Namaste my friends

Something quite different today. I had planned to write the second part of our contemplations on Armenius’s answer to his prayer. But then I came across a short story from quite  a few years ago now, that seems to speak directly to our series title, Flee, Be Silent, Pray Always.

I offer it, I share it with you now in the hope that you will find it interesting and (or) entertaining.  It’s going to make this post way way longer than usual, but I hope you find it worthwhile to spend some little time reading it.

So, with love, here is the story I once called:

LEAD ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION

The old carpetbag perched as if it ” a living thing, an alien visitor from the other world, in the middle of Brian’s old table. Its bulging bulk and musty smell, a constant reminder of its threatening presence.

It had been three days now and he knew he’d have to make up his mind soon, make some sort of decision. He had to find a way to deal with this.

Brian, or Brother Brian as he would prefer to be known, had made the long climb to this crumbling stone house a long time ago. He could no longer tell how many years it had been. All his life he had known what his destiny was to be. Even as a child, he had felt the call of the mountains and the monastic life. But, like most people, he had ignored the call, ignored his destiny, and settled for an ordinary life: school, university and a job shuffling papers for some obscure government department.

Then, one day without warning, he walked out of the office, sold his belongings, packed a small bag and caught a one-way flight to India. He didn’t know quite what he was looking for, but he did know it was something vaguely spiritual. He thought that if he couldn’t find a spiritual life in India, then he wouldn’t find it anywhere.

It didn’t take him long to find his way to the remote mountain monastery of a reclusive order of contemplative monks. For Brian, it didn’t matter what they taught, what lineage, gurus, or teachings they followed; for him it was the simple and quiet life of meditation that was the main attraction.

Now, all these years later as he sat staring at the carpetbag, he reflected on how fast time can pass when you spend your days meditating and working in the gardens that supplied the monastery. Sighing, he thought that they had been good years. Was it ten? Twelve? No, it was ten years he spent in that place. But, for some reason he could no longer fathom, he had decided that the so-called isolation of the monastery wasn’t isolated enough for him.

Then, smiling, he remembered: after a while the other monks’ constant chatter had begun to irritate him; he had begun to long for total silence.

The Abbot understood Brian’s need for quiet and deeper contemplation. After all, he had been his mentor and advisor for many years and knew his student well. He told Brian of the old house, long abandoned, that lay just over a week’s walk in the hills above the monastery.

So, along with a brother monk to accompany him on his trek and help him carry cooking utensils, food and seeds for the garden he planned, Brother Brian left his home.

There weren’t many comings or goings at the monastery, so Brian’s leaving was a momentous event in the life of the community. Not sad, not happy; these monks had long since learned that what happens is simply what happens. But, for Brian, there was a sneaking sense of excitement as he began the long, but welcome, trek to what he hoped would be his home for the rest of his life.

He embraced his brother with a farewell. Brian smiled as it occurred to him that this was likely to be his last ever contact with a fellow human being. Soon the brother was gone, and Brian was alone. He surveyed the house and saw it wasn’t as bad as he’d been led to believe. Why, there was even a table and chairs to sit at.

It was the work of an hour to place his meagre belongings in their place in the house. And so his life of true isolation began. The years passed and Brian’s prediction proved accurate: he saw nobody, heard no human sounds. His only contact with that other world was the monthly cache of rice and other staples the Abbot arranged to have dropped off for him to collect a couple of hours walk downhill from the house.

Brian always ensured that he would not encounter the brother who made that long trek for him. Lately though, he had seen the tracks of a horse and cart. The monastery must have modernized, he’d laughed to himself at the time. Samsara, he thought, it’ll get you every time.

His plan for total seclusion and quiet had worked for a long time. But now as he stared at the carpetbag, he remembered the day that other visitor from the other world had come calling. It was six months ago now and he’d been at his cooking fire, about to ladle his daily rice into his bowl, when he heard the knock.

At first, it was just another sound from the old house that had over the years developed its own voice, or so Brian liked to think. But the knocking persisted, grew louder, and that did strike him as odd.

Putting down his bowl he went to the door of the house, opened it and came face to face with the first human he had seen since his brother had left him here all those years before.

‘Are you Brian?’ the apparition questioned.

Brian, for some moments, had no answer. It’d been a very long time since he had heard another human voice, and just as long since he’d had to use his own to give an answer to anyone.

‘Are you the man known as Brother Brian?’  The voice was more insistent now and Brian saw its owner seemed to be dressed in some kind of uniform. Was he a policeman? A soldier?

‘I am Brian. His voice shocked him.

‘Well, this letter is for you. It is from the government and it is necessary to deliver it to you in person. That bloody Abbot fellow tried to stop me, but it is my duty you know.’

So, this stranger was a postman. He shoved the letter into Brian’s hand, turned and marched away, leaving Brian standing dumbly in his doorway.

After some time Brian came out of his stunned reverie. He stared at the letter, which did indeed bear his name, or rather the name he once owned and was of use only in that other world he’d turned his back on. And it bore the crest of the government. Brian could not begin to work out what it was about.

But, realizing that there was only one way to find out, he opened the tattered and crumpled envelope.

Before he even read the letter’s contents, Brian’s world fell apart. The date at the top of the typewritten page transported him back into that other world. As if the long intervening years had counted for nothing, he became who he had been then.

That date told him how long he had been away from the place of his birth; it said to him that he was not alone. His years of practice, of attempting to exist in a timeless state with only nature’s seasons to guide his daily activities, suddenly seemed to have no meaning. But what he read next was almost beyond his comprehension:

Dear Sir

You have lived in our country for many years. We believe you are a member of a religious community. However, such a status does not exempt you from the very strict immigration rules that we have put in place to ensure the security and well-being of our nation and her people.

It has recently come to our attention that your original visa was for a period of six months only. Therefore, you are in this country illegally.

We have decided to be lenient in your case and have not insisted on your immediate arrest and detention pending trial for the extremely serious crime of visa violation. We hereby inform you are to leave this country by no later than three weeks from the date on this letter.

Please be warned that should you not present yourself Immigration officials at your chosen point of departure by that date,  action will be taken to place you under arrest and your case will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Yours truly

Minister for Immigration

Brian was calm. He folded the letter, returned it to its envelope and placed it on the little shelf he reserved for his few books and papers. It would not be correct to say that Brian’s life and routine returned normal; he was really only going through the motions, tending his garden, even meditating a little more than usual.

But he was disturbed. Not only had his isolation been broken by the visit of the postman all those months ago, he was as the letter demanded, being forced to leave his safe haven, his home of all these years.

But it was neither of these two issues that seemed to occupy him most on this day. As time passed from what he now called the Day of the Letter, Brian had grown increasingly restless. He found himself spending long hours daydreaming and remembering his old life, his life before that day he walked out of the office and bought a one-way ticket. He even sometimes caught himself wondering what life would be like if he walked back down the mountain.

And now, six months later, he sat staring at the carpetbag. He smiled now, remembering the threat in the letter: he’d had three weeks to leave. Still, he remembered from his old life how slow bureaucracy could move sometimes. He reached down to rub the soreness on the side of his lower leg. As he felt the scratches, he recalled how he’d come by them. Actually, he thought, if it hadn’t been for the carpetbag and its soft bulk, he might have been more badly injured …

Along with that general restlessness engendered by The Day of the Letter, he sensed a growing dissatisfaction, a dissatisfaction that had not passed, even after so many months.

And these feelings seemed to extend to the house itself, still as tumbledown as it was when he’d first laid eyes on it all those years ago. Suddenly it didn’t seem good enough and he had an irresistible urge to improve it, to fix it up a little, as he liked to put it.

So, it was three days ago, and he was rummaging around in one of the small outbuildings at the back of the house. He trod with care: the rough floorboards were all loose and in varying stages of decay. And, sure enough, all his care didn’t prevent the inevitable. As he reached for a bundle of metal garden stakes that he thought might make a fine tripod for his cooking pot, his foot sunk into the floor as one of the rotten boards gave way.

He didn’t sink far; something solid but soft got in the way. Pulling his leg out he saw it had been cut. A small amount of blood oozed from some long scratches. Even so, he realized hed been lucky not to have gone in further and he wondered what had broken his fall.

He peered into the hole and saw what looked like a fabric bag. He reached in and pulled it out. Nice bag, he thought, with his newly reacquired eye for things of the outside world. He seemed to remember that such a bag was called a carpetbag.

Standing up and heaving the bag from the floor, Brian was surprised by its weight. He decided to take the bag, reeking of dust and the musty smell of damp and age, into the house before opening it to see what was inside.

How different he was since the Day of the Letter, he thought as he sat three days since finding the carpetbag, staring at the thing. How many years had he been here without even setting foot in that shed? Anyway, it’d been a very long time since he had been even remotely interested in anything of a material nature.

But, at the time he found the bag, he had acted without a second thought; it was just natural to take the bag from its hiding place and into the house. And it seemed perfectly normal for him to want to open it and look inside.

He had lugged the carpetbag through the door and into his house, heaving the heavy load onto his table. The dust made him cough, but he didn’t hesitate. The bag’s zip was rusty, but came apart easily. However, the sight of the bags contents did make him hesitate.

Bundles of paper that he could see were old English banknotes. Pulling himself together, he started taking out the bundles, twenty in all. He guessed that each bundle had to contain several hundred pounds. Of course, he knew that they were no longer legal currency, but on the antique market, he was sure they would fetch a fortune.

At the very bottom of the bag, he found a large pouch, heavy and solid. Opening the drawstring, he found it full of stones. Pulling out a handful, he realized they were small diamonds, dozens of them. Mixed with the diamonds were stones of many colours: red rubies, green emeralds, purple amethysts.

Even his newfound interest in material things was defeated by this discovery. He returned the pouch and the wads of banknotes to the carpetbag and set the thing in the middle of his table. Suddenly he felt the pain from the scratches on his leg, so he left the house and went to the little stream he used for water and washed the wounds.

For those three days he went about his daily routines as best he could. But he had to pass his table and the carpetbag many times a day, and it came to preoccupy his thoughts. Its contents could ease his re-entry to the outside world in a very nice way. In fact, he doubted he would ever have to think about getting a job or earning a living. But this was his home. No matter how much the postman with his letter had pulled him back to that other world, no matter how much stuff, how many things, this carpetbag and its cargo could buy, he’d have to leave his home.

So he sat and stared. He didn’t think; he’d gone over and over his choices. He couldn’t do it anymore. He just stared, and time passed. With a start, Brian realized it was dark and that the house was cold. Still not thinking, only acting, he went to the little shelf and retrieved the letter and a pencil. He returned to the table where he sat and began to write on the back of the envelope in the tiny script he’d mastered all those years ago when he still thought keeping a journal was a useful practice.

My Dear Brother Abbot

How many years you and my other dear brothers have made the arduous trek to bring to me the staples that keep this body alive. No words of gratitude would ever be enough to tell you how I feel. Of course, I know if I were there with you now you would tell me that you and they are only doing what needs to be done for a brother. Still.

When this letter arrived, I was deeply disturbed. I found myself thinking of and longing for the old world of my youth. I found myself falling into Samsara again. I did not like this, but I found it drove me to change my world here. I began to be obsessed by the need to improve the house in a physical way.

While I went about this crazy business, I injured myself by stepping through a rotten floorboard. My fall was stopped, and my injuries lessened by this carpetbag that I now send to you.

However, in the three days since, I have not been able to engage correctly in my daily routines and practice. When you see what is in the bag you will understand my distress and confusion. On the other hand, you might not: you are so much more advanced along the path to enlightenment than I.

I have just sat through a long dark night of the soul, completely lost and not aware of this body or this material world that surrounds me. When I rose from this state, I knew what I had to do. The letter in this envelope and this carpetbag and its contents do not belong to me, nor do they belong in my world. I send them to you because I do not know what else to do with them.

As always, I rely on your help. You have always been there for me when I stumble and as I enter the bliss.

Your brother salutes you dear Abbot.

Brian

Scooping up the letter and dragging the carpetbag off the table, Brian strode out of the house, and in the darkness, trod the well-worn path to the spot his brothers brought his supplies to.

Long ago, he had built a small shelter for the brothers to rest in, and in which perishable items could be left. He placed the bag there and, with a large stone, weighted down the letter so it would not be missed when the brother next came.

As he rose from this task, Brian saw that it would soon be dawn. He would have to hurry if he was to make it back to the house for his morning meditation.

THE END

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I hope you had an enjoyable and interesting read. Next post will truly be part 2 of the series, and we will be contemplating the second part of Armenius’s message: Be Silent.

with love and peace

Paul