The Monastery

Chapter 35: Love

Susant watched as Jampa left the garden. He had spent the last hour or so watching his friend, partially out of curiosity, partially out of admiration. He did not really know why he admired Jampa so much. Maybe it was because he always smiled, no matter what was going on.

              Jampa lived a simple life in the monastery. He ate, slept, read and meditated. But every day, sometimes several times a day, Jampa would come to the garden and walk the paths in a clockwise manner. He called this act of walking laps, koras.

              Susant realized that what Jampa had been doing was a different kind of meditation. He noticed that when Jampa had first started walking, his mannerisms were quicker, less patient. Yet the more he walked, the slower he became, and a smile curved ever so slowly over his face. He was never outright smiling, just the faint flicker of one that never faded.

              Susant realized that meditation was not something that had to be done sitting. It was any completely focused state of mind. Sometimes, being entranced by a book was meditation. Other times, it was listening to the sound of the birds in the trees, or the wind dancing through their leaves. He came to understand that the world was never truly quiet at all, and true silence was something to be cherished.

              The pain in his stomach had subsided over the days since he had broken his vow. It was still there, but not nearly like before. He understood that his mind had panicked, causing him to overthink, and, as a result, he'd made poor decisions. In a sense, he regretted breaking the precept. But if he had to go back in time, he would not change what he had done. It was in the breaking of the precept that he had been given a gift.

              The following day, Susant did not sit and meditate at all. He walked through the gardens from dawn till dusk, taking seldom breaks to sit and rest beneath his favorite tree. He smiled when he thought of the simple things he learned throughout the day.

              At first, he had only seen a garden with some small stupas, but as he spent more and more time there, he came to notice many things about it that he had not seen before. It was as if with each minute he spent in appreciation of the place, the more it opened to him, revealing different pages about itself.

              The stupas were not just decorated in ornate gold trim with statues. Each one told a story. Each one was related to something that could be explained in several different books. Every creature, every symbol, held some meaning. Just like the vajra had been a symbol of lightning, the tigers told the story of the man who came before the Buddha.

              He knew that there were nine trees in the garden. Of all the trees, he found it interesting that the one he had had chosen to sleep under was the only one with leaves the likes of which he had never seen before. They were green and similar in shape to most leaves, with the exception that, at their tips, they needled out, long and thin, like stretched spades.

              He also noticed that when Jampa walked, he would sometimes stop and pick up a seed off the ground. They were always the same type of seed he was interested in, the seeds of the tree that Susant slept beneath. Jampa had told him that it was a special tree, but that he could not tell him why, only that he knew that it was.

              Susant leaned his back against the tree. It had become his friend, his warmth in the dark. Even if it hadn't been special to anyone else, it was special to him. From two days before, he had started bringing the tree cups of water from the dining hall. He thought that it was the least he could do.

              So once again, he sat beneath the tree, pondering the lightning in the sky. He had let it be since Kamala had spoken to him. He had decided to take the advice of the nun. She had been studying these things far longer than him, so he spent his days trying a different approach.