The poor creature did it al by itself. It
had carried the body of a lost hiker after almost dying in an avalanche. The
donkey was exhausted and collapsed after crossing the gate of the monastery.
Monk Yato was crossing the yard in order to get to the kitchen and was the
first one to see the poor animal and the person it had brought to them. By the
touch of his fingers, Yato noticed the donkey had died. It was probably due to
exhaustion. As far as the man was concerned, Yato and other monks carried him to
one of the rooms.
He was in some kind of coma for almost a week.
Every so often, monks would check on him and realize that he was doing great
except for the fact that he was fast asleep. But life in the mountains went on,
no matter how interesting it was to have someone from the outside so close by.
The younger monks were the most curious ones, whereas the older ones hadn’t
cared yet and had decided not to visit the tourist at all
During
that week, the monks held a small vigil for the soul of the donkey, which they
had buried near the main temple of the monastery. They all appreciated a lot
what animals could do for humanity and had a tremendous respect for any kind of
life that was lost during accidents in the mountains. The men from beyond
didn’t seem too convinced by this but the monks believed it with all their
hearts.
One week after, the hiker woke up in the
middle of the night. His name was Greg Emerson and he had been climbing almost
every single mountain nearby. It was very dangerous as some of the mountains
had special regulations but it had been clear he didn’t care about it, at all.
When he woke up in the small room they had put him in, he instantly thought he
had been captured by some foreign force from beyond the mountain range. He had
no idea of monks or their beliefs.
The halls were being watched and his bedroom’s
window overlooked a large chasm with no apparent bottom. The morning after,
when one of the monks decided to check on him, Greg committed the mistake of
being excessively aggressive. He thought he was too strong, so he released the
man in order to stand up and run away. But the monk had not being that injured
and jumped at him, tacking Greg to the ground with ease.
He was locked up in the cell once again and no
one came to tell him anything for a whole day. It was very late when he noticed
the movement of a light behind his cell’s door and then some steps. He trusted
he was going to be released real soon. When the door opened, it was the Grand
Monk, a very small mall that seemed to move his legs really fast in order to
move at a normal pace.
When he entered the cell, he told Greg that he
knew who he was, his full name, his job in the city and why he had come to the
mountains. He even knew that that his reason for wanting to get to know the
mountains and nature was false and that’s why he had been confined to that cell
until he got better. Now that he was, they had to check if it was in their best
interest to release him or if it was better to keep him for a longer time. He
complained, saying it wasn’t legal and ethic to retain someone against their
will but the Grand Monk clarified he could leave his room but not the
monastery.
The following day, he noticed the Grand Monk’s
orders had been honest: no more monks came to check into him and the door of
his cell was now wide open. He could walk all around the various levels of the
monastery, including the dining room where all of the monks gather at night to
have a very sensible and small dinner. Greg missed the real foods from the city,
sometimes being hungry for a hotdog and other times for some pasta with
meatballs. In the monastery there was only a lame kind of bread with nothing on
it and some goat cheese.
One day, a monk showed him the burying site of
the donkey that had brought him to the monastery. Greg remembered that creature
and thanked him on his grave for having saved him. As far as he could remember,
he had been riding the donkey for a while through the mountains just when they
had been caught by one of those awful storms that sometimes happens deep in the
mountains. During that awful weather, he had been knocked out and the animal
had done everything by itself.
Weeks after being “released” from his room,
the Grand Monk ordered him to participate in the various activities that the
monks did all around the monastery, as he was one more of them for at least a
while. So they decided to try him in various areas. The first one was the
garden, a small hydroponic plantation overlooking the chasm. He wasn’t very
good with plants so he did not do a great job. Besides, his hand were not at
all delicate and he was always distracted, looking over at the view or being
apparently immersed in his thoughts about how he would return to civilization.
The next place they tied him on was the goat
pen. It was really simple: he only had to fee them twice a day and let the roam
around the main yard for a while. The ideal walk for the goats would be to go
beyond the gate but they couldn’t let him go with them there so the monk had to
tolerate the goats being all over the place now and Greg being useless when
feeding them. He only gave food to a couple of them and then he just got
distracted when looking at the snowy mountains and imagining what his loved
ones were thinking right then.
His last opportunity was in the kitchen, where
a big Monk called Hitso, taught him about how to make the simple bread they ate
and how to do some other dished with the vegetables they grew in their small
garden. They didn’t have any modern
appliances, only an oven that used wood but there was no wood nearby that they
could use. Beside, Hitso explained to Greg that the monks preferred not to eat
things that were cooked, instead eating everything raw.
In the kitchen, Greg really felt he was a
little bit happier. Maybe it was the fact that he was serving the monks and
that gave him some kind of purpose or it may have been the fact that he had
stopped thinking about how to escape and about his loved ones in the city. He
just realized that the monastery was his reality at the moment and that it was
best to use it in his advantage instead of always being distracted by other
things.
Greg began to enjoy the company of all the
monks and even tried to meditate like they did but he wasn’t that calm yet. In
his spare time, he would look at the chasm and wonder what marvels laid down
there, beyond the light of the sun. Monk Yato explained to him that the
monastery had been built right there because their religion believed an ancient
evil slept beneath the darkness of the chasm and that it was necessary to have
prepared religious people nearby in order to defend the world once whatever
lived down there emerged.
It was a very nice story and, of course, Greg
didn’t believe any part of it but he respected the fact that the monks were
dedicated to their beliefs. He began thinking that maybe that was something he
was lacking. He didn’t believe in anything except fame and fortune and going on
to the next thing. Greg was very impatient and had always been like that. He
wasn’t the kind of person to wait patiently to see what happened. No, he was
the one “creating” his future. Now he was doing the opposite angle.
Months after arriving in the temple, the Grand
Monk called Greg to his room and told him he was ready to go back to the
outside world. The young man nodded but then he knelt and asked the old monk to
let him stay with them and become a monk like them. He wanted to learn their
ways and be calm and a better person.
But the Grand Monk said that couldn’t be. He
had to go back to the outside because he had unresolved business there. Greg
had to attend to that and, if he still wanted, he could comeback afterwards and
join them. Greg left that same afternoon. He would never come back to the
monastery but would always remember what he had learned and try to pass it on.
