Red Hot Coal

James Rorchsh

James Rhorchsh

Red Hot Coal

"It's a beautiful way of living, the dharma wheel." I said.

"A little mysterious." She whispered back. Her eyes were illuminated by the entire luminescence of the moon, shining off of those dark pools of color. The light made everything blue and cool, the heat sucked out of the room through the large window in the middle of the room. I could put my hand to it, and feel the bite of the chill winter wind.

She lay beside me. On my bed. Our bodies snuggled tight, our arms wrapped around each other, feeding off of our mutual warmth. I could smell the cleanness of her straight black hair.

"Mysterious. Mysterious is good." I said, kissing the nape of her neck, "It's not fake. It's real. The world is mysterious." By now my loins were burning with desire, the very anti-principle of the dharma lifestyle. I wanted Lin. I wanted her so bad my hands began to shake.
And then she left, stretching her back and getting up off the bed. She hadn't been naked. She was still fully clothed. "Don't go." I said, holding onto her hand. Her skin was smooth, like that of a baby. I wanted to touch it forever, make it mine. I wanted to possess it, which, I admit, was against my principle of buddhist lifesyle.

"Don't be silly." She teased. Every night. I had yet to see her nude, though my eyes had imagined her in such a holy state since the day I met her. "I don't want you to let go." Did I hear her correctly? I was going to say something, a twitch of anger rose in my throat. But she was gone, outside the room. I heard the click of the doorknob and the tread of her footsteps goodnight.

I sat there on the bed, then went to the restroom and took a cold shower. My room was tiny, a cramped space where not even a rat would live. The shower was a closet made of tile, the chrome faucet too short for my head. I had to crouch for the water to flow over me, drowning out the sounds of the party down the hall. My hair stood up like needles, as the cold water flowed over my body. I was freezing. Shaking with chill. Yet, I stayed in the shower, willing myself to stop thinking about Lin.

After the shower, I sat beside my bed and meditated. It was still late, or rather early, the party dimming down as drunken co-eds slinked off to their dorm-rooms for sex and sweat. But I meditated, holding my back perfectly straight. Not ram-rod straight, like a soldier recruit in a war movie. It was natural straight, my back muscles perfectly calm.

Thoughts intruded. They passed away almost immediately. I found myself thinking of my teacher, his old kindly eyes, and then letting go. I thought of Lin, of the day we met, my heart pounding like a koto drum, and I let it go. And then I thought of nothing. My mind was silent for a long time.
Why? Why did she say that? "I don't want you to let go.", the words rang out in my mind, chiming in the large space of my head. I grew tired, and dozed off to sleep.

* * *

The next morning I skipped my first class to go to the Dharma center downtown, where my teacher was teaching a class of beginning meditators, mostly thirty-somethings interested in the art for bragging rights. They'd give up after a week or two. When I walked into the spacious wooden pavilion set in the gardens out back, I was intruding on the session right then and there. A few of them twitched at my presence. An older man with graying hair and a cellphone next to his cushion shifted uncomfortably, almost glaring at me before shifting again. Well, fuck you, old man, can you do that without the hate? My teacher was sitting comfortably around the front of the pavilion, not meditating, but playing with a small sparrow that had landed on his finger.

"Good morning, Suk Hyoon." I said, sitting by him on a small wooden bench. The sparrow flew away. Hyoon looked at me and laughed.

"The girl did not sleep with you?" He asked. A few meditator's shuffled. Some were slumped over asleep. Hyoon rang the bell and dismissed them.
I thought about it a second. Sometimes, when your teachers know you so well, you feel you have to impress them with how far you've progressed. I wanted to do so now. I wanted to show my teacher I wasn't just a sack of libido. And so I spoke,

"It's only right to let it go." I said.

Hyoon smiled, but said nothing. He continued to look at the garden, but it was awkward, and I began to sweat. "She's beautiful." I said. "You know when we first met. I wanted to..." I stopped. Hyoon wasn't looking at me, but was staring off into the gardens, watching the new practitioners go. Even so, he was waiting for something. For something from me. He had to be.

"I want to maker her mine." I didn't care. That was what I said. I didn't expect it would mean anything, and yet, Hyoon turned to me and spoke.

"She said, asked you not to let her go." He said, "What will cause that, I wonder?"

I thought about it, turning the question over in his mind. Whatever Lin was afraid of, it happened that night. She was afraid of love. Would that make me let her go? Would love turn me away from her?

The Dharma. It was a wonderful thing, the Dharma. Built on the idea of letting go. Was she afraid of my buddhism? I turned and walked away. I had to go talk to her. Talk to Lin. I had to show her that I wouldn't... And I froze. I felt the wooden boards of the pavilion under my feet, the roughness of their grain, and let it pass away. Suddenly, my mind became incredibly silent, and I focused on nothing at all.

There was no room for Lin in such a space. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Hyoon looked at me with care in his eyes, and I embraced him with watery eyes. "Teacher... Does the Dharma mean--" He hugged me hard. I hugged him desperately. "Does the Dharma mean-- there is no room for anything?"

"You are at the threshold", he held me at arms length, smiling like a father over his son, "of knowing." It was strange, but I didn't want this. I didn't want to let go and end in an endless void. It was strange, however, because that's what I was doing these past seven years. That's what...

"How can you live with that?" I asked.

Suk Hyoon replied, "Silly student. The Dharma is not the letting go, but the picking up. There is no Dharma when you let go of all." It was a shock. A contradiction of everything My teacher had taught me, enough that for a moment I thought it was another man. He let me go, still seeming infinitely wise. I stood by him, still feeling completely ignorant, and the many cars and traffic hummed throughout the city, past the gates of the Dharma Center where the six monks, my teacher included, taught.

I still did not understand.