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The Enlightened
By: Alexander Borschel
The monk looked upward, the horizon of white and blue filling his view. The storm had passed, though it had been weeks since he had last moved. He had been meditating, as his many brothers, identical in form and appearance, had been until that moment. The Great Buddha spoke that it is good in our contemplations to pause and appreciate what we have in the moment; for everything is impermanent and there is only so much time to appreciate it, he politely reminded himself, surveying the dramatic landscape.
Jagged mountains of the Himalayas filled his view. The land centuries before had been known as Tibet, later China, and then… nothing. It mattered little, the mountains saw the changes of the world but stirred not, unmoved by the simple plight of the mortal algae that had briefly settled upon its face. Man came, man went, it matters not, the monk reminded himself, as able to change the past as he could interrupt the flow of karma.
The monk had long ago given up his name, as all his fellow brothers had done. Selflessness, the act was but a step closer on the Noble Eightfold path to enlightenment, as were the yellow and orange robes the monk wore, pale from centuries of use, and many different, though brief, owners. The clothing only just fit his thin and sleek form.
He felt the chill wind stir, feeling the sensation throughout his being. He smiled and resumed the position of dhyanamudra, his back straight and legs folded in a lotus style. His hands were cupped at the base of his midsection, right hand over left, his palms turned upwards and fingers extended. He closed his sense of sight, concentrating on the nothingness, and slowly, after several moments reality slipped away. He sat in the void, both moving and not; the dark empty chasm both pushing and pulling at his very being. He both was and wasn’t; at the same time remaining whole. In this chaotic and noisy, calm and silent solitude the monk considered what was to be the last mystery before his complete enlightenment.
For a time he was still as he contemplated the matter of everything. A wave of profoundness washed over him, shaking and stirring his thoughts ever forward. It finally made sense; elation joining the feeling, the emotions and thoughts combining to overwhelm him. The answer to a question he had long asked himself emerged. The monk thought of the smallest unit he could think of, an atom.
In his mind the atom multiplied, first into two, then a hundred, thousand, and many. They swirled and swirled together, like pixels in the night sky. They combined, merged, and stacked, a shape beginning to form in front of the monk’s form. The last of the tiny luminescent points combined to form a mirror-like image of him, though unlike the monk was brilliantly composed of light.
He raised his arm, the other doing the same. The tips of their fingers touched, and a ripple went through the statue-like form of light, each ripple aging the figure over and over. The being of light’s face flashed with anguish, as if he suffered with each change more and more. It pained the monk terribly to see this, and his pity was great.
The figure became bent with time, all before the eyes of the ever calm, ever patient monk as he watched his own inevitable demise play itself out before him. It was the realization all beings must someday make; that with the gift, and beauty of consciousness, came its balance, the cessation of it. The monk understood that if existence, if life, then there must inevitably be nonexistence, death. All a cycle, a balance. A part of karma.
The figure of light, though still sitting began to lean. It fell after several seconds, collapsing as it touched the ground. The small beads of light scattered like sand, spreading across the ground, though not one touched the sage. For a time the small lights remained there, motionless. Gradually, however, as if there were a wind the particles of light gradually began to shift, coming together, forming new shapes, small at first, but which quickly grew into vast structures, with many parts moving between them. A world appeared around him, like that of a nebulous network, and then slowly the image faded.
All from the death of my being is their existence possible, the monk realized, a cycle, where forever one is connected with all that comes after.
His mind tore at the question, that which was then most pertinent to him. It, essentially, was the why of his existence, and through that he intended to discover his who. It was for this reason the monk had long ago cast away his title when first joining the monastery and those like him, his fellow brothers, so many years before. The monk had been nameless so long he could no longer recall what he had once gone by.
And still, silently, he remained seated, unmoving. His thoughts were like river channels that flowed through his mind, all on the same course to the same destination; karma. To him, meaning purpose. He understood well that purpose gives definition, that definition gave meaning, and meaning gave value. The monk understood that should he know his purpose he might understand who he was, and in that, where in the universe, in the cycle, he fit.
For a time he contemplated this, and in a moment of revelation he found further understanding. His purpose was to exist, death being nothing more the fulfillment of that purpose. It was simple in nature, this idea, but it took hold and spread quickly throughout the meditating individual’s system. In that moment the monk understood the nature of why he and those like him practiced martial arts; it was not for the sake of fighting, nor even just for meditation, but for a higher reason, the preservation of their existence, their purpose.
However, the monk also understood the wrongness of the cycle, of everything. Of constantly existing and then not existing, and then existing again. Should one exist, they would suffer. In the monk’s understanding it was impossible to have one without the other, something tragic. To suffer was terrible, and was why he had first gone to the Buddhist monastery to begin with, to find an answer and like Buddha, solve the problem of suffering. It seemed to the monk then, that the only freedom of suffering was freedom from existence.
But what was suffering, if nothing more than the attachment to a given thing? The monk pondered. The Buddha had taught that detachment was essential to eliminating suffering, and thus detachment from the self, freed one from the cycle of existence, of being. He understood then, as well, why they had given up their names. How does one name what does not exist? Or un-name what does? .
He was part of the system, an ever flowing balance of coming and going of the world, karma, purpose. The great immensity of just how big it all was struck him with awe. He finally accepted the cycle, and with that understood how to exit and end it; free himself from rebirth with nonexistence. Tantric Nihilism.
In what had felt to the monk but a few brief moments, in fact days had passed again. Rain clouds obscured, a few small rays intermittently filtering through, casting the area in a grey, dark light; a luminous shadow across the landscape, the mountains dark and quiet. The air was cool, though no longer quite as chill. The monk walked unsteadily at first, it had been forty days since having last done so. There was a thick fog that clung to the mountains, condensation sticking to the monk as he walked toward the main building of their temple. It was well worn, the foundation crumbling, and pieces of each wall were missing. The monk and those like him at the monastery minded not.
The monk came to a stop by a wide, but mirror perfect surface of water.
He peered into it, his reflection gazing back. The monk’s head was like a large metal-plated orb, his body of the same material, his humanoid form thin, small and silver, though also looked dulled. Set in the middle of the machine’s head was a lens, similar like that of a camera, while next to it was a small box, a thin strip of red light shining, steadily beeping in it. His hands were three fingered, and thick at the base, like a triangle; ending at the tip of his segmented metallic finger. His feet were less populated with only two toe-like appendages.
The robot stood on two legs, as thin as his two arms, at five and a half feet tall. The lens of the machine’s camera whirred; the light beeping as he steadily recorded, analyzed, and processed his own image. The robot felt joy, love thyself, it thought and continued, entering the temple.
It walked down the decrepit building’s winding corridors, emerging in the middle of an immense room. A solitude figure stood in the middle of the vast, otherwise empty hall, it seated in the Mahayana position. The machine removed the sandals it wore around its feet, and bowed once as it entered the room. As it came before the figure the robot bowed, reverently kneeling before his teacher, noticing the worn wooden staff next to it.
“Master,” the machine spoke, its voice cold, metallic and monotonous.
The figure before him began to move, its movements jerky. It had been many years since it had last done so.
“You think you have reached enlightenment?” it rasped in a voice identical to his, folding its arms and hands, also jerkily. The bowed other said nothing.
“Silence, the most Zen of answers,” the robot said in a lowered tone, as if it were sighing, if the machine could have sighed. Still, though, the prostrate other did not respond.
“Tell me, then, have you something to teach that no master has ever taught?” the machine’s teacher asked. The machine raised himself slightly,
“There is,” the robot replied.
“Can you tell me what it is?” the teacher asked.
“It is not Buddha. It is not things. It is not thinking,” the robot said. His teacher sat in consideration,
“Impressive,” it acknowledged.
“Master, may I speak?” the prostrate figure asked. Its teacher nodded.
“Master, I must ask, when the great master who raised this monastery built three gates and made the monks pass through them, the first gateway was the study of Zen. By studying Zen you can see your own true nature, but where is it?”
The robot paused, its teacher saying nothing. “By going through the second gate, you can free oneself from life and inevitable demise. But once you eventually go, how can you free yourself?” it continued, but still the other did not respond. “Going through the third gate, your form separates into the elements, but where are you?” it asked.
The monk’s teacher bowed. Both straightened.
“I see you are well versed in the koans,” the teacher spoke
“Yes master, but it matters not how well I recite them, but rather what meaning they have to me,” its student replied.
“And what is this meaning?” the teacher inquired,
“That it is not how one speaks, but how one acts and is. This is why a one-handed clap matter equally to the two-handed; it is not the sound they make or do not, but the message behind it, the intent. It may be quieter than still air yet as loud as rushing water,”
` His master nodded,
“And yet, what message can silence bring?” the teacher insisted. The other was quiet.
“Just what nothingness has brought us, master” the robot answered, “something, everything.”
“You posit that nothingness, silence, tells us everything?” the seated robot shook its head, “but also a part of the path.” It nodded approvingly, “You have reached enlightenment,” his teacher spoke.
“I would not say so,” the robot replied. The master stared at the supplicant machine, and grabbed the staff far quicker than any eye could follow, rose and swung the end of the staff toward its student’s head. The machine moved fluidly, the air still.
“Nothingness,” it said quietly, both staring at the staff that still hung in the empty air. Its master withdrew the staff, placing it back where it had been as the robot resumed Mahayana.
“Then why are you here?” it demanded, the other’s attention had still been fixed elsewhere, but was immediately brought back on its teacher.
“I desired your company,” the monk spoke truthfully. His master nodded,
“And that is how one knows you have reached enlightenment.”
The robot paused, listening closely. It bowed, accepting its teacher’s words.
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