TEN DIRECTIONS
By Samuel Winburn
Ten Directions
Samuel Winburn
Copyright 2017 Samuel Winburn
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
PREFACE
THE MEASURE OF HEAVEN
Chapter 1 - d'Jang
ONE HALF OF KNOWING
Chapter 2 - August
Chapter 3 – Aurora
Chapter 4 - Kalsang
Chapter 5 - Francesca
Chapter 6 - Calvin30
UP FROM THE ROOTS
Chapter 7 - Francesca
Chapter 8 - Kalsang
Chapter 9 - August
Chapter 10 - Calvin30
Chapter 11 - Aurora
ISLAND OF JEWELS
Chapter 12 - Aurora
Chapter 13 - Calvin30
Chapter 14 - Kalsang
Chapter 15 - Francesca
Chapter 16 - August
A BRIEF FLASH OF LIGHTNING
Chapter 17 - Calvin30
Chapter 18 - Kalsang
Chapter 19 - Aurora
Chapter 20 - Francesca
Chapter 21 - August
OCEAN OF STORMS
Chapter 22 - Kalsang
Chapter 23 - Calvin30
Chapter 24 - Kalsang
Chapter 25 - Aurora
Chapter 26 - Kalsang
Chapter 27 - Francesca
Chapter 28 - Kalsang
Chapter 29 - August
PATH TO GROUND
Chapter 30 -Kalsang
Chapter 31 - August
Chapter 32 - Aurora
Chapter 33 - Calvin30
Chapter 34 - Francesca
THE CRY OF WILD GEESE
Chapter 35 - Francesca
Chapter 36 - Kalsang
Chapter 37 - Aurora
Chapter 38 - August
Chapter 39 - Calvin30
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
This story began in an unusual way. That is to say, it was unusual compared to my preconceptions of how your average work of fiction begins – with a central concept, a plot summary and outline, followed by the methodical execution of that plan. This story didn’t happen that way. This is what happened.
Whilst taking a shower 20 years ago, an artistic vision arose from one of my daydreams. The vision regarded a teaching by the Buddha on generating compassion through the visualization of breathing in the suffering of the world, dissolving one’s own suffering in that, and breathing out liberation from suffering for oneself and all beings. In this daydream, I imagined a monk on a remote planet breathing in the suffering of the universe in the form of a black hole, the densest and darkest phenomenon known to science, and breathing out compassion in the form of light. Inspired by the clarity of this vision, I wrote a short story, which is still my introduction to the character Kalsang in Chapter 4.
Thereafter, the whole book gradually and organically grew from this seed of a vision. Providing soil for that seed was an early decision to set the scene in a world where, somehow, humanity has managed to survive the fall-out from our current ecological overshoot. This choice came as a natural consequence of my career helping develop the profession of environmental accounting, an important piece in the puzzle of achieving a sustainable future from out of our current mess. The climate and sky into which in this seed grew was a commitment to exploring the spiritual evolution of my characters, in an open way, as they navigated their way through the plot. In the process, the narrative became a mirror in which to reflect on my own Path, and many of the struggles of the characters became improvisations on my own inner struggles.
The final ingredient bringing this book to fruition was magic. In my case, magic only occurred once I had become properly lost. Truthfully, I have been lost since the beginning, but I’d been too busy showing everyone that I knew where I was going to notice. However, at some point it became difficult to pretend anymore, and it was only then that magic had a chance to happen.
The magic began at a barbecue. A friend, Akiko, had invited my family over for lunch. While shopping in our neighbourhood shopping centre in suburban Western Australia, she had randomly met her old roommate from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco whom she hadn’t seen for over a decade. When we arrived at the barbecue, I recognized that Akiko’s friend was the renown Buddhist female lay master Khandro Thrinlay Chodon whose teaching I had attended earlier that week. Over the course of that afternoon, I learned that Khandro Rinpoche was the widow of the ninth Shabdrung Ngawang Jigme Rinpoche of Bhutan, and also carried the wisdom lineage of her great grandfather Tokden Shakya Shri, an important spiritual reformer in the Himalayan Buddhist yogic tradition. Khandro Rinpoche was the only female Buddhist Master I had met at that time, other than the fictional Lama Wangmo, Kalsang’s Guru, who I had invented for this novel. Later that afternoon Khandro Rinpoche’s brother, Sey Jigme Dorje, came to the barbecue with his daughter, Seymo Yeshe. Learning that Sey Jigme also lived in Perth, I asked where he lived and he replied with an address only a few houses down the street from my own. Magic.
Thus, began a new era in my life. For 30 years prior to this meeting I had been diligently attending my local meditation centre, struggling to learn a spiritual tradition with a history and culture, which was distant from my own. Perhaps part of the attraction to Tibetan Buddhism was this distance, which cast the shortcomings of our unsustainable and frenetic modern Western culture into sharp relief. In this regard, the moral high ground of the Tibetans “turning the other cheek” to the loss of their homeland was unassailable. However, this conceptual approach to learning Buddhism had done little to settle my crazy emotions, which was what I had been longing for.
With Sey Jigme steering me towards authenticity in following the spiritual direction Khandro Rinpoche has lain down, I have since been learning that meditation practice is much more than sitting in a room doggedly trying to apply some formula learned from ancient, often esoteric, texts. Instead, Khandro Rinpoche teaches that wisdom manifests humbly and organically in ordinary daily life through realizing that we are not separate from the flow of our world. Rather than becoming defensive and remote from our chaotic and turbulent times, we can transform ourselves and our world from within those conditions, which are not separate from ourselves. Through practicing these teachings, it is slowly, painstakingly, becoming clearer to me that expanding insight comes only through the process of becoming more genuine.
This book has had a 20-year gestation period because, for most of that time, my creative well often ran dry. Without the inspiration and direction from Khandro Rinpoche and Sey Jigme, which flowed from that magical barbecue, perhaps I would have never had the confidence and persistence to complete it. Perhaps I would never have had the coura
ge to release it into your care. In any case, out of gratitude to my Teachers, I offer my book towards the goal of attaining the magic potential within each of us. May our lives become ever more peaceful and productive.
Em ah ho!
THE MEASURE OF HEAVEN
‘May the mind of compassionate awakening
grow where it has not grown,
and where it has grown purely,
may it increase forever more.’
~Shantideva, 8th Century India
Chapter 1 - d'Jang
No one, not even his mother, had responded to his calls in many tides.
d'Jang couldn’t fault them now that all tides were being consumed into one. Time itself was being swallowed by that horrible hole in the sky, so maybe there was no longer any point in repeating tearful farewells.
All of this was his fault; there was no getting around it. It would be a conceit to take full credit, but there had been a moment when he had at least a chance to say something. He had not - so few had even tried, and now it was too late.
Here he sat, in relative if temporary safety, on a remote satellite while the planet of the Mother Ocean was being swallowed. He longed to indulge his self-pity by hailing someone, if only to relieve his loneliness, but what would that accomplish?
It would all be over soon enough anyway.
Feeling hungry, d’Jang reached out with his lower left octopodal arm and wrapped his tentacles around some feed swimming past. His catch, dangling over the mouth of his fifth head, was rescued by a thought. This one, so common in the Mother Ocean, would soon be among the last of his species. d’Jang looked at it kindly and decided to spare it. The hole should swallow his ship before he died of hunger. The feed wriggled free and slipped behind the pilot’s console. d’Jang waited, disappointed when the creature did not re-emerge. This was what had come of him, having his heart broken by feed.
d’Jang thought of his lovely daughter d’Song. As the future died the past was becoming everything.
He once again scanned the logs for the last transmissions received from his Home Reef, including mnemes, computer encoded packets of feelings and memories, sent from the children of his Pod, although the youngest would not understand their significance. Right now, much effort would be expended to shelter them from what was going on. If adults with full melding could not comprehend the sudden finality that had interrupted the busy constancy of their lives, how could they explain it to children? d'Jang savored these last echoes of pleasure as their mnemes stirred in his heart, the excited potential and clever associations from the new minds, even in these final moments.
d'Song again appeared before him, or at least an echo of her. What he saw was a computer augmented mental image, but enough had flowed between them over the tides that she was able to manifest in his mind as an independent presence. She was maturing so beautifully. Her faces had all emerged from their buds, each revealing different facets of her loveliness. He longed to enfold her in his tendrils, but in trying to, her image drew away.
“Do not worry, Melded One.” She said that as if there were anything else left to do.
One of her brothers struggled against her attentive grip, the unmelded personalities of two of his heads fighting with each other again, and d'Song released him with a sigh. There was too much resignation there for eyes so young.
She had already grown stronger than her father. d'Song was one who had spoken out after d'Jang had told her about the instabilities in the Channel Between Planets when they had first been observed in his telescope - the ones that everyone else had busied themselves in explaining away. She was a kid, and so had been ignored. Perhaps together, a kid and a low rank male like himself, they could have prevailed with someone of significance - someone like her mother, queen of a high caste pod. That was fantasy. Important people rarely listened, and especially not queens to their daughters. And as for him, d'Song’s mother had enjoyed her concubine and then forgotten him. He was no Alpha. So, he had stayed silent; even then d'Song had not given up on him.
“I miss you d'Jang.”
“My lovely d'Song, beyond my depth.”
His concentration was middling, and her image began to fade as his words completed. He struggled to keep her fresh in his mind, but her dissolution into sadness and memory could not be stopped. Then there was nothing to do but wait. And watch.
d'Jang caught himself feeling bored with the slow progress of the terrible thing growing outside his portal, wishing it would just finish what it was destined to do and end his misery. Objectively it appeared completely benign, a nothing edged with a blur and growing at an imperceptible rate. Yet this nothing would soon erase all beauty from the universe.
d'Jang’s body blackened with shame. Was he not a villain to wish away any of the few precious hours remaining for his people and their world? Was the pain of knowing so great that it called for shortening, by even an instant, the billions of years of evolution and tens of thousands of culture and knowledge, or accelerating away even one hopeful laugh of the children who in their youth could not comprehend the small number of their remaining days?
A sharp flash of light from the blurred edge told him that some celestial fragment, an asteroid or comet, had vanished beyond the event horizon of the black hole.
d'Jang tightened the tendrils on his lower third left hand to access the recording of the event by the space telescope array of which he was now the lone operator. Always the scientist. Who was going to be around to analyse the results? Still it gave him some small peace to have a job to do. He ordered a different spectral image for ten of his eleven faces; the eyes of his main face too smeared with tear mucus to focus on anything useful.
Scientist. The word had lost all nobility. Endless procedural meetings and meaningless debate and pride masquerading as humility. Too proud to break things down for the masses. Dithering in the name of truth while the other side felt no such qualms. “All Oceans Will Become One.” Such an inane inversion of the simple spiritual truth, that they were all connected by the ocean they shared. Those idiot prophets, growing fat dishing out self-serving delusion to the Alphas. Like c'Virm, the worst of that despicable lot. How did he feel now, d'Jang wondered, facing compaction into his Great Ocean, completing his fantasy of everyone becoming One?
Then again, who was he, d'Jang, to fault anyone else for cowardice? He might be able to convince himself otherwise if he alone had not stayed behind while his colleagues had shifted out. Still hiding behind his investigations as a distraction from the approaching cataclysm. Scientist.
d'Jang’s main face looked past their dying planet into the infinite night and the lights that would outlive them. Which one of those was home to the demon responsible for inviting his world into oblivion? He wanted to focus all his helpless anger on that single light - to focus it on the owner of that horrendous face, imprinted upon all podlings in history lessons, with that strange thatch of threads sprouting from its crown and obscuring its singular face. The one who had introduced the instructions for building this, this thing? There were no words to describe the horror that his other faces were intently dissecting with the telescope. There was no way to get to the bottom of it or of his grief, or of his shame at the depths of his complicity. Wasn’t the telescope that he had been so proudly manning the very one which had received the instructions for building the damn thing in the first place?
His anger was misplaced. What possible benefit could those strange beings derive from destroying the Mother Ocean? They were much too far away. So, they likely did not know. They probably thought they were doing everyone a favor by sharing their wonderful technology. Maybe they had been swallowed up by it too. The scientist in d'Jang would not let him diffuse responsibility across the waves of stars so easily.
No, his people had done this to themselves. d'Jang could remember the excitement the Channel Between Planets wormhole had engendered, as short ago as 20 moons, before it had decayed into a channel to their doom. The hopeful Surge out into the wa
iting Oceans of the cosmos. How were they to know that it would suddenly produce the end of everything? The sister planet, m’Hoomuun, now within reach of his people eager to escape the fouling waters of their Mother Ocean, had already been eaten. With blinding flashes even pieces that had ripped away early had disappeared into emptiness.
Nothing remained of a billion people and all the creatures of that world.
And today would be the final moment of the Mother Ocean, of everything that had ever been or could ever be. And he, d'Jang, would watch it all. The simple geometry of his cowardice dictated that this would be so.
There were no words for the sadness that seeped away his being. It was a blackness of greater depth than the hole in the heavens. Nothing would remain.
Precious time ran past.
As the monstrosity bore down on the Mother Ocean, d'Jang launched a probe back to his Home Reef. By what insanity had he done that? As the probe fell away beneath the shaking waters of the Mother Ocean his mind’s eye had travelled with it.
Even before the probe camera located the glowing phosphorescent layers of his Home Reef, he could hear their Singing, millions of voices, in a communal celebration of grief, clicked and boomed and trilled through the ocean, vibrating the view. As the probe approached the Home Reef, d’Jang noticed its glow was brighter than usual; overwhelming the usual dull green and red of the coral were pulsating electric rainbow hues. Focusing the probe lens, d’Jang realised that their reef was gleaming with people, lined across the ledges, their chromataphore skin aflame with every color imaginable.
The probe hovered close enough to resolve individual faces. Perhaps he would see d'Song. The improbability of that did not diminish his hope. His search was unsuccessful, but in scrutinising faces d’Jang noticed a strange commonality in their expression. They were all staring the same direction, towards the West, and all their faces were blossoming with individual variations of hope. How could this be? It was as if each found confidence in the sense that through their solidarity they could yet survive. Their courage ennobled them and included him. d’Jang turned the probe to join them in facing the darkness ominously growing on the horizon. He would stand with them, his people, in their proudest hour. They sang out their hearts as one, and their collective song became one current, rushing back against the approaching darkness. The black mass that swooped in upon them was not the black hole. It was the hardening of water.
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