Duong Huong - The Zenith

“How can I be so weak? Is it because of old age that I have become a stranger to myself, a miserable person even in my own eyes?”

So he berates himself. While sipping his tea, he looks into the bottom of the cup, trying his best to find in the gently rocking yellowish water an association, a memory about streams, a thought of long ago about tea parties, thin wisps of steam that wave over still hot dishes. Anything that would make him forget his solitude. But that is impossible. For his solitude is the twin of his forgetting. The more you forget and run away, the more solitude comes back to haunt you: two garrotes tightening around his neck.

He stands up; if he were to stay seated he would suffocate. Throwing his long coat on his shoulders, he walks out. As soon as he opens the door, the white clouds rush to his face, wetting it. The large tiles under his feet slush with water as if rain had just fallen.

From the other side of the temple, the guard yells: “Please go in, Mr. President. It’s very cold.”

The guard flies across the patio and takes hold of his waist as he is about to descend the stairs.

“Mr. President, please go back inside.”

“Oh no. I get a headache sitting inside the whole time. Besides, I have to go and say thanks to the abbess for her deep-fried patty.”

“Mr. President, it’s already a great honor that your chopsticks touched our vegetarian food. You don’t really need to come over.”

It is a nun speaking, her loud voice reverberating from the other side of the cloud. She is only a couple of dozen steps away but he can’t see her through the white fog. It is truly a setting from the extremities of a mountain. Only when he puts his feet on the threshold of the middle temple building can he see that the nun is sitting and pounding betel leaves for the abbess. Before he can say anything, the abbess walks out and says, “Please, Mr. President, please go right in because it is very cold. Should you by mishap catch a cold, we would not know what to do to redeem ourselves in the eyes of the people.”

“Please, you are even older than I,” the president replies, walking inside.

The nun abandons the mortar and steps in right after him, closing the door. The screeching sounds of the closing door startle him. Then he realizes how familiar this screeching sound was to him in his youth. The old wooden houses were all built on the same model, and the sound of the doors screeching on their wooden posts makes him sad, thinking of days long gone.

The abbess asks him to sit down facing her, on an antiquated ironwood chair, which despite its age is still very strong with a patina that reflects like a mirror. The guard sits behind him, on a stool of woven rattan that the nun brings over to him. In the middle of the room, a brazier is crackling as it burns. From time to time, the nun takes a stick and pokes around so as to make the coal burn red. The whole room gives an air of simple warmth and antiquity. The nun pours tea water into a set of rare Bat Trang cups to honor the guest. The nuns drink nu voi (lid eugenia) boiled with ginger.

The smell of the tea water brings back memories of his mother: “Venerable one, voi with ginger is very flavorful. Do you use this refreshment also during the summer?”

“Mr. President, in summer we consume fresh tea leaves or dried mum petals.”

She turns to the nun: “You have mung bean pudding for dessert. Why don’t you offer some to the president?”

“I am sorry, venerable teacher. I am so forgetful.”

The nun goes to the next room, where the soft pudding is being kept for guests. He quietly looks after the woman in a long saffron dress, then vaguely thinks: “Why doesn’t she seek a family like so many other women? Is this place really a prayer hall or is it only a temporary shelter for her, somewhere to hide and forget a past of suffering, filled with unhappiness? A kind of surrender to Fate, just like me, an old king stuck in a hole on top of Lan Vu Mountain.”

The nun comes out with a dish of mung bean pudding topped with white cornstarch.

“Mr. President, would you taste this pudding, us poor nuns’ fare?”

“Thank you very much. I just had a taste of your deep-fried bean patty, it was excellent. I am sure your pudding must taste just as good.”

So saying, he takes up a piece of the pudding and bites into it. He then washes it down with a sip of the voi tea prepared with ginger. It was simply wonderful. He realizes this tea ceremony is helping to alleviate his depression. He looks up at the ancient wooden structure, wondering why it has taken him so long to visit this place. The tiled patio is like a wall separating the secular world from that of the monastery, and crossing it seems like crossing a frontier between two kingdoms that are, if not hostile, at least incompatible. Why should it be so?

“It’s truly delicious. This goes marvelously with voi tea.” He then laughs and adds: “I have been here more than a year, yet only today do I dare come into the temple. I didn’t realize what I was missing. Had I taken the liberty of troubling you sooner I would have had a taste of this pudding long ago.”

“Mr. President, the living quarters of a monastery are certainly not elegant enough for us to dare invite you,” the abbess answers, smiling. Her two rows of teeth are still intact, solid and brightly black.

Smiling in turn, the president replies, “We are neighbors, we should have gotten acquainted a long time ago. It’s my mistake for being so busy.”

As he finished the cup he continues: “Venerable Abbess, the other day, apparently, you had a requiem for the newly deceased woodcutter?”

“Yes, sir. You have such a busy schedule and yet you still have time to be concerned with the fate of a common person. This shows that your compassion is very vast. I learned from my nuns that you went all the way down to the village to attend his funeral.”

“Oh, I only dropped by to pay him a visit.”

“But that, sir, is already a great honor for the dead man’s family.”

“By the way, Venerable Abbess, would you be kind enough to explain to me what a requiem achieves in Buddhist terms? Do all deceased persons need a requiem or only those who have had an unusual, particularly painful, fate?”

“Mr. President, the Buddhist faith is not strictly tied to any rite. There is no regulation as to who needs or who doesn’t need such a service. Everything depends on the compassion of the living. Only compassion can open our minds, enlighten us to what is needed; and only when enlightened can one have what is needed to see through one’s karma. We in the temple only do what is requested by the living survivors. It is said, ‘When your heart is moved, the spirits will know.’ We monastic people know that when your Buddhahood is illuminated like a lamp, it shines not only on the spirit but also on the earthly body of the people. It shines across the seven skies to open up the lotus blossom of your plenitude.”

“Venerable, we are outside of your faith. No matter how we try we cannot readily understand the scriptures of your religion. However, from a secular standpoint, we are very much concerned with the story of the father woodcutter and his son. I wonder how you can explain that conflict.”

“Mr. President, the Supreme One taught us that in everyone’s life, greed is the one predominant drive. It is greed that blurs our conscience just as a black cloud covers the sun or the moon. Feelings between father and son, teacher and student, brother and brother can all be maligned and destroyed by greed. In one of the many lives of the Buddha, even the Supreme One was also murdered by his close cousin, the monk Devadatta. In dynastic histories, from time immemorial, there are many cases where a crown prince would kill his own father, the king. I am sure that you must have read a lot more than me, a poor nun.”