I am not making any money with this. I do not own Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
etc.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
===================================== Tomb Raider: The Sadhana by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =====================================
Chapter Seven
The corridor sloped downwards. I tried to be careful not to slip, for it steepened with every step, and if I fell, the cause would be a long, painful slide down to darkness. I tried to grip the walls but they were lacking of edges. After a good three hundred feet I saw a step below me. I stepped down carefully, and then stopped to search my surroundings.
The underground chamber was huge. On three corners of it were deep pits with sharp stalagmites in the bottom. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, I dodged them while walking to avoid them colliding painfully with my forehead. In the middle of the chamber was a sort of a walkway that seemed man-made. I followed it to the end of the chamber, my flashlight sparkling off crystals in the walls. Then suddenly there was no walkway. I stopped hastily, and sand from under my boots poured into nothingness. In front of me was a pit the size of an average family car. I tried to reach my flashlight hand as far as I could, and with trouble, I could see the other end of the pit.
I was in my own territory. This I could do. I strapped my flashlight to my belt, and measure the lenght of the pit by throwing a couple of stones to the other side. Then I gathered some speed, and jumped, grabbing the other end with my hands. I was left dangling from the edge. I pulled myself up, the sandstone scraping my arms. Congratulating myself for a job well done, I unstrapped the flashlight, and continued forward.
In the next chamber I was greeted by an eerie glow. IN the middle of the chamber was, again, a pit. Blue flames rose from it. I'm no chemist, but I recognized the smell floating around. Oxides of lead.The fire must've been burning there for centuries. Lead burns with a blue flame, and it places where oxygen isn't plentiful, it burns slowly. I walked past the pit, and suddenly I heard a loud noise, like an explosion from behind my back. I turned as quickly as my reflexes were able to turn me, and realized the blue flames had engulfed the whole back wall of the room. I ran forward, the light from my flashlight jumping around as I leapt over smaller rocks. I turned to see that the whole chamber was now in flames, but the flames didn't seem to reach any further than the doorstep. I kneeled down to retie my left shoelace, and the continued. After some minutes of darkness the corridor came to a total cul-de-sac. An opaque wall blocked the whole way. I pointed my flashlight up the wall - there was a large opening in the wall about eight feet up. But there was no way to reach it. I tried to jump and grab the edge, knowing that it was all in vain - it was just too high. I cursed my robbers silently again and swore to play ball with their heads if I ever came across them again. They'd taken my rope. I then tried climbing the wall, the result being landing on my bottom a half dozen times and a cloud of curses when the actual falling happened. I was presented with a brain teaser again, but I wasn't in the mood. My muscles hurt from eight days of marching around with minimal food, my mind was empty except for negative thoughts, and there I stood, next to am unclimbable wall after walking eight hundred miles to reach it. Talk about hard luck. I often say I make my own luck. Some luck I had made that time.
I sat in the darkness for awhile, listening to rats squattling around eight feet above my head in the opening. I decided to try and win the mountain with my head. There must've been another solution. A lever perhaps? I had seen no levers, and the cave didn't seem man-made, so there was nowhere to hide one. Staircase that had rottened away? Possible, but where were the remains? No smoke without the fire, they say. Levitation? Wasn't that the national sport in India? I settled down in the corner, leaned my head on the hard rock and kept thinking until I fell asleep.
I didn't wake up to a strange noise. I woke up when something hit my head. The other end of a rope. I jumped up, guns pointing at the first possible direction - upwards. Keeping an eye on the opening, I grabbed my flashlight from the floor and cleared my throat.
"WHO IS IT? ANSWER ME!" I yelled, and noticed that the thing that had hit my head indeed was the other end of a rope. I yelled again, using all three words of Tibetan I know, one of them supposingly a curse - "you yak-kissing claypot", or something of similar level of insult - and finally, a head peered over the opening. It was the smiling face of a relatively old monk. I lowered my guns.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe that I walked over three ranges of mountain to discover a cave that has already been discovered."
"Not by you it hasn't", the monk said playfull, in very much understandable English.
I pointed my flashlight to his eyes. On purpose. "When I feel a sudden urge to hike eight hundred miles in the Tibetan winter, I'll be sure to inform you. Be a dear and cut the crap, will you?"
The monk's face disappeared. Great, I had insulted this simple man and now he's leaving me here. Jolly good. This story would be a killer in the next museum banquet. Assuming I ever had the never to tell it. But my sarcasm was unnecessary. The monk's footsteps approached the area again, and in a second a fittingly long piece of ladder was lowered to where I was standing. I could've kept up appearances and used the rope, but I'm only human, so I took the ladder. Up in the opening, I opened my mouth to say a shallow thank-you-for-help, but there noone was up there. Cursing under my breath, I started running along the dark corridor. After awhile it became dimly lit, and I heard footsteps ahead of me. I kept running, wand when I could see well enough not to run to the walls, I stopped to switch off my flashlight. The tunnel came to an end - a dead one. Wondering what kind of an optical trick the monk has used to get rid of me, I started inspecting the interior walls. I patted them in case oif levers or pressure pads. I stroked them in search of some kind of seams in the rock but found nothing. Until my hand found a wet spot. I pressed my finger on it and felt cool water trickling from inside the rock. I turned, and swithed on my flashlight. When there's water somewhere, it might be flowing from an underground river. And underground rivers often carve caves if the rock is porous enough. In the opposite wall, another source of trickling water. I tried to touch it with my finger, but noticed that I could see my finger as a mirroring picture when I placed it over the spot. There was no water trickling - it was a mirror placed on the wall. I traced the edges with some help from my flashlight, and soon I could reach a large mirror off its hooks. My mind was whirling in a very positive way - what on Earth might they be hiding in a place like this? I squeezed myself past the mirror into another dark tunnel.
The tunnel dissolved itself to a huge chamber. I arrived in the west side of it, above an underground river glittering somewhere far below. Above me, thousands of sparkling stalactites, like stars, lit by light coming somewhere outside the cave. I pointed my flashlight into the darkness and discovered hundreds of formations of helictites and stalactites. They were both yellow and white in colour - hanging like draped curtains over the chamber. The river flowed somewhere below.
I was standing on a wooden walkway. It felt steady - steadier than the rope bridge five days earlier. It felt suprisingly steady, considering that it must've been built hundreds of years ago. Slowly, memorizing every detail of the cave, I walked forward, to the other end of the chamber. It is very rarely that I get to go treasure-hunting in caves as magnificent as that one.
I honestly felt sorry to abandon the chamber and to move on. But the chances of coming to another chamber like that were high, so I continued. The next corridor - how many had there been already? - wasn't very long. It ended in a small room lit by candles and scent sticks. A soft, sweet smell floated around.
On the rear end of the small cave chamber was the young monk I had seen. He was seeted in front of an altar built next to the back wall. He was deeply in prayer, but his voice became a little more quiet when I approached the altar so he must've had noticed me. Here the stone was hard - I couldn't quite put my finger on an explanation how the previous chamber been such a palace of calcite rock. I stopped and stood four feet away from the altar. Unconsciously, I let my gaze wonder around, in search of levers, secret openings or other kinds of hiding places for the Sadhana. I was relieved that there was someone with me - it was a sign that I wasn't too far from food and sleep.
The monk gathered his ropes and rose from the floor. He turned to face me, smiling. He was quite young - probably in his twenties. His face was frost- bitten, and his whole body told of friendliness.
Inner peace even, perhaps.
"Welcome," he said, gesturing me to come closer. I nodded, smiling curiously, and a bit confused if he thought I was worthy to approach the altar. Some monks are very strick about their altars, I've noticed. I once avoided a death by decapitation running when I accidentally got too close to an altar in Borneo. I walked closer to this mystery man.
"Thank you," I said. He offered me a waterskin. I drank and wiped my mouth in my sleeve. A lizard crept past my left leg. There had to be another entrance to the cave close.
"You have come a long way. Did you find what you were looking for?" The monk asked. A cell in my brain found its match. "No, I haven't, actually. It's you who's been following me around, ain't that right?"
He shook his head. In some countries shaking of the head means yes. I couldn't remember how it was in Tibet.
"It wasn't me. It was brother Cheng, who I know very well. He isn't here anymore." Whoever this brother Cheng was, it was possible he could be held responsible for theft. "Did he nick my rope and my food?" I asked, quite innocently, really.
The young monk smiled and united his hands in an apologizing gesture."Yes, he... Lama Dorje felt it was necessary to test you."
"To test me?" Feeling like part some secret agenda again, I eyed the monk suspiciously. He ignored me.
"My name is brother Songsten. I have lived here in the Manasarovar valley all my life. Every brother has to spend three years in this cave, and only come to eat and sleep in the monastery, in the village."
"What village?"
"The Kailash village. It's on the other side of the mountain. The entrance I use to get here is quite near it."
Figures. Brother Cheng had been sent to make sure I wouldn't spot the village, pack my stuff and head home before finding what they wanted.
"Listen, brother Changling, or whatever your respectable name was. I have just walked eight hundred miles to get here. I have one question, which will require a no-yes answer. Do you, or do you not, know the location of a holy relic called The Sadhana? Can you help me in any way in finding it?"
The monk almost died of laughter. Water flowed from his eyes.
"I didn't know it was allowed to laugh in holy caves," I remarked, a bit hurt. I had just, indeed, walked eight hundred miles just for the fun of being laughed at. At least he had the decency to explain.
"It makes me sad if you have not found your Sadhana yet. I cannot help you with it."
I sighed heavily. My luck. I had just come across the Monty Python of Tibetan monks. "What do you mean 'if I have not found if yet'? Could someone please, finally, explain to me what the Sadhana even is."
The monk approached the altar, and picked up a small stone from it. He took my hand and pulled me closer.
"The Sadhana is here. Everywhere. In the mountains. In this altar. This is Milarepa's cave."
Milarepa is the most popular and loved saint in Tibet. He was very vengeful and dark-souled in his youth, but later came to remorse about what he had done, and began studying Buddhism in India and Tibet. He became a great Buddhist teacher and holy saint. He had spent many years in desolate caves, meditating. There were several caves dedicated to Milarepa in the Himalayas.
"Unlike all the other caves, this is the real one." He picked up a small statue of Buddha from the altar. It was corroded and simple. "This belonged once to Milarepa. It is so old-looking and pitted because Milarepa cried onto this statue and his tears were dissolved into it."
Somehow, I believed him. But I still had to learn about the Sadhana.
"You said that the Sadhana is everywhere. What is it?"
"Lara," - why did everyone always know my name? - he began, "The Sadhana is a rite of purification. A journey. A pilgrimage when you are in a state of life that you are standing at a crossroads and do not know where to go. The Sadhana is for the lost and forgotten. It isn't anything you can hold in your hand."
"I understand," I whispered. And I really did. I closed my eyes and listened to the cave breathing around me. Drops of water made echoes in the chamber. Incenses and candles burned, their light flickering.
I understood the purpose, but I couldn't understand the cause.
"I have been here for two years. Every initiate who is sent here is told a story about a traveller. A woman, who one night appeared at a monastery door exhausted, and sick. She had travelled far - with such odds against her the story felt incrtedible. She fallen from the sky next to Mount Kailash, and walked to the monastery. He'd seen the holy lake. She knew ehere this cave was. Noone else knew."
The was crap. I hadn't found any caves in 1989. Or had I? I cursed the imperfectness of the human memory, and set myself to listen to brother Songsten again. The story of my survival was once again told to me like a Buddhist legend. I couldn't adjust myself to it, so I just tried to rip off the facts.
"After the woman had been sent back to her home, Lama Dorje sent three monks to find the cave. They succeeded - the woman had told them he had been on the side of Lake Manasarovar where the lake looked like a human eye. In five years, a monastery was built here, and soon a village formed around it. Now there is even a road to a nearby village, where there is an airfield."
So I hadn't found the cave. I had just, by accident, given them a clue how to find it.
"You speak very good English."
"I have studied in Calcutta."
"I don't understand - why did Lama Dorje send me here?"
"He didn't send you here. He send you out there to find what you had lost. You had showed us the way - we had to pay our debt."
What had I lost? My belief in my profession and my life. It was true that I had rediscovered those things - I was bursting of anticipation to begin travelling again. No matter how raggy, tired or hungry I was. I had believed I was in debt to the monks for saving my life, but they truly seemed to have another take on the subject.
"So there is no Sadhana then? I mean, a concretic one."
"There is a Sadhana. If you feel there is. Let me ask you one question."
"Yes?"
"On your way here, have you made painful decisions?"
"Yes," I whispered, and stared at a flickering candle.
"Have you learnt anything?" he asked.
I looked into his eyes. "You said one question."
He shrugged. "Do you feel uncomfortable answering?"
"No." Surprising, byt it was the truth. Try lying to a monk - I'm positive they know when you are telling the truth and when you're not.
"Have you learnt anything? About yourself, Lara. About yourself."
Had I learnt anything? Yes, I had. I had learnt that there was something greater than me in the mountains. I had learnt I could survive anything that didn't kill me - now there's an understatement.
I nodded.
"Then you have found your Sadhana."
I carefully lifted the Buddha statue from the altar and held it until it felt warm in my hands.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
===================================== Tomb Raider: The Sadhana by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =====================================
Chapter Seven
The corridor sloped downwards. I tried to be careful not to slip, for it steepened with every step, and if I fell, the cause would be a long, painful slide down to darkness. I tried to grip the walls but they were lacking of edges. After a good three hundred feet I saw a step below me. I stepped down carefully, and then stopped to search my surroundings.
The underground chamber was huge. On three corners of it were deep pits with sharp stalagmites in the bottom. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, I dodged them while walking to avoid them colliding painfully with my forehead. In the middle of the chamber was a sort of a walkway that seemed man-made. I followed it to the end of the chamber, my flashlight sparkling off crystals in the walls. Then suddenly there was no walkway. I stopped hastily, and sand from under my boots poured into nothingness. In front of me was a pit the size of an average family car. I tried to reach my flashlight hand as far as I could, and with trouble, I could see the other end of the pit.
I was in my own territory. This I could do. I strapped my flashlight to my belt, and measure the lenght of the pit by throwing a couple of stones to the other side. Then I gathered some speed, and jumped, grabbing the other end with my hands. I was left dangling from the edge. I pulled myself up, the sandstone scraping my arms. Congratulating myself for a job well done, I unstrapped the flashlight, and continued forward.
In the next chamber I was greeted by an eerie glow. IN the middle of the chamber was, again, a pit. Blue flames rose from it. I'm no chemist, but I recognized the smell floating around. Oxides of lead.The fire must've been burning there for centuries. Lead burns with a blue flame, and it places where oxygen isn't plentiful, it burns slowly. I walked past the pit, and suddenly I heard a loud noise, like an explosion from behind my back. I turned as quickly as my reflexes were able to turn me, and realized the blue flames had engulfed the whole back wall of the room. I ran forward, the light from my flashlight jumping around as I leapt over smaller rocks. I turned to see that the whole chamber was now in flames, but the flames didn't seem to reach any further than the doorstep. I kneeled down to retie my left shoelace, and the continued. After some minutes of darkness the corridor came to a total cul-de-sac. An opaque wall blocked the whole way. I pointed my flashlight up the wall - there was a large opening in the wall about eight feet up. But there was no way to reach it. I tried to jump and grab the edge, knowing that it was all in vain - it was just too high. I cursed my robbers silently again and swore to play ball with their heads if I ever came across them again. They'd taken my rope. I then tried climbing the wall, the result being landing on my bottom a half dozen times and a cloud of curses when the actual falling happened. I was presented with a brain teaser again, but I wasn't in the mood. My muscles hurt from eight days of marching around with minimal food, my mind was empty except for negative thoughts, and there I stood, next to am unclimbable wall after walking eight hundred miles to reach it. Talk about hard luck. I often say I make my own luck. Some luck I had made that time.
I sat in the darkness for awhile, listening to rats squattling around eight feet above my head in the opening. I decided to try and win the mountain with my head. There must've been another solution. A lever perhaps? I had seen no levers, and the cave didn't seem man-made, so there was nowhere to hide one. Staircase that had rottened away? Possible, but where were the remains? No smoke without the fire, they say. Levitation? Wasn't that the national sport in India? I settled down in the corner, leaned my head on the hard rock and kept thinking until I fell asleep.
I didn't wake up to a strange noise. I woke up when something hit my head. The other end of a rope. I jumped up, guns pointing at the first possible direction - upwards. Keeping an eye on the opening, I grabbed my flashlight from the floor and cleared my throat.
"WHO IS IT? ANSWER ME!" I yelled, and noticed that the thing that had hit my head indeed was the other end of a rope. I yelled again, using all three words of Tibetan I know, one of them supposingly a curse - "you yak-kissing claypot", or something of similar level of insult - and finally, a head peered over the opening. It was the smiling face of a relatively old monk. I lowered my guns.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe that I walked over three ranges of mountain to discover a cave that has already been discovered."
"Not by you it hasn't", the monk said playfull, in very much understandable English.
I pointed my flashlight to his eyes. On purpose. "When I feel a sudden urge to hike eight hundred miles in the Tibetan winter, I'll be sure to inform you. Be a dear and cut the crap, will you?"
The monk's face disappeared. Great, I had insulted this simple man and now he's leaving me here. Jolly good. This story would be a killer in the next museum banquet. Assuming I ever had the never to tell it. But my sarcasm was unnecessary. The monk's footsteps approached the area again, and in a second a fittingly long piece of ladder was lowered to where I was standing. I could've kept up appearances and used the rope, but I'm only human, so I took the ladder. Up in the opening, I opened my mouth to say a shallow thank-you-for-help, but there noone was up there. Cursing under my breath, I started running along the dark corridor. After awhile it became dimly lit, and I heard footsteps ahead of me. I kept running, wand when I could see well enough not to run to the walls, I stopped to switch off my flashlight. The tunnel came to an end - a dead one. Wondering what kind of an optical trick the monk has used to get rid of me, I started inspecting the interior walls. I patted them in case oif levers or pressure pads. I stroked them in search of some kind of seams in the rock but found nothing. Until my hand found a wet spot. I pressed my finger on it and felt cool water trickling from inside the rock. I turned, and swithed on my flashlight. When there's water somewhere, it might be flowing from an underground river. And underground rivers often carve caves if the rock is porous enough. In the opposite wall, another source of trickling water. I tried to touch it with my finger, but noticed that I could see my finger as a mirroring picture when I placed it over the spot. There was no water trickling - it was a mirror placed on the wall. I traced the edges with some help from my flashlight, and soon I could reach a large mirror off its hooks. My mind was whirling in a very positive way - what on Earth might they be hiding in a place like this? I squeezed myself past the mirror into another dark tunnel.
The tunnel dissolved itself to a huge chamber. I arrived in the west side of it, above an underground river glittering somewhere far below. Above me, thousands of sparkling stalactites, like stars, lit by light coming somewhere outside the cave. I pointed my flashlight into the darkness and discovered hundreds of formations of helictites and stalactites. They were both yellow and white in colour - hanging like draped curtains over the chamber. The river flowed somewhere below.
I was standing on a wooden walkway. It felt steady - steadier than the rope bridge five days earlier. It felt suprisingly steady, considering that it must've been built hundreds of years ago. Slowly, memorizing every detail of the cave, I walked forward, to the other end of the chamber. It is very rarely that I get to go treasure-hunting in caves as magnificent as that one.
I honestly felt sorry to abandon the chamber and to move on. But the chances of coming to another chamber like that were high, so I continued. The next corridor - how many had there been already? - wasn't very long. It ended in a small room lit by candles and scent sticks. A soft, sweet smell floated around.
On the rear end of the small cave chamber was the young monk I had seen. He was seeted in front of an altar built next to the back wall. He was deeply in prayer, but his voice became a little more quiet when I approached the altar so he must've had noticed me. Here the stone was hard - I couldn't quite put my finger on an explanation how the previous chamber been such a palace of calcite rock. I stopped and stood four feet away from the altar. Unconsciously, I let my gaze wonder around, in search of levers, secret openings or other kinds of hiding places for the Sadhana. I was relieved that there was someone with me - it was a sign that I wasn't too far from food and sleep.
The monk gathered his ropes and rose from the floor. He turned to face me, smiling. He was quite young - probably in his twenties. His face was frost- bitten, and his whole body told of friendliness.
Inner peace even, perhaps.
"Welcome," he said, gesturing me to come closer. I nodded, smiling curiously, and a bit confused if he thought I was worthy to approach the altar. Some monks are very strick about their altars, I've noticed. I once avoided a death by decapitation running when I accidentally got too close to an altar in Borneo. I walked closer to this mystery man.
"Thank you," I said. He offered me a waterskin. I drank and wiped my mouth in my sleeve. A lizard crept past my left leg. There had to be another entrance to the cave close.
"You have come a long way. Did you find what you were looking for?" The monk asked. A cell in my brain found its match. "No, I haven't, actually. It's you who's been following me around, ain't that right?"
He shook his head. In some countries shaking of the head means yes. I couldn't remember how it was in Tibet.
"It wasn't me. It was brother Cheng, who I know very well. He isn't here anymore." Whoever this brother Cheng was, it was possible he could be held responsible for theft. "Did he nick my rope and my food?" I asked, quite innocently, really.
The young monk smiled and united his hands in an apologizing gesture."Yes, he... Lama Dorje felt it was necessary to test you."
"To test me?" Feeling like part some secret agenda again, I eyed the monk suspiciously. He ignored me.
"My name is brother Songsten. I have lived here in the Manasarovar valley all my life. Every brother has to spend three years in this cave, and only come to eat and sleep in the monastery, in the village."
"What village?"
"The Kailash village. It's on the other side of the mountain. The entrance I use to get here is quite near it."
Figures. Brother Cheng had been sent to make sure I wouldn't spot the village, pack my stuff and head home before finding what they wanted.
"Listen, brother Changling, or whatever your respectable name was. I have just walked eight hundred miles to get here. I have one question, which will require a no-yes answer. Do you, or do you not, know the location of a holy relic called The Sadhana? Can you help me in any way in finding it?"
The monk almost died of laughter. Water flowed from his eyes.
"I didn't know it was allowed to laugh in holy caves," I remarked, a bit hurt. I had just, indeed, walked eight hundred miles just for the fun of being laughed at. At least he had the decency to explain.
"It makes me sad if you have not found your Sadhana yet. I cannot help you with it."
I sighed heavily. My luck. I had just come across the Monty Python of Tibetan monks. "What do you mean 'if I have not found if yet'? Could someone please, finally, explain to me what the Sadhana even is."
The monk approached the altar, and picked up a small stone from it. He took my hand and pulled me closer.
"The Sadhana is here. Everywhere. In the mountains. In this altar. This is Milarepa's cave."
Milarepa is the most popular and loved saint in Tibet. He was very vengeful and dark-souled in his youth, but later came to remorse about what he had done, and began studying Buddhism in India and Tibet. He became a great Buddhist teacher and holy saint. He had spent many years in desolate caves, meditating. There were several caves dedicated to Milarepa in the Himalayas.
"Unlike all the other caves, this is the real one." He picked up a small statue of Buddha from the altar. It was corroded and simple. "This belonged once to Milarepa. It is so old-looking and pitted because Milarepa cried onto this statue and his tears were dissolved into it."
Somehow, I believed him. But I still had to learn about the Sadhana.
"You said that the Sadhana is everywhere. What is it?"
"Lara," - why did everyone always know my name? - he began, "The Sadhana is a rite of purification. A journey. A pilgrimage when you are in a state of life that you are standing at a crossroads and do not know where to go. The Sadhana is for the lost and forgotten. It isn't anything you can hold in your hand."
"I understand," I whispered. And I really did. I closed my eyes and listened to the cave breathing around me. Drops of water made echoes in the chamber. Incenses and candles burned, their light flickering.
I understood the purpose, but I couldn't understand the cause.
"I have been here for two years. Every initiate who is sent here is told a story about a traveller. A woman, who one night appeared at a monastery door exhausted, and sick. She had travelled far - with such odds against her the story felt incrtedible. She fallen from the sky next to Mount Kailash, and walked to the monastery. He'd seen the holy lake. She knew ehere this cave was. Noone else knew."
The was crap. I hadn't found any caves in 1989. Or had I? I cursed the imperfectness of the human memory, and set myself to listen to brother Songsten again. The story of my survival was once again told to me like a Buddhist legend. I couldn't adjust myself to it, so I just tried to rip off the facts.
"After the woman had been sent back to her home, Lama Dorje sent three monks to find the cave. They succeeded - the woman had told them he had been on the side of Lake Manasarovar where the lake looked like a human eye. In five years, a monastery was built here, and soon a village formed around it. Now there is even a road to a nearby village, where there is an airfield."
So I hadn't found the cave. I had just, by accident, given them a clue how to find it.
"You speak very good English."
"I have studied in Calcutta."
"I don't understand - why did Lama Dorje send me here?"
"He didn't send you here. He send you out there to find what you had lost. You had showed us the way - we had to pay our debt."
What had I lost? My belief in my profession and my life. It was true that I had rediscovered those things - I was bursting of anticipation to begin travelling again. No matter how raggy, tired or hungry I was. I had believed I was in debt to the monks for saving my life, but they truly seemed to have another take on the subject.
"So there is no Sadhana then? I mean, a concretic one."
"There is a Sadhana. If you feel there is. Let me ask you one question."
"Yes?"
"On your way here, have you made painful decisions?"
"Yes," I whispered, and stared at a flickering candle.
"Have you learnt anything?" he asked.
I looked into his eyes. "You said one question."
He shrugged. "Do you feel uncomfortable answering?"
"No." Surprising, byt it was the truth. Try lying to a monk - I'm positive they know when you are telling the truth and when you're not.
"Have you learnt anything? About yourself, Lara. About yourself."
Had I learnt anything? Yes, I had. I had learnt that there was something greater than me in the mountains. I had learnt I could survive anything that didn't kill me - now there's an understatement.
I nodded.
"Then you have found your Sadhana."
I carefully lifted the Buddha statue from the altar and held it until it felt warm in my hands.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi