On the Third Day

He emerged from the earth on the third day, an early Sunday afternoon. Chin exited his coffin and stared around him. Not much had changed. The two gentleman who had escorted him to his station were nowhere to be seen, and were instead replaced with two eager novices showering him with gifts of water.

He stretched, unbeknown to himself, for over a minute and stared blankly at the floor. He had every desire to close his eyes, return to his sleep…no mind. No ego. No sight. Blind to the demands of the external. His feet well beneath the ground, as though the idea of corporal transit were a blind spot in the spiritual existence. His attachment to the organic soil had been transmuted into a sober reflection on the nutrition he might one day provide his next-door neighbors, the worms.

In the silence of a Friday evening, he had succumbed to the will of his spiritual path, by Saturday he was living in his version of purgatory: a soothing, pacifying, albeit drab cleansing process. By Sunday, the idea was that he might have defeated his final attachment – himself.

The minutiae of the monastery had been nothing less than ordinary, a monotony of meditation and ritual cleansings of various past karmas. It was in this repetition of the sacred among the mundane that Chin had found peace the past two years. Forever a stranger to himself, a squirrel in the world scrambling to collect his nuts, he realized now that he had always been chasing a grave. And that reality was his final embarrassment. Unacceptable to his formidable foe, his own ego, he could not accept that he might one day pass and move on as another scrap of existence.

Chin had been plenty transparent about that when he registered in the northern country hillsides, nestled among rhododendrons, lilacs, and bright pink cherry blossoms. This floral cover provided him with a mental camouflage: the whole place had a divinity to it and he felt at least here he might live eternal.

But it was clear from day one that Denny Lin, the old master of the clan, would work to eradicate this glaring hiccup in Chin’s own growth. This weekend had been the final solution.

“You shall descend to the earth, where you will encounter your worst fear: your own impermanence. Nestled in the cold, damp soil of our mother nature, you may rest in the total awareness that one day, you too will be no more no less than the compost for a tree, should you be lucky. Rest assured, after this final trial, you will be free to join in our ranks, and perhaps within a year you can serve as a temporary assistant to a few prayer services. You may always hold on to “om.” When you have been tested. Not before. And you may reflect on the last two words you will utter on Sunday evening as you embrace your familial status with us at the ashram. Now, go to bed and be ready to descend.”

And before he knew it, Chin heard the thumping of dust scraps, and soon some pebbles, and before long the mute clumps of clay collapsing his world into a sensational oblivion. He had three gallons of water, some crackers, and even a little bit of dental floss and toothpaste: all the earthly luxury he would need.

Language had become a muted tool of his. Having long accepted his passive reception of communication it just seemed like a cumbersome pasttime to him at this point. He laughed for a hair of a second as he reflected on the one sound he had made in his entire program immersion: a grunt after eating a roughly boiled potato. He was stared at like a caveman, and then the senior team returned to their serenading gossip and politics hour.

By the time he walked alongside his would-be acolytes, they were completely immersed in “omming” his presence and fanning his feet. He felt retched. Out of respect for their desire to practice reverence, he allowed this would be idolatry to persist. He felt sick. There were no words in his head. There had been no words in his head. For. Two. Years. The ashram had kept him committed to a steady diet of Ram Dass literature, reeducation programming, nature walks, and at least four or five hours of meditation. His mind had ceased. Until now.

And it was at this point that he recognized the solipsistic crutch of the matter. His two words quite simply were:

I Quit.