors of offering.

Self-knowledge is given into the 'I', yet also the river can surrender a thirst into empty hands cupping at its womb.

Just as the feet upon the road both follow the road and have made the road; so too, the motion of 'I' is lost into depths yet journeys in a circle."

The young fellow interrupted " Are you saying that my art is given into this river, this force of chi, circling within me endlessly. Than emerging in the time it is called for as a physical expression; creation? If so, I say it is an interesting model but like most metaphysics its truth lies only in its obscurity. Most things in a fog can be most things in a fog."

The old man held out his hands as if the talons of a hawk " What is so unnatural that when you are hungry, the river offers up fish? Nothing you would say. Understanding is about knowing what put the fish in there in the first place.

What kind of a man seeks to learn martial art, do you think?"

The young fellow shook his head " Who knows. There are many types, at least in the beginning. Weak men. Frightened men. Those who would seek an arm for their cruelties. Defeated men. Impatient men. Revengeful men. Some who seek what others have that they can be more than their present less."

The old man replied " In all, some seek more. Some seek less. That is true of all arts. Whom do you think is more likely to succeed, those who seek more, or those who seek less?"

" In this world, a man can easily gain less, more is not so readily at hand."

The old fellow nodded " It seems it is the way of the world to take less from the more and even more from the less but the man seeking less, does he succeed if the world takes from him or if he gives to the world or if he simply lets the more drop from his fingertips?"

The young fellow replied " We have found ourselves in defeat again, old man. I say that a man seeking less does not succeed if it is taken from him before he was ready to give it away."

" What is taken is never given away, that is true. But the weak artist seeking strength must discard his weakness. If instead his weakness is taken away, is he not then stronger? Just as the horse with a pebble under its hoof becomes faster by that removal."

The young fellow argued " But it does not seek the pebble."

" No, but by its weakness, its slowness, its clumsiness, it allows itself to be overtaken. To be thus renewed. For the empty man, his hunger becomes a vessel for the fish. He journeys to the river, what is a net but patience?

At some other bend of the river, a man climbs a tree and watches the sunlight play upon the gentle ribs under the river's skin. What does he imagine but these sparkles are not a school of fish passing along the river?

Surely this is food for the empty man. But there is a cloud on this day, no sparkles.

Down the road lies a man of crippled legs; his bowl licked dry a day ago. The man in the bough brings him rain.

Take everything of the world, my son, and place it inside yourself.

Understand that much of the world is created by you just as much of you is created by the world.

This is what is meant by if you seek peace in the world, seek peace in yourself.

You are a strong man, how can you be self-defeating? How can someone take something out of a river and call that..... drowning? The pebble on the road is something to the sandal but nothing to the fish. The river is deep but the road is a boat.

Where something is hidden in one place, go to the other.

Remember that though you are most of the world, neither are you all of the world or it of you.

If you are at war with it, you are at war with yourself...but we said the cloud, the sun, passed over the tree.

A man starved, another drank.

One had thirst, another fed.

When the world is more or less, shall you judge your manliness by that more or less of the world in you? To be truly defeated is to sit with an empty man ignoring another man dancing a miracle in the rain.

Remember it does not matter to the road or to the river what your conscious mind does with all your 'selves' ; in that alone, there is great peace.

A thousand mistakes is a thousand pebbles. In the river, they are nothing; on the road, not even a wall.

Say in your hand now you have a stick. If I snatch the stick from your hand, you say you are defeated. If the stick breaks in half, are you? If you break the stick in half and give me half, are you defeated? If you discard the stick and I pick it up, are you defeated then?

How many men, how many women, do you think know a stick from a branch, a branch from a tree?

Can you sing while you cry, my young fellow? Then you can come upon a thing both upon the road and in the river.

Here is the world in you and you in the world.

Where the river and the road meet this is to study a thing and the thing's shadow. For what thing is in the light is not necessarily what it is in darker depths.

The sunlight cannot leap out of the water to become food for hungry selves.

When you came first upon me you were doing a beautiful dance. I applauded. But not all things in you danced. Some slept. Some cried. Some hungered.

Under us the earth and the world sleeps. And spins.

If it stumbles, you may stumble.

If you stumble, it may stumble.

You and the world are like riding an old horse pulling a cart on a muddy road. If the world stops, get off it, so the world can start back up again.

When the road tilts, go to the river. When the river froths, place your feet upon a gentler path.

This is what it means to 'break chains' without breaking chains.

Even I, an old forgotten hermit, have my 'hut' and do not wish to pull it over.

For I am living and thus in that living...love the living world.

To speak of experience as only victory or defeat is to say that a dancing man on a mountain top is only 'cold' , only 'alone'. Is he not also mad..standing on his head juggling an entire mountain with his moving feet?"

The young man impatiently snapped his stick and flung it out at the long grass.

His eyes were wet as he turned at the old monk and spoke " Enough. I see that. But you must see too that some experiences simply destroy without meaning at all.

Ten years ago, my village was destroyed. My entire family brutally killed. You know why? My village grew fruit for the local prince. When one of his sons died from a strange disease, a diviner told him it was our fruit, supposedly bewitched by a village crone.

At the time of the slaughter, I was away, working the harvest with an uncle. Hearing of the death of my family, he would not return there, Instead, after a year with him, he paid for me to go to a monastery where martial arts was studied. He hoped that their ways and teachings would heal my pain. But it did not. I cannot nor will not ever forget what was taken away and would rather have died fighting to hold it.

To have such a thing happen, that is a defeat. It can be no success, no better test by which I grew to be what I am.

My love, my pain will not taste such a horror."

The old man looked long at him. Then finally spoke in a voice very hollow and slow " As yet, there is no word for the death of an innocent. For even the word victim suggests a fault. As in a bowl not being empty when other eyes shadow its rim.

That your grieve, your pain now journeys within you as an eternal self flying a ragged torn black banner; it goes stooped forward into the agonies of a wind's empty throat; it is the hands of a poetry for it touches upon all things without absorption; it will always sing, it will never forget and that is your nobility and grants what you loved: a dignity.

Remember, the place of sea, cloud and land are the levels of consciousness; touching and touched.

The conscious mind is plagued by its task of living. It would eat and survive when all else would but tear the very will of existence out of the body's own roots.

Remember when we said the body knowing intimate its own death then allows itself to forget that death?

Here is the same.

When the deer is wounded, it will at first flee. Later, having escaped, it will lie in the grass and contemplate its state. It will curl about the wound, its mind, its tongue a bridge between the narrow focus of pain and the wider healings.

So, too, the consciousness of a man. It will flee great wounds in a pattern as seemingly random as the deer, yet having within those track, a reason. The randomness of the sparrow's flight seems trivial and chaotic when one cannot see the shadow of the hawk.

Given time, however, the terror will seep downward, just as the sky first boils black and then rains out its own heaviness, eventually becoming as clear and light as new glass.

That things grow out of tragedy is never to say that tragedy is the sole means for a nobler face. It can be; it does not have to be.

Things grow out of this and may indeed be nobler. Look how the new pine rises above the fire ravished old forest.

But the sanity of pain is not about a deep hole lightly covered with twigs. It is about a hole in the land which though some see filled , you will always know its still there.

A man who has lost his leg still has his leg. He feels it so. Yet any two legged man will find it hard to call him whole.

The forms of one thing are found in many other things.

You will find your pain now in many other places; you will find your love now in many other places.

Inside you the pain is now free as you are now free of the pain. But this is as new lovers, you are free of all things except to be what you once were.

The young fellow held up his hand " Old man, you answer the what of my pain, you still do not answer the why. The why of their deaths."

The old man replied " There are many pieces of glass through which a man will look at why.

The necessity of life is death; just as light is prismed by darkness; so too, the Tao, the energy, is guided by the walls of time into a physical presence.

But let no one say the necessity of goodness requires evil; for evil and goodness are energies ; are motions. They 'happen' with or without the arm of each other.

Evil is called 'death' when hidden; evil is called 'survival' when 'hunting' in the open.

Do not listen to such. Those words are the drool of a different beast. Something created in the landscape of a mind terrified by the echos of its unbreathed universe. These men cannot, will not, see and their eyes cower in empty palms. Their hands rip upon human flesh to fill them.

To ask why is there this evil is to ask why do blind men fall into large holes?

Listen to me.

A man in a tree sees many things. From his perch, he sees darkness rain down light, birthing the light. Darkness is ahead of light but not fleeing. Death does not flee from the living.

Rather darkness brings the light as a black horse draws a well-laterned cart.

The dead ride the black horse, the living ride the cart.

Only a fool would straddle the carriage, the harness between them. For what is here but a terror painted by the sweat and dung of death, the roar of passing earth, the harrowing grip of faint light which cannot bend itself into a better cradle.

Who would not be mad in this shadow land?

When the man in the tree looks out far into all the infinities of all the horizons , he sees nothing.

Yet things come out of nothing, journey past his tree, return into nothing. This along the way of his road, of his river.

But as light, as death continually move in the landscape, he will see shadow. And the shadows of shadows.

Shadow is nothing in itself but it can hypnotize the viewer. An object can blur into a greater thing or lesser thing or grotesque thing.

Even the light itself appears torn, ripped by shadow.

He sees the shadow of himself, sees also the shadow of himself and the tree.

He goes to the ground , tries to dig up the shadows of the tree, for that is his experience. Of course , he cannot and what we now have is a large hole. There, too, is still his shadow and the skins of the innocent; they lay about him like the rag shadows of fleeing things; like the crumpled stares of darkened soil.

He is not an evil man; he woulddwell amongst their unlit eyes, these shattered candles. Here, where their patterns are as random as a winds sculpture on sand, where the land grants them a sanctuary they no longer require.

Oh, do not deny, he is grievous. His feet are heavy amongst their cooling blood. Of his Selves, many are sad and lost. Many will sob. He will sob. As if his breath lives only amongst the linger of their last breaths.

He has come amongst them like a furnace of love praying over the waxen splinters.

Yet...the courage to say...'I will live for you' ; to take the last breath from each these offered palms; to hold that name forever in your throat; that is as much courage as to 'die for' . When the choice is given are, we heralds or speechless by our own guilt of survival?

The most difficult thing in the world one can do is to apologize to the dead for your own state of living.

In the end, my son, to look for 'why' will only decay into 'why not'.

In the end, he who pries open one door now hides behind another.

The cost of one side of a coin will usually be the other.

What are the words man has carved or broken for 'why'? God, soul, karma, fate, history, sin, justice? When the 'why' of one must also too be the 'why' of millions?

History will willingly crush millions of innocents to advance one foot.

In the rise and fall of empires, like a tide, was it worth it?

Is it worth a thousand innocents?

Ten?

One?

Say one innocent here, upon this path, its death will turn the chariots away from the city, a place Fate will make into a million corpses. Is it worth it?

If its your innocent?

Is it?

The young fellow moved to reply but the old man continued " Let us remember too that why and why not are pondered by the living only, the dead have left them behind.

Their graves do go unanswered but who asks, my friend, them or the living?

Let us never, never speak of 'why' as a weak apology for our own continued living.

There is no 'why' for the death of an innocent.

That question will become the shadow of your living , that 'why'.

Listen, listen.

What if you asked me ' why is the sky blue?' I reply ' because it is not red.'

Then can I not say that the innocent are dead because they are no longer living?

Does it make sense?

That the death of the innocent is necessary that they may no longer be living; be seen amongst the living?

That the living did not wish to be seen amongst the innocent.

And are you not now living and thus have driven innocense from your own state of living?"

The young fellow jumped to his feet barely able to control his anger. Before he spoke, however, the old man addressed him very gently, " Good, good, my son. Do not listen to the splatter of saliva in the shadows.

The innocent shall not perish! Say such.

For many will argue ' the sins of the father are carried by the sons wether by empty hand or a bloody one'

To which you answer ' The innocent shall not perish'

But they will answer ' the lion eats the lamb, the hawk circles the sparrow. Need with its larger claw consumes the toothless mouth of Want. Thus the world is made to revolve.'

To which you stand ' the innocent shall not perish!'

Their answers continue ' those who choose the mountain walk are at the feet of falling stone. Those who choose the valley dwell before the belly of the flooding sea. Danger is near the breath of all living,this is naturally so, wether by the a nature's heart, a city's or a man's '

Here you decree ' the innocent shall not perish!'

Again they come , clothed in black and smoke, and with long pale fingers dangle their secrets at you. ' Behold' they say ' the gods have dice and games and whims and revenges; they build their worships out of bones, their laughter with our bewilderment. Their appeasing is unappeasable; their justice is unjustifiable. What can be done when cold and calculating prayer is an offence but when it is as a lament, it is mocked and scorned? We are of their likeness in the way a limbless ape has a tail!'

Now shall come the time of your prophesy , my son and you will decree ' the innocent shall not perish'

For the only answers for the debates of evil, of why, of why not, is as a stone speaks to the wind, or rain , or time itself. "You will not wear me out , that it is your weakness, not in mine.'

Your purpose then becomes solely this ' the innocent shall not perish.' The shadow of that stone becomes the shelter, the habitat of the weak, the suffering, the condemned, the hunted.

That an innocent may look up to you and not see shadow but rather a banner for all innocents. Hope!

A hope blind from all thought of failure by the courage of its enigma: hopelessness.

That out of 'why' the tiger builds its final corner and looks out with fearsome eye guarding the unperishable innocents.

That tomorrow is born again solely for the innocent. Your road becomes the limbs of that innocent hope. Your river waters the seed that will not drown in your mouth.

Go now, dance again, spin your love and pity, your pain and courage across the landscapes of your heart.

That evil men shall fear the wind in your refusal of 'why'.

Let them know you will not descend to their banquet table of 'whys' though you are as empty in your belly as all of Death itself.

For 'why' is there in your belly, you have consumed it in the way the crow consumes a pebble to mash up the grist of all its living. It will now taste of everything you take inside.

Why is never asked, it is lived. Let the throat of it never cease to sing, like a lark speaking with ember red eyes."

The young man interrupted "But is that not all I have ever done, living in a silent spring of iron?"

" So it has. So it has. You have tuned your instrument. Filled your fingertips with poise. Now add the words, like the master poet who finally finds them as breathing stripes amongst the patterns of bamboo.

'Why' is a blindness for most good men, it gives evil a very long laugh.

When good men will not bend from a passion, that passion will hold their light true, just as the cord of a candle is the tiger's stripe within the wax."

The young man looked at the old man " Can this fail, falter; this passion, this candle?"

" Yes. Nature does. The tiger does. The man, the woman does. In time , your passion will fail. Fail in many things. Succeed in many things. But one does not discuss failure or success in these things; one does not discuss the subtleties of colour when the sun begs for rising.

This, instead, is the time of the Tree Stretch!! When fall comes, you can dig up 'why', split that into a thousand pieces with the sharpness of your intellect and then save it for the stoves of a colder repose!"

The young man showed his doubt in a shake of his head " Wait a minute? Are you saying that this way is a cycle of anger, then passionate cause, then some sort of discussion, reappraisal, then finally a resolution...almost imbecilic in its half awakenings?"

The old man shook his head gently and answered " Look at it this way, young friend. Say you walk into the long grass and come upon: a tiger. You are in terror,; it is angry having been suddenly awakened.

Then you and the tiger exchange eyes. There is a point where you do not see the tiger, only its eyes. You know this from martial arts. At that point where opponents exchange their intent, purpose, being , future , if you will.

The attack is known. Known to come. This is not anger. This is purpose rising out of passion. This is light coming out of darkness, my son. Remember light is simply darkness not moving. Darkness is light in motion.

In the actual attack, the man moving, the tiger springing, twins of a darkness burst into a lightening speed.

If the man dies, if the tiger dies, their bodies, their minds , their eyes rise out of the death wind and exchange names. Blooded, a gray coolness, this is the fall after the spring; but is this... a failure...?? it is an easy time , for the man forgets all of what was his name but that which he carried this far; that which is unexplored. He carries 'worth' into the next world in the way the tree heightens itself to walk higher into the clouds.

Death comes. The man feeds. The tiger feeds. The land is sated. The tiger is sated. The man is sated. Flesh leaves flesh. Spirits paint on the same stripes.

The tiger waits for the next man.

The man goes searching for the next tiger.

And they carry each other.

Do you see now, my young son, the tiger and the man carrying each other across the long grass?"

The young man looked long over the grass.

The blades of grass leaned across from each other and then with a change of wind a whole bunch would look the other way. The black stripes between them, especially those close by, would simply shimmer from left to right and back to left again. It made a sound of almost purring in the wind.

A hawk circled above, a long stroke of pen tip seen from the paper eye.

The grass hid its brethren mouse from this mouth as the grass attempts to hide from all mouths.

He remembered his younger sister. How they had played tag; hid amongst the long grass near their home. How their mother would be half infuriated as she wandered in the grass calling for them to come in. But she would always laugh when they crawled within feet of her and then spring as a single wind upon her skirt helm.

He had hated the scent of dried grass ever since he had learned they had used piles of it to torch the huts the villagers were locked in.

Now he remembered he had lost that loathing of dried grass even today when he wandered out to here. Somehow seeking more than just old breaths of wind.

He looked again for his sister's large dark eyes, her oval face streaked with the shadow of grass lines.

He could not see it but he knew he had not lost it.

She could still spring with him.

He looked down at an old bald face; its eyes wrinkled with the memories of countless sisters and brothers. " Thank you, old man. I am not bent but I am easier. I guess...as if to a new wind. Or direction. Somehow I see a light which my hands alone could never have struck."

The old man nodded " In the heart of all candles is its true flame. Sometimes we just need to meet our match!"

The young man could not help but grin at the smile of a few faint hairs on an old happy chin.

A Lost One

Breeze carried the scent of sun grass across the old man's nose. A faint grin lifted the corners of his closed eyes; the lids parted a little, the rest of the body remained as it was, a burnt fold of nut, dropped from the one limb of the Bent Tree.

He had grinned because it had been (or did it just seem so?) months since a visitor had roamed across the long grass and settled noisily near the old man's ear.

One was coming now though no human sway of limb or even head could as yet be seen. This time of season the grass grew high above the height of most men, obscuring the ancient road. The tree could be seen from the road but not the way of the road from the root of the Bent Tree.

But this one came not even from the direction where lay the road, he or she was plowing through the grass from the other way. Though the parting came not from the road, the old man nonetheless knew the steps were of his kind; or at least of his race; or at least of his species. For the grass did not part with the silence of a tiger nor with the grace of a deer; the bear did not normally leave its snow cave nor the buffalo , its water. And the elephant rarely walked alone. This pursuit of the rising sun must be of Man.

Sure enough, it was a man that appeared staggering into the small clearing that existed from the settlings of the old man. He threw himself, more than just exhausted, at the base of the Bent Tree. Turning over on his back, a long sigh came out, followed by a very contented folding of arms over his chest.

This had hardly past, however, when the visitor, a mid aged man of regular height, weight and features sat, or rather bolted, up straight. He began to vigorously brush at his clothing trying to pick and flick away all the bits and adherence of his passage.

It was when he was blowing and swiping with a particular ferocity upon some chaff imbedded in the fabric upon his left shoulder, that the figure of the old man suddenly emerged into his full awareness.

He leapt to his feet and ran back into the long grass, only the fear of its denseness keeping his head in view.

The old man looked at this head parting the long grass in a tremble of stare and laughed.

To this the man answered "What are you, a spirit?" For he looked like no man ;so blended, so natural; like an overlap of shadows creating something real only to the imagining eye.

"Of a sort."

"What sorts?"

"Of the sort as you."

The man puzzled, tried again. "I mean are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?"

"Oh I am a good spirit for indeed all spirits call themselves so, some for good reason while others for a bad cause."

"What do you mean?"

"Why I mean for the same reason that good men try to be good whereas evil men are always good! We should never ask a man what they are nor judge them only once in a day. For a hungry man will come as your friend at supper time whereas your friend will come to your door weather it is supper time or not. Both may eat, only one will stay. Then you can judge."

The man, a little calmed by the nature of this speech if not the actual content, came back into the clearing."Do you come here often?" he asked the old man.

"Often enough. I came here once like you but it took me a very long time to find my way back here"

"For how long did you leave?"

"Oh, I never left".

The man was puzzled still "But you said it took you a long time to get back here?"

"Have you not ever been somewhere yet not known the name of that place?"

"Yes, I suppose... I have. What is the name of this place then?"

The old man answered "House"

"House? Not Home?"

"Not yet home. A home is something you are born into and leave out of many times. I have been here but once, so it is as yet... a house."

The man thought it better to give up this line of questions and again flopped himself down beside the old man. "Well, I'm afraid I've lost my house, home, possessions, everything. I am a merchant, you see, or at least was. Being very good at it and very busy, too busy, in fact, for wife or children. I had amassed a good fortune in a city far from here. But the, shall we say, political climate was gettingtoo large an appetite for the gold and lands of such persons as I.

I sold everything, deciding to flee to more stable lands. I had hired what I thought was a trustworthy man and his guards to protect myself and my gold on the journey. It seems however that they interpreted the contract as a bind for them to cherish my gold only.

They waited till we were well beyond any chance of contact with any traveller to and from the city before they plotted their murderous plans.

By luck, on the seventh night of our camp, I was restless and finally decided to catch some night air in the cold hour before dawn. All the guards, thinking me fast asleep had gathered away from the tents. I thought this very odd and crept closer towards them. That is how I was able to overhear their plans to murder me within the next few minutes. By luck I had with me a gourd of water for a night's drink but I had no time to even gather a weapon or food let only gold. I could only thank providence or chance for my life and the clothes upon my back. I immediately slipped away into the grass which was high enough to obscure my flight. That and the hour of darkness. I lost them, the bastards, but I lost myself as well. And the road.

For a day, I wandered, cursing my fortune. At night I slept in this forest of endless weed but I would not call it a sleep.

Those guards had filled my travelling days and nights with tales of snakes and tigers and all sorts of terrors in the grass. No doubt it was a ruse to keep me within their grasp but I could not help but let such things toss and turn me all night.

Now this is my third day of wander. Fate has now thrown me into the hands of a ..., well, forgive me, but an odd sort of hermit fellow. I trust at least beingworthless but for a near empty gourd of water you will at least not add bodily harm to the list of my woes.

And if you have any food..., though I am unused to begging, it would be a very long stretch of the truth to bargain with the worth of my credit..., yes, it is the most honest to call it...begging".

For once the old man had a face twinged with shame "No, No. I must beg from you. Your forgiveness. I eat so little, I had not even thought of being the host. He reached over and picked up a sack. Handing it to the lost man, he said "Nuts and grass roots, the only fruit of these wide fields. Not a rich fare but at least a rich food. Take them and enjoy, my friend."

The lost man was quite busy the next while, his fingers and mouth in a happy unison with the explorations of his appetite. As he slowed and ate in a more contented manner he kept glancing at the old man, wanting to resume conversation.

But the old fellow had closed his eyes again and his features had settled not to the hardness of stone but rather the warmth of worn wood or the slope of gentle sand.

The man fidgeted and frowned, grunted and stretched but still the hermit ignored him. Finally the man could withhold no longer but blustered out "Old man, I am lost. Can you tell me the way? Oh I know you will answer which way or which home. Please have a little mercy, just tell me where the road is and which way to turn when I come to it so that I may find sanctuary."

The old man turned to him and said very gently "You are not the first to lament the Guide nor perhaps the last to curse it. That, too, is a Way of the Way. The blessing to the sailor claws at the cliff hanger's grip. The star gazer is blinded by the sun; at night, the trail walker becomes disorientated. The Guide never gives one way for it knows the Way is as many as there was, is and shall be pairs of feet. To give only one way is to deny full vision and it is by that free will that any way is found. For how does the seed become the grass? Does it follow the sun to the top of the sky and back? Riding back down upon the rain? Does the new grass follow the deer following the tiger?About one place there are many circles, how can we point of the one way?

But , you friend, have asked for two and two I shall give. It is less than the Many but is still twice as great as the blindness of one.

About the first is eighteen strides of the tiger and if you will be a little patient, I shall tell you of each one.

1. Old Taoist saying: If you're going in a circle, there's no need to run.

2. It has been proven that in the wilderness, the faster a lost man runs, the sooner he will return to the window of bewilderment. Once there he will close the curtain and proceed more slowly.

3. What is 'ment' by be-wilder'? The state of reason is discarded. This is necessary. The lost man must become the hunter out of his own hunted. For this he needs a new reason. To build that he must first shatter the old reason. One cannot assemble a spear from the uncleaved stone, the unsevered limb.

4. The lost man is so because he has not yet learned to break things. When he finally shatters his empty glass jar upon the rock; when he takes a piece of sharpness and extracts the long fibres from the flesh of the tree to snare his meal; when he scoops out the gourds for his water, his gathers; when he cuts the tree fronds for his hut; when he slumbers below the small carved deities of his making, is he lost?

He has not returned, but is he lost?

5. When the lost man shatters his own 'lostness',is he then more lost? How can one shatter dust upon dust itself and claim to have broken anything of value?

6. Sometimes when a lost man is found by the others it takes him awhile to learn how to smile. This is because his hands are busy reweaving gladness out of broken glass.

7. If you do go out and search for a lost man or woman always shout their name out ahead of you. To warn them you are coming. If you find them, never shake their hand unless they greet you. Always ask them 'Are you lost or truly lost' before you take them home in your own glass jar.

8. Sometimes there can be more than one lost man or woman in the wilderness. When there are many, and after a time there has not been any sounds of breaking jars, then a wall is put up and the place is called: a city.

9. You may think it strange that a lost man is never found amongst lost things, but it is not. This is because while the man is lost he carries the lost things with him. And when he is no longer lost, he throws all the lost things away from himself having no longer any need for them. If in your searching you come upon the lost things of a man, it is not enough to know you are searching in the wrong places. You must also understand that the lost man is telling you he does not want to be found.

10. Nothing is absolute. Some call a man or woman lost when they cannot find their way back. Some are called lost because they cannot find their way ahead. There are those who are called lost because they do not know where they are. And there are those who are called lost because they haven't been found, because we don't know where they are. But none of these people are truly lost, they are beginning. It is the finish, the ending which they have broken. It is as if they are the runners standing still and the others are the goal posts running past them. Tell me, who do you think always wins such a race?

11. Two lost men suddenly came upon each other face to face in the wilderness. When their steps had swallowed all the air between them, they stopped and both simultaneously asked "Which way is home?"

Whereupon, for answer, each man pointed behind himself for indeed home is where he had come from. Each man nodded thanks to the other and then continued to proceed straight ahead.

12. Sometimes you know a man or woman are about to become "lost' because they give you things. They seek to lighten their load for the way from one side of the wilderness to the other is as far as the distance one sees looking 'backwards' into their own skull.

They also discard these things to cover their footsteps from all but the best of the 'trackers' Into your ears they will hang words like 'mountain road' or 'path of clouds'. Into your nostril they may place a drop of fading stale, of drying fear. Before your eyes a mist comes, their features waxing, waning, the way a candle breathes the wind.

Upon your tongue is placed a bitterness. Of this you will not gag, nor spit out, for it has the solemn, the reverence ofdirt; the ashes of a burial.

Into your hands are placed their hands, but not all of their hands. Only the skin of toil is gently pulled away and placed there. It's translucent sheen of callous and wear giving the radiance of a wedding garment laid to one side.

At your feet, they will place all or most of their wordily things, all those things too hard, too clumsy, too heavy or too sharp to be woven into a mantle of feathers.

Take your foot and push away this pile and always you will see a name. If it is theirs, then they are 'lost' and gone before you can even look up.

If it is yours, then you have been only travelling towards a mirror.

This is called self-knowledge. When what is found was never even known to be lost, what was it worth?

No one falls into a hole in the ground until they have dug it. Begin again but this time trade your shovel for a flute.

13. There once was a young man who despairing of a peasant's life climbed into the mountains in search of a holy man in order that he may enjoy the life of a recluse rather than the endless drudgery of a farm.

Upon finding the hut of the recluse he begged the holy man allow him to stay as an apprentice to learn the ways of the Tao and the mountain.

The holy man only replied to this asking with the words "Get lost."

The young man returned to the farm but after a year his despair was even deeper. Again he climbed to the holy man this time bearing a great deal of farm produce and goods in an effort to 'purchase' his stay.

Again the reply " Get lost."

Returning to the farm for two more years he continued to slave. With endless hard work and persistent scrimping, he accumulated a bag of silver coin. This he took to the holy man hoping to 'bribe' his stay.

Again only the reply " Get lost".

In a rage of disgust, he stormed away from the hut and in a particularly volatile gesture flung the bag of two years labour over the edge of a cliff.

Dismayed by this foolish act , he sought to recover the coin. His efforts were fruitless and, worse, in the wanderings of days around the huge cliff face he became hopelessly lost.

The result being that for thirty years , he ended up living alone in the wilderness. As time progressed, he became versed in the ways of the mountain, in the ways of the Tao; this being taught to him by the mountain, by the Tao.

Now it came to pass that on a particularly long trek hunting for certain herbs, the wandering man came upon the hut of the recluse. As the man sat down before the recluse, the holy man noted the peace and stillness, the health and vigour, the spirit and light of the eyes and body which assembled before him.

To this then , the holy man gave a wide grin and clapping his hands together expressed tremendous delight at how well his apprentice had completed his first lesson of "Get Lost".

14.How can you tell a lost man the way when he is already upon his way? If a man upon such and such a road stops and inquires " Where is such and such a road?", do you direct him off the road, so that you can then direct him back on the road?

Or do you laugh and kindly lay your hand on his shoulder exclaiming "Friend, you are already on such and such road. Why , it has found you before you were even lost!"

15.Does one call an unlit candle buried in darkness, lost? Many stumble around it but is the candle itself lost? When the candle is lit many now see their way but can it now be said that the candle now sees its own way? For being now lit , it journeys towards its own end, its own diminish. Yet, is that not the place where it always stood?

16 Some men will enter the forest as a group with a guide. If the guide becomes lost, so also the group. But the group can become lost but not necessarily the guide. For a bad guide can lose the way of others but not necessarily of himself alone. Hence, in the wilderness, if a man is alone and offers himself as a guide do not hire him. For he has lost the way of others which is not the same as to lose the ways of himself.

17.Once a group of ten soldiers entered the wilderness. In a short time they became hopelessly lost. An argument then occurred in which the nine men blamed their misfortune upon the one who was the leader. In the end the leader fled for his life; to become 'more lost' from the nine who were lost. In a few days , the nine stumbled out of the wilderness into a village containing many of their enemies'swarriors. The nine were slaughtered within the blink of their bewilderment.

The tenth has remained living peacefully in the wilderness. To be' found' is not the same as to be 'lost from the lost'.

18.Once a young prince became lost from his hunting party. After days of thirst and hungry wanderings, he stumbled upon the hut of an old hermit, a recluse. Here he was fed of simple grains, pure water. Here he rested in the wrap of gathered down; snuggling by fires of pine dropped from the wind.

After a few days of rest, the hermit provided him with a detailed map which would lead him back to his lands. He also gave him provisions and water for the trip.

Now the prince pondered over his goodbyes for he had seen well the bliss, the serenity of the old man's ways. Saw also the generosity and kindness of his manners. His wisdom seemed simple yet vast, his heart unblemished by greed or lust. This the prince compared to the courtiers, the plotters, the underminers, the intriguers of his Court.

He thought ' If I could but learn more of his ways in my heart, perhaps there might be more peace in my homeland.' With that, he offered the old man to come with him. In exchange for his teachings, the old man could have the comforts, the luxuries that he had so amply come to deserve after a long austere of life and study.

The old man answered with a single, simple "No."

When they young man wanted to know why ( for he was a little displeased that such an honour offered was so easily discarded) , the old man answered " Once there was a man lost in the wilderness. Long was he lost till he was near to the point of madness over thirst.

Suddenly he came upon a deep mountain stream. The only approach to it being along a tree trunk which had fallen from one bank to the other.

At the foot of the tree, where he stood, was placed a sword and a cup. The lost man picked up the cup and crawled out on the log. Just as he was to reach for the water, a tiger leaped up upon the log. It killed the man with a swipe of his paw and carried him off for its meal.

Now a time later, a second man came along also dying of thirst. Again the cup and the sword. This man let the cup alone, snatched up the sword for protection instead. Once out on the log, he hung far down that his lips may reach the water's surface. Unfortunately , he lost his balance, fell in and drown, his body swept along in the raging rapids."

The old man looked at the prince and asked "Tell me what should have these men done?"

The prince answered " Why they should have taken both the sword and the cup of course."

" And that is why I shall not go with you. When the whole is the sufficient, why take only the half?"

At the end of these sayings the old hermit at the tree smiled at the robbed man's rather bewildered countenance. "The eighteen steps of the tiger are guided by the eye of the sun, the whispers of the moon, the fingertips of shadow, the flames of stars. Do not despair, the stripes of your own destiny will gather.

And there is a second way! "

The hermit pointed outward towards the road seen only by his memory, the grass being so high. "Go that way the eighteen bounds of the tiger which are known to be each the ten full strides of a man. You will then reach the road you seek."

The robbed but not- now- so- empty man asked " And which way shall I turn at this road?"

To which the hermit replied "Ah when you turn, you will turn right."

The man thanked the old hermit and left as he was told carrying the gourd, the bag of seed and turned right upon the road.

Now when the man came upon the village, he came to hear of his old guards who were at that moment in that very village, causing a drunken uproar with their new gains. At first, the man was struck almost dumb with terror and sought to flee but then some new flicker of backbone unbent his cringe.

Going to the elders, he told his story in full. The village, already disgusted with the behaviours of the guards, needed little bidding to suspect the guilt of such an unsavoury lot. A spy was sent, who with the ply of a few free bags of wine, easily gathered up the boasting confessionals of the robbers.

The village men, armed with clubs, then easily overcame the drunken guards. The money was beat out of them and given back to the man. Then the guards were forever drummed out of the village, their heads to ring a long time with the tune of punishment.

In gratitude, the man settled in the village, living a new life of mutual benefit amongst his neighbours. In time he married, had children, then grandchildren.

Beside his modest house, he bought land. This he had cultured into a large park with many cultivated plants and flowers ,rock gardens andtrees. Anyone in the village or wandering strangers were free to walk and rest in its coolness.

There was however a small corner of the park let grow wild. Long grass, one old pine ; a place of shadows and reflections. Few entered it though it was not denied to the public. By its appearance it seemed a very lonely place. People passing by claimed that at twilight the long grass purred to a small wind which always gatheredthere. Only the owner would go in every day; an hour or two.

He usually took nothing in with him, took nothing back out. Save perhaps a sometimes strained look going in to be exchanged with a serene countenance coming out.

He would usually only say of it that " it was a place to be truly lost amongst the treasured found."
The TWELVE MONKEYS

It came to pass that a procession passed through the long grass. It was a procession of funeral. It was a multitude arranged in the grays and blacks of sombre. A dozen men carried a rectangular box upon their shoulders, this being the unwheeled flight of the deceased. The rest of the mourners bore vessels of incense or brass bells or streamers marked with symbols for a plea of heaven's opening for the dead.

The procession was going this unusual distance for the dead man had passed away of a strange illness while travelling to distant relatives. These same relatives were now bringing back the man for burial at his hometown.

Following the ancient trail between towns, they passed close to the old bent tree. Under it was seen an old man naked but for a rag loin; still but for a slow breathing.It was customary for a funeral procession to give alms to the beggarly and poor as gesture of the dead's discard of all material. This being so, one of the mourners approached the old man to place a handful of coppers at his bent knees. Before the moment, however, the old man help up his hand and moved his head in refusal.

"Your grief is also my grief, friend," spoke the old man. "But I have no use for money. Keep it till more needy mouths cry out near your hands. But that the generosity of your custom is not given insult, there is another one I could beg."The griever replied with a solemn bow "Speak it, old man."

"The legs of the dead are many. The shoulders of the dead are the width of a multitude. But age has only a winter's sticks to walk upon; without the sap and vigour of spring.

I, too, would seek something in the village where you go. Alas, my years going out into the land's mercy would be as fruitless as a limbless seed falling upon rock. Distance is a thing of youth and death, between them the aged have learned to judge their steps narrowly. But I see before me a thing of wings to lift my destiny. I would not ask for anything to insult this solemn procession or its dignity. Yet, too, it would seem the need of your generosity should be answered if I have a generosity of need. With humility, I ask that you carry me to the village on top of the coffin you already bear".

The griever was taken quite aback by what seemed to be a disrespectful request. He could only think to answer "But their burden is already much..."

The old fellow replied "With much respect, we add but a husk to another husk in this harvest. That and the breath of my living, which even I could lift with a palm.

The griever replied a little doubtful " But the box, it weighs much..."

"That is true, my son. You are very wise to say the box is much. Upon the strong we lay down more than just death and it's companions of a last season; the weight of our walls around such mysteries can, ah, now there is a yoke!I can only ask that you consult the bearers. If my need can be divided amongst their twelve mercies then let them have that joy. For sometimes a man goes forward in easier comfort by what he carries than by what he leaves behind."

The griever could not answer this and so returned to the procession which had stopped a little distance away. Much discussion, argument followed the old man's request. The box was set down, along with the incense, bells, flags, etc. while gray and black cloth gestured in sharp and stern flaps with all the fevered words.Indeed the wind fed on such fragments as "not the place of a beggar to define what's to be given..." "....a great insult, a beggar on top of...," "...but the giving is so little to give..."

On and on went the time till it was near dusk when the majority agreed that it was indeed a tremendous insult to the memory of the dead and thus overrode the offer of a generous deed.

For that telling, the mourner returned to the old man. The old man offered no rebuttal, no verbal reply, simply bowed gently to the dark clad apologies. As it was dusk, the procession decided it was too late to proceed. Sticks, twigs, dung was gathered quickly, small fires set for the night to ward off dangers. After water and fare, the mourners slept till dawn. They left immediately leaving the figure of the old man still beside the bent tree.

Imagine, however, their surprise and dismay when upon arriving in the village and setting the coffin down, who should pop out but the old man himself! And the dead man nowhere to be found. It seemed that the old man had stole into their night camp and switched places with the corpse.

The corpse now sitting peacefully in a lotus poise under the bent tree.

The mourners, now swelled with the other village relatives, boiled quickly to a wraith and set upon the old man intent only with beating him to death. It so happened, however, that a military guard was passing through the village and, seeing the riot, fell upon it. Whips and spear butts soon separated the mob from their victim though his blood smeared face continued to see a rain of insults and spittle.

The captain of the guard finally shouted the crowd into a semblance of

order. At least long enough to determine the accusations of the old man's crimes.

A party was sent with the box to return with the deceased. The rest gathered in the village square. The Captain ordered an immediate tribunal. The accusations were taken down, witnesses heard, the defence offered no rebuttal, verdict was passed as : guilty.

However, before the verdict was passed by the captain, (Death the usual punishment for such sacrilegious insults to the revered) it was the custom to allow the guilty to plead mercy in the sentencing. A calm and serene face gathered all eyes now towards the old man.

"Mercies? What is void but mother from which a man begins. And through his youth and manhood what is void but a father from which a man fears and rebels. But at an old age, man leaves the mother and the father and comes to cleave to void as his most compassionate lover.For there are far more deaths in a man's breathing than there are in that last breathless look.

But no matter. For your considerations, I shall give you a story. For indeed the parable is always the plea of the wise or the wink of the foolish. A stick to one end or the other. But the words seldom awaken or deny mercies. Men carve their compassions with their heart beats not with their ear drums. To the story then conclude with it or an old man as you will.

In a land ancient before even my own birth, there was a river which split this land in two. Across this river was only one bridge, and this bridge was so old it was said that it's feet had grown out of the silt below like the trunks of a stone tree. It's span was stone as well, old and strained like a dragon's skin; held aloft by the stone fingers spread open palmed. These hands came from wrists of massive square stones. Now the land about was dry but not desert; where the sun was a constant hunter but did not completely devour the life which itself fed upon it; thus it was a land where the river ruled.Long grass spread out from sides of its heart at first a vivid blush of green then dwindling over the miles into a think brown.

Much was the life that dwelt in this grass but none quite so lively as the twelve monkeys which lived in a great tree that grew quite close to the bridge. They were a noisy, raucous lot spending hours at leap and play, chase and hide in the great green canopy.

Now it came to pass that a man had wondered along an ancient trail which led to the bridge. Although not a criminal or a monk, he had left his place of birth to seek a new dwelling of solitude.

It was dusk when he had reached the bridge and so fiercewas the noise of the monkey cavorting in the great tree on the other side that he declined to go further. He had pulled along with him a clever cart. Clever in the sense that once dismantled it could be reconstructed into a small hut, the planked wheels to make a round door and a table top inside.Once done, the man went inside, to arrange the items and fare he had managed to bring along.

No sooner was he inside when the rains began. His hut was very dry, very snug indeed but the poor monkeys across the river did not fare so well.

Their spirits quickly dampened, brother joining brother gathering up sister as they all huddled in small groups under the thicker parts of the foliage. The rain came and came and the river drank and drank. Until finally the river spilled over its banks, its reach extending to the tree trunk, to the hut support and further. It rose and rose, even after the rains had stopped for the gorged streams which fed the river continued to add their wider throats of white song.

The monkeys watched the river rise up the trunk of the tree but they were not overly alarmed since its taste had not as yet reached even the lowest branches. In fact, once the rains ceased a new game soon erupted where monkeys would be lowered tail by tail so that they could get a drink and, of course, make fools of themselves in the reflections they saw below.

There was no such frolic for the hut-man, however. After a few door openings, the man became afraid the water might pour in and drown him in his own hut. When his last peek out confirmed the water was at the door's lip, he ceased to look out and instead frantically began sealing all the cracks with bits of cloth. This done, the man awaited in all the fear and sound of his imaginings, convincing himself by the hour that disaster was swallowing him up.., much in the insidious manner that a snake circles the toad with the inexhaustible lips of persistence.

Indeed days went by without the man venturing even a peak through a shred of cloth. The terror of being swept away having pinned him into this dark cocoon, it now invaded into his very mind itself. For he was convinced that if ever the tiniest barrier was plucked, water would flood his darkness into a cold death.

Reason had lost all battles to this..., that the hut would lift and float away. That the river could not reach the height of the hut.., that the rains had quit and surely would deplete the river in time. All such inner talk was unheard. In the end, it was water itself which liberated the man. Thirst. Thirst as a real madness, overcame the mind's madness. That need tore at him till it seemed he had a throat for the entire river.

The door was flung open but his eyes met sparkles of light not liquid. As he staggered down to the river bank, he could not help but wonder how many hours, how many days he had suffered needlessly. Even as his lips touched the water, as he heard the music of the monkeys seemingly roar at his folly, he resolved to store enough food and water in his hut that he could remain 'shut in' for months if need be. This the man completed over the next weeks, cramming his hut with gourds and pots filled with water, grains, dried fruit.

In that close plenty, he found a new comfort. He would sit in his hut with the door open and watch the monkeys gather their food. He felt an amused smugness to see their antics, especially feeding time. They had no system, it was a chaos. For each monkey could carry only what it could carry in one hand. Needing the other to climb. If a monkey gathered more than this, it could only set the excess in the crook of a tree limb or on the ground. Then all the other monkeys acted as if this was communal property again. Sometimes, the 'owner' would squawk; most times he or she was too immersed in their delight to notice the loss.

Now one day, there came to the man's ears a noise of drums and horns. This noise having already boiled up the monkeys' fever. Looking across the bridge, the man saw a procession coming forward, a caterpillar of many legs, of bodied colourful silk and flashes of steel in the sun. It was an armed guard both fore and aft a huge chair carried by at least two dozen massive slaves. On top of this chair was a nobleman, clad in a fine flowing vermillion robe nearly covered in jewelled adornments. Bending out of this mountain was a small, fat, chub of a man, wrinkled by age, bloated by pleasure. His eyes were closed; He slept above his bearers exertion. Above these eyes was a remarkable hat of a rare white fur. It rose a good three feet high and was as wide in its centre as a man's reach. It was decorated by only one jewel besides the jade coloured band which attached it to the drooping chin. That jewel was in the shape of a lion's face more than half eclipsing the sun. As a symbol of the wearer's lineage and status it was, of course, pure gold.

When the man saw such a kingly status, he became very frightened for the glance of such a one could easily send ten spears into the man's throat. He scurried into his hut and closed the door, hoping to avoid ire by absence.

The procession approached the bridge, passed directly below the old tree. It was fortunate that the hat just went under the lowest limb of the tree for the guards were under absolute orders to swerve for nothing man-made or natural. Or perhaps not very fortunate for by being inches from the limb, the hat was jerked away from its owner by the clutch of a monkey.

Now here was a game!Guards, slaves, nobleman, all in a melee of roaring and shouting, even as the white hat rose higher and higher in the tree passed from one monkey to the other. With it lodged in a tree fork, they crawled in, over, around, and out of the thing. One would hold it while another bounced on it; another might grab it from one and thump it down upon another. In no time at all the royal hat had become soiled and shaped in a very ignoble manner.

Men were sent climbing into the tree but they were of no agile match to catch the monkeys or the hat, tossing in the branches. Those who got even close received for their unarmed efforts (for they could only climb weaponless) a nasty bite on the hand or arm.Coming back out of the tree, the guards strung their bows. A constant barrage was aimed into the tree but visibility was so poor and the monkeys so agile that not a single monkey was hit. Finally, however, a misplaced arrow struck the gold medallion on the hat with enough force to knock it out of the monkey's hand. Down it tumbled to land at the nobleman's feet. The lion's lips snarled and foamed for a punishment but in the end, nothing could be done.

It would take days to cut the girth of this massive tree and to use fire in such a dry season could easily turn to a suicide for the executioners. There was nothing to be done but resume marching formation, raise the hatless king onto his chair and move onto the bridge. The last guard at the rear bore in his hands the monkey's havoc even as his ears gathered their raucous ridicule.

The procession crossed the bridge and following the path came directly upon the hut. The guards glancing back at the king, saw the purse of his lips and immediately tossed hut, stores, man and all, right over the embankment. The procession moved on, no one even glancing as the hut slid roof first into the river, sticking into the mud at a slant with only two-thirds of itself seen above water.

Inside the hut, the man had been sitting atop his provisions. Once turned upside down, he was trapped and now worse was pinned by those containers which would not float, but crushed him against the roof. Panic seized him and his feet and hands flailed at the boards of the hut until the roof and half a wall parted from the rest. The man burst into breath and dragged himself to shore.From there he watched in dismay any floatablesbeing carried down the river.

All of those were lost and as well the heavy containers which had pinned him were now being swallowed into the river mud, its depth of silt at least the length of a man. With persistence and a length of vine, the man was at least able to rescue the broken hut. This he reassembled but not again in the pathway to the bridge. He carried the pieces yards and yards away into the long dense grass, the tips of which easily brushed the roof top.

Once the hut was repaired, the man once again refilled it with provisions so he could wait out any calamity. Once it was dusk, he sat upon the roof of his hut enjoying the cool of the lifting breeze. All of a sudden there was a great raucous across the river. The monkeys were screeching and screaming and in the twilight the man could see their silhouettes moving madly from limb to limb in the tree.

There was a tiger amongst them. Its growls and snarls carried to the man as he saw its long body leaping into the tree in pursuit.

The man watched as the tiger leapt again and again only to land on limb after limb without a monkey in its jaws, though sometimes its claws were only inches from the monkeys' tail or flank. Even as the tiger tired, the monkeys became bolder, more infuriating; mocking and making rude noises; some even began 'bouncing' off the tiger's back when it was in mid-air between tree limbs. The tiger grew exhausted and resting upon a tree turned its face away from the monkeys' sneer. It caught the smell of prey across the river. At that moment, the moon was uncovered by twilight and its light both reflected the man of the tiger and the tiger of the man. The tiger bounded from the tree and headed for the bridge. The man, terrified, jumped down from the roof and scrambled into his hut, barring the door behind him. The tiger came across the bridge and immediately went low to the ground.

Far down the trail, a herd of deer had crossed from one side of the long grass to the other. The tiger marked where the grass had closed past the last deer and in a burst of speed, raced up and then leapt into the grass. The force of the tiger's speed and weight came full upon the deer's neck, snapping it with a painless, soundless death.

Picking up the dead carcass, the tiger trotted far away into the grass for it greatly mistrusted the man-scent all around.

In the hut, the man waited. The grass was touched by the wind. Pawed into a motion. This in turn, brushed against the hut, both making the soft sounds of an animal circling. Through the cracks of the hut, the man could see stripes of shadows moving; sometimes in patterns, sometimes casting a blackness over his peer. This would frighten him away, to sit again hearing, counting the footsteps of the hunger he imagined stalking him.

Hearing the breath of his nightmares; sensing the unrelenting eyes, the patience of glaring days; the tiger waiting, waiting.

The man waiting and waiting. The hut as certain a prison for this man as any stone and iron of another's creations. When food, water ran out, not even such desperation could overcome the man's tiger.

Even death did not release him, in the way death releases so many other men.

When that which is of grieve, or of burden or of climb, is let go. But how can such a thing be let go of? When the living was all but a nightmare in the dream? When the living ends, here now the dream ends, but what of it?

When a dream ends, then reality appears. But for the man, reality is not a climb to watch a ti ger trail away.

Reality is the prison of a box unsurrounded by tigers, pursued only by shadows and a touch of wind. That remains with the dead as it was the living."

The old man turned to the Captain "And there, Sir, and all, is my story. For your considerations."

Some in the crowd laughed, most mumbled angry for none saw the point of this odd tale of dialogue. In short, the crowd soon called for his punishment.

The Captain seeing as little reason in the old man's tale as many of the rest gave for his sentence: "death by stoning".

He was taken to the edge of town, stones readily gathered but before the first fell upon his flesh a shout was heard from the rear of the crowd.

Everyone turned to behold a remarkable sight.A procession was again entering the village. It was the half of the original returning again with the coffin. But what a sight, for on top of the coffin rode the man all had presumed to be death. He was grinning and laughing; shouting and crying. He was left clad only in a loin cloth. He had discarded all his funeral attire like a groom preparing for a wedding bed. One of his bearers told the tale. Imagine their initial shock when they had come upon the man sitting against the tree and found him alive not dead! It seems he had 'woke up', having absolutely no idea where he was or why he was there.All he knew was a strange sensation was upon him, something even more joyful, more lifting than his riches had ever achieved. Yet he knew not the why of that either. He had a couple of hours of dancing a happy madness, talking to birds and an old tree, rolling in the grass, all the antics of a man who trades the aged of solemn for the freedom of the looser-limbed.

Spent, but in a wistful state, he had returned to sitting by the tree. In a state of gently peace, he had not heard the approach of his bearers till they were almost upon him. Opening his eyes, he had welcomed his friends and relatives with an open-armed shout; they had answered by running away!!

In time, however, the funeral was convinced the man was no apparition but somehow had recovered from a very deep sleep, a symptom of his extreme illness.

The bearers had told the man of all the happenings so far. It was soon realized that had the old man not 'switched' places, causing a delay of day and night, the 'dead' man would have been buried alive!

At the insistence of the crowd and a little gold from the extravagance of the re-born, the Captain was persuaded to set the old man free. The re-born man thanked him profusely and then declared a celebration be prepared at once.

It was at the banquet that someone asked the old man to explain his parables about the twelve monkeys and the man in the hut.

The old man spoke "When you put a dead man into a box you should take him out many times on his last journey. Sit him up at your table with tea and food before him. Play, sing the songs of your traditions. Wait to see if he dances or drinks or feasts."

Someone asked "How many times should you do this?" The old man grinned "As many times as you would wish him to be alive!"

"But we would always wish him to be alive!?!

The old man answered "Then cease the journey. If he is dead, he will go on ahead of you. If he is not, where shall you find him but still amongst you? Look at your own riddle. Half of you stayed to beat the dead impostor; half journeyed back to find the dead. But those who sought death found a living imposter, was that not the same as what was to be beaten?

Who can answer what is death, what is a living stillness? Who can answer what is living, what is a dead man whistling? In all this, nothing is exchanged but laughter for lament, like a well turned joke!"

A villager lifted his glass "Then death was indeed cheated!"

The old man shook his head softly, "No, do not mock death. It comes. But it does not demand you journey to it. In pure stillness, it will not pass over, yet neither will it rudely stir you."

"But pardon, old master, the point of the flood, of the king, of the tiger, what was that?"

"The man who hides from the tears of living is no more saved than a funeral's grieve can open the ears of its cause.And what is this giving, this charity? As if a man will fly if we give away his legs. Remember the monkeys? Did we call it generosity when each kept only what they could hold in one hand? No, we called it a necessity of the climb; a law of Ascension as it were."

One of the guests interrupted "But surely it is wise to store food for the future. Our own village has seen the disaster of famine avoided twice in my lifetime alone."

The man who had been dead but was not longer spoke up "I do not think the master speaks of food for the physical body. Had I awoken amongst all my riches instead of beside the tree I do not think it would have enhanced my joy one bit. Indeed, it may have lessened it for the emptiness spoke of a wondrous change. This was a telling to my eyes of what, somehow, my heart already knew. My heart already knew I was empty of all things burdensome of soul. There is no hut so empty as that which has its walls broken away!" He turned towards the old man "But master, I wonder why, on one side of the river, there were twelve monkeys in a tree, not just another man?"

"The twelve parts of a soul, the twelve signs move freely across the sky whether of day or night. Some may sleep, while some are not. While this one feeds, this one contemplates its belly. Sometimes their noise sounds like a war but they are only at play. Conflict spreads them wide like the fingers preventing a fist, calamity grasps each heart into a reach of unity. A man's soul is not like a courtier, a face over a face over a face. It is a river, where one finds stillness, foam, current, depth, curve, fall, roar. When you measure the face of a man, it is as if you cleave a rock. The pressure you bear, the weight of how you look upon a man, this shall half the rock again and again. For new faces. But the rocks grow smaller and smaller till in the end you must peer into very small faces indeed!

And when you can no longer see his face, you declare him dead. That is not the way one looks into a river. But the river, like the monkeys, has no fear of the onlooker. The man in the hut hides his faces. When we come upon the hut if we hear no man, see no man, know no man, what can we conclude but there is no man!!"

"Old master, tell us, when you switched places with the man who was dead but is no longer, did you know he was not dead?"

"I knew that many thought of him as dead. I did not know if he thought of himself as dead. Remember for the man in the hut it does not matter whether the tiger comes to the hut or not. For where does a man carry the face of a tiger, in the moon? In his eye? In his soul?

When a man is still in his hut is he dead? When a monkey is still upon a tree branch is he dead? The trouble with a hut is there no place to fall. For is that not how men see the end of their time, as like the sun in it's twilight? Yet inside the hut how will I know if I'm up or I'm down? On which side of the wall do dead men look for dead men?

In the village there is a man who makes a perfect fit of gloves from the stretched leather of pigs. But do we call him the Creator of the Hands?

Then it is not the maker of the hut which deadens the soul. None of you here would have killed this man though you drove the living into the hut. But can a man who stays close by his hut be called: living?"

"But, old man, the monkeys stayed in their tree? Do they not cling also?"

"And why should they not!? From where they are they can see a bridge, a river, a trail, a grass of jungle, even another man's hut.What use is a valley to the mountain? For what is the greatest thing about a fine banquet, what you can taste or all that you can see? Vision is never stale, never sated so long as it is limited only by itself. Likewise the river only grows angry at what is put before it. You have come to know a dead man by his hut and would so conclude that any man in a hut must be dead!

All men are tigers, tigers for themselves, tigers for others, even tigers for tigers. For the tiger is real, is it not?

The monkeys called to it from their riot of living and it came. The man called to it from the silence of his moon-face and indeed did it not cross the river?

But the tiger which crossed the bridge became a tiger real and a tiger imagined. The tiger was divided into two when the man entered his hut.We cannot say which is the greater of the tigers but we can say that no man can defeat both, yet even a monkey can defeat one."

The man who was dead but was now not to be, spoke, "Master, if the man went into the tree, the tiger could have captured him there anyway. Seems to me that a hut is better for a real tiger but a tree is better for imaginary ones."

The old man answered "How many times do you think a real tiger comes? How many times does a real tiger not come? When the real tiger does not come, it is the imaginary tiger which comes! This means that when a man is not twelve monkeys in a tree, he calls out to his own death many, many times. It can be, as with my friend here, that someone exchanges; someone robs him of his tiger. If one thinks of death and does not die; who dies? Just as the deer died for the man when his moon-faced brought over death?

But like an old woman who knows the date of the next feast, does the man rattle his cup and plate days before?"

Who goes to the hungry dog with empty hands; for any dog will bit the hand which does not feed it!"

A guest interrupted: "The tiger is death and cannot be avoided?"

"The tiger is many things. It is passion. Greed. Lust. Courage. Want. Cowardice. Pride. Fear. Compassion. Hunger. Dignity. Love. The tiger is a man's heart in this world. And the world's heart to the man. It will include death but not be contained solely by it.

The tree is a man's mind in the world. And the world's mind rooting in the man. For did not the tiger pursue the monkeys through the thoughts of the tree? There are the 'I's, there are the monkeys of this world. When one is asleep another is not! A man sends his tiger out into the world. What does this mean but that he causes suffering? For no man can suffer his own suffering. Like the man who was thought dead, did he grieve? A man can gaze all his years into a cracked mirror yet he will feel no pain onto his own face; yet he will grieve another's fracture!

Think of it as such when a man is full but his family starves, will he know contentment? But when a man starves, while his family feeds, is that not a great joy of sacrifice!?

The suffering inside a man is nothing to the man. He is as distant to it as the river is from a rock thrown into its depths. There is a ripple but does the river slow its pace?

But the face of suffering that is another matter. Like a moon ,it settles full upon the waters. Will not the spirit lift or fall away from such a blanket of apparition?If I cannot suffer my own suffering, yet I think I suffer, where does my suffering go?

When a man or woman suffers, does not a tiger then go forth?

When a man is angry the tiger goes forth. When a man is fearful the tiger comes forth.

When you believed the man was dead, was he dead? Now you believe his is living, is he alive?

The point about tigers is not about whether they are coming or going, for what is coming, was sent; what is going was called."

"Do you mean that whenever I am angry with some neighbour, some friend seeks, in their fear, my anger? In a way, creating my anger?" asked one of the guests.

"When it rains, is it because there is a hole to be filled? But watch out! For men dig holes hoping for rain!

It is not always enough to see. For the twelve monkeys see far without the hut but even they do not know when a bouncing branch will uproot the toe of a sleeping tiger.

Truly, when I switched places with the man who was thought to be Death but is no longer, I did not know he was not dead 'till I entered his hut.' Nor will a man know if he is dead or not unless he leaves his own hut and enters another's hut. Then he will begin to understand the way of tigers in the world. But wisdom always knows of a lack of understanding. Life is a game. There are dice with the mark of a tiger's paw. For will not the deaf man say onto us "why listen for I have lived well without it?" Will not the blind man say onto us "why look, for I have lived well without it?" Will not the limbless man say "why walk, for I have lived well without it?"

Yet even as we ponder these things to be true, do not others come forth to speak to us of their 'living well without'.

The miser without his generosity, the murderer without his compassion, the sloth without their work, the evil man without any goodness at all.

What they are without is exactly what is left behind when they enter their huts. And that becomes a tiger in the world. When the angry man enters his hut, what does he leave behind: his anger?

No, for he has taken that into the hut. He is without forgiveness and it is that which he leaves in the world; a lack of forgiveness. It is a hole for a rain of tigers to fill. Now everyone knows that bad men do not always die by their own bad deeds. Though they usually die of someone's bad deeds. Or may die of a good man's deeds. So a man need not be the hunted of his own raising.

But look about you, even in this placid village, does it not seem there are at times more tigers than men in the nights of your distance? If twelve men uncage twelve tigers each, will it matter whose scar is upon whose wound?

What monkeys do that men do not do, is simple, their common riot is the breakage of huts!

At a feast, each bowl makes for distinct fare; an individual harvest. Thus the body divides the communal soul into the personalities of taste, spiced of the twelve ingredients. Now if we did not have the bowls, who would we be?

Hey! If we have covered bowls how would we live? If the bowls were balls, could we tell whether each one of us is living or dead?

All my stories are simple. They are about the man who hides what he has not by hiding what he has. For what is more empty than a bowl turned upside down?

All my stories are simple. They are about the man who leaves behind what he has, not by discarding what he is.

Remember: a footprint is a hole familiar to all by its formation. No one calls a footprint a hole because we think it is shallow. But its deepness lies in other directions.

All my stories are simple. The man who dwells outside his hut is as imprisoned as the man inside. The man who must exist outside the cell is as much a prisoner of the cell as the man inside it. For we must remember that trees grow everywhere. Our thoughts grow into any earth; and any earth will grow our thoughts. No tree is higher than its mountain; no monkey is higher than its tree. No man is lesser than all; No all becomes greater than the least.

All my stories are simple. A man dancing is a tiger. A man weeping is a tiger. A man is always a tiger, even asleep he is a tiger.

But the tiger is not the man. He is a marriage of man and something mysterious not quite of man. He is a marriage of woman and something infinite, not quite of woman. He is a marriage of child and something of a power, the way stone and sea resist without yield; conquer and contain each other without defeat.

All my stories are simple. The man in the hut would not suffer death. If only he had known he could not suffer his own death, he could only bring suffering into his world. But not by his death. By his death at living.

All my stories are simple but this one. This I offer onto the man who was thought to be dead but was found to be hiding in a hut instead. When you look directly into the tiger's face and tremble, it will grin most widely. When you look into the tiger's face and laugh, it will grin most widely. When it returns to the work, does it carry laughter in its throat or something less?

Now this is a thing that can happen but must it be a bad thing that can happen? For who can harbor the thought of a laughing tiger long in this world. It must slip out of our closed palms and bring joy to any eyes which may see it.

The man who had walked from death, stood up "Hah! It is so true, master. When I was frolicking about after my awakening, I stood on my head for awhile. Two strange thoughts came to me. One: that a tiger would look like a striped cocoon if I were a monkey hanging by its tale. The other thought was that a frowning man hides his joy upside down!"

"So we see. I will tell you a final riddle before I go. Once a man once so astounded and puzzled by the way trees grow, bending and branching at random in their growth, that he devoted his life to analyse their patterns. He read their calligraphies, plotted their mathematics, studied their veins of astrology, spent countless hours accounting for the sun fall, rainfall, cloud, wind, even the magnetism of the earth.

Now one day, late in his life, he was sitting by a particular huge tree whose branches literally filled the near sky. Before him was his usual great pile of whets and works. Suddenly a little old man, naked, thin and lithe appeared on one of the bottom limbs. He so pestered the scholar about what the books were about that finally the great man gave in and explained his work, his struggle for the tree's cause of pattern.

'You don't really know?" quipped the white bearded man from the crook of the tree. "Why, the reason the branches of the tree turn and bend all over the place, twist and crook, all in degrees, all in directions, is because they are busy looking everywhere!'

So aghast, so stunned, did the scholar look upon this simplicity, that the old man could not help but contain his laughter. With pity, he quickly added 'Now remember that when one looks everywhere for something which is already everywhere, it is like looking for smoke in the mist. That is only the effect not the cause. To look for cause reach out for fire!'

A man's mind is like the tree and seeks to go everywhere. One need only remember that it remains also where it always was. The tree mind, the still mind, does not separate itself from anything. How then can there be a pattern between all things touching?

That is why the tree, like a wise mind probes gently and never closes completely around what it finds. In that way the most massive trunk can still dance on the mildest wind. In that way the most ancient trunk can still turn the wildest storm.

For if the tree were to close completely upon what it had found, it would be as a bowl upturned to the wind and die in that darkness"

The old man turned to he who would not die on this day, "Ah what can I say. Wind, earth, mind, monkey, tree, hut, tiger, man. These are only words of different ends of the same stick. Like branch and root.

If you sing well, who will know or even care if you're drumming backwards? To look behind you, you will see where you are going. Is that not the same as to look ahead and see where you have been.

To which the man who had been dead but rode home upon a broken hut laughed and replied "So true, Master. Just like a tiger chasing its' tail.

At Last

"Problems are like a 'hole in the bucket'. Do not fix the hole. Rather move closer to the water as dictated by the size of the hole. One learns to use the hole to lessen the labour."

A young woman drifted along the road, her eyes full of only her thoughts. They reflected nothing of the bright, joyous day.

Her eyes were dim and far, the pupils narrowed by an intense concentration, a deep worry betrayed by both her moving lips and her thickened brow.

She was obviously neither a constant vagrant nor of some criminal pursued, for her dress was of a means and style rich in colour and cloth. She walked unafraid, natural danger being furthest from her mind; not so much out of courage, though she had it, but out of her oblivion. She had left her village though she was alone only in her thoughts. Indeed, one could see behind her an entourage of a dozen guards and a few ladies-of-waiting. By their agitation, they were having troubles of their own; their mistress's demand for a respectable distance to think versus a protector's need for close-at-hand.

What could trouble this young soul, of such beauty and wealth? When the soul is unhappy, one should immediately look to love as the bone caught between the teeth, for love is either the fruit or that thorn.

There was no fault with the parental embrace. Her mother and father loving and caring for her in a way beyond the veils of her expensive dress or waiting servants. For wealth often does not go much beyond those things, but this girl, the parents saw her as the real treasure not for what treasures could adorn her. Being so they had ignored politics and tradition and allowed their princess to choose her own husband.

In another large village lived a good family of a means secure in economics as well as social standing. They had two daughter and a son. The son was the youngest, of handsome look and figure; intelligent and industrious. Even at the age of twenty, he already was displaying a knack for politics and a social position.

To the girl he was always kind and very courteous, his poetry and his gifts of love a constant stream when they were apart.

In a month she had been swept off her feet, in six months betrothed, indeed it was a week from this day that the marriage was to happen.

What had come to pass that such joy of tears at six months was now tightened to a darker cloud at this year's end?

Love had flowered a bliss in her heart. It is so much freedom for a young girl to find love and to choose that love.

Such flowerings yield either a windblown ecstasy that blooms over even the saddest pot or will, if time permits, gather a coming maturity.

It was in this young soul that fortune, or as she might lament: misfortune, had given her that maturity.

A maturity of open eye not clouded by the misty ways of the love-filled heart. Her rapture had not so much dimmed as become overshadowed by the light of perception. A perception that though her love was pure and indeed his love might be pure but that her lover, himself, was less than pure.

Maturity, of course, lent to herself two cautions. The first being that perfection is found only in the ideal, all things from the shrill of the pretty bird to the fall of a star have their flaws and disappointments.

But this assurance did not dispel the second caution, for what seems is not always what is, like a blanket of colourful leaves over a rain's mud.

Though he treated her with a careful respect, she had noted that his mother or sisters were often ignored or worse, disdained. To her, they were loving, intelligent people but she got the inkling that as women their thoughts were not of his manly consideration.

She had never known him to give a single alm to a beggar. His protest that there was always ample food for the sower and the industrious seemed to ignore the crippled or aged state of those hands he brushed aside.

She had heard stories too, cautiously spoken within her hearing, of an almost ruthless manner overseeing the servants and workmen of his father's large estate. She had, of course, silenced such talk in a flurry of defence but nonetheless, the doubts were not so easily put down in her own mind.

Once on a walk, he had spied a young vagrant plunking plums from a tree on the property. Only her intervention had saved the gaunt-cheeked imp a more severe beating than two hard blows with a cane.

To his credit, he had no vices as many well-to-do young men such as drinking or chasing the village girls. It seemed to her, though, that he avoided these more out of their swerve from a cold and calculated future than for the goodness their abstinence should bring.

All the while, as her nature half mulled these and many more doubts as to the true compassion and nature of her lover, her heart stormed fierce upon his behalf.

"He is hard, perhaps, in places but what man is not in this world, what man cannot help but be? And cannot a great love and a loving wife soften such hardness where needs be? He is yet young, yet unsure of his place in the world. In time, mellow will grow out of security as he finds true hold upon his destiny. Do you not love with a full love? There are many women who bed more crueller, more wicked men for a love such as yours? It is not the place of a woman to judge her man, criminal or saint, that will be God's. Your love must be your reason, nothing else, nothing less!" On and on it went, backwards, forward. For and against.

She could not discuss it with her parents, for her parents believed her happy and gained a great happiness by her show of contentment. She would not shatter their dream though she perhaps misunderstood that they dreamed for her not necessarily for her and him.

She found as well that her mind began daring into the future, both of a life with him and without him.

Despite the pleadings of her heart, her mind could not help but unearth misgivings of ill-treatment or the chattel of a marriage. She saw herself either as a china doll upon the hearth or... a broken one. Either way, she saw very little of the vibrant essence which she had felt inside all her life.

Her life without the marriage was even more vague having with its mists a sense of power, of potential and as well a real risk of obscurity, of remorseful loss.

She had talked more and more to a healing woman of the village. This woman claimed the girl had "old knowledge, hidden skills" and was looking for an apprentice.

She had spent a few hours with her father's uncle, an oracle and diviner. It had been fascinating. Indeed, he was so delighted with her attentions that he succumbed to give her a few star charts and some oracle runes with which to "study".

Walking in the village, she had found herself drawn more and more to the destitute, the crippled, the ill. Having offered direct help a few times, her betrothed had displayed much disapproval so she had disdained.. But now her inaction troubled her in many ways.

Over and over, those questions. Who was she? Who was she to be? Who was she to belong to? Could she just follow her heart?.. And perhaps lose her mind?.. Or soul? Wait for another? As if a woman is but a womb begging in the marketplace? Work among the unfortunate? But what of her parents, their need for grandchildren? The occult, the ancient healings,... her father, mother, neighbours might collapse at their daughter taking up such an occupation that was already odd enough for even a man. Or could they all be but the whims of a child's heart, that heart less troubled before womanhood. And the passing fancies melt away, the lover shunned as well, and life sometimes does not hand back the chance again. The next suitor may be kind but not loved, compassionate but unsuitable by age or manner. Or the next suitor may not be. She to live with her parents, their silence of no marriage and no grandchildren all the more cutting to her by its own kindness.

Now with the wedding but a week away, the increase in household activities and nuptial preparations was buzzing with the persistence of a windowed fly.

She had fled all that, but not her thoughts, determined in this walk to return with firm resolution one way or the other.

But like the length of this road travelled she was going nowhere.

The habits of mind vs. heart, soul against soul were now too ingrained to give one way or the other either by treaty or argument.

She was as pitted against herself as she had always been.

It was at this point that she came upon the sight of the Bent Tree. She turned towards it, seeking both its shade and its change of focus from a road simply east or west. Her guardians trailed the waist high grass behind her. They kept the same respectable distance but the hum of their disapproval rose like morning insects at harvest.

She was almost to the tree when she saw an old hermit sitting lotus position dressed only in an old gray robe and an odd looking hat. The hat was red or at least long since faded from red and was triangular in shape. The point upward, the three sides sloping downward and fitting rather unsnugly around his bald crown.

She was very put out at this sight for she had solely wanted to rest and think under the tree. The last she wanted around was a funny (and probably smelly) hermit talking to her. She stopped, undecided whether to proceed or not.

The old man opened his eyes and looking at her said in a very gentle voice "What is wrong, child?"

A little taken back for she at first wondered if he had read her mind she answered with the first thing that came to mind "Why do you wear that funny hat?"

She had no more than said it when she realized how rude it sounded.

The hermit didn't seem to mind however but simply replied "Why do you do not?"

"Do not what?"

"Wear such a funny hat?" his finger pointed to his own.

"Well, I guess because I don't have one"

"Now you do!" and he threw the hat to her feet.

She picked up the hat, a little gingerly, and moved towards him. Her guardians immediately pursued but she signalled them to stay put. They answered with a flourish of protests and opened their umbrellas to the sun.

The girl knelt down beside the old man and placing the hat in front of him said "Thank you but I can't accept this. You need it for the sun. She glanced around "besides it appears to be all you own."

He laughed "Hah! And what a thing to own. Too small to keep off the sun, soaks up the rain and its too thin for the cold. If I drink from a stream it falls in it. If I go for a walk across the grass, the crows attack it. In the village it draws every little imp with a stick or a pebble. Even just sitting here, the wind plays tricks and snatches at it constantly."

"Why do you own it then? Why not give it away?"

"It is useless, who will take it?" answered the hermit.

The girl returned "But if it is indeed useless, why not throw it away?"

"Perhaps it is like many things, it does not like the use we make of it. If I throw it away, I may do both it and I a great disservice. It, by the denial of its coming use; I, by the denial of my coming need."

"What do you mean?"

"When one is resting, one doesn't have the road taken away".

She shook her head in the motion of argument "But then one would keep everything since even a thing of use in one day may have a different use tomorrow. It would be no good to say "I have no need of this thing of this use since one cannot as yet know what other uses there may be to come".

He shrugged "Since what is in the past will find its use or new use in the future, what are we to do with everything anyway? Why carry it all with us? Or keep it stashed; near our grasp? Can we loan it out yet have it back upon quick demand? Who shall we trust and how far shall we map their lives to remain close to ours?

She looked puzzled at the hermit "We no longer speak of the odd red hat, do we old man?"

"Perhaps not."

They were silent now. Together. Both gazing across the long grass. The old man with his history forgotten. The young woman without hers known. Above their heads a small crow landed upon the Bent Tree. Without apparent reason, it poked at a fresh bud on a small branch. It tore it loose but then dropped its sour taste between the unmoving figures below.

"Where did you get it, then?"

"What, child?"

"The red hat?"

"It was given to me"

"Why?"

"An exchange."

"In exchange for what?"

"One left sandal with a worn heel and a strap made of a woven hair rope."

'Sorry I asked' she thought to herself.

Time settled. She moved her eyelash. The long grass waved back. The Bent Tree shifted one of its branches a little.

"And I suppose the shoe was an exchange for some other previous thing?"

"Always, child, always. That is the way of things. They are lonely out of hand. We should have pity upon what we create and then condemn as un-soul-less".

She looked at him and smiled, thinking this a joke. "You mean your hat has a soul?"

"Doesn't yours?"

"I don't have a hat, remember?"

"But you believe you have a soul. Perhaps your previous hat left it behind!"

"That's just nonsense."

"Hmm. Perhaps. You say my hat has no soul. You have a soul but no hat. Could this be destiny?"

She dug at the heel of her dirt. "What? You want me to give up my soul for a hat?"

"No. No. Of course not. That is silly. I want you to wear the odd red hat to tell everyone you now have a soul."

"But everyone already knows everyone has a soul, the hat won't tell them that. That's ridiculous."

"We are only trying to find a use for the odd red hat."

"Oh. Sorry."

Silence again. Save a few coughs and glances of disapproval emanating between the tips of the long grass and a very low cloud of colourful silk.

She spoke again. "This exchange thing. What if I gave you something for the odd red hat, would that help?"

"Yes" he answered "That's the way it works, I guess".

She nodded. " Well alright then what can I give you for the hat. An umbrella? Fan? Sword?"

The old fellow spoke "It has to be of equal value."

"But the hat is useless!?" she exclaimed.

"Exactly. Well, not quite. It is useless to me right now. That value may change once it is given to you. For me or for you. The man who cannot play must give the flute to the one who can. You must exchange for it something that is useless to you right now, yet...,"

"Yet?" she questioned.

"Yet... a handful of dirt is not to you what this odd red hat is to me. When I wore the one left shoe I found my travels difficult by the strain and pronounced limp which its disharmony caused upon my legs.

"The hat seemed a welcome change. But the burden of it's precarious balance and social disfigurement, its brash herald of unworthy note have made it a tremendous burden over my head."

She replied "So I must exchange something like that?"

"Yes"

"But everything I have with me, or of what servants have brought means nothing to me. I cannot say the servants or guards mean nothing but one cannot trade people for a hat."

"When someone sees smoke coming from their house, do they rush around the outside of the house to see if everything of value is now outside? Or would they enter the house first, pursuing that which was to them of the most value?"

She replied "Well, one rushes in first, of course."

"And in one's mind, the picture of what is most precious, has that not been carried uppermost since the first glimpse of danger? Like a sleeping child cradled through the smoke?"

"Yes, you are right."

"And in one's mind, the picture of what is most dangerous, does it not flick continuously at the precious dream in the mind? Along the edges of the skull curl such things as fire, as viper, as danger; the emotions give them living image

; the mind fights their look of victory."

She nodded agreement "It is like that. Fear paints a web across even the most polished mirror."

"That is good, child. Very good. That mirror. For in what is seen, is it real or is it the burden of a legless man in three feet of water? The seduction of paint over a rungless earth.

She shrugged, "It is real and not real. If there is fear, then there must be a face to it. If there is no fear, what is to be faced? It may be birthed by intuition, for where there is smoke, there is fire. Yet there is so much of a mind that is not of the exact moment. That is past and the pasts of past. My uncle says there are many, many circles around the same moment; in all directions like a pebble thrown not into a pond but into the air. That an act or even a thought is as much the result of waves collapsing into a final eruption of fount as they are of the pebble birthing other evolutions."

The old hermit looked at her "Hmm. A child who is not fool. But what child truly is? A very wondrous or a very dangerous thing as it grows old. It reminds me of a story told to me.

'Once in a park, Thunder went to kick an old man who was just sitting there on the grass.

But Wind grabbed Thunder first and said "Beware the silent will. For the steel folded is not the steel broken."

Thunder pictured in his mind a metal bar doubled in two, its resistance now fractured. He laughed and replied "And how is that so?"

Wind gave her reply as this. "There is a way of folding things which does not separate strength from the living process. Think always of the coiled spring!'"

She looked grave, doubtful. "I am no coiled spring."

The old man nodded. "Perhaps. But that may be because you have not yet bent. Steel is steel, young or old."

"Does it not rust?"

"Yes. But the rust outside remains cutting, it is the rust inside which weakens the blade."

She nodded. "It is said, it is the living which wears away the flesh, yet, it is the lack of living which wears away the soul."

"The end of rust is in tears, the beginning of rust is in tears."

She questioned "All things have within themselves, then a pair, a pleasure?"

"What has pain or pleasure to do with tears?"

"Surely, they are the result of happiness, and of misery?" she answered.

The old man grinned "But surely they are opposites. How can opposites create the same thing? What cries in the mirror, the face or the image?

"Perhaps it is by those tears that we know the face is real. " she answered thoughtfully.

"There are two kinds of swords which gather no more rust; that in the hands of the cowardly; that in the hands of the fallen." spoke the old man.

"There is another. The sword undrawn." She held a closed fist in her other fist and raised it up before her face.

"Is it not the way of the feminine to hold the sword within? Is it not the way of the masculine to draw forth the sword? Yet, as the sword is drawn close, does not my enemy lean into my reach? As the sword is thrust, does not my enemy go beyond my reach?

Thus when your hand is empty, when the sword is undrawn your enemy is the nearest to their defeat."

She shook her hand "But I have no enemy. Not really. It is all up to me."

"Towards the hill no one looks until the banner is struck. Then even the crows flock to its feet.

The emptiness of your hand is that calling to so many others."

She looked at him "Why? Why is it so important to have one's palms filled with something, from a mother's breast all the way to the dirt above one's face?

He answered"We have returned to the red hat. You have something in the mirror which you can exchange for my red hat for does it not seem to you to be both useless yet, irksome, yet too, an undrawn sword; the banner of an empty hand?

She laughed. "My thoughts are indeed like your red hat for they are indeed a trouble so long as I possess them in my indecisions. The hand does not so much wait as falter."

The old man shook his head. "Child-warrior, do not be so quick as to call the mercy of your hesitation; a weakness. It is what is meant by the spear of two thrusts.

All strengths, feminine or masculine, are at their greatest weakness when they are at their greatest strength. It is the middle grip which in reality becomes the best stance."

She looked very puzzled. "What do you mean?"

The hermit smiled at her "You said you felt your weakness by the hesitation of your 'strike'. But have you been struck? If the feminine is to hold, then when it is strongest in mercy, it is also very close to the edge of great weakness if it shall 'hold' when struck. So, too, the male if it strikes without hold, it becomes easily exhausted by its random eruptions of "self".

If the middle "grip" is taken, when the male is thrust forward, the female shall close to protect or if the female is extended, the male circles behind.

The attack becomes defence, defence allows attack, there becomes a circle of steel around you. In its movement, what is strongest lies between what is weakest and your enemy. Even if you do not know where your enemy is."

She laughed "It is the first time I have heard of procrastination as a virtue!"

He smiled too "You would have heard it before but that most people hesitate to say so."

She grinned and nodded; her eyes lightened for a moment. "The feminine to hold, the masculine to act, all things have within themselves such two, whether in motion or not?"

"It is best to say where one is not, the other is. When one is small, the other large. At the end of one, there begins the other yet when one is half, the other will be half as well. These things are not made to exist, they exist. Harmony exists whether seen to exist or not."

The girl shook her head in disagreement. "But when there is strife, how can it be said there is harmony?'

"The short end of the stick moves a little, the long end of the stick moves far. What is it?" he asked.

"A lever?"

"And riding upon the lever. Where is the strife; where is the harmony?"

"If one were to sit upon the long end, one would move about more than any other place. That may be felt as a disharmony" she answered.

"If one finds disharmony in sitting upon one end then one will find disharmony sitting upon the other. Though a shorter distance, it is nonetheless a rise or fall of one's position.

In the middle place, the middle road , there is no rise and fall, no disharmony."

She replied "Could it not be argued, old man, that there is no change either? That without strife, how can we feel gain, growth?"

"The lever is within. The circle is about. When something gains, something is lost. To add is to subtract. On either end of the lever, which is masculine, which is feminine? If one is to thrust, the other to draw close? One acts, the other retreats. When one feels strife, is one feeling too masculine or too feminine?

Does it really matter what is far or close so long as one remains in the centre.

She replied "If one leans out into the arc of the circle will not one be struck by both ends? The first by act, the second by react."

" How can one feel unbalanced if one is the system which we claim is always balanced?" the old fellow answered and then continued "If your feet are planted firmly on the ground, yet one leans forward, so far forward to the very edge of imbalance, will you not feel the sensation of falling without falling?"

She replied "But if you are not falling, the sensation will change from imbalance to a reassurance of balance."

"True. True. Now go up to the top limb of this Bent Tree. Stand up on it's thick reach and lean outward again. Will you lean out as far, will you come to the same distance from the centre of your stance?"

"Height has increased my fear. The test becomes more... what?... mortal in consequence? Yet, there is no physical reason why I cannot do the same."

The old hermit's head nodded "So here we have the sensation of imbalance while at balance. When this strife goes, as you say, we feel growth in the ability to lean into the wind in higher places."

"Is that not a growth, to now have the trust in my physical balance that I can lean out in the Bent Tree?"

He grinned "The answer is obvious. Either one takes the 'view' that what is done in one place is then done in all places or growth and gain is measured by a continuous onslaught of changing obstacles.

She nodded "Surely it is the later for by grasping above us, we find the means to rise."

The old man did not nod "I wonder though of the eagle, of the rock.

When the bird leaves the nest, cleaves from the mountain, it rises. Yet it rises on nothing. The higher it goes, the more of nothing it has grasped!

Or the rock in the face of the sea. Is it a rock because it is at a stand still or is it rock becomes of the volumes of water it displaces, or the height of the sea foam which lifts from its' embrace?

Things, beings, animals, inanimates and maybe even souls seem to do just what they are best at doing!"

This statement seemed to disturb the girl and with an anger perhaps more than she intended, she retorted "There is much in life that seems to prevent all this natural doing! Not too much is left alone to simply do its best. At least for the human soul!"

He gazed at her "Would that be the voice of the rock or the voice of the eagle?"

She shook her head "Such things live simply by their simplicity. That is not the passage for woman. She flies by the stone wing, she rises with the sea carried upon her back. If she is still she is called dumb or plotting, if she is high she is called virgin or vulture.

Old man, the last thing this world will ever do is simply let a woman be!"

The monk replied "If one were to light a candle how close would you hold the match to the candle?"

""Very close, of course, at the wick."

"At its centre, the wick, the heart of the candle, then? There is no use holding the match an inch away, or even next to the candle but at the wax?

"No, the wax will only melt away, the candle will fall."

He nodded. "You must bring the spark to the centre, then, to make light. But how does one do this?

She looked puzzled. "It is a simple enough thing. The match is lit, then held to the tip of the wick till that is lit."

"Simple enough. She says. Here I am in a room of utter darkness. I strike the match. The room is lit. Yet in this, I am not content for I know the match is of a short nature, it is to only light the way of lighting the Way.

This being so, I envision the candle, married to the match and in that I see light more lasting. With my eyes, my hands, the focus of all my bodies I bring match and candle into touch into my envision of the actual happening. Can you see that, Child? The way all the forces of my being come together at this halo in the centre of the candle, first in my mind, then in reality by the bodily action."

"Yes. Of course." nodded the girl.

"And if I was blind, could I accomplish the same?"

"The hands could be the eyes as well. Though more difficult. It might be difficult to know when the candle is lit unless someone told you."

"And if I was blind, why would I light the candle.?"

She pondered. "Perhaps for a loved one or to beckon to a loved one. Perhaps it is that loved one which is beckoned to which can now tell the blind one the candle is lit."

He nodded "Just so. Just so. And tell me, Wise Child, what does one light for the one who is blind?"

"I..don't...understand what you mean, monk."

"If I was blind and you were not, what would you light for me to beckon me, to show me the way of my passage?"

"Nothing. I have nothing that would do that."

"Hmm. Perhaps." Replied the hermit. "Let me ask you this; what if I were blind and tried to light a candle for you? What if I missed the centre, the wick, and did not light the candle? Yet I believed I lit the candle for you. Now you do not wish to hurt my feelings so you do not tell me the candle is unlit. Rather than be distant from me, you have chosen blindness to remain close to me.

Have you done a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Well, if it was unimportant that I see, that is that I did need passage, then it was a good thing. For I would not wish to maimthe graciousness of your intent with the indifference of a failure."

"Well spoken, Child. Then if you, who can see, come upon a blind love, or a blind love comes upon you, is there not a way to light a candle within his or her blindness? Could you not light a candle and by the same faith by which the blind lit the candle for you, you light the candle for the blind?"

She looked a little fearful "But I do not like that. Whether I light the candle or not, the blind will have faith. It seems a terrible wrong not to light the candle for the blind love. "

He nodded "Of course. When one can see, one must have truth. When one cannot see, one must have faith."

They were still for a few moments while she pondered this conclusion. "How is this a harmony then?"

"In the darkness, faith carries itself. In the light, vision carries itself. Like the eagle or the rock, each finds itself doing well where the doing is best. As well, when one no longer distinguishes between faith and vision , then the words of lightness and darkness have no meaning. They are no longer separate entities for when faith marries vision, Behold!

It is now the eagle which lifts the air with it; it is now the rock which brings the sea down into the valley; it is now the woman who carves the worldly shape that is intimate to the form of her shoulders. In the curve of your shoulders, there upon lays only one fit.

This is called tree's pollen. All must find a natural duty, not an unduty.

Name the beast that can run so fast as to flee from what it is to overtake what it is not? There is none! The horse will trample the sheep; the dog is crushed by the weight of the harvest."

"No!" she interrupted, "Woman is not unchangeable. Woman is not chained by a long will ordained by all histories! Woman is not some beast which remains contented by the salt of its harness. Woman is..."

The old hermit held up his hand "Such things live simply by their simplicity. That is not the passage for woman. She flies by the stone wing, she rises with the sea carried upon her back. If she is still she is dumb or plotting. If she is high she is virgin or vulture. Young girl, the last thing this world will ever do is simply let a woman be!"

She retorted, "My own words."

He nodded. "Choose."

"Choose?"

"The hawk keeps the rat in its searching eye, by that will, the land herds and reshapes dirt into the huddle of its need. Or the hawk carries its hunger high and continues to do so until it plunges unfed into the earth's belly. Or dives into the rat which has left the shadows of its own immortality and journeyed into the land palm unturned.

She spoke "But I wonder, is it all of just one choosing? The hawk has will, true but the rat has will, too. For that matter has not the land its own will?

"Quite true. Within a will there are wills. And that will is part of other wills. There are many parts of a circle, indeed, the circle exists because all things are at least pairs, which is really a three, which is really a six, they all growing outward and so on."

They form a breath filling the circle. The circle is like a wind, that which at this moment touches my face neither ends nor begins there."

"What are those numbers you spoke of, three and five.... ?"

"The first begins the second. They combined begin the third. Because they are of the wills, as the winds; because they are not like rocks breaking or bricks piling; because they are more the form of pouring wine into a glass; that one fits exactly into the other the way that liquid and air pass thru each other into the glass.

Because of this the third can join with the first or the second for these wills yet remain. Thus we form the fourth, the fifth. They will all combine to more and so on.

This is to know that as one inflates an air bladder, has the air outside that balloon be pushed out wider? No, you say, the air is still inside, so there is still the same volume. Yet how did such a thing get there?

Thru the will of my breath, both the world and the balloon breathed.

The consequences of the first yield many yet what is there that was or was not there before?"

"Well, the balloon is filled."

He nodded "A potential is created. A shift on one's position on the lever."

She rebutted "Then what causes the first?"

"Think."

She did. After a few moments, she replied, "I see the end becoming the beginning, for when..say... the third joins with the first,...no... these are all pairings. The first is unique because it is by itself.

And even if the end of the circle becomes the beginning, something has to get it all... or keep it all in motion.

I suppose one could say that the first is not really alone because if it is after ' the end' then it contains all before it. Or rather behind it?"

"How many people do you think are blind to what lies behind them?" the old man asked.

She shook her head, "I do not understand, no one can actually see behind themselves 'cept with a mirror or if they turn around."

"Can you trust the mirror?"

She thought a long time about this then shook her head no. "No for the mirror could be painted as a picture."

He smiled at her. "And what do you think the mirror is.. That is, what does it represent?"

"Other people's eyes, your view of your life through theirs; the way they view your life. And their opinions from that. And my judgement based on that opinion."

He nodded "Then what you mean is that whatever is First must turn around to see everything.

She shook her head "But if it turns around, will it not now become the Last?"

The old fellow laughed "A mystic! The old cook wears a hat of wood upon his head to go out shopping. At the market, it is a basket; at the kitchen it is a pot; on the table, a bowl; to wash up, a basin. Behold in the night, the soil it contains! Could all of this have happened without the bowl?"

Irritated, she replied, "This is foolish, what is that suppose to mean?"

"Of your life, it fills you. And out of you, fills your life. Can you have a living without you; can your life be without your being?"

"Of course not ! I must..."

"Listen to me more gently. "Can...your..life..BE..without..your BEING?"

"This is..."

He put his fingers to his lips then whispered "Can your life be without your being?"

She did not answer this time. They sat for awhile silent, the wind dancing lightly between them.

The old man spoke "In one's life one has a task that one does very well. One also has a task that one does well. And lastly, one has a task that one does to the average achievement.

The wisest know that the task that one does very well is often the simplest for the world to see yet it has under its surface great power, great perseverance.

For example. The ox chews its cud very well. All day and night, asleep or not, through seasons of all weather, across time itself. Indeed if one sits anywhere in the universe, on any star; if one "tunes" to such a frequency, you will hear the methodical rhythms of the ox's cud.

Out of that stems all the brawn, the bulk, the impassivity, the inertia of the great ox. It nourishes, sustains the massive back and loins, hold the neck of the oak tree rooted into place, the head and the eye do not sway from this task of contemplating the certainty of the ox's greatness.

Now from this what the ox does well is stand upright upon its four legs. Such a thing cannot tremble, cannot stumble, cannot totter even onto the crash of heaven or earth. One feels that even onto its own death, the ox will eternally stand; that the earth would be compelled to gradually rise up and build a mountain so as to recover this strength.

Picture yourself running full tilt into the side of an ox, would not a wall be softer? What would be the antics of a hundred martial artists be but so much rain? Can you easily see the peoples of a thousand tribe mount its back? Will it bend even as the land below gives way? It cannot, the nature of ox is four-legged and would not then be ox. The ox of the methodical cud, it is that BEING OF SINGULAR VIBRATION which creates OX. Like the waves of the ocean. What can set forward into them, what can penetrate so long as their motion maintains its unlimited boundary? When does one cross the threshold into the sphere of the candle light, of the night star?

The ox stands of four by its end as the gong sings for its hammer. Again and again and again. It will not be denied.

Now from this standing on all fours, well we see what the ox does to the average.

Pulls a cart. We say to the average for a horse will pull the cart faster with more grace; A mule with less jerkings of motion. A dog is more eager to please, a man more quick to turn. There are many animals which will pull a cart in a better way for a different reason.

One pictures the ox, the cart moving on the Dust Road, it is almost painful, its jerking, lethargic plod; even the vision of each of the four legs lifting then falling into the dust like huge misshaped pedestals grinding out a palpable corn; though ponderous it is more of thing coming to a gradual falter than some great omni-powerful machine.

But watch, Child, as the ox pulls the cart AND chews the cud.

Now there is completion. The circle is complete mouth to wheel ,the cart, the long streak of a comet's mouth foam as it travels even across eternity's grin. Rolling over and over down the road, the centre the mouth, its chew sending a push at the spokes, of its work, that push an impulse to rim the forward trek.

It is the SIGHT of all inertia in a wind's motion; it is the dance of the rock.

One watches the cud, the ox, the cart. Take the entire world, my Child, you can take the entire earth and place it in that cart.

So long as the ox does what it does very well, chews it's cud; the earth will be ever pulled forward. It is the power, the rythmn of that cud chewed very well that one can see this.

Now if you were a philosopher, you would walk along with it. Standing in front, walking backwards, you would lay before it a thousand questions. All about its tasks, its work, its soul, will it turn here or there? You would ask it about dusts and histories and oxen gods and the meanings of oxen drums.

It, of course, would answer nothing. This you might find frustrating, so much so, that it might take you many years to see the answer it has always carried in its teeth. Like the grin of a contented god."

She turned her eyes out of the distant haze and looked over at the old man.

That very moment he was chewing on a marvellously long piece of grass, poised in the midst of a monkey-ish grin.

Out of her laughter, she finally replied, "It is really so simple, monk? That my task is simply the seeking of what I am?"

"Yes. No. Within lies BEING. It has a task, both the Being and the Task emerge into the world simultaneous, just as the flower unfolds its name and its destiny in the same gracious bow.

But the Task of the flower was not its name. That is the fault of the world. For if I were to pluck the petals from the stem, I say I have the flower but what does the flower say?

If it listens to me, shall it not wither and die for I have left it a nameless root, an open throat between a belly of dust and a wind hungry for history.

If the plant is to live on and flower again, must it not believe that it is more than its Task, its task is only a punctuation of a sentence. If the dot is not there, CONTINUE!

It will imagine then, forming in the artistic rapture, using its memories, seed, urgings, instincts, faith, BEING, to raise up a hypnosis of a self-mantra.

The physical flower, the petal formation, becomes a bridge between thathead and the rawness of my own grasp.For the plant there is always a state of completion.,the aura pulsates in the chi; by this it never collapses. That I come and take a portion of this is invisible to the flower. It is completion, my hand passing through this candle is only a kiss.

In this way, Child, Being is always. Like an unpulled cart. Task simply becomes the ox. Bringing Being into the world."

Sadly she shook her head. "But I am not a flower. In myself, there may be the seed of my task, I agree. But it seems for the human being there are so many seeds, so many possibilities. I am more a garden than one seed. What do I weed? What do I water? Do I indeed let so many hands pluck from me, using my imaginings to conjure up a better Being?

I do not like philosophies which speak of something preordained gradually coming as if we are each suns and will, indeed must, rise when our hour is come." She reached down and torn up a handful of root and dirt. Holding it in a fierce mongoose shake, she practically roared in the old man's eyes "I do NOT wish to wait, old man. I wish to seize my hour, NOW. I feel my womanly heart and will trying to unit with my mind, my soul. Wood, spark, wind and will gathering even as time, shadow, moon begin painting a backdrop of the very earth slowly heaving up before my eyes. It seems to me that even now, something begins darken my look.

Everywhere, everywhere, they carry bits torn of me, the rags of me; and they come to surround me; Moikah! It is insidious the way they encircle me, trap me with myself; dropping over my eyes the gray skins they have fashioned from their beliefs of me.

What can I do, old man? Is there no asking of the true weave of I under this coverlet. What lies below? Mother, woman, crone, or a very still dog waiting its' chance?

Old man, friend, listen. Listen to me."

The dirt fell from her palm. "If I wait for the seasons to flower me, I shall long before wither into a straw of imitation. I shall be as the plants, once dried, that one crumbles inadvertently; in the curiosity of an experiment in touch; for I will be seen as living yet it is only husk, dead husk.

What do I need to avoid such as a crime?"

He answered gently; "It is said that tyranny and freedom are but different degrees of a sensation in the will just as pain and pleasure are to the Body. In theory we debate their extremes, in practice we are defeated by their suppleness.

Think of will as the extension of Urge, that Urge which elbows tyranny away from the flesh of the candle flame.

Will is as the spear handle. What is the point but the skill, the craft, the artist, the doing intimate to the Task. The Mind is as the body wielding the edge.

If the Will is too weak, the shaft will break.

If the Will is too heavy, the Mind will become weary.

If the Will is too long, the shaft is awkward; it will be as if the spear doesn't exist; one is tied to a fence.

If the Will is too short, it is as if the edge is a knife, cutting both the Mind and the Task in the same stroke."

She nodded "This I understand. The Will then is a tool, or rather a bridge; an extension from the Mind to the Task. I must not be the prisoner of it but how does one 'create' the perfect Will?

The hermit answered "How does one touch the centre without crossing the circle?"

She laughed. "It is like a hat. You pick up the circle by its edge and simply set it down on your self."

He nodded "How would one use such a way to become the centre of all things without marring anything?"

She considered a moment "Thought. Thought can lift up the world and set it down on top of me?"

He replied, "Or within you. And you within the world. If the Task is within either it is now easily within both.

What is Will when the Task dwells already within? One rarely speaks of the Will of the flower to blossom."

She asked "Is there such a thing? Surely there are plants of a flowering type which due to some cause do not in the end, bloom."

He held his hands in the classic open lotus poise. Then he brought them together palm to palm, the fingers pointed upward. "Those which do not, pray to do so. The appearance is different, the Being is the same. Which has the perfect Will?"

She replied "It would be the flower which bloomed, for in blooming its Task was performed through the Will."

"You watched but you did not see. Look again." His hands opened and closed slowly as before.

She answered a little impatient. "One blooms, the other does not."

"Who said they were two?"

She looked at him but said nothing. He repeated the movement of his hands a few times very slowly. Then he said "You try it with me."

They repeated together the opening and closing of the hands.

"When you hold the palms together what do you feel?"

She answered "There is a drawing, a will to open."

"And when they are open?"

"There is no sensation. Only a harmony of nothing, of balance."

The old man nodded in agreement. "Which state then is the Perfect Will;, the state of bloom or un-bloom."

"When there is bloom, there is no Will. It seems that I wish to say this is the Perfect Will"

The hermit replied. "The Task is pursued by Imperfection. When Imperfection has consumed itself, perfection blooms. The sensation of Will is the sensation of Imperfection."

"But what of your spear? If I have no Will, the point lays distance from me, how can I use such a thing to defend myself, to complete the Task?

"Who says the point lays distance from you? That picture is still of an Imperfect Will. For Perfect will, all Imperfections are drawn within."

""Then I hold the point but if I am cut upon it, how is that Perfection?"

"The old man shook his hand gravely though his eyes twinkled without reserve. "In the Perfect Will, the centre is touched without crossing the circle.

If we call our hands that are closed, the knife, see as it opens, how the centre forms the circle.

With the urge of Imperfection one cuts the knife, and thus the Perfect Will blooms its Task.

She blew out her exasperation with a toss of her hands. "Words. Words. I remember trying to learn how to paint. Mixing colours. You can make one colour then another then another back and forth but eventually you're left with a bowl of gray. Like a valley which cannot rise out of the mountain's low breath.

Forgive me, old, man, but your words are like that.

For a moment there is an appearance of clarity but then you speak more and the mist drifts across the mirror again.

You are saying that my Task lies already within me, if so, why is it's sign so reluctant to emerge?"

The old man held out his hands in the classic 'mantis below the palm' poise.

"Goal can be called the poise of the fingers. The body becomes a poise of poise, healing, flowing with chi into the poise.

What is the function of the goal but the liberation of our inertia.

Goal is the lowest form for the river to take current.

Our look, as outside, of inspection, calls this lowness, sea but in reality it is of no concern of the present river flowing.

Is goal then the Task? Or the picture of the painting?

Look at it this way then. Freedom releases the 'flood' flow, the current, the goal pursuit.

But the discipline of the Task gives the counter current of the chi, the embankment going upwards towards its goal.

When one goes down, another goes up. From the low, chi, travels to the high.

It is easily easy to see that, is it not?

The water goes to the left, the channel goes to the right"

He made a cutting motion across his right palm.

"This is an ancient thing called 'carving the cup towards heaven'.

It means to cut a groove of chi, by chi, from the lowness up to the highness. This is done before the rain, in a sense it is the birth of means before even the urge or desires awaken.

Literally it means to carve a cup not from the rim downward into the wood but from the solid inside upward.

Obviously this can only be done if the carver with her knife is already inside the solid piece!

There is an old saying that the cup is known as a 'cup' by its' emptiness since it is that emptiness that the cup is shaped around which is said to make the cup, a cup.

In the same saying, it is stated that this is true of a room as well.

Now think on this.

By reshaping emptiness, we give it new usefulness, new names. Since emptiness is infinite then so are its names, its' usefulness."

She interrupted" But only a fool would open the door of a room filled with water to get a drink. When is the last time you awoke and rose well-rested from an ordinary cup?"

He shook his head, "You can say such a thing because you do not have the cup's intuitions of a cup or the room's dignity of a room.

The senses must be blind for they constantly rob one another.

What is emptiness is seen by the outsider as a goal, by the insider as the Task.

Harmony is created when they agree. This could also be called 'the mouse sleeping in a cup' or 'the fish drinks its own skin!'

Tyranny denies the Task for the Goal.

Freedom seeks the Task be foremost, be above the Goal. Freedom is 'chi rising up the mountain to gather the rains'."

The girl spoke "Freedom causes disharmony then?"

The old man shook his head "Never. There is, my Child, a certain burden peculiar to the fit of your shoulders only. That is Freedom. If it is 'cup', if it is 'room', some things may dwell in it, some others may drink from it.

The disharmony is created only when the Outside cannot see what is known Inside.

She asked " You mean the Self is always true, it is the Outside which is false?"

" Yes, but you must be aware of how large, how small the outside world is. Like the cup, the universe lies within nothing, nothing lies within the cup. Inside, outside hinge upon the rim of the cup. What is the rim but the consciousness of all your selfs?

When the sapling sees the oak, the sky folds away a little, to make room.

If the seedling cannot see, the sky does not move.

Only the self has the power to move the sky or not.

Remember when urge comes, the river flows, for chi has already cut the way!"

She plucked at the grass " You make it sound simple. Nonetheless, there are many saplings which though they may see, the sky does not move; for not all seeds become trees. To me , it seems that oppression is at greater number than freedom."

" Is it, Child? How much of the world is occupied, how much is space? Or have you turned your cup into a room and cannot drink from its walls skinned to your Freedom?"

Again he held his hands in prayer then made a small circle outward; as they stopped before him he made the motion of a flower opening outward from his wrists

"Here is the urge of faith for with prayer you can cut the room and re-open the cup!"

She looked at him in a way of metamorphosis, her eyelids as if pealing out of a darkness " Then why does not each sapling simply thread the sky with its will? Why not just hear the one true voice inside?"

" One hears. Already. But what is heard inside may not be what is thought to be outside. You may hear a master harpist in another room play his harp tuned towards the notes of a sitar. Now you say to yourself 'that is how I wish to play' but you can never learn to play the sitar to sound like the harp-sitar. Imitation may be flattery but it is not perfection to the original nor to the imitator.

Too, look upon the hands of the master and the beginner. The beginner takes wide strokes at each note, high and arching like a clumsy pecking bird but because his knowledge is limited he moves little over the overall instrument. The master plucks precisely, wasting no extra effort moving from note to note. He flows exactly from place to place without a waste in arc or deviation. Yet like an eagle he flies full over the domain of his instrument; he controls it, it does not control him.

The beginner seeks to play the song; the master is content only to strike each note. But strike well.

When the moment of your life comes, you must be tuned only to hear that moment; nothing else of others or of your self. Nothing of past or future.

I see you ready to ask how is this done. Think of this..it is said the loss of one sense results in the increase of another; like a blind man who hears much more than a man who listens too much with just his eyes.

Now if you were to lose your eyes, your hearing, your smell and your touch , how great would each of life's moments taste to you?

Let me tell you a story.

Once in a small village, there was an old blind beggar man.

At the side of the dirt road, the one road through the village, he had sat for years and years. Aside from a few handfuls of rice people tossed in his bowl each day, he was ignored and forgotten.

Few spoke to him and he replied to few so that as his age had progressed he had become completely deafwithout the town or himself even realizing it.

Only loud noises would reach him now and not much loudness or excitement ever sang out from this village of farmers and herdsmen.

On day, however, something exciting did happen to the village. A calamity, yes but nonetheless exciting! Not, however, taxes or floods for a change.

This time it was a tiger.

Since the villagers had implements only for warring with nature and courage only for the long sufferance of poverty, the best defence pursued was distance.

Everyone ran. Down the village road, out into the fields and gathered around a large tree for safety in numbers.

Everyone that is but the old blind..and now deaf..beggar. Oh, they had shouted their warnings to him, some had even shown a courtesy of tugging at his wrap as they went by, but he could only decipher only a hint of the noise, the haste.

In his mind, he heard the footsteps of the multitude and what with their weaving back and forth the way panic tugs at the slowness of loved ones, he was convinces of the village dancing past.

Of the shouts directed at him, of the attentions to his person so long an unknown thing, he could wonder only that some parade of fortune, of unusual delights was behind this new village gladness.

So only the blind, deaf old man sat still in the village, still as always his external poise, but this time a countenance of expectation had settled on a face so normally unmoved that dust could harbour lightly on its brow for hours.

It was this face that a few of the villagers could see from their new perch in the tree. Their verbal reports recorded the tiger as it came up to the unseeing anticipation of the old fool.

What they could not exchange was the thoughts of man or beast, only their own astonishment as the tiger stopped just inches from the man's face and sat down on its haunches. Even more astonished were they as the old man reached out and appeared to gently brush at the tiger's beard of fur.

What the tiger thought they did not know but it is said that the tiger fears only a lack of fear. Or better to say they respect it or perhaps like the villagers, the tiger is surprised by it. We can only guess for it is always difficult to know what mind the emotion of an animal is.

But the old man's mind we can know. Man being for the most part dulled in his natural instincts has lost that sixth sense of danger that most other animals have.

Left to only his human senses, these impaired or dulled by his disuse or disease, the old man did his appraisal by assumption. Since only delight had marked this trail in his mind by the banter and touch of the dancers, what could he not be led to conclude?

When the breath of the tiger came upon him, he could easily detect the scent of carrion stale in the throat.

As the taste of meat was rare in the village, here obviously , standing before the beggar's nostril , was a man of wealth.

By the delight of the dance, and the thickness of the beard, perhaps here was a Prince. Wether by error or design, his noble tread does now honour the village road.

The old beggar could think only to bow deeply before the Prince. The crowd at the tree were then astonished to see this happen. The tiger saw a poise of submission and so remained sitting before this puzzlement of an old human thing.

After the long bow, the old man hearing no words from the Prince (how true as the one could not speak and the other could not hear...what friendship could not be truer?] he raised his head and again touched the Prince's beard with deference.

The beard, a luxurious head length of dense hair, the kind one might find on a Raj-king, or a grand-master who performs wondrous conjures and magic acts!

'Hah' thought the old man ' this is the thing, a Master has come to grant divinities or travels in search of an apprentice. Perhaps he is going to...'

At that moment the tiger displayed a slight twitch out of its patience, the way a dark cloud annoys its belly of rain with a spark of electric. His tail flicked around and brushed upon the knees of the blind man.

Whereupon the old man's fingers dropped from the beard to the tail. ' What is this but a tail? Supple of fur? A monkey's! This man has a monkey!

He spoke out ' How delightful a pet it must be to you Sir, so mischievous and quick. I remember I had a trained monkey once. For awhile it brought me good fortune for it had a comical way of running to the offered coin of a stranger than somersaulting the reward back to myself. Alas it was killed one day for it had learned to extract coins from a stranger's pocket without the need of the stranger's hand! Indeed they beat me in the name of the thief training a thief and would not believe that a blind man was less than the wit of a monkey.'

Absentmindedly, the old man had been stroking the tiger's tail; he, now reached to pat its head.

The tiger, though unafraid, intercepted this familiarity; his paw rose and stopped upon the old man's hand.

'What! All gods forgive me! I was startled Sir! For you have a bear as well!

Ah, the bear, a rare thing in these parts, down from the toes of the mountain to dance with man. Sometimes a sad dance, sometimes a happy song.

I remember when I was a boy, there was a great poet who camped near our village for a time.

He told a poem he had written while living close to the bears amongst the great hills to the North. He believed the bear was the union of earth and a human soul. That union was yin, female, very protective, very strong. It lumbers in four directions for it had a great burden, a burden given onto it by its own mercies.

Climbing trees as a man climbs trees, that is without the tail of a monkey or the spring of a cat, going up paw over paw, the bear would rise to the top of a tree and from there call out in a guttural language of both mankind and moonish howl, of woman's cry and animal scream.

Any souls of a tortured or lonely death may come upon this bear by flight of torn and ragged wings.

There they would cling to the fur of the bear for sanctuary from a world which had not the ears for what they were..or are.

The poet then said such souls would hold to the fur for three seasons, the bear bearing this burden heavier and heavier to the ground as the seasons and the number added on.

Finally, at the time of the cold, the bear would re-enter the earth carrying these souls with it.

Inside the earth in a deep cave known only to the bear dwelt women who had been barren in their lifetimes above on the earth's surface. To each woman would a soul go...following the dream breath of each sleeping woman... down the throat and into the womb....so that these women could return and give birth to these souls seeking a second better life.

And what of your bear, Sir? Is its coat heavy or light with the souls of this time?' At this the old man let go of the paw and reached to touch the fur of the bear.

The tiger, perhaps as a caution, perhaps to now stretch, stood up. At the same time, it turned its side towards the blind man.

The old man touched the fur of the tiger, feeling both its light covering and the dense muscle underneath.

Though the tiger was not exactly the height of a horse, the old man was the height of a boy patting a colt. That being the last time he had been near a horse, his delight exclaimed ' You've such good fortune, my Prince, to have a horse as well. Though a peasant may have an ox or a dog for his trail, only a rich man would have a horse, a bear, a monkey for his walk. Who else but.....' The blind man became very still, very silent, his lips moving in silence as they told the tale now rampant inside his mind.

' Could this be instead? The breath of a hunter? The face of a man? The paws of a bear? The tail of a monkey and the back of a horse? I have heard of such a thing but can it be true? Truly here?

The Breaker of the Wheel, the God Manicariawi who knows the way through the Gate of Life after Life?

Through the mouths of Death he hunts, digging in the low winds with his paws of mercy, it is said that by his Face of Man, bearded with the wisest of time, he knows all of a soul's trials and tribulations, the whys of unrests, the pains of wants, the ever-rule of desires.

He watches as one by one the Monkey trickster paints a torturous trail from the childishness of satisfy to the old palms of blissful emptiness.

Even the good is given with tomorrow's grin of taking away!

Oh, the many souls such as I pinned to the Wheel by the splinters of their struggle.

The Face of Man, he laughs, through the tears of a saviour. Yet he comes, yet he comes.

Even the Paws of Mercy have claws. Suffering, we are far beyond Sufferings' own sake. Yet it ends, yet it ends.

What is a soul's heart but a rose; Oh! The many thorns that stitch, its white grace, bleeding away the heavy bloods of need till it is as light as Light.

And thus to this Reward of rewards! The ride of the White Horse splitting the foam, themists that lift rock into cloud!'

Tears ran down the blind cheeks, a face that had not been wetted by such a humanity for a long time. The dust of his waiting parted, such that a map of rivers joined at his smile.

' My soul is free, is free ' he whispered and reaching out he clasped the neck of the tiger and pulled himself astride the back of powerful stripes.

To the astonishment of the tree peoples, the tiger neither killed the blind fool nor tore away in madness. It simply rose and trotted out of the village. The burden of a near naked soul, in ecstasy gripped around its throat made it falter in its purpose not one step.'

The hermit smiled at the girl.

" When you have no way out but your taste for life and death, climb upon the tiger! For if a hundred souls were to climb a mountain all tied together, all must go as fast as the fastest, all must be as slow as the slowest.

It is not the mountain which is the task, it is the rope..

Woman, upon your shoulders will fit only one exact burden, do not look about for it, for it is already there.

All the things you wish to be, all the things you know others wish you to be, all the things you don't know to be nor they know they wish you to be , the task will bind.

The rope; that is the beard of the sight; the tail of the ordeal; the grip of the bear; the muscles of the horse."

She nodded " One forgets there is as much willing in unwillingness as there is inwillingness."

They were silent awhile. Then the hermit smiled again and asked " You know now? Without first questioning?"

She nodded again. " I know that to separate mind, soul and heart to find the true answer is to saw off the legs of a horse in order to make it easier to put on the saddle!"

They laughed, then she continued , " In one's life one must lead and one must follow. The strong and the weak are inseparable like the leaf and the root. Choosing is in itself not unforgiving. If I choose one life, I do not discard the other. It is only a lack of love which becomes the knife he uses to sever his hands from my task."

The hermit questioned " His hands?"

She shook her head and smiled " One must take a vow of all or nothing; between two halves there must be a whole. You are right, old man, the cup of my life is not a morsel.

How can one speak as a beggar when there is a tiger asleep in the bowl? If I fear it, who will not? If I carry it, who will not?"

The old man made a wide circle with his arms " Behold! The universe grows a little larger to make room for a new kettle of fish!"

She replied with a grin " Life's very simple, isn't it? One thinks one must take a stand when all I needed to do was take a walk!

Speaking of that, I see over there that the umbrellas grow more furious; they shall soon revolt. I'm afraid I must return to my home. What shall you do , old hermit?"

He stood up to her offered hand and replied " I shall go a little with you, perhaps even to the village, for I am tired now of counting the number of holes in a circle."

" Holes in a circle" she asked " and how many did you count?"

" More than one, less than two" he quipped.

They laughed together and then began to move away when she looked into her hand. She had absentmindedly folded the red cloth into the likeness of a flower.

" Wait, what of this? We did not trade, is it still yours? I know, I have a story about five sisters my uncle told me once, do you want to trade for it?"

He waved his hand at it " Tell me the story as we walk but as for the cloth..ah...leave it for the wind to wear. This time of year it begins togrow naked and cold."

After a moment's thought, she tossed it away into the darker shade.

Taking a grand fatherly stride, she and the old hermit headed towards the umbrellas; which as one all rose up like colourful butterflies and fluttered towards the two approaching souls.

In the late evening, the shade stirred in the long grass under the Bent Tree. A tiger arose from its long day of nap and shaking a red cloth off its head stretched its eyes luxuriously into the coming hunt.

The story: In ancient China there were 5 beautiful young women, all the more so as they were quintuplets , being identical in appearance, mannerism, walk, etc. Each had married and went off to live completely separate and different lives in social, economic, political standings. By letter and visits however, there had remained intimate communication between the sisters such that there was no secret ever between the 5.

One day the King of their province decided to give a huge masquerade. The 5 sisters were to go and as a joke they decided to each wear a different costume BUT they would each pretend to be a one of their other sisters. To make sure their husbands did not give them away the 5 sisters came all together in a coach separate from their spouses.

To add even more confusion they also decided not only to be one of their sisters but through out the night they kept switching from different sister-to sister. Till indeed every sister had a turn at being each of her other sisters!

Now there was quite a discussion ( some of it a bit bawdy) through the night amongst the crowd as to how the husbands would find their real mates to take home, for everyone knew there was not a secret between husband and wife that could be used to separate the one from the five if a husband should ask it.

Imagine everyone's complete surprise when precisely at quitting time the right husband strode up to exactly the right wife and took her away. How was it done?

A clue: Harmony is always in line with the progression of Chaos.

