Heavenly Creatures

Tara visited the Buddhist bookstore often after that. The shopkeeper told her that he always got new shipments of books on the first of every month, so she went by on the second to peruse the new titles.

That day, Tara came upon a calligraphy painting of a warrior bowing to an old sage with a white beard. Something about the picture called out to her, and she stopped for a long time to admire it.

“That’s an interesting picture,” the old shopkeeper said, coming up next to Tara. “In my homeland China, we have a saying that there is gold beneath a man’s knees and he should never bow to anyone but heaven or his mother.”

“This is a picture of heaven,” Tara said. Some ancient knowledge seemed to speak through her. “This is a vision of the lion bowing to the lamb.”

The shopkeeper looked surprised for a moment, but he turned to look at the painting again before speaking. “Ah, I see it now. It is not pleasant being a lion. Pride makes one stiff and inflexible.”

Tara felt a flash of insight jolt through her. Of course. All her life, she had raged against injustice, but her love of justice had ossified over time into vengeance and hypocrisy. And it was this hypocrisy that had caused her to kick Kali at the track meet.

“How enormous,” Tara said. “Could I take this, actually?”

“Certainly,” the old shopkeeper said. “Bring it up to the register and I’ll give you a bag.”

At the register, Tara was surprised when the shopkeeper handed her the bag without ringing it up. When she tried to point this out, the shopkeeper shook his head and pushed the paper bag towards her.

“You have taught me something today,” the old shopkeeper said. “Consider this my thanks.”

“But you’ve taught me as well,” Tara tried to protest.

The old shopkeeper shook his head and smiled. “Consider this an offer of friendship.”

Tara smiled then and took the bag.

“Would you like to stay for tea?” the old man asked.

“I would like that,” Tara said, and she sat on a wooden stool next to the tea table.

As the shopkeeper heated the tea, Tara asked, “How does one become the Buddha? I heard it requires countless lifetimes of good karma.”

The shopkeeper chortled. “Ha! Where did you hear that?”

Suddenly feeling defensive, Tara pressed her lips into a thin line. “From a source I find reputable.”

The old man seemed to notice that he had been somewhat abrasive and changed tracks. “What I mean is, that may be true from a relative standpoint, but in truth, there is no karma.”

A shock went through Tara at this bit of information. Her mind couldn’t grasp or understand it, but something in her confirmed that what the old man was telling her was the truth—the ultimate truth.

“So then, what is the point of all this?” she asked. “All this learning, this studying of scriptures?” This suffering, she wanted to say.

“It is so you can realize that fact in yourself and in your life. So you can see how ignorance and motivity make up the drama of this world, how light perceives it, and yet how you cannot locate yourself in any of it.”

Tara stared at the old man then, as if seeing him for the first time. Whereas Sun Wukong’s teacher had been gentle and kind, the old shopkeeper seemed as clear as glass. She had seen God in Sun’s eyes, but in the shopkeeper’s, she saw a simple, empty brightness. She realized with a start that this was why she hadn’t gone with Sun—to meet the shopkeeper.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The shopkeeper smiled. “The more relevant question would be, who are you?”

Various answers flashed through Tara’s mind. I don’t know, she finally thought. She opened her mouth and asked a question instead. “How can I help those who suffer?”

“Do you suffer?” The old man looked at her with a discerning gaze. “Begin with your own suffering.”

“I have,” Tara said. “But now my parents are in the hospital, and I suffer again.”

The old man frowned in commiseration. “That’s hard,” he said. “That’s very hard.”

As he spoke, Tara had a startling realization. “I suffer because I am attached to what I want for them instead of what is,” she said.

“That’s true,” the old man said.

Tara sat quietly, sipping her tea. As her mind sank into contemplation, a memory surfaced of herself as a child, looking into the orphanage mirror and talking to herself.

“You can’t be weak. You have to be strong now. You have to be strong.”

Tara finally let herself feel the horror and sadness she had stuffed down as a child. Images flashed into her mind: her, crying over the bodies of her parents; her, holding tightly to a stuffed rabbit as she stood alone before a roomful of children. She saw how her pain was not just her own, but how all people suffered, some in greater ways than she could imagine.

Fear and frailty were an ancestral rite of passage, passed down throughout humanity’s long history. But anyone could see the world with greater clarity and forgive others, forgive the universe, and even forgive themselves.

“Thank you,” Tara said, setting down her empty teacup.

The old shopkeeper smiled again, and she was comforted.

* * *

The next morning, Tara woke with a smile on her face. She was visiting her parents at the hospital today. Despite this, the world seemed brighter than it had when she had gone to bed.

The feeling of hope, which had temporarily been obscured by the accident, now returned, like the sun emerging after a storm.

At the hospital, Tara looked at her parents’ forms in some disbelief. She could see some kind of black fog obscuring them from view.

Her grandmother seemed to see nothing unusual and sat in the chair next to her parents. The old woman looked back at Tara, who was still standing by the doorway.

“Well?” she asked. “Why are you gaping?”

Tara shook her head and sat down. She resolved not to make a scene and observe carefully instead. She and her grandmother sat there for a while, making small talk. After a while, her grandmother turned to her.

“You talk with them for a while, dear,” she said. “I’m going outside for a walk.”

Tara looked at her parents once she was alone with them. The sunlight was coming in through the curtainless windows, hitting her mother’s face. Tara remembered how her mother would have been concerned about wearing enough sunscreen to protect from its rays and smiled. She scooted her chair closer and took her mother’s hand.

In the silence, Tara felt the weight of her worry and exhaustion creep up on her again, like the fog surrounding her. Her soul felt tired, as if she had lived hundreds of lifetimes in a float tank of sadness. She closed her eyes, imagining herself lying atop the ocean, staring at the sky. I want to disappear into the infinite, she thought.

She must have dozed off, for in her dream, she was in the Mongolian field again, listening with anxiety to the snarling of wolves in the distance and shivering from the cold. A man walked out of the woods towards her then. He was no ordinary man; he had a shining countenance and a smile like the gods.

It was her father, the Buddha. He held out his hand, which Tara took, and from his warmth and light, all of the coldness of the field melted away.

“Father, I’m so tired,” Tara said. As she spoke, she could see countless lifetimes where she had sacrificed herself for others. And then, miraculously, she saw through her father’s eyes to the root of her sorrow. She saw the kernel of victimhood that made up her self-concept crack open into light.

The Buddha touched her on the forehead. “You’ve done well. Come home now.”

Tara startled awake. She had nodded off next to her mother, and her hand instinctively went to wake her.

“Wake up, mom,” she said. The room was silent.

Tara shook her mother’s hand. “Get up!” she said, a little louder. An old vestige of anger came up, snake-like, but Tara recognized the thought, the old expectation of control, behind it. And then she let it go. She relaxed her grip on her mother’s hand. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. I give up, mom. Do whatever you want. I’ll accept it.”

Tara remembered something the shopkeeper had said. Pride made one stiff and inflexible.

“I give up,” she whispered. She had been holding her mother’s hand, and she let it go. Her pride crumbled, leaving her free. She could finally, finally, give up being the savior.

Tara wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. She could still see the black fog around them. She remembered what Sun had said about souls in purgatory being common in the in-between and closed her eyes briefly, sensing the stillness of the space.

She opened her eyes soon after to look towards the hospital bed, where a different, familiar pair of eyes which vaguely reminded her of her sister’s had opened.

“Tara?” her mother said. In the bed next to hers, her father also stirred.

“Mom! Dad!” Tara cried, standing up and almost knocking over her chair. “You’re awake!”

Tara laughed and cried as she hugged her parents. The commotion brought in a nurse, then the doctor, and finally her grandmother. Even Tara’s stoic grandmother cried openly at her parents’ miraculous recovery.

Tara’s mother told them that she had been wading through an enormous storm of black rain clouds before being filled by a feeling of peace. She had followed the feeling until it led her back to herself.

“That’s when I opened my eyes and saw Tara praying,” her mother said, smiling. She winked at Tara. “I always knew that we made a good choice in adopting her.”

Tara smiled, her heart full of happiness. Everything seemed to align in that moment, and Tara suddenly remembered something.