In The Light, Part I
Posted on Sun Aug 28th, 2022 @ 11:04am by Lieutenant Jai
Edited on on Sun Aug 28th, 2022 @ 11:22am
2,825 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
What Lies Ahead, Between, and Behind
Tags: jai
T I B E T
Miri’s Planet (Earth 2), 1962
Suggested Soundtrack: Jordan Rees [You Are Our Only Hope Now]
The call to prayer came before the dawn.
It would be several hours before the sun rose, in fact. Dawn in the Tibetan mountains would come around 7 a.m. in this time of year. Which would be about four hours from now.
The boy woke atop a thin mat, laid out on the floor. The room was barely larger than some might use as a closet, but with a spectacular view of snow-capped mountains. The moon was still high enough that its haunting light tricked through the ornate window lattice. Shadows and moonlight illuminated the boy’s skin, revealing the intricate detail of the tattooed markings than ran along his arms and back.
He was privileged to have privacy. Other boys his age boarded in rooms smaller than this, with three others of similar age crowded into the shuttered space. He knew it well. It had been life, too. Until the selection.
As he stirred to wake, the tattooed youth picked up the red-orange cloth that had served as his only bedding. Shifting and tucking it around his body revealed the reality that the sheet was, in fact, his clothing.
Bare feet padded around the interior the cloistered sanctuary of the leader of the Lamapa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The great teacher. The one whose destiny was to recognize the next Dalai Lama. With each step, he felt the weight of the world burdening his shoulders, until he found himself standing at the door that would lead him into the temple proper.
He reached for the door, and stopped. Uncertain.
Uncertain of what?
Everything.
Taking a deep breath, the boy stepped forward. With a single step, Jai abandoned his sense of self and emerged into the temple as His Holiness, Jay Prakas Gyatso, the thirteenth reincarnation of the Gyalwa Lama. The doorway outside was framed by two of his tutors, ushering him into the temple hall. Everything that happened from this moment onward would be as they wished it.
What Jai wanted didn’t matter, because he wasn’t Jai.
Not anymore.
He would bathe first. Prayer was a sacred obligation of the faithful. It was not undertaken lightly, and required the ritual preparation of the body before any holy questions could be contemplated. Flanked by his tutors, Jai held his head high. They would chastise him were he to lower his eyes. As the morning call had passed, the temple was coming to life before his eyes, as monks of all ages began milling about.
Three boys made their way to the showers, all about Jai’s same age. In times past, there would have been more of them. Child-monks, given to the monasteries by a cultural tradition in which one son of each Tibetan family was trained as a monk, but today they were less than a handful. Banned. Prohibited, by the laws that had superimposed themselves on Tibet. As the boys made their way along the halls, the banners of China hung alongside images of the Republic’s leaders.
Even still, the boy-monks played as children played. He could feel their laughter. Once, he would have played as they did. Once, not so very long ago, Jai would have played with them. But that was before it had been decided that Jai was the reincarnation of the Gyalwa Lama.
Before it was decided that his childhood was over.
Bathing was a ritual. Dressing was a ritual. Prayer was a ritual. As His Holiness, Jay Prakas Gyatso took his ordained place before the morning prayers, Jai was careful to open the scroll as he had been taught to do so. Read the words as he had been taught to do so. Led the prayer as he had been taught to do so.
What was the point of being the Buddha’s chosen great teacher if all was required of him was to do what he was told when he was told? To say what he was told to say? To read only what he was told to read?
Eating was a ritual. At breakfast, Jai found himself on a raised seat that overlooked a long table. At his feet were the elders and tutors. The real masters of their destiny, the ones who ordained what Jai would do, or say, or read.
He wondered if all the kings of Europe, or the emperors of all China or Rome, had been this powerless? Felt so meaningless?
The child-monks served the tea, moving around the table with the decanters to keep filling the monk’s cups. One slipped, spilling the tea atop several monks in a cascade of both laughter and harsh words.
Jai was expected to be contemplative. Had anyone noticed, he would have been chastised for the smile that lit up his face. But the fact that he wasn’t revealed the unexpected moment for what it was.
A distraction.
With the monk’s attention on the haphazard spill, Jai slipped out of the ornate robe that draped his shoulders, removing the symbolic hat and leaving it on the settee cushion as he quietly slipped away.
“Tayata om...”
The young monk paused. He was laboring at a churn, a traditional method of making the yak butter tea known in Tibet as po cha. As children, monk initiates were required to have a sponsor, who guided their education and their place in the monastic order.
When Jai had come to the temple, that sponsor had been Monk Lhakpa, who was also in charge of the monastery’s kitchens.
The kitchens had been where he had grown up in the temple, laboring at the tea churn as so many other monks did. Until one day, it was no longer appropriate for Jai to do so. It was a task beneath him. Because he had holier duties to focus on.
He knew it wasn’t his place, but Jai questioned whether that was true or not.
“Tayata om bekanze...” Jai began again, re-starting the attempt at recitation. Monk Lhakpa had been teaching him a new mantra, to help guide the meditative exercise for this morning. Time and time again, the kitchen was where Jai escaped to. Because it was different with Monk Lhakpa. He didn’t give Jai a manta to recite, but a prayer to reflect upon. Looking up from his butter churn, the boy seemed to pose a question as he uttered, “...bekanze razha?”
A solitary finger was raised, over at where the aging monk was preparing a large pot of porridge. “Bekanze maha, bekanze razha,” the elder monk stated, before adding the conclusion, “Samudgate soha.”
“Tayata om bekanze maha bekanze razha samudgate soha,” the boy recited, completing the mantra. When he had finished, he looked up at his teacher, as though for affirmation.
“Good,” Monk Lhakpa stated, eliciting an immediate smile from the child. Then, the solitary finger again returned to the air as the monk asked, “Now, what does it mean?”
The smile fell. A look of confusion played out across the youth’s face, as it was plain to see that the child was wrestling with any manner of thoughts or emotions, before finally looking up and stating, “But... you didn’t tell me what it means.”
“It’s not a recital, your Holiness,” the man quipped back, though he no longer called the boy by his name. As the man started to prepare the food to be served, he shifted his attention to the boy. Crossing over to the butter churn, the man began to decant the butter tea into a large kettle for service. As he did, he continued, “I didn’t ask what it means to me, I want to know what it means to you.”
The child’s head went back, his face betraying both irritation and surprise with such honesty that the monk couldn’t stop the laugh from reaching his lips.
“I don’t want you to answer now, but think on it,” Monk Lhakpa said, not bothering to suppress his own amusement at the boy’s theological quandary. Instead, pressing the heavy kettle into the boy’s spindly arms, the monk then touched the child’s head and commanded, “Go. Serve the tea. When you have finished, pray. Meditate on this mantra, then come back to me and give me your answer.”
For his part, Jai was conflicted. On the one hand, he had the distinct impression that he was being laughed at. On the other, he rather appreciated the head pat from the fatherly monk. That duality of conflict was plain as day on his face, as he lifted the kettle and said, “Yes, sir.”
==============
THE 24TH CENTURY
Haumea Colony
Suggested Soundtrack: Russell Bower [Shin Zen-Su] (Jai’s Theme)
==============
He cried himself awake.
How long had he laid there, staring up at the ceiling? The tears ran from the corners of his eyes, soaking into the pillow beneath his head.
Sitting up on the bed, the boy drew his knees up as he curled his body into a fetal position. Arms wrapped around his legs, as though desperate for a hug. His head buried down into his knees, Jai tried to simply breathe.
In.
Out.
After several minutes, the Tibetan youth finally found the strength to raise his eyes. Resting his chin on his knees, the boy rocked himself from side to side as he looked around the interior of his quarters.
Much like when he had been elevated to the position of Gyalwa Lama, Jai occupied this small cottage not because of who he was but rather for the position he occupied. The colonial residence of the Chief of Medicine. A place he was expected to entertain dignitaries or the various organizations that sponsored the hospital’s health care services.
Ceremonial, as so much of his life had been.
The sun was already up, its light trickling through the windows as Jai found himself hesitant to face the day. Then, finally, the boy swung his legs over the side of the bed before he pushed off from the mattress, finding his footing on the replicated wood paneling that greeted his bare feet.
Staggering into the private bath, the youth rubbed at his eyes before plunging his hands under a sink of cold water and splashing it on his face. Letting the water run down his face, the boy stared down at his hands. Turning his arms, the brown eyes looked over the indelible markings that etched an elaborate mandala ribbon from the back of his hand to his elbow, and from there to the shoulder.
Closing his eyes, the boy hung his head as felt up the wall for the medicine cabinet. There was a prescription there, staring back at him as he held it in his hand. It was an almost universal panacea for the survivors of Miri’s Planet, a pill advised to be taken on the rare occasion that any of the children experienced traumatic memories from the quite real zombie apocalypse they had survived.
The rare occasion.
In reality, Jai subsisted on it. Become so routine with its use that he feared what life might be like without the pills and only the memories. Instead, Jai took a pill and put on a smile, because he'd learned a long time ago that the secret to staying safe was to never let anyone know he was afraid.
Replacing the bottle in the cabinet, the boy caught his own reflection in the glass as he swung it closed and beheld the mirror. The boy in the mirror wasn't at all the one he recalled, almost a stranger, made all the more haunting by the echo of that which was familiar. He was that which survived. And this was the price for living, he supposed.
Once upon a time, he had struggled with the idea that he could be what people wanted him to be. Or the idea that he was the person they believed him to be.
Now he had no one’s expectations to live up to other than his own, and Jai found himself conflicted still.
Who was he supposed to be?
Was he a failure for not knowing? Or was that the question he was supposed to be asking?
There had been a time when adults had offered him every answer he needed to know, and Jai had resented them for it, because there had never been any need for him to think for himself. Now, he found he missed the tutors.
No, that wasn’t right.
If he was honest, Jai still didn’t miss the tutors. He missed Monk Lhakpa. The master of the kitchens never offered any simple answer but had merely helped Jai to find his own by re-phrasing the question for him.
He wondered what Monk Lhakpa would think of the choices that Jai had made.
He’d become a healer. That much had to be good, right?
But he’d also joined Starfleet. Ostensibly to do the most good for the most people. Would Monk Lhakpa agree? Or would he see the uniform and the wars that came with it?
The latter thought weighed heaviest, as Jai showered and then changed into the cloth of the Federation, looking at his reflection as he adjusted the position of the combadge on the chest.
As he moved toward the door, the boy’s hand passed over a string of prayer beads. They were ancient as he was ancient. Several museums of different planets had sought them. A debate ensued with the overseers of Miri’s Planet over whether they belonged to Jai or should be kept as a cultural artifact.
They were all that remained of the child-monk he had been, once, so very long ago. The sole worldly possession of a boy whose name – whose only name – had been Jai. Not His Holiness. Not Jay Prakas Gyatso. Not the thirteenth reincarnation of Obaidullah Tenzen Gyalwa, or anything or anyone else.
It was selfish, perhaps even greed, but as the boy’s hands closed around the subconscious comfort of the mala beads, he felt some of the doubt and anxiety slip away.
Stepping out of his home – or the Chief of Medicine’s home, anyway – the boy stood in the light of the dawn and drew in a deep breath of the planet’s air. While the mountains were far away, a distant cry from the views Jai had enjoyed at the temple, he was at least spoiled by the fact that the cottage had a garden. It was a place where the boy would escape to meditate before he started his day.
Sitting cross-legged, the boy stretched the string of beads between both hands as he closed his eyes, allowing the mala to pass through his fingers until he felt the Buddha bead catch against the crook of his thumb.
Then he just breathed.
In.
Out.
The thoughts seem to drain out of him, the sum of all fears dissolving as a fog fades away under the full light of the sun. Each breath taking Jai further and further from where he was, until he was left with only himself. “Tayata om bekanze maha bekanze razha samudgate soha,” the boy uttered, reciting the last mantra that had been taught to him.
The Buddha bead slipped between his thumb and forefinger, as a smaller bead arrived to take its place.
“Tayata om bekanze maha bekanze razha samudgate soha.”
The bead slipped through his fingers, as the next arrived. Bead by bead. Breath by breath. Prayer by prayer.
“I didn’t ask what it means to me, I want to know what it means to you.”
Jai had never made it back to the kitchens to give his answer.
The Buddha bead caught against his thumb, as the wheel of prayers had come full circle. The boy’s hands closed over the mala as he stayed there, silently contemplating the words of Monk Lhakpa before he finally found courage enough to open his eyes and face the day.
Seriously, what did that mean?
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