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FORTY-ONE

Hsu Min was a novice in Jampa Lodro’s gomba, but he’d arrived as a telepath, and was full of himself. He had many opinions to outgrow.
Normally, the novice in meditation was beset by unwanted thoughts. These thoughts intruded from hidden depths. Some were enticing thoughts, some were ugly thoughts, and one undertook to contemplate them, observing them. One undertook to observe them until one perceived the pain or fear, or guilt or grief or false belief, that generated them. And until one perceived the false lessons one had learned from them. Thus one loosened the grip of maya.
When thoughts no longer intruded, one could begin to experience the Tao awarely. Ordinarily this took much meditation, the muchness varying with how evolved the soul was when it incarnated. Someone who had evolved to a relatively high spiritual level in their previous lives would progress more rapidly. And it seemed to Min that he knew how to recognize such a one: Usually he would be relatively delicate, physically, in order not to be tempted to violence. And normally he would be telepathic or otherwise psychic, at least sporadically, for it was maya that tended to cloud psychic abilities.
Being both delicate and telepathic, Min expected to progress quite rapidly.
Adepts commonly meditated with their eyes open, seeing nothing, but it was entirely acceptable to close them, to cut off the distractions of vision. Telepaths might also close their inner eye, so as not to be distracted by other people’s thoughts, and in meditation this was customary among novices who were telepaths.
When the barbarian first came to the room of meditation, the sight of his gross physical nature disgusted Min, so that he closed all three eyes. Surely someone like the barbarian could never attain enlightenment. Such size and strength would come only to one born with the idea that reality was purely physical, and solutions violent.
Yet Master Jampa must have approved his being here. Perhaps, Min told himself, he has brought him here to provide a challenge, an experience. Certainly he will be a distraction. Perhaps his presence will bring to the surface of our awareness things which are resistive, thus loosening elements of maya that might otherwise persist for a longer time.
Snap!! Master Ho’s slender staff rapped Min’s shaven skull, causing him to recall that one does not dispose of a thought by elaborating it.
Nonetheless, Min had one more thought about the barbarian before he let the matter go; he decided to speak with him after supper, and examine the thoughts and images stirred up.
Jampa Lodro knew, of course whose knuckles knocked on his door post. “Come!” he said.
Hsu Min entered and bowed. Jampa Lodro had not lit a candle; it was dusk out, but not yet twilight.
“Master,” Min said. His voice was quiet, but tight with urgency and upset.
“Speak.”
“The barbarian giant is a murderer! A monster! He came here for refuge after killing many men!”
“Indeed? How did you learn this?”
“I questioned him.”
“He speaks neither Chinese nor Tibetan.”
“The man is a telepath!” Min said as if somehow the Tao had betrayed him by allowing this to happen. “I spoke to him in Chinese, and he read my question telepathically!”
Tampa said nothing, simply regarded the young man calmly, so Min continued. “He went about in a dark room somewhere, with a knife, and killed many men in their sleep!”
“Ah. And who were these men he killed?”
“Uh, I do not know.” Min groped inward. There was that about Jampa Lodro that when he asked a question, you usually came up with the answer. “They—they seem to have been soldiers. Or—they were bailiff’s men!”
“Indeed? Any others?”
“I—not that I know of. But he killed dozens of them, mostly in their sleep, though some—some in a fight.”
“Hm-m. And why did he do this thing?”
Min stared blankly inward. If that had been part of what the barbarian showed him, he hadn’t noticed. He’d been too shocked. After a moment, Jampa continued. “To enter a room full of bailiff’s men must have been dangerous, unless he was one of them. Was he?”
Min shook his head. “I think not, master. No he wasn’t.”
“Well then,” Jampa said affably, “let us ask him how all this came to be.” The master got up from his mat, and after gesturing toward the door, left the room behind the novice.
Nils was not in the novices’ room. One of the others said he’d gone outside. They found him sitting on a footbridge over the stream, his large bare feet dangling. He didn’t even stand up to meet Jampa, let alone bow. Truly a barbarian, Min thought, and kept his third eye open to perceive whatever thoughts the two might exchange.
This student is Hsu Min, Jampa said mentally. He is troubled over violence you have been part of. He believes it was with some bailiff’s men.
Most recently it was. I have been violent many times earlier, however.
Ah. Please relate to us the circumstances of this most recent violence.
The reply began largely with what Nils had learned from Wu and Chen, both verbally and from what lay beneath the words, and from the bailiff’s wife: a montage of confiscatory taxes and insults, humiliation, and ruin. And by the bailiff’s personal army—beatings, tortures, rapes and murders, perhaps mostly not ordered by the bailiff, but known and condoned by him. And of peasants preparing to rise against him, in a fight that might have killed his ruffian army and himself, but would surely have killed many peasants and townsmen as well.
The barbarian had never intended to murder them all in their sleep; it was necessary that some survive, to report that a single giant had done it, and not the people. Circumstances had wakened them sooner than the barbarian intended, but the bailiff’s men had been less bold and skillful than he’d expected, and he’d had no difficulty escaping.
Between their reports and the grapple he’d left on the balcony railing, there seemed a reasonable chance that the emperor’s investigator would accept the story of a single killer. Especially if the investigator was a telepath.
Jampa Lodro turned to Hsu Min and spoke aloud. “Are your questions answered?”
Min stood silent for a moment, still not satisfied. Finally he replied. “He bears the karma of many killings.”
“Indeed? And you?”
“I have killed no one!”
“Ever? Can you say that with certainty? Have you examined your past lives so thoroughly?”
Min swallowed.
“We have all had the karma of murders to balance. All of us. It is usual that he who murders will himself be murdered, though often not in that same life. Also, usually he who takes lives in one existence must save lives in another.
“Yet there are other factors. Do we not make agreements between lives to do thus and so, that we may experience? And when soldiers fight, is there not a mutual understanding that one or both may die of it? Is there then karma there?”
Min said nothing; simply stood dumb. Jampa put a hand on the novice’s shoulder. “Do not believe something because I or any other teacher says it. But if it seems correct, or if you need it as a tool, accept it as you will. And if later it seems incorrect, set it aside. In time, all shall be known by you, in the Tao.”
Jampa turned back to Nils then, and bowed slightly. Nils bobbed his head in return, feet still dangling.
As the master and the novice walked away, Hsu Min spoke again. “Master, you bowed to him. First. And he scarcely bowed back.”
Jampa answered drily. “Have you noticed his eyes?”
Min shivered. He’d tried to ignore them, forget them. “Yes, master,” he said.
“They are blind, you know.”
Min said nothing to that. He’d talked himself into believing otherwise. Jampa continued.
“They are pieces of glass, made to cover the nakedness of eyes punctured by the servants of another emperor, half a world from here.” The master looked at the novice who walked glumly beside him. “He to whom I bowed,” he went on, “is a tulku of much eminence. We shared our souls yesterday, when he first arrived. Thus I did not question him for myself this evening; I questioned him for you. You are a novice of more than usual promise. As for the depth of our bowing—to measure the depth of bows is to value the inconsequential.”
As they walked on, Jampa said nothing more, either about the barbarian, or about the broader questions still troubling Min. The novice would have to sort them out for himself or not, as the case might be.

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FORTY-ONE

Hsu Min was a novice in Jampa Lodro’s gomba, but he’d arrived as a telepath, and was full of himself. He had many opinions to outgrow.
Normally, the novice in meditation was beset by unwanted thoughts. These thoughts intruded from hidden depths. Some were enticing thoughts, some were ugly thoughts, and one undertook to contemplate them, observing them. One undertook to observe them until one perceived the pain or fear, or guilt or grief or false belief, that generated them. And until one perceived the false lessons one had learned from them. Thus one loosened the grip of maya.
When thoughts no longer intruded, one could begin to experience the Tao awarely. Ordinarily this took much meditation, the muchness varying with how evolved the soul was when it incarnated. Someone who had evolved to a relatively high spiritual level in their previous lives would progress more rapidly. And it seemed to Min that he knew how to recognize such a one: Usually he would be relatively delicate, physically, in order not to be tempted to violence. And normally he would be telepathic or otherwise psychic, at least sporadically, for it was maya that tended to cloud psychic abilities.
Being both delicate and telepathic, Min expected to progress quite rapidly.
Adepts commonly meditated with their eyes open, seeing nothing, but it was entirely acceptable to close them, to cut off the distractions of vision. Telepaths might also close their inner eye, so as not to be distracted by other people’s thoughts, and in meditation this was customary among novices who were telepaths.
When the barbarian first came to the room of meditation, the sight of his gross physical nature disgusted Min, so that he closed all three eyes. Surely someone like the barbarian could never attain enlightenment. Such size and strength would come only to one born with the idea that reality was purely physical, and solutions violent.
Yet Master Jampa must have approved his being here. Perhaps, Min told himself, he has brought him here to provide a challenge, an experience. Certainly he will be a distraction. Perhaps his presence will bring to the surface of our awareness things which are resistive, thus loosening elements of maya that might otherwise persist for a longer time.
Snap!! Master Ho’s slender staff rapped Min’s shaven skull, causing him to recall that one does not dispose of a thought by elaborating it.
Nonetheless, Min had one more thought about the barbarian before he let the matter go; he decided to speak with him after supper, and examine the thoughts and images stirred up.
Jampa Lodro knew, of course whose knuckles knocked on his door post. “Come!” he said.
Hsu Min entered and bowed. Jampa Lodro had not lit a candle; it was dusk out, but not yet twilight.
“Master,” Min said. His voice was quiet, but tight with urgency and upset.
“Speak.”
“The barbarian giant is a murderer! A monster! He came here for refuge after killing many men!”
“Indeed? How did you learn this?”
“I questioned him.”
“He speaks neither Chinese nor Tibetan.”
“The man is a telepath!” Min said as if somehow the Tao had betrayed him by allowing this to happen. “I spoke to him in Chinese, and he read my question telepathically!”
Tampa said nothing, simply regarded the young man calmly, so Min continued. “He went about in a dark room somewhere, with a knife, and killed many men in their sleep!”
“Ah. And who were these men he killed?”
“Uh, I do not know.” Min groped inward. There was that about Jampa Lodro that when he asked a question, you usually came up with the answer. “They—they seem to have been soldiers. Or—they were bailiff’s men!”
“Indeed? Any others?”
“I—not that I know of. But he killed dozens of them, mostly in their sleep, though some—some in a fight.”
“Hm-m. And why did he do this thing?”
Min stared blankly inward. If that had been part of what the barbarian showed him, he hadn’t noticed. He’d been too shocked. After a moment, Jampa continued. “To enter a room full of bailiff’s men must have been dangerous, unless he was one of them. Was he?”
Min shook his head. “I think not, master. No he wasn’t.”
“Well then,” Jampa said affably, “let us ask him how all this came to be.” The master got up from his mat, and after gesturing toward the door, left the room behind the novice.
Nils was not in the novices’ room. One of the others said he’d gone outside. They found him sitting on a footbridge over the stream, his large bare feet dangling. He didn’t even stand up to meet Jampa, let alone bow. Truly a barbarian, Min thought, and kept his third eye open to perceive whatever thoughts the two might exchange.
This student is Hsu Min, Jampa said mentally. He is troubled over violence you have been part of. He believes it was with some bailiff’s men.
Most recently it was. I have been violent many times earlier, however.
Ah. Please relate to us the circumstances of this most recent violence.
The reply began largely with what Nils had learned from Wu and Chen, both verbally and from what lay beneath the words, and from the bailiff’s wife: a montage of confiscatory taxes and insults, humiliation, and ruin. And by the bailiff’s personal army—beatings, tortures, rapes and murders, perhaps mostly not ordered by the bailiff, but known and condoned by him. And of peasants preparing to rise against him, in a fight that might have killed his ruffian army and himself, but would surely have killed many peasants and townsmen as well.
The barbarian had never intended to murder them all in their sleep; it was necessary that some survive, to report that a single giant had done it, and not the people. Circumstances had wakened them sooner than the barbarian intended, but the bailiff’s men had been less bold and skillful than he’d expected, and he’d had no difficulty escaping.
Between their reports and the grapple he’d left on the balcony railing, there seemed a reasonable chance that the emperor’s investigator would accept the story of a single killer. Especially if the investigator was a telepath.
Jampa Lodro turned to Hsu Min and spoke aloud. “Are your questions answered?”
Min stood silent for a moment, still not satisfied. Finally he replied. “He bears the karma of many killings.”
“Indeed? And you?”
“I have killed no one!”
“Ever? Can you say that with certainty? Have you examined your past lives so thoroughly?”
Min swallowed.
“We have all had the karma of murders to balance. All of us. It is usual that he who murders will himself be murdered, though often not in that same life. Also, usually he who takes lives in one existence must save lives in another.
“Yet there are other factors. Do we not make agreements between lives to do thus and so, that we may experience? And when soldiers fight, is there not a mutual understanding that one or both may die of it? Is there then karma there?”
Min said nothing; simply stood dumb. Jampa put a hand on the novice’s shoulder. “Do not believe something because I or any other teacher says it. But if it seems correct, or if you need it as a tool, accept it as you will. And if later it seems incorrect, set it aside. In time, all shall be known by you, in the Tao.”
Jampa turned back to Nils then, and bowed slightly. Nils bobbed his head in return, feet still dangling.
As the master and the novice walked away, Hsu Min spoke again. “Master, you bowed to him. First. And he scarcely bowed back.”
Jampa answered drily. “Have you noticed his eyes?”
Min shivered. He’d tried to ignore them, forget them. “Yes, master,” he said.
“They are blind, you know.”
Min said nothing to that. He’d talked himself into believing otherwise. Jampa continued.
“They are pieces of glass, made to cover the nakedness of eyes punctured by the servants of another emperor, half a world from here.” The master looked at the novice who walked glumly beside him. “He to whom I bowed,” he went on, “is a tulku of much eminence. We shared our souls yesterday, when he first arrived. Thus I did not question him for myself this evening; I questioned him for you. You are a novice of more than usual promise. As for the depth of our bowing—to measure the depth of bows is to value the inconsequential.”
As they walked on, Jampa said nothing more, either about the barbarian, or about the broader questions still troubling Min. The novice would have to sort them out for himself or not, as the case might be.

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