The Year of Rice and Salt

That means we must try again. We try and try again, life after life, until we achieve Buddha wisdom, and are released at last. Or some then choose to return to the human world, to help others along their way to release. Those are called bodhisattvas. You could be one of those, Kyu. I can see it inside you. Listen to me now. Soon you'll run for it. Things will chase you, and you'll hide. In a house, a cave, a jungle, a lotus blossom. These are all wombs. You'll want to stay in your hiding place, to escape the terrors of the bardo. That way lies preta, and you will become a ghost. You must emerge again to have any hope. Choose your womb door without any feelings of attraction or repulsion. Looks can be deceiving. Go as you see fit. Follow the heart. Try helping other spirits first, as if you were a bodhisattva already.

I don't know how!

Learn. Pay attention and learn. You must follow, or lose the jati for good.

Then they were attacked by huge male lions, manes already matted with blood, roaring angrily. Bold took off in one direction and Kyu in another. Kyu ran and ran, the lion on his heels. He dodged through two trees and onto a path. The lion ran on and lost him.

To the east he saw a lake, adorned with black and white swans. To the west, a lake with horses standing in it; to the south, a scattering of pagodas; to the north a lake with a castle in it. He moved south towards the pagodas, feeling vaguely that this would have been Bold's choice; feeling also that Bold and the rest of his jati were already there, in one of the temples waiting for him.

He reached the pagodas. He wandered from one building to the next, looking in doorways, shocked by visions of crowds in disarray, fighting or fleeing from hyena headed guards and wardens; a hell of a village, each possible future catastrophic, terrifying. Death's home town.

A long time passed in this horrible search, and then he was looking through the gates of a temple at his jati, his cohort, Bold and all the rest of them, Shen, I li Dem his mother, Zheng He, Psin, all of them immediately known to him – oh, he thought, of course. They were naked and bloodied, but putting on the gear of war nevertheless. Then hyenas howled, and Kyu fled through the raw yellow light of morning, through trees into the protection of elephant grass. The hyenas prowled between the huge tufts of grass, and he pressed through the knife edges of one broken down clump to take refuge inside it.

For a long time he cowered in the grass, until the hyenas went away, also the cries of his jati as they looked for him, telling him to stick with them. He hid there through a long night of awful sounds, creatures being killed and eaten; but he was safe; and morning came again. He decided to venture forth, and found the way out was closed. The knife edged grass blades had grown, and were like long swords caging him, even pressing in on him, cutting him as they grew. Ah, he realized; this is a womb. I've chosen one without trying to, without listening to Bold's advice, separated from my family, unaware and in fear. The worst kind of choosing.

And yet to stay here would be to become a hungry ghost. He would have to submit. He would have to be born again. He groaned at the thought, cursed himself for a fool. Try to have a little more presence of mind next time, he thought, a little more courage! It would not be easy, the bardo was a scary place. But now, when it was too late, he decided he had to try. Next time!

And so he re entered the human realm. What happened to him and to his companions that time around, it is not our task to tell. Gone, gone, gone altogether beyond! All hail!

One. The Cuckoo in the Village

What happens is that sometimes there is a confusion, and the reincarnating soul enters into a womb already occupied. Then there are two souls in the same baby, and a fight breaks out. Mothers can feel that kind, the babies that thrash around inside, wrestling themselves. Then they're born and the shock of that ejection stills them for a while, they're fully occupied learning to breathe and otherwise coming to grips with this world. After that the fight between the two souls for the possession of the one body recommences. That's colic.