There was a time, not so long ago that a people, the people of the eternal changes, were still living on a giant cloud, a cumulonimbus to be precise, far above, in the sky. Their village was maybe a small village, maybe a big village, maybe not even a village; and to get there, some could have told you to go left after the tree on the road to the cemetery or to carry straight on, then right above the orange field and then down all the way to the pond, or maybe the pound, or the factory, or whatever would be at the moment you would reach the place
“ Once, many years ago, Alfred, when he was a carpenter, or a fruit picker, or an astronomer, got so close to the border of the cloud that he felt himself sucked by something called Gravity and fall through the sky . ”
It was a place filled with uncertainties. One month you would wake up in a family of six, in a farm, with a father called Greg and a caring mother and the month after you would be the orphan of a blacksmith, the Mayor or the new Imam of the Mosque.
Every few weeks, everything would change except for your name and your age. Indeed people would keep the same name, they would grow old and die and they would remember their past. Because they were born into it, they had no idea that this could be unbearable, their world was like that and they didn’t questioned it, actually they didn’t even know something different was possible.
Well, it isn’t completely exact to say they didn’t knew about something else. Once, many years ago, Alfred, when he was a carpenter, or a fruit picker, or an astronomer, got so close to the border of the cloud that he felt himself sucked by something called Gravity and fall through the sky . Alfred was indeed lucky enough not to break his neck because he was a wrestling champion and he was strong and solid.
He did land in an amazing place, it was a cotton field just outside a small village called Advitam. The amazing thing was that there was one road leading to it, there was a central square to the village and make no mistakes, you could come back after a month and the road would still be there, leading to the same place. Sadly he didn’t have enough time to meet anybody as his friend Anton, the fisherman, threw a line with a hook big enough to catch him and pulled him back up into the cumulonimbus. Wait a second, did I say Anton the fisherman? Maybe I meant Anton the Mongolian contortionist.
People of the eternal changes were stunned when Alfred told them about the “one road” to the “one village” with the same central square. However this just happened before the Great changes, and people instead of being excited by this incredible story, became so busy trying to figure out their new life and new identity that they forgot everything about it.
The story could have ended here if it were not for a little child, little enough for not having to spend too much time learning his new life. Somehow Erdnaxela was unable to take this story out of his head: a village with one road leading to one square. A road you could day after day, week after week, month after month, walk by and be sure to arrive to the same central square. It felt to him the sweetest thing in the world. He was only nine years old, but having already been the son of a postmaster, a pig tamer, a mayor and a water therapist, after having lost a brother to a war, a mother in childbirth and in a car accident and from a deadly bird flu, after having lived in a farm, a lighthouse, under the bridge and in a Zen monastery; it felt soothing to imagine this road.
When he had free time, he would hide in a tree in order to let his mind wander. He would count the steps he would pace on this road and… well, not much more because he had no idea what lay after the village‘s square. Erdnaxela decided to see by himself, Curiosity was burning in him, and the day his father and mother turned to be rope makers he seized the occasion and took from them enough ropes to come down the cloud and start looking for the village of Advitam.
As the wind blows so does the cloud moves. What was once just under did move far away and instead of a cotton field Erdnaxela found himself in the deepest open air coal mine of the land. Advitam, he was told by dark face people, was far, far away and the road would be long and complicated. Many difficulties would be ahead and it was better for him to stay where he landed and learn to pick up coal which was such a great thing to do. For coal could be diamantes if ripen that he could store as much coal as he wanted and then just wait and wait and wait until they would turn diamonds, maybe, one day. Well, as great it can sound to some, Erdnaxela was not convinced and his desire for this “one road” was much greater.
Only the people with black faces asked him, before he left, to leave them a souvenir of his passage. A hand would be nice enough for them. So did Erdnaxela left his right hand to them for no much use of it did he have. Or maybe he right his left hand but it is not so important for he didn’t need much that one either.
As the way was rolling itself under his feet, our little boy found himself (minus a hand he had left behind) in a prairie full of gigantic mushrooms. Mushrooms as you can’t imagine, tall as trees, from all the colors you could dream of: paling blue, screaming green, juicy red and hard boiled purple. Some sort of smoke was coming out of them and butterflies were jumping from one to the other, singing songs of praise and smelling like incense sticks. They were there, squeezing themselves through those trees, as many roads as mushrooms but only one was covered with a velvet carpet, a carpet on which was endlessly written: mind your steps, mind your steps, mind your steps. Erdnaxela who wasn’t such a good reader , having missed school many times for his family was poor and he had been sent to work in a factory of toys or maybe because his father was a diplomat that had been relocated so many times in the cumulonimbus that no schools did manage to pass on this little knowledge to him. Anyway, our little boy didn’t quite understand and put his legs and feet into a small box on which was written: “small box for unexpected things that may have been understood in unexpected ways”. Not that he did understand what was written on it, he just saw a box, and it happened to be useful to put unexpected things that were no longer needed.
Not so far from there (because what he would find was never far away from giant smoking mushrooms) was a group of flying spiritual masters. Not any everyday spiritual master, no, you had advaitist non-dualistic vedantist masters, blue lotus left hand path masters, camel in the needle masters, nosearchnogoalnomaster masters, and the like. You could say that it was a stunning view and if the child had been a little older he would have frozen in front of such sparkling beauty. The sun was no match for this. And when through the impeccable silence of the place resonated the sentence: “What is the sound of one hand clapping” the confused child threw his last hand in the air, and ran away forgetting his mind behind.
This search for certainty did turn to be longer than expected. Some of you may see this as a sad story but believe me, when Erdnaxela after so many efforts arrived in Advitam, reduced to a fast beating heart without either legs, nor mind, nor head to the “one road” leading to the “one central place”; it took him no more than two heart beats to understand that he was home.
Comments