• Intro
• I-II
• III-IV
• V-VI
• VII-VIII
• IX

Chapter 5: Khoorlrhani-Tas

Tas, or Queen, Suwan, my mother, married a man named Boutage, who was at the time a prince. Boutage, my father’s actual name, though greatly honored by the people, was not destined to be the tah; instead, it was his brother, Kalid, the eldest and most trusted by my grandfather, Baju.

My mother told stories about my grandfather, the first tah during the modern dynasty who was a peace loving man. He reversed the tides set in motion by his father, and through the advice of his wise son Kalid, the wars for a short time ceased.

My grandfather and all of Arkaya loved Kalid. He was wise, humble, and destined to rule with evenness and grace. My mother told me that, though she loved my father, she also loved his brother Kalid. She in fact loved my father because, she said, “His love for Kalid was obvious and made him shine as a wise man who would serve in his own capacity. In the beginning I admired his humility,”

When the time of my grandfather’s death neared, it was said that my father became jealous. He envied his brother and became ambitious in ways he never had before.

About Kalid’s death, my mother told me, “It was said there was an accident and Kalid, while trying to capture an eagle, fell into the nearby river and was carried over the falls to his death. Your father told this story to your grandfather.”

She said it as we ate breakfast alone together one bright morning, the sun accentuating her rich and regal features. She said these words for appearances, but the subtext hidden within her tone told me she did not believe that story.

When Suwan met my father, she said he was a happy man, kind and generous. Later she said he became obsessed with proving himself. He wanted more, his cup never full enough. When my grandfather died, my father became tah instead.

Suwan never accused my father of Kalid’s death. No one did! It was the great forbidden thing to speak of, and my brother, Minot, did not tell me about the story in detail after I was a man.

“It was an accident,” Minot said, looking off, his apprehension to tell me the truth as apparent as the horizon we both looked at as we rode together one day. No one would tell the truth, as if somehow the truth would harm me.

It did not matter to me. Somehow, when I looked at Paen, I knew that the man that Kalid was, the man my family missed and whose murder caused them to hate my father, was exactly the man who stood by Khoorlrhani-Tah today. I wondered why they would not see this. They were blinded by a veil of rational thinking, I thought, and even Paen agreed.

“If they all saw the way you do, Jeshibian, there would be no story, no drama. If they saw like you, they would only see the bright center and forget the edges of the dream.” He then patted my head and sent me off to play in the woods.

“Go and forget yourself and the intrigues of your father’s court, boy!”

Suwan, Khoorlrhani-Tas, spent her days away from my father, and whenever my father returned to their bedroom, she would be gone, spending time with my sisters and my Aunt Nandee until her husband was asleep.

No one could talk about my father’s deed directly, but neither could they forget it or forgive my father for that which the master had every right to not forgive my father—even though he had already forgiven him a million times.

My mother had little happiness. In the royal dihj as a whole there was not enough happiness, only reality’s heartbreaking contradiction to what was hoped for, only the glaring fact that no matter how lavishly decorated with silks, anointed with oils, blessed by clouds of incense, stocked with preserved fruits, cattle, and slaves life in Arkaya, though beautiful, was impossible to be fulfilled by.

I saw this kind of disappointment in my mother’s eyes. This in turn caused my father to stare into the horizon, searching for that which would fulfill him and yet somehow return him, magically, to my mother’s graces.

My mother was beautiful, with dark brown skin and large, rich brown eyes. Her hair was braided and tied back with white cloth. She wore a silver dagger beneath her navel over her long white tunic. Her smile, with straight white teeth, was genuine; and her heart was strong despite her disappointments. Her face was round, her cheekbones high, regal, her mouth generous.

She took care of us. Despite the ache in her heart, she held us, groomed us, and loved us. She absorbed pain with her touch. I wondered how it was that Suwan managed to love the way she did. Then I saw her eyes glow as her gaze settled on the master. The master would sit with her, and she would serve him food herself, and even served the servants. She loved him dearly.

Chapter 6: The Terrible Six

I had five brothers. From eldest to youngest they were: Boutage, who was named after our father, Minot, Seleth, Kuba, and Darlian.

We were spoiled but living lives where our sense of duty was always reinforced. My sisters, twins, were named Anya and Lenya. The terrible six is how the sons of the tah were teasingly referred to by Master Paen, who knew the handful we were to the women, my mother and Aunt Nandee, sister to the tah. My father also had two brothers: Toumak and Geeda.

Nandee was a warrior, a unique, tough, and fiery woman who never let us cry whenever we scratched a knee or were stung by an insect. She would not tolerate it and reminded us that we were princes. She watched us, pushed us, and disciplined us.

Somehow Nandee instilling pride within us worked like a painkiller, but there was not enough pride to be had to ward off the pain and discomfort dispensed from beautiful Arkaya. The jungles of my homeland were harsh, hot, itchy, and though Arkaya was splendorous on the eyes, the skin and feet were tormented by heat, poisonous plants, and many kinds of stinging insects. As a baby, I would look to the ceiling and see insects crawling between the interwoven palms overhead. As boys, we would play with scorpions or spiders and suffer the sting of a slapped hand from our aunt far being so stupid! Perhaps Nandee was more dangerous than these creatures.

When I was six, my brothers took me to explore the jungle for the first time. After being introduced to the world this way, my brothers and I ventured sometimes with cousins or other boys close to our family to the nearby streams. The eldest brothers took charge of us for the day and we would fish or play games in low streams. At age eight, I learned to nock an arrow for the first time, and as Minot stood behind me, steadying my hands, I sent the bolt through the heart of a caribou. I cried, but Minot showed me how it was a natural act and how to ask for forgiveness in loving respect for the animal.

Minot acquainted me with all the rituals of the hunt and never let me shy away from the harsh reality of the thick deep green world of Arkaya. Minot also encouraged me to not shy away from the inevitable fighting among my brothers and me.

At age twelve a boy was considered a man and so was not watched over constantly by the women though he was expected to be where he should be. That was hardly the case with the young Khoorlrhani princes, the terrible six of us, or at least the eldest of us. Minot and Boutage, the eldest of my brothers, endured scolding and beatings from Nandee and our uncles on a day-to-day basis.

Every morning was the same. Having slept beneath the stars in the summer, I awoke beneath the morning sun to silence and dew-jeweled blades of grass and fragrant leaves, the new air cool and crisp. My brothers would again conspire to have more adventures in the jungles, promising to return with meat or herbs or to run whatever errands that the adults required of them but could get them to fulfill. Minot and Boutage were household rebels.

During those earliest of years neither Minot nor Boutage took the adults seriously, and so every night was the same. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep through yelling, lecturing, and both of my brothers returning, huffing and cursing, into the large clay floored room we all shared. Later, however, they would be giggling and sniggering and planning to start over again.

Then Boutage and Minot would harass the rest of us—Seleth, Kuba, Darlian, and me—drive us outside to sleep in the tall grasses in peace. We were challenged to stay hidden from our maniacal brothers who, if they found us, twisted our fingers, pulled our hair, and wrestled us. It was always a late night frenzied chase beneath the moons, a wild circus game of them against us, and then the terrible six of us regrouping to escape the adults who grew tired of our ruckus.

Boutage would make wild and scary faces, and he always played too rough and recklessly, causing Kuba to cry or Seleth to bite! Darlian would snatch me away and together we would find the best hiding places.

Minot would often find me in the grass not far from the dihj, and thinking me asleep, he would cover us both with a blanket. He slept protectively beside me and then returned in the morning before I awoke. Then I knew no danger, felt no fear, and I took Arkaya completely for granted despite a scorpion bite, a hornet sting, or the other irritants that came with it.

Before that wilder time, as a mere babe of no more than three to four years old, I stayed home at the dihj, close to Suwan and Nandee. I played with my sisters in the streams while my mother washed her hair in the reflective ponds nearby. I marveled at the vibrant colors of butterflies and crawling beetles safe beneath the canopy of trees. There was no word for anything then. I only saw and wondered. Every moment was a stringing together of momentary beads of noticing, pointing, laughing, and contemplating Arkayan splendor: yellow sun, deep green and shaded jungles, fireflies, vibrant and wild orchids, and rainbow colored birds.

In those moments I basked in my mother’s glow. She was as beautiful as the Goddess Ashuta herself to me, her slender arms, soft bosom, and loving eyes. I loved being near her. I often preferred it to the raucous company of my brothers.

Occasionally Master Paen would wander through at dusk riding his mehra Quanon . My heart would light up and he would wink at me as he passed. As my sisters twisted my hair into locks, the sun would set over the leafy canopy, and soon the spicy aroma of stews and bread would fill the air, spilling down to the ponds from the south entrance of the royal dihj, where torch wielding guards stood watch over us. Upon the calling of the servants, Suwan would carry me inside. Then my brothers would return from their high adventures: Boutage bold and brash, Minot quiet and clever, Seleth moody and passionate, Kuba wild and funny, Darlian curious and hyperactive. The peace would become a twisted thing running hot and cold, delightful and dreadful.

Without fail, Nandee would enter the dining area and snatch away a bowl, Boutage’s or Minot’s usually, because something had not been done to her satisfaction. She would wield a fighting staff threateningly and chase them around. Sometimes this was funny, and sometimes a wound would need tending to. My aunt was something of a firebrand.

“You are all so terrible!” she would scream.

My mother would often shout at her to calm down. Sometimes my Uncle Toumak, the highest ranking warrior in the kingdom, entered and instilled the fear of God into my brothers to teach them a lesson. He was a pair of wide glaring red eyes, a flaring and ringed set of nostrils, a thick mane of dreadlocks, arms thick and tattooed, and he stood seven feet tall. During the worst of my eldest brothers’ mischief, I recall Toumak making an entrance such as this. The two were taken beyond the gold tapestry that divided the dining hall from the main parlor. There was the harsh sound of a heavy handed slap, but there was no shouting. It was over. I wondered what could possibly withstand a smack from Uncle Toumak’s calloused hands. Those hands, surrogates of my father’s, straightened out my two oldest brothers from that point on.

They entered, their faces flushed, humiliated, their vigor blunted. From then on, they focused on their duties and no longer mixed in their plans to escape for half the day.

When I was six I rode with my brothers for the first time. I had by then lost my fear of a mehra’s sheer size and shared a small one with my brother Kuba. A grey beauty with black socks and curled horns, we named my mehra Nanui. Darlian was only a year older than me, not quite yet old enough to hold the reins, and so he shared Seleth’s steed, Treetop, a male with a shiny brown coat with spots of white and pale horns against his large head.

In another year, Darlian was old enough to take the reins, and so Darlian and I shared Nanui as we rode into the thick wild jungle, the two youngest of the terrible six. My memories of that time are still very good, the sensation of it still aglow with life. I love to recall our mud fights and games of tag within the deep green mists parted by dusty sunrays cast over thick soft ferns. Ashuta called to us to explore her. I was captured by these jungles and giant moss-covered rocks and the towering buttress roots of bulky trees over deep forest floors.

I recall the sound of our mehra’s hooves digging up the moist red dirt as we ventured out on our own to command Nanui’s respect as well as the respect of one another. Over time my brother and I switched off the lead position riding our animal, and together we learned how to find our way about the thickness of Arkaya. By the time I was eight, Darlian and I frequented our favorite watering holes during the hot summers. In the winters, which were cold enough for fur boots, we explored the edges of the city. We ventured sometimes into Arkaya’s busy center to see the travelers, the dark faces of Bantu, their ornate long lances, exotic blow guns, and darts being sold along with jewelry we sometimes bought for our mother.

Mainly, however, Darlian and I kept to the woodland, where beneath the softly illuminant depths of Arkaya’s rich canopies, we explored and played our games. I loved it!

In time, our elder brothers mellowed and became more reliable. They showed us more about how to ride, the subtleties of how to track animals, how to fish, how to climb rocks and carve a dart, and which plants to use as poison or food. Every day we rode, pushing deeper and deeper, getting closer to the monolithic fence that divided our protected world of youthful abandon and curiosity from the dangerous world of harsh reality for which Toumak felt we were greatly unprepared.

Upon laying eyes on the great fence, its massive sequoia logs buttressed by stone watch towers, crowded by jungle mists and vines, I was filled with awe. I wondered if I would ever be brave enough to venture beyond that mysterious barrier. Would being made a warrior make me worthy, like my brothers bragged that they were already?

Still though, the lands behind my father’s fence were not entirely tame. When caught leaving the homestead, Darlian and I were often forced to ride with a larger company, usually our brothers. Unfortunately that meant we were the lowest in the chain of command on such rides and had to endure the dominance games always played among us.

We all stopped one day along a steep switchback of a hillside that had a clear view of the great log fence right before us. Further in the distance, the ramparts could be seen, including the tiny figures of warriors standing watch along the parapets.

“Would you go past the gate, Boutage?” Kuba asked.

Boutage smirked and glanced back at him. “I already have at least a hundred times.”

We were all wide-eyed with admiration.

“What’s over there?” I asked, seeing something moving in the brush.

He looked at me, devilishly, and then glanced at Minot. “Manju tigers, all hungry for young Khoorlrhani meat. Ha!”

I swallowed, trying to believe he was only joking.

“There’s no such thing!” yelled Darlian.

“Of course there are. Don’t fool yourself. There are quite a few Dar,” Minot said.

I sat behind Darlian, who was a few inches taller than me, on Nanui. We both looked beyond the fence and into the mists of the open land. From over his brown shoulder I looked deeply into the mists beyond that line.

“Shoot, a manju tiger is the last thing I’d be worried about over there, Darlian,” Seleth muttered. He snapped a bite free from a fist full of dry meat and passed the meat to Boutage.

“There hasn’t been a raider seen this close in four years, Seleth,” Minot corrected him. He pointed upward, to the snow-capped mountains. Seleth looked at Minot, and then nodded.

“They’ll come down soon,” Seleth said, chewing. Seleth’s hair was straight like a Mayak’s, like our enemy’s. He was often teased for this, and it angered him.

“I’ll be ready for them,” Boutage growled, and then he glared at Minot. Boutage was dark skinned and thick like a grown man, his arms full and defined. Boutage had indeed encountered Mayak before, and once was even by kidnapped them. He had escaped, and in a manner that earned him the nickname “the black diamond,” a story to tell later.

“They won’t need to come down if the agreements are kept, Seleth,” Minot said.

“You mean if we keep paying them stocks of our food,” Kuba said, stirring up the debate.

“Let’s ride,” Minot groaned, annoyed.

Darlian and I said nothing and fell in behind these two as we descended back into the jungle. I looked behind us to eye the great fence as it sank from view.

To say the least, my brothers argued a lot. They were, after all, Khoorlrhani: hot tempered and opinionated.

“It is an agreement for peace, the master’s great plan,” Minot growled, taking the bait as we rode along a rocky stream.

“You mean to make us cowards, to make our father a fool,” Boutage shot back.

“No, to stop killing each other,” Minot said.

“I’m fine with killing Mayak. You are the dreamer, peace maker Minot,” Boutage shot back. “Father always thought you were.”

“You are short sighted, a narrow minded ogre, Boutage. Mother always thought you were,” Minot returned without skipping a beat.

This same pattern was oft repeated: hard verbal attacks taken in jest or seriously depending on their tolerance that day, and sometimes they would yell and knock each other off their animals. Seleth and Kuba would then have to separate them, reminding them that they were brothers.

They were both hot headed, but Boutage fast became the tyrant among us. He took after the Khoorlrhani-Tah, our father. Minot, although known for his quick temper, was nevertheless regarded as having a more even disposition and displayed the characteristics of my mother. Although she had a calm reserve about her, Suwan was as formidable as our father. Minot was dark, tall, and slender. He had a neatly trimmed long mane of dark and twisted hair tipped with dull green dye. Minot, like Seleth, had our mother’s thin facial features. Minot’s eyes were large and dark and his cheekbones deep. He wore thick beaded bracelets around strong forearms, and two gold hoops decorated his earlobes. The only traits my two eldest brothers shared were the deep ridge of their brow, a deeply brooding Khoorlrhani gaze, and our father’s hands.

Boutage, heavy with large shoulders and arms, was a head shorter than Minot. His head, a round weighty thing held by a thick strong set of shoulders that obscured his neck, was shaven, a length of his scalp dyed red across it and tucked behind his ivory ringed ears to denote junior rank in our father’s personal guard. Boutage’s eyes, like our father’s, often betrayed his shifting moods: rage, ambition, and deep concentration. Boutage was full of heart and Minot contemplative.

They had fought on a number of occasions, and each had overcome the other, Minot through stealth and grace and Boutage by brute force and determination. In the end they were always again brothers. During the worst of it, however, Master Paen would always happen by. He would get word somehow.

“Nothing remains unsettled between you. That is the rule,” Master Paen said this to us on more than one occasion. “The lines we draw in the sand cut us off from the wealth of our knowing ourselves.”

“We’ve only forgotten that the Mayak were once our brothers,” he told me. “Your brothers carry on just like the first sons of the first tah. No one see’s this though. They can’t step back and see it and do what is right.”

“Why are they always fighting?” I asked once, troubled by the violence between Minot and Boutage.

“Oh, to uphold identities, to passionately have a side, a point of view, something to stand for,” he murmured as we strolled along the creek near our dihj. He studied the white orchids growing along a length of thick bushes beside us.

He knew that I, being only eight, did not understand and so he elaborated, “As you live and grow, you will begin to hold on to what appears to you. You will protect everything you love and lament its passing. Sometimes, Jeshoya, you will not notice that what you protect is just an idea of who you think you are. You will chase after more ideas and defend against losing the ones you have.”

“Like my butterfly collection?” I asked, recalling how I had refused to let him throw it out as he insisted I start a less murderous hobby.

“Ah-ha! Yes!” His eyes lit up and he laughed. “Your idea of art! What if I was to take that nasty, albeit colorful, collection of bug carcasses from you? You would protest even more and then be sad to not have it, and your days would seem empty until you started another collection, right? He picked a white flower that stood out to me as we passed. I nodded.

“So that means your collection gives you meaning. Oh, what would you do without it? Well if you could remember the time before having it, then perhaps you could ask, ‘Would that be so bad? Did those dead bugs make me who I am?’ Who are we before we possess things and have ideas? Isn’t that person more our true self to already be enjoyed without needing things or events or ideas to make it enjoyable? Aren’t all these ideas we desire a way to posses ourselves and others, to only selfishly delight and be of use only to ourselves? Who is that self that we are pleasing here? That is the more puzzling question.”

Master Paen then pushed the stem of the flower into my hair behind the ear.

“Your brothers want life to go according to how they see it, and if life does not look that way for any single moment they get angry, frustrated at what they think it implies about them and what they think they deserve.”

“Like Father,” I murmured.

“Like your father, exactly. Like everyone though.” And he drew a circle around us to imply the whole of the kingdom. His finger then stopped, pointed at me, and touched my nose.

“Except you, Master. Why are you not like this?” I asked.

“Because I can see it all so differently, as though I had great big diamonds for eyes instead of those coals that are stuck in your brothers’ heads.”

I would always laugh when I was with him. The weight of the world would lift suddenly because he spoke the truth, and he lit the sky with his presence.

The master told me that there was no difference between us and the Mayak. As we passed by another clearing and viewed the great mountain beyond that fence from whence they came, the master said this: “This war between Khoorlrhani and Mayak began with a disagreement between brothers. You didn’t know that, eh?”

“No,” I said. We walked together through a grove en route to the palace where he would leave me.

“You haven’t heard this story? Yes, all wars start this way, with brothers refusing to see beyond their disagreements and ideas. Let me tell you the story, the story of the first tah,” the master said.

We sat on a nice flat rock with just enough room for both me and him to sit. The master looked off into the distance at the approach of a golden sunset, and he then said:

Ages ago, there was only one tribe of Genia, the Great One Land of the world. The world was nameless and was only known as the world appearing for the living things to dwell within. Man flourished. By firelight the people told stories as a means to remember and honor where they came from, the source. It was said that the first man lived in the depths of the valley of Arkaya. He had a wife and together they birthed the first generation, the one tribe. The ancient stories passed down by word of mouth say that the unified tribe of men flourished under a single tah, a wise man who recognized the Goddess Ashuta as everything.

“Now do you know who Ashuta is?” the master asked me, testing to see that I did not let my attention wander.

“Of course! She is all of the jungle,” I said.

“Ahh, but she’s more, Jeshibian! She’s that mountain over there, the sun, moons, and the stars in the sky and…she is even you,” the master said, and my mind stopped, my attention consumed by his bright radiance. I smiled my then mostly gapped and crooked toothy smile and turned to face Paen more squarely. And just how exactly was he going to explain this to me? How could She be me?

He went on.

The tah, or the man with open eyes, could see Ashuta’s form, God’s form, dancing everywhere within the jungle and knew her to be the divine, the source of life. Though he was not a perfect man, Nayogi, this first tah, loved Ashuta and this love sustained his people.

“I know you are everything that is! Oh, and how you appear,’ he cried, ‘taking form and moving it, being all of it simultaneously. You laugh and play with us, your children, as us, bending, whirling, and dancing! It is your knee my daughter skins when she trips! Your tears she cries! It is you, your heart as the inspiration in the bosom of my son in watching the moons with your own eyes! Oh great one, yours is the beauty splendorous beyond words, beyond feeling, beyond touch, taste, and desire. I am dying to be yours! And yet here I am, freely lived by you who appears, whimsically dying and being born yet always divine. My heart is yours! I love you and my love is yours. Oh and how you know this already for how could it not be? What a mystery, this game of appearances!”

And Nayogi did love her. He could not explain his knowing the divine in this way. It was perplexing to others, the trickiest of all riddles, but he knew that loving her made none of it a problem. The expression of his love was barely on the tip of his tongue. He was only the natural expression of God. Nayogi relied on that, on her, completely. Though he was a man, Nayogi deeply suspected that he was not separate from Ashuta, and though he loved his life he gave it entirely away in his contemplation of her. In everything he did, he saw her, recognized her. There was no line that held anything apart. It was all Her. Because he saw life in this way, Ashuta’s divine qualities became more and more Nayogi’s, and the good tah enjoyed a great intuition. He called this intuition his diamond eyes.

Nayogi saw the world with diamond eyes, a gift from the goddess that revealed the world as mere play of her. In this way Nayogi lived with detachment and humor in his separate appearance. He did not struggle for control for he knew control did not exist.

His children, however, were frightened. They only knew themselves as they appeared, in an individuated form, separate, limited and threatened by all other entities of the divine play.

Then the master affectionately asked me, using my nickname, “Do you follow me, Jeshoya?”

I only nodded, so entranced by him that I could not speak.

“Nayogi, Ashuta called, “you must watch over your children, guide them and keep them from harm. Teach them all you know about loving me. Keep me in their hearts and minds. Bring them my love. You must tend to them. This is your duty.”

Ashuta blessed Nayogi and opened his eyes to see the world and to understand its nature. He understood the properties of form, and with his creative spirit he understood many of its secrets. He brought much to his people whom he faithfully served. Through his insight, he discovered fire, which kept the beasts of the jungle in full view at night, and Nayogi also created the spear to enable humans to hunt for meat and fight off the predators of the jungle.

As other men appeared, they turned to Nayogi, relied upon him for their survival. The men and women of the valley cooperated with one another, shared the knowledge of the tah, and in harmony they survived harsh winters and predators together.

Nayogi was decorated with feathers given to him by his people, who wanted to be with him, to know his gift of diamond eyes. They served Nayogi and Nayogi served them. The circle of mankind was unified and it endured for centuries, eons. All were of and lived within this circle of illumination and loved one another with innocence, openness, and with bravery, standing alongside their tah, who lived many hundreds of years.

“Master Paen, hundreds of years!? How is that possible?” I questioned.

“I don’t know! Ask Ashuta. I certainly do not envy Nayogi, would you?” Paen said.

“What?” I queried, not quite getting that Paen was only teasing me.

“Never mind. Anyway…” He cleared his throat and resumed.

Ashuta was all the tah ever spoke about, and he taught his people many lessons of how she was everything, including their own bodies and minds. The tiniest particle of them was of Her!

“We must regard all others in our lives as the same heart,” he would teach, wanting them all to let go to and enjoy this reality.

They trusted him, and respected him for he had diamond eyes, the eyes that saw no boundary.

Nayogi surrendered perfectly to the goddess and stayed in Ashuta’s grand room of mindless abiding, which dwarfed Nayogi’s point of view, reducing it to nothing.

Then Nayogi was gone. There was no one. Then Ashuta was gone. There was only Brightness of Being, the nameless One.

Nayogi, alive and yet somehow dead, stayed still, and that grin that was once Ashuta’s grin was now his own. Nayogi wore that smile. There was no place to hide, no space set off by boundaries, no personal self, no death, only divine consciousness. Nayogi was that.

He was love itself, boundless in its glory! He enjoyed the vast play of light taking place as many worlds, including the world in which he appeared. Only the tah knew no dilemma, took no refuge through identity, only laughing while being Being himself!

In Genia, the Great One Land, this time was a grand time of loving, creation, and sharing. It was the golden age, as the one tribe looked up to the tah who was true and the tah’s children loved him as though he were a god! And he was, for his disposition was that of the eternal one who moved through him now unfettered. The tah loved his children, for he knew that they were the same heart, the same God that he was.

The golden age of the awakened tah began to tarnish, however. Nayogi had two sons, Khoorlrhan and Mayakti, bitter rivals, and it was the loss of love between these two men that, like an axe, drove the awful wedge of differences within the land of Genia. Khoorlrhan and Mayakti, both passionate men, were jealous of one another, and instead of being content with what they had, what their father provided for them, they desired more! They competed in every way and always wished to have the circumstances of the other brother’s life.

When Nayogi-Tah died, his eldest son, Khoorlrhan, became tah. His attention, however, was not on Nayogi or Ashuta, but rather, he was consumed with bettering himself in comparison to Mayakti, his brother. Khoorlrhan was too proud, too ambitious, and Mayakti too vain, too calculating.

Nayogi warned them, “My sons, you must hold your attention on the divine, the source itself, not purely the modifications of it. It is unwise to obsess on this and that the way you do. The treasures you seek in your lives will only serve to distract you more and more from her ultimate form. If you forget that your heart is entirely Ashuta’s, entirely divine, you will lose your humor. You will suffer limitation upon limitation. Your mind will become an abstract prison for you to dwell separately from Me. There you will be exploited by other entities that will use your tendencies against you and you will suffer unnecessary drama.”

He looked to his eldest, Khoorlrhan, and Nayogi pleaded, “Our people must continue to enjoy this true connection to Ashuta, and therefore you must serve her only and in doing that you will see that in truth you and all beings are divine. Neither that which you can acquire nor experience can compare to this understanding, and to assume that any such a thing can ever compare to this sight, the sight with diamond eyes, will be your undoing and the ruination of our circle!”

Nayogi begged for his son to hear him, but Khoorlrhan could not be convinced. He viewed his father as a sentimental fool. Khoorlrhan was stubborn, hypnotized by the spectrum of possibilities of objects and sensual circumstances within the light play of Ashuta. He was convinced that, by besting his brother at all things, he would be happy. So he solely pursued victory and attainment in his life, squandering his father’s gifts of understanding to serve his own purpose.

On the fateful day when Khoorlrhan became tah, wisdom was forgotten. Still, the children of Genia looked to him with open hearts, but in return Khoorlrhan lied to them to suit his desires. He convinced the women that they should please him, and he convinced the men that they should honor and respect him without question. They feared his wrath if they did not for he was thought to be the same man as his father. Tragically, they were wrong.

Master Paen told me this tale lovingly, his one leg crossed over the other, shoulders bent forward to explain to me not only about my brothers but also about my father and what was happening between them. How long and passionately Paen worked—seemingly lifetimes! He not only worked to free for my father but for those before my father as well. He began on that very day teaching me the timeless lesson of all generations, teaching me to see, to choose enlightenment instead of dominion born of presumed separateness over the land. This is why he was here! The master was the One! Ashuta’s agent! Placing a hand on my shoulder, the master went on to tell the tale.

Mayakti was young and beautiful, and Nayogi loved to hear Mayakti sing and play his gunbri in his courtroom. Mayakti’s eyes were deep and dark, his hair long and twisted in even locks, and his form slender and nubile. He was not like his brother Khoorlrhan, who was mighty, broadly built, and bald.

Khoorlrhan was strong. He had large competent hands, large arms, and a dark and stern face. Khoorlrhan was built for work and Mayakti to inspire, and that’s what they did respectively. Khoorlrhan worked the fields with the tah while Mayakti wrote songs for him.

Nayogi instilled in his sons that which they were capable of mastering. In the fields, he taught Khoorlrhan how to grow and care for crops. He also taught him to hunt for meat and defend the kingdom from predators. He gave his beloved first son the knowledge of fire. “Which will illuminate our village with a circle of sight,” Nayogi told Khoorlrhan. “You will bare this most important responsibility to care for your brothers and watch over them. You must teach them and your sons everything that I have taught you to keep the tribe unified. You must keep the beasts, the manju tigers from our villages. You must keep our circle lit, Khoorlrhan! This is your duty. It must always be done perfectly, lovingly, honestly, and as service. Your commitment to this must be as great as my love for you.”

The tah taught his second eldest son the art of inspiration through music. He saw in his son’s heart the ability to express the beauty of Ashuta. In the court of Nayogi, Mayakti would play for his father and many guests who sat on great cushions in a large circle. Mayakti’s songs were also sung in the fields as workers toiled and abided in loving remembrance of the sacred.

Nayogi would instruct his son, “When you sing, you must let go of yourself completely, so much so that no ear can possibly mistake who it is that really sings and really plays. It is Ashuta! You will bare this most important responsibility to inspire your brothers and remind them that they are the same One, the same heart. You must keep the truth in my court. Using inspiration, you must fend off the fear and doubt of your brothers and keep them in the light of truth with your art. Each song you write must be made attractive in this way for all to pass down the generations when I’m gone. This is how you will serve.”

I thought of my brothers, how instead of doing what Paen asked they competed with one another. I saw how this error had been passed down. Paen went on:

The tah warned both of his sons to stay clear of the haunted swamps that were beyond the royal jungles, at the edge of the circle of illumination. These were the forbidden woods as they were the gathering places of lost souls, entities that interfered with the living. And Mayakti and Khoorlrhan stayed clear of these places in their travels for many years.

The day came, however, when they lost their respect for those woods and began to take shortcuts through the swamps in order to make their way back home from their wandering. These two terrible sons began the journey of their own independence, of asserting and then insisting on their separateness.

As Mayakti was walking the forbidden woods, he met the twin snakes, Mandee and Jandee, tricksters Mayakti’s father warned him about. As Mayakti passed them, he paid them no attention. However, ignoring them would not be enough.

“What is this I hear of your brother’s purpose being greater than your own?” Jandee the snake of lies asked.

“You see,” Paen said, leaning in. “The twin snakes will try to complicate the world of their victim. It only takes merely acknowledging them, Jeshoya! It begins with Jandee, the trickiest of the pair, who, by appearing before you, makes you believe you are separate. It is a lie that you are separate and you must remember this. Then Mandee fills you with fear and desire, makes you worried and impassioned. Together they consume the delicacy of your attention as if it were an egg.”

“What if one does not acknowledge her?” I asked, trying to change the story.

“Acknowledge who?” the master asked calmly, crossing his legs and then leaning into me, challenging me to understand him.

“Jandee!” I exclaimed.

“Now, exactly what is a Jandee?” the master teased.

“You just told me, the snake of lies!”

“Well, who is being lied to? Do you know who that is?” Paen teased.

I leaned forward against him, a bit feisty and angry. He was making me work for the rest of the story. I pondered the question, picked my nose, fidgeted my feet, and patted my chin. He stayed quiet as the breezes ran through the nearby treetops. The sky was turning deeper hues of orange. Finally I took a stab at his question.

“Master, I suppose no one?” I shrugged. Master Paen put out his hand for me. I put my smaller one in his and he clasped it in a congratulatory hand shake.

“Good job,” he said. “Jandee is the very lie itself that you are separate. Jandee is a quick and subtle suggestion, so easily overlooked. Very good, Jeshibian!”

Nodding, the master went on:

So, upon assuming Jandee was true, Mayakti became afraid. When Mandee struck fear and insecurity into the heart, life then became an impossible riddle to solve. Mayakti kept walking, not listening to the beast of the swamp. Rather, he focused his mind on the task at hand, which was to deliver his new song to the tah who would be waiting for him at home.

“Why does Khoorlrhan hate you, Mayakti,” Mandee the snake of fear asked, her black tongue slithering. “Tell us why! Tell us why!”

Mayakti ignored them and was soon far beyond them; however, their words penetrated his mind and remained in his person. As Mayakti played his gunbri, he hesitated and became stuck, self-concerned and bewildered. He played his instrument sloppily, without focus, and his voice fell flat upon the ears of Nayogi.

“What is it my son?” Nayogi asked him, who had noticed Mayakti was struggling as he tried to understand the questions put to him by the twin snakes.

“Father,” Mayakti began, “am I not useful?”

Disturbed by such a question, Nayogi leaned forward in his chair to inspect his son. He could see sadness and doubt in his heart.

“You play your role wonderfully, my son. Why are you self conscious?”

Afraid that his father might suspect where he had been and that he had disobeyed him…

“Oh!” I exclaimed at seeing how this was unfolding. “Mayakti lied,” I said.

“Yes!” Paen exclaimed.

Paen was teaching me that, in asserting my separateness, the world would become complicated for me like it was for my brothers. It was a disturbing story and yet I was intrigued and motioned for the master to continue.

It was a trick of the snakes, for Mayakti was never before moved to lie. “I wish only to be sure that you are pleased, Father,” Mayakti said. He swallowed and looked away, ashamed. Nayogi, not entirely believing his son, cocked one grey eyebrow.

“I have never given you reason to not trust me. You need not lie to me, my son, for I love you beyond words. You shock me with this. Tell me where you have been?”

The tah stroked his beard, thoughtful in the wake of his son’s silence, then his eyebrow arched.

“Ahh… Have you been to the swamps?” And the tah beamed, smiling. ‘What an awful place, eh? Come let us laugh about it and write a new song for amusement,’ Nayogi said, trying to cheer his son up. But upon being discovered, Mayakti became afraid! The spell of the asps was now an awful spiraling mess! It was as if Jandee and Mandee burrowed into the young one’s mind and created a maze of confusion and doubt.

Mayakti could not laugh for he was self conscious, the asps having veered his attention away from what is true.

“So, great Khoorlrhani sage, do you know what is true? I’ll give you a hint. It is what Nayogi knew,” Paen asked.

“There is not a separate one!” I exclaimed. “But how can this be for this tree is right here, Master. I can feel it right here! I am not the tree,” I said as I ran my fingers against the bark of a tree growing beside me.

“It is all light, all of it the same, including you, and with all as the One, there is no one who is separate, no grounds whatsoever to be self conscious. That is the truth, and knowing that most deeply is the secret to my diamond eyes,” he said. He then went on with the story:

There was no one to be self-concerned to begin with! Mayakti forgot this though and indeed felt separate. He thusly felt he must solve problems as presented by the asps. For the first time in his life, Mayakti felt terribly separate, a separate individual to be compared against another! Mayakti, seated before Nayogi, feared his own father, feared God! He saw his father as an other, and because Nayogi could see him, Mayakti became even more afraid, ashamed, and protective.

Knowing that his father, the tah, could see him through and through, Mayakti still lied to him and would not confess his fear.

“I have not been in the swamps, Father.”

No matter what the tah said to reassure his son that Mayakti was the same heart as God himself, Mayakti only doubted it more. Nayogi’s head sunk. He had lost his dear son to the spell of self possession.

But his other son was also in danger at that very moment. Khoorlrhan was cutting bamboo while he traversed thick mud. He traveled near the bog and was nearly out of it when he heard the voice of Jandee: “So what is this that I hear about your brother’s purpose being greater than yours?”

Khoorlrhan stopped cutting. He looked behind him to see the asp coiled on a nearby log. In disbelief, he placed his bulgy fists against his thick hips and stared with large and clear brown eyes at the black snake, unafraid. He laughed loudly, throwing his shiny bald head back.

“Demon snake, you mean to trick me, don’t you? You will have me walk your dark paths with you, enter your maze of lies? I do not think so.” Khoorlrhan held up his blade, meaning to cleave Jandee in half. He did not see Mandee hiding at his ankles, and she, queen of fear, flared her red hood of death and hissed at him.

“You are eager to die!” she said, bearing her venomous fangs, startling Khoorlrhan and making him drop his scimitar. He fell on his back into the mud and could not get away. His eyes were wide with fright as the asp loomed over him, black eyes glistening. She swayed to and fro, dancing her black dance.

“Sister Mandee, release him,” Jandee, said. “He does not see that I was only doing him a favor in telling him about the lies his brother has been spreading. Perhaps Mayakti is right, though, as there does not seem to be a brave bone in Khoorlrhan’s body after all. Look at him trembling before your small form. He is ten times your size! Perhapsssss the tah has him working the fieldssss and lighting torchesss to save his feelingssssss. Poor stupid Khoorlrhan. Perhaps Mayakti was right after all—he is uselesssssss. Release him sister, let us go.”

The master’s rendition of Jandee’s voice sent chills down my spine. I knew he was telling me this story to prepare me for my own eventual meeting with these characters. I had hoped that day would not come. Still knowing that I was slightly shaken by the story, and despite the darkening sky, the master went on.

And Mandee subsided, and she and her sister slithered away. Khoolrhan’s mind was on fire. He hung his head and wept from the worst sting he had ever experienced, the sting of tremendous doubt and fear of death, a fear he had never known until then. In the fields that day, the tah showed Khoorlrhan more about growing food, how to do it with greater care, but Khoorlrhan did not seem to be listening. Instead, he seemed angry, defensive, and disagreeable.

“What is troubling you, Khoorlrhan?” the tah asked.

“Father, do you not believe that I am capable of this?! Why do you criticize me so much? I am not so stupid, if you would only believe it!”

Khoorlrhan swallowed a lump in his throat, the lump of fearing that his father did not value him. What a silly assumption! It was a lie! The tah was shocked and almost could not respond. After taking a deep breath, the tah merely said, “No, son. You are not stupid. I am sorry for insulting you.” Khoorlrhan, however, refused to believe his father and turned his back on him to finish working alone. The tah begged his son to release his fear and trust him.

“You are my beloved son,” he pleaded, but to no avail. Khoorlrhan was full of doubt and pride, his world made complicated. He began to trust no one. The tah left Khoorlrhan in the fields to work alone, saddened that his oldest son had fallen into the trap of the asps, the trap of separate identity.

Soon the two brothers lost their interest in serving their father. They no longer yearned to be in his company, and instead, they worked on their separate strategies to solve the dilemma of their self-consciousness. Mayakti focused on creating an image of his self that proved he was just as strong and skilled as Khoorlrhan, and Khoorlrhan created one to prove he was just as beautiful and talented as Mayakti. They forgot that their roles were suited for them, to serve mankind, to serve Ashuta and their own awakening to their true nature!

Nayogi cursed the twin asps as he lay on his deathbed. He knew that Jandee and Mandee, the snakes of fear and deception, had poisoned the minds of his sons and pitted them against one another. It was too late to help them for he was old and worn and soon his body would fade from the world. The destiny of a divided kingdom was already established, as the brothers’ love for one another was forgotten. In forgetting their love, they forgot Ashuta as they built the walls of separation between them and made demands that the divine mother serve their desires and aid them in victory against one another.

“Ashuta, make me desirable, make me beautiful, make me talented, make me better than my brother,” Khoorlrhan prayed.

“Ashuta, make me strong, make me brave, make me a skilled man, make me more fierce than my brother,” Mayakti prayed, and the goddess, entertained by the play, answered them both.

She brought grace to Khoorlrhan’s form and hardened Mayakti’s. They were both attractive warriors but now also bitter rivals. Many of the women in the tribe noticed Khoorlrhan, including the stunningly beautiful Urso, Mayakti’s very own wife. She became drunk on the sight of Khoorlrhan, the new tah, and seemed to be in love with him. This outraged Mayakti and so he took his wife and children to the far reaches of the kingdom to live with them alone, keeping his wife far from the tah. Sick with love for Urso, Khoorlrhan thought of nothing but her. He resented his brother for taking Urso away, and in his bitter distraction, the circle of illumination was neglected. There was no warrior to guard its dimming boundaries, and many suffered because of the new tah’s preoccupations.

The manju tigers of the jungle entered the unguarded circle and killed many, including Mayakti’s wife Urso and their children. Angered, Mayakti swore to avenge their deaths. Mayakti no longer had a brother, and many, put off by Khoorlrhan, followed Mayakti to the northern hills. There Mayakti learned to hunt the snow-covered woodlands.

His gunbri grew old and worn as he no longer played it, and so not only those left behind in the old kingdom but those who followed Mayakti to the highlands never heard the song of heart again as Mayakti learned to build and fight. Ashuta had answered his prayer and made Mayakti the fiercest warrior ever seen, and he was the tah of a new tribe called the Mayak.

Khoorlrhan, drunk on the sour wine of his ego, played his own gunbri, singing songs that expressed his own beauty, his vanity.

Sadly, man became preoccupied with dividing the Great One Land and with dominance over one another, competing for resources. Nayogi’s enlightened kingdom faded as it became common for mankind to settle for mere survival with no understanding of Ashuta’s light play, no enlightenment. Tah after tah of both tribes, for thousands of years, struggled in vain to understand the real truth. They could not see as Nayogi saw. Instead, they were only bewildered, afraid, and in anguish brought upon by their greed and war mongering and by forgetting the God knowledge of Nayogi-Tah. They essentially exiled the true tah from the kingdom of the Great One Land. With Khoorlrhan and Mayakti mortal enemies, the one tribe of man became divided into the two main tribes: the Khoorlrhani and the Mayak.

After that, we were silent again. The moons were but two silver crescents in a dark indigo sky. Before us were the random silent explosions of fireflies floating in the warm Arkayan air. I looked at the silhouette of the great mountain ranges in the distance colored by the remains of twilight’s glow.

My heart was heavy and I sulked. I recognized that this story was about all of us turning away, and I was bewildered by the lack of a way it all could be undone. Master Paen took my chin with his curled index finger.

“Don’t you worry, Jeshoya? I have been showing you all along how to see past Jandee—by noticing me. One day you will see it all as just a story and you will enjoy playing your part as much as I do.”

“Do you promise, Master?” I asked.

“Indeed I do.”

“Will the tribes remember love again?” I sobbed, and the master took me under his arm.

“As long as at least one of them on each side loves the other, yes. You will see it all come to pass, my dear boy. You will truly see me and you will see it all.”

“Master, you are like Nayogi! Why are you not the tah?” I coughed and wiped my tears away.

“HA! Don’t you worry at all. You will see it all. You will.”

• Intro
• I-II
• III-IV
• V-VI
• VII-VIII
• IX