The Illusion of Two (The Ten-Thousand Things and One).
--
It was a story he would have just as soon not told. It is far easier to be silent and considered wise than to speak and keep from being proven a fool.
Yet no story ever gets told without actually telling it and who was pawo to deny such proven wisdom by remaining a silent fool? Damned if he did and damned if he didn't, he supposed, so he chose the condemnation of the culprit, leaving that which was to be undone, well, just that. God only knows what that story would have been like so, here in its place, is this one.
--
--- ONE ---
Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday
A dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.
- Kalidasa
--
The Dawn dribbled into day a saggy, sopping teat, slobbering her greetings to her sleep-soaked pups and leaving no room for even the Sun to squeeze in a turn at the nip.
The Sun scarcely cared, though, for the Mother of the Morning spoke soothingly to him, lips slack and flowing like a flood, bathing him in patience, reminding him he can always drink deeply of her later.
One pup, on the other hand, was about to squeal and squirm, wrinkled and wrought from the force feeding, but he swiftly remembered better. Mother knew best and you didn't argue with her. You ate what she offered and did not complain. Still, thirty days and nights on the deluge diet will make even the most accommodating appetite crave for change, so some minor tummy grumblings, made respectively, were allowable.
Wow...nice day, he thought, gasping for a moment's extra breath heaved in vapors between the heavy rain drops. I suppose i ought to count my blessings. I could always have my umbrella.
He marshalled himself and left the thought incomplete. Instead he gave what thanks he could that he was merely standing out in the pouring, freezing rain like an idiot. He realized he could have been standing out in the pouring, freezing rain like an idiot clutching the empty, useless wooden spine dangled with broken, wooden ribs that his umbrella, assuredly, had become.
He marshalled himself again, leaving thought altogether in counting his blessings, counting his breaths, counting his heartbeats and slowly following awareness into the emptiness of everything that was Her.
This was best. Surely you ate what the morning offered, but when the Morning Mother manifested her earthly Council and bade you to wait out-of-doors, well, that was exactly what you did and nothing else if you could help it. Somehow he had found grace in Her sight but he had already tempted fate enough and the time for thoughts of idiots and umbrellas was past.
The whole scene, he knew of course, was perfect: the crag-rimmed, mountain plateau, the pagoda courtyard, the meteorological pissing-on... all was a vessel in readiness of the living waters of Her spirit welling up within him and just beneath the brim the sip of irreverence already nursed, tending him back into obedience and attention. Yes, the whole scene was, of course, perfect. It, like all else in this world, was a lesson.