"I of my own knowledge…"

Chapter Eight. The Monkey

Mr. Conway’s hand on my shoulder brought me awake, and I got out of bed, shivering in the mid‑night cold. One advantage to wearing robes: it wasn’t hard to get dressed. Seeing his face by the flickering oil lamp, I got a sense of the experience—not to use the embarrassing word “wisdom”—concealed behind that youthful face. Our silence reinforced the impression.

He worked with me to find a comfortable position for the meditation exercise, telling me (to my surprise) that I would not have to torture myself into the cross‑legged lotus position favored by yogis. “Without years of preparation, you would be unable to sit for long with legs crossed. The pain would be intolerable.”

“When I did a little yoga in college, they seemed to think the lotus position was essential,” I said.

“I don’t believe in doing things the hard way,” he said briefly. “How long did you study yoga?” (more…)

Part Two Another World

August, 1979

Chapter Seven. Experience

 My room — my cell — has one window, facing south. In daytime I see the mountain, but at night the mountain is only a finger pointing to the moon. And it is the moon that I see in my imagination, by day as well as night: The moon, full silver, giving itself a halo of deep blue against the black sky, sailing clear and calm, unmoved by the tragedy and farce below.

At this great height, air is thin. Nights obscured by snowstorms are rare; cloud cover so thick as to block out the moon is scarcely less so. In the many years I have been here, I cannot recall a night whose moon was lost to cloud cover. At most, I have seen layers of cloud illumined from behind, great uneven porous blankets of grey, shining into one halo of light. But mostly the nights are clear with the light of the moon in its phases. (more…)

Came home from Nan Rothwell’s pottery last night with 47 pieces that were in the latest firing. The best 18:

(more…)

Chapter Six. Escape

By the end of April I’d spent about three months learning a few Tibetan phrases that might or might not prove useful in the event—long enough to realize that to go beyond these phrases to fluency could require not months but years.

I’d carefully adopted the wearing of a monk’s robe, not merely for the sake of fitting in visually but also to save wear on my flight suit.

Oxygen was going to be a problem, obviously, since I had no way to refill my mask. The monastery puts some sort of drug into newcomers’ food, to lessen the effect of high altitude on bodies born in lower places. My careful, inconspicuous searches never turned up the drug’s storage place. Not so surprising, perhaps, since I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I’d have to do without it, and hope the residual effect of whatever was still in my system when I left would carry me past the worst. (more…)