by Dan Millman
He came over and looked at it, as awestruck as I. “Looks like a statue or something,” he said.
“Here,” I said, handing it to him. I didn’t want to give it away, but it seemed the right thing to do.
He looked at it, and clearly would have liked it, but he had his standards, too. “No. You found it. You keep it. To remember.”
“Thanks for showing me this cave, Kimo.”
“You keep it a secret, okay?”
“I’ll never tell anyone where it is,” I promised, tucking the statue into my pants.
The swim out was challenging, but not as difficult as the way in, because now I knew how far it was, and had time to rest and take many deep breaths to prepare.
BY THE TIME WE GOT BACK to shore, it was getting dark. Kimo insisted that I could stay at his place. So I got to meet his three sisters and four brothers, two of whom I’d already met with him on the street. They all nodded, curious or oblivious, as they passed quickly through the room in which we sat and talked. He offered me a beer, which I accepted, and sipped slowly, and some pungent weed he called “Maui Mindblow,” which I declined.
We talked late into the night, and I got to understand the soul of another human being very different from me, yet the same.
Before Kimo flopped onto his unmade sleeper bed and I stretched out on some blankets on the floor, he shared something else with me: He told me how he’d felt different from other people his whole life, “like I was from another place or something,” he added. “And I got a feeling dere’s something I’m supposed to do wit’ my life, only I don’t know what …” he trailed off.
“Maybe finish high school first,” I said. “Or sail the seven seas.”
“Yeah,” he said, closing his eyes. “Sail the seven seas.”
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought back on this incredible day: starting out on a mountaintop, ending with Kimo and the underwater cave. And finding that barnacle-encrusted statue, now safe in my pack. I’d have to examine it more closely the next chance I got.
IN THE MORNING, I said good-bye to Kimo and I set out alone, back into the rain forests of Molokai, toward Pelekunu Valley. I had the feeling that the “treasure” Mama Chia had spoken of might be absorbed in little bits and pieces, not all at once, but that they might add up to something. And if I just stayed alert and open, and traveled where my heart led, I would find the rest of the treasure, whatever it was.
As I walked along the back roads, getting short rides with a rancher or town person, and then entered the forest, I thought about Kimo, and the other people I’d met, from all walks of life. Remembering my vision in the fire, I wondered about their purpose, and how we all fit into the bigger picture. Someday I’d find the tools to help them understand, and to find that purpose. I knew this, if I knew anything.
WALKING AFTER DARK in a strange part of the rain forest, I felt disoriented, and suddenly weary. Not wanting to travel in circles, I decided to sleep where I was until the first light of dawn, then continue. I lay down and fell quickly asleep, with a vague feeling of ill ease, as if maybe I shouldn’t be there, but it was only a very subtle feeling, and it was probably just my fatigue.
In the night, I had a strange and dark but compelling sexual dream. A succubus—a female seductress—both darkly dangerous and terribly erotic, came to love me … to death. She wore a filmy blue gown that revealed creamy skin.
I half woke up, and realized where I was, but an icy feeling of horror gripped me as I felt her presence and then saw a woman’s shape, blue and gauze covered, floating, moving toward me through the trees. I quickly looked left and right and saw that I had stumbled into a place of unmarked burials, and restless souls.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck as my Basic Self told me to get out of there. Now.
As the spirit’s cold, shapely form floated closer, I could sense that fear and seduction were her only powers, but I had been prepared for this; I had returned from hell, and neither fear nor seduction had the same power over me. “You’ll not have me,” I said with authority. “I’m not here for you.”
I forced myself to wake up fully, and I walked slowly out of that place, not looking back, knowing all the time that she was following me, close behind.
At some point, I felt her give up and fall away, but I kept walking through the rest of the night, just the same. Something else was troubling me—a vague feeling again, like I was missing something important. But this time the feeling clarified, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
A phrase from Mama Chia’s riddle came to mind: “As above, then so below.” Now what could that mean?
I was “above” in the highlands. I was “below” in the town. I had been “beneath the sea.” It was all the same. As above, so below. Different, yet the same. Because wherever I went, I was there! The treasure wasn’t in any one of these places; it was in all of them. Mama Chia had already told me the answer; it was inside me—as close as my own heart.
This was more than an intellectual understanding. It hit me with an overwhelming force, an ecstatic realization. For a moment, I lost all awareness of my body. I collapsed on the wet leaves. I had found the treasure, the most important secret of all. Energy welled up inside me. I wanted to cry, to dance!
But in the next moment, ecstasy gave way to another feeling: a sudden sense of loss. And I knew, without knowing how, that Mama Chia was dying. “No!” I cried into the trees. “No. Not yet. Please, wait for me!”
I got to my feet and started to run.
CHAPTER 22
Living Until We Die
True teachers use themselves as bridges
over which they invite their students to cross;
then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse,
encouraging them to create bridges of their own.
—Nikos Kazantzakis
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I RAN, climbed, scrambled, and ran again. Covered with mud, exhausted, cut and bruised, then cleansed by a heavy rain, I finally stumbled and fell at the foot of Mama Chia’s stairs about two hours after sunrise.
Fuji, Mitsu, Joseph, and Sarah came out, and Joseph helped me inside. Mama Chia was lying peacefully on the futon bed, surrounded by flowers.
My friends, supporting me at first, stepped back as I went to her and knelt by the bed, my head bowed and tears streaming down my cheeks. I rested my forehead on her arm, so cool, so cool.
I couldn’t speak at first; stroking her face, I said farewell, and offered a silent prayer. Mitsu sat nearby, stroking Sachi, comforting her. Socrates, in the blissful ignorance of childhood, slept next to his sister.
Joseph looked like a sad Don Quixote, his eyes dark, one hand on Sarah’s shoulder as she rocked in grief.
A stillness pervaded the valley, a sadness, unbroken by the cries of Redbird, the ‘apapane. Here had passed a very special woman. Even the birds were in mourning.
Just then, the ‘apapane landed on the windowsill, tilted his head to one side, and looked at Mama Chia. Birds have a cry of sadness, and we heard it that morning—an unaccustomed sound—as Redbird flew to her side, made the call again, and flew away, like her soul.
I walked into the moist warm air toward the east, the rising sun just now lighting the sky, silhouetting the hills. Joseph walked with me. “She must have died quietly, in the night,” he told me. “Fuji found her only an hour ago. Dan, we heard you were away; how did you know?”
I gazed up at him, and my eyes told him what he needed to know.
Nodding in understanding, Joseph told me, “Some time ago, she left me instructions,” he said, “about where to take Tia’s baby, and other business matters. She asked to be cremated, in the burial ground of the kahunas. I’ll be making the arrangements.”
“I want to help with anything I can—with everything,” I told him.
“Yes, of course—if you wish. Oh, and there was this,” he revealed, holding up a piece of paper. “I think she wrote you this last night.”
We
looked at the note; in Mama Chia’s scrawled handwriting were six words: “Among friends, there are no good-byes.”
I went back inside, sat near her, and just looked at her. When I was young, death was a stranger to me—a phone call, a letter, a piece of information, a solemn announcement about people I rarely saw. Death was a visitor to other homes, other places. People just faded into memory.
But this was real, and it hurt like a razor cut. Sitting there, with the body of Mama Chia, Death whispered into my ears with cold breath, bringing intimations of my own mortality.
I stroked her cheek, feeling an ache in my heart that no metaphysical philosophy could remedy. I missed her already; I felt the void she left, as if a piece of my life had been taken away. And I reflected that, ultimately, we have no control in this life—no ability to stop the waves that come crashing down. We can only learn to surf those waves, embracing whatever comes and using it to grow. Accepting ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, our foolishness and our love. Accepting everything. Doing what we can, and flowing with the rest.
It may seem strange to some people that I would be so attached to a woman I’d only met a short time before, but my admiration for Mama Chia—for her goodness and courage and wisdom—made up for the brief time of our acquaintance, and made her passing all the more painful. Perhaps I’d known her for lifetimes. She was one of my most beloved teachers who had somehow been waiting for me since my birth.
JOSEPH CONTACTED MAMA CHIA’S SISTER, who informed her other relatives. We let the body rest for two days, as Mama Chia had requested. Then, on the third morning, we prepared for the trek up Pelekunu Valley to the sacred kukui grove and the burial site beyond. The old pickup truck became her hearse, decorated with leis and garlands of flowers. We drove carefully over the makeshift roads as far east as the roads would carry us—Fuji and I, followed by Joseph, Sarah, Mitsu, with her little boy, and Joseph’s family, as well as Victor, her nieces, other relatives, and a long procession of the many local people Mama Chia had known and helped over the years.
When the road ended, we carried her on the pallet, constructed by her friends from the leper colony, on slippery, winding paths, past waterfalls through the kukui forest she had loved so well, into the burial site of the kahunas. The lepers were still restricted to their compound, and so couldn’t accompany us, but they sent many flowers.
We entered the burial ground in the late afternoon. I felt the ancient kahuna spirit, Lanikaula, welcome Mama Chia, welcome us all, as I knew he would. Now they would both stand eternal watch over the island they loved.
By dusk, we had built her funeral pyre as she had instructed, setting her on a bed of leaves and flower petals, atop many logs, crisscrossed beneath her, gathered from a dry part of the island.
As the pyre was prepared, some of those closest to her said a few words in memorial, or recited quotations that reminded them of Mama Chia.
Fuji was overcome, and couldn’t speak; his wife, Mitsu, said, “This is what Mama Chia taught me: We cannot always do great things in life, but we can do small things with great love.”
Joseph, quoting Buddha, said, “Gifts are great; meditations and religious exercises pacify the mind; comprehension of the great truth leads to nirvana; but greater—” Here, he began to cry. “But greater than all is loving kindness.”
Never taking her sad eyes off the pyre, Sachi said, simply, “I love you, Mama Chia.”
Another woman, a stranger to me, said, “Mama Chia taught me that kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless.” Then she sank to her knees and bowed her head in prayer.
When my turn came, my mind went completely blank. I had prepared something to say, but it was gone. I stared another long moment, in silence, at the pyre, as images flashed through my mind—meeting Ruth Johnson on the street, then at the party, then as she nursed me back to health—and then a long-forgotten quotation from Matthew came to me: “I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me; ill and you comforted me.” I spoke these words not just for me, but for all the people gathered there.
Fuji came up to me, and to my surprise, handed me the torch. “She asked in her instructions that you light the pyre, Dan, if you were still here on Molokai. She said you’d know how to give her a good send-off.” He smiled sadly.
I lifted the torch. And I understood that everything she had shown me came to this: Live until you die.
“Good-bye, Mama Chia,” I said aloud. I touched the torch to the dry grass and sticks, and the flames began to crackle and dance. And the body of Mama Chia, covered with a thousand petals of red and white and pink and purple, was embraced by the flames, and engulfed.
As the smoke rose to the sky, I stepped back from the blazing heat. Then, in the dying light of day, as this small group of people gazed into the flames, I recalled how Mama Chia enjoyed quoting sources of wisdom, and from out of nowhere, the words of George Bernard Shaw came to me—words she herself might have said—and I found myself calling them out loudly above the crackle of the roaring fire for all to hear: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible—” My voice quivered then, and I could speak no more.
Others spoke, as Spirit moved them, but I heard none of it. I cried, and I laughed, as Mama Chia would have laughed; then I fell to my knees and bowed my head. My heart was open, my mind silent.
I LOOKED UP SUDDENLY because I heard Mama Chia’s voice, as loud and clear as if she were standing in front of me. All the others still had their heads bowed, or were staring at the fire, and I realized that the words resounded only in the quiet halls of my mind. In her soft, sometimes lilting voice, Mama Chia spoke to me, and said:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
When I heard these words, my heart broke open and my awareness leaped to a place I had never been before. I felt the nature of mortality and death within the great circle of life. Overwhelmed, I swooned with a searing compassion for all living things. I fell at once into the depths of despair and soared to the heights of bliss—these two feelings alternated within me at the speed of light.
Then, I was no longer on Molokai, but standing in the tiny room I had seen in my vision under the waterfall. Acrid, pungent smells of sewage and decay filled the air, partly masked by burning incense. I saw a nun caring for a bedridden leper. In the blink of an eye, I became the nun, wearing heavy robes in the sweltering heat. I reached out to smooth an ointment on this poor man’s face, my heart completely opened to the love, to the pain, to everything. And in the leper’s disfigured face, I saw the faces of all those I had ever loved.
The next moment I stood on the rue de Pigalle, watching a gendarme help a sick, drunken man into a police ambulance. Then I became that police officer, I smelled the drunkard’s putrid breath. A light flashed, and I saw the drunkard as a child, huddled in a corner, quaking as his own father, in a drunken rage, lashed out at him. I felt his pain, his fear—all of it. Looking through the gendarme’s eyes, I carried the drunkard gently to the waiting van.
The next moment, I found myself gazing, as if through a mirror, at a teenage boy in his bedroom in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. He was sniffing powder up his nose. I knew his guilt, and regret, and self-hatred. Then I felt only compassion.
Next, I was in Africa, gazing at an old man, moving painfully, trying to give a dying baby water. I cried out, and my voice echoed in this timeless place where I sto
od. I cried for that baby, for the old African, for the teenage boy, for the drunken man, for the nun, for the leper. That baby was my child, and these were my people.
I wanted so much to help, to make things better for every suffering soul, but I knew that from where I stood I could only love, understand, trust in the wisdom of the universe, do what I could, then let go.
As I saw all this, I felt an explosive surge of energy, and I was catapulted up, through my heart, in a state of perfect empathy with existence itself.
My body had become transparent, radiating shifting colors of the spectrum. Below, I felt red, rising through orange, and yellow, and green, changing into gold. Then, surrounded by a radiant blue, my inner eyes were drawn up to the center of my forehead, rising into indigo, then violet …
Beyond the confines of personal identity, no longer concerned with a physical body, I floated in the place where spirit meets flesh, from a vantage point high above the planet we call earth. Then the earth receded in the vastness, then the solar system became a disappearing speck, and the galaxy, too, until I was beyond the illusions of space and matter and time, seeing It All: paradox, humor, and change.
