warmth. So they all spent the night on the hilltop in comfort, the two pale-skins wrapped in each other’s arms, the blue-skins lying on furs in the snow. There was no need to explain to the Udvorg that Alua was Vireon’s First Wife. This they all understood.
In the morning they marched down into the lands of running water, a world of green and brown and yellow leaves, where winter was still a whispered promise.
It will be strange for us all.
12
First came the denial of self, the surrender of ego, the death of certainty.
Sharadza ate nothing for days, drinking only the water given by the crone. Outside the mouth of the cave, sun and moon came and went, stars and clouds danced across the sky. Winds blew and rain fell.
Patterns.
The hunger gnawing in her gut eventually gave way to the comfort of emptiness. Her body accepted, as her mind already had, that nourishment was not to come. She was no longer hungry at all. How many days had it taken? Time was lost to her. Day and night were opposite sides of a coin, flipped into the air. She strove to catch it in her hand.
She meditated, sitting on the hard stone of the cave floor, in the dark, in the light, in the purple shades of twilight, the golden glow of morning. She repeated the first of many mantras, aloud at first, then quietly in her mind, revolving like celestial orbs in her consciousness.
All is One… There are no distinctions.
At last the crone came to her in the timeless dark, giving her a fruit like a silver-skinned pear. “The pome of Oridnis the Cloud City,” said the crone, “grown by a race of ancient savants. This is mokkra, the Fruit of Enlightenment. Eat all of it, even the seeds.”
Delicious, it tasted of starlight, rain, and wisdom.
The Great Oneness blossomed like the petals of a rose at the zenith of her understanding. The physical world spread about her like a spider’s glittering web. It ran through her body, through her veins, through her thoughts like silver mercury.
All is One… There are no distinctions.
She knew… And awareness flowered beyond her skull, beyond the walls of the cave, through the porous rock, into the rushing sky, through the continents of cloud shifting above the fluid play of earth, sea, wind, and fire.
“The part is the whole.”
The crone placed a small stone into her palm.
“Th='27'› “This is a mountain.”
She spilled a single drop of water into her other palm.
“This is the sea.”
All is one… There are no distinctions.
A flaring ember from the coals of the fire hovered between her eyes.
“This is all fire, everywhere.”
She blew into Sharadza’s face, breath redolent with the strange tea.
“This is the measureless sky.”
She took Sharadza’s hands into her own, squeezing them together.
“This is life.”
All is One… There are no distinctions.
Sharadza swam the sea of clouds, but she also sat in the cave. She plunged into the green depths of the ocean, but she also sat in the cave. She burned in the fires at the heart of the earth, but she also sat in the cave, an earthen womb at the center of the Living World.
Next came the unity of thought and action.
She sipped a warm vegetable broth brewed by the crone, and drank wine from a stone goblet.
“All that lives, and all that has ever lived,” said the crone. “All that will ever live. All are fractions of the great spirit, the unified consciousness of Being.”
Sharadza blinked, and stars swirled in her eyes. She was still in the cave, but also in the sky… in the earth… in the ocean… in the fire.
“The part is the whole. There can be no separation. Separation is only illusion. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then show me.”
Sharadza stood before the crone and squeezed the small stone in her fist. The cavern rumbled, tremors running beneath her feet. A small stalactite fell to the floor, smashed into a cloud of dust. Sharadza grabbed the dust in her hand and blew on it. Outside, a great wind rushed across the forest. She sat down. The cave grew still.
“Good,” said the crone. “The infinite can be found in the smallest of fragments. The web of life invests our world with diversity. We are the sparks that move within the greater flame, which is also ourselves.”
“Material and immaterial,” said Sharadza. “There is no difference but that which we believe.”
“Whatever we believe,” said the crone, “is our reality.”
Sharadza meditated again, this time repeating the second mantra.
Thought is Action… Non-thought is Being.
She sat on one side of the fire, the crone on the other. Days and nights flashed by, but the cave remained unchanged.
“As all things are one, so are the Mind and Body,” said the crone. “Your highest self is that which determines form and motion. This invisible essence is what you seek, for it is the source of all power.”
Thought is Action… Non-thought is Being.
“The world of flesh is a river. You have been a fish swimming in that river. But now you see that you are the river itself, and that the river is also one of spirit. Flesh and spirit, body and mind, form and formlessness. These are your tools. Seek the highest self and find there only Truth.”
Sharadza was a ray of light, gleaming across the universe. That light gave birth to a flower, which also was her. The flower fed an insect, and she was that insect. The insect was devoured by a frog, which was her as well. Something ate the frog, and something devoured that, and she passed on through the chain of devouring… transforming, always transforming, never destroyed, never ending. She passed through a hundred lives, and then sat again in the cave with the crone and the flame.
Thought is Action… Non-thought is Being.
She sprouted from the earth as a newborn bud, grew into a sapling, sprouted leaves like dreams into the air. She rose toward the warm sun for a thousand years, feet planted in the earth, and stood tall as a mighty Uyga ruling over the forest of Uduria.
The crone brought her back into the cave with a whispered question.
“Which is more important? Thought… or Being?”
Sharadza blinked and felt the sun moving across the sky.
“There is no difference,” she answered.
“Good,” said the crone. “Now sleep.”
Third came the mastery of patterns.
She studied the hidden patterns of nature, the expanding and repeating of organic forms. Infinite forms serving infinite purpose, and all those serving the ultimate Truth. She dwelled inside that inner sun of blazing, absolute Truth. From there, all things were possible.
Even the mantras were patterns – that was all.
She sat in the cave, on a mountaintop, on a cloud, on the endless seascape, in the branches of trees… and repeated the mantras whispered in her ear by the crone.
