Mori the Student

Everything, as it should be

A young guy named Mori went to Japan, to one of the temples around Kyoto, with the intention of learning meditation. He brings along an interpreter, gains permission to join the class of a Zen master and begins lessons. The master neither encourages nor discourages the presence of the interpreter.

A couple of weeks go by. Rising early, Mori attends daily meditation sessions, joins the communal meals, helps with cleaning tasks and other duties, same as everyone else at the temple, who were mostly novice monks. All the while, the interpreter explains things and relays instructions to Mori, who believes he is doing well and is on his way to becoming an adept meditator.

Then, unexpectedly, the interpreter falls ill and is taken away to another part of the compound. Young Mori is left in a quandary, thinking if he is not able to understand the Zen master’s instructions, he will need to stop. Continue reading “Mori the Student”

The Voice in the Well

There are places we should not go to.

There are no Gods and Goddesses down here despite what anyone else might have told you. This is a well, a very dry and old one, but it is the very bottom of everything there is, everything that you know of. They do not send those with hope or means this way. It’s only those without influence and a future that find themselves here. Round the stairs, down and down, did you look over to see the drop, as you made your way here? This is quite a distance from the surface, you do realise that? Look up. That pin prick above your head, at the very centre of the dark circle – that’s the sun. The outside. Everything you had known. Where all things possible are present. Things like hope. Expectation too. But not down here. Continue reading “The Voice in the Well”

These People

Only two days after the ashes of her burnt body had been brought back….

How dull it was. Watching the lifeless ocean sway erratically, from high up the grassy slope by the abandoned prayer house, only two days after the ashes of her burnt body had been brought back from the crematorium for final rites. Now she was, if you looked at it that way, somewhere out there, scattered and spread all over the ocean, with an abundance and generosity that was never her character. I wasn’t responsible for what happened. Her refusal to leave things be. It may have been one of the sisters. I would never put things like this past them. At the funeral, which took place just a few metres behind me, in the light drizzle that fell, I was watching them. Beautiful. Suitably mournful. Huddled together, away from everyone else. But their eyes couldn’t hide it. They had it in for her since young. I know because she’d told me that a few times. On our few holidays away from this place. And these people.

But did you see the look I was getting? I’m not surprised she became the kind of person she was at the end of her life, famous in a way, alone in many others, due to her background. This was her background. This prayer house built in the early 20th century and still proudly maintained although the only prayers were funerals of people who hadn’t requested to be buried elsewhere. From the slope you can see the edges of the roofs of the township below. And the ocean. Right there before us, far away and dull. I’ll miss her. But I doubt these people would.

photo from unsplash.com by Erik Jan-Leusink