A village was burning far off down the hill, and almost without pause came the dry gunfire clicking - sometimes short explosions, sometimes cries in a foreign language. Only yesterday everyone had left the temple and departed for Mustang. But the Master told me and three other monks that we must remain here until the very end. Five people had to stay in the temple until the end, because Buddha Shakyamuni teaches ultimate victory, and Guru Padma crushes the enemies of Dharma across time and space.

All the spirits of the temple had gone forth to stand guard. Upon the roof of the pagoda, my brothers saw the silhouette of Mahakala, the great protector of truth.

In the furthest regions of universal consciousness, within the labyrinths of emptiness, I had encountered him many times before - as a fiery light dissolving darkness and liberating beings from the demons of Mara. But in the loka of humans, Mahakala would not stop bullets. And I knew this. And all of us knew it.

2

We gathered in the hall of secret practices and waited for the Master. He arrived troubled and restless. Casting an empty gaze over us, he began to speak at once.

“There is something we are about to say to one another right now. And this shall become our agreement, working through every loka ever created — and even those never yet imagined by the wind.”

Everyone nodded. Before us appeared a bowl and a knife. I lit the candles and incense. He continued:

“We do not speak our names now, dwelling in complete no-mind. Take this knife, and one by one cut the left wrist, filling the bowl with blood.”

Each person present repeated the words aloud, and the knife began to pass around the circle.

3

The Master began to chant the mantra. The growing noise of soldiers approaching the temple came, they were guided by local traitors. Some people are very simple in their mind - they see an opportunity to steal something on the fire so they use it. Hearing them draw near, the Master raised his voice and spoke hurriedly:

“Now I shall recite that which you have never heard — yet know with absolute certainty. Immediately afterward, each of you must fold your awareness into the personal mantra of the beginning of the path and bring the sound-light to a halt.”

He began:

Chandra open from the mind
A light neither yellow nor white —
The one invisible for darkness.

_
By touching the night,
He revealed
How emptiness
Gaze into the eyes of form._

This gaze does not see itself,
Yet opens the door for others —
A door for which no key exists.

Beyond that door, the worlds
Do not border one another,
But merge
Into anatta and anicca,
Like a layered dream.

4

Gunfire echoed through the inner courtyard of the temple. Soldiers were searching the chambers, smashing apart the ceremonial halls. There is nothing — and even that nothing does not exist. Only emptiness meeting forms that see themselves reflected in its eyes as the process of the world.

And even this burning, throbbing pain spreading outward from my chest, where my heart shines with a yellow light, exists only as the impermanence of the form of my incarnation.

An incarnation that continues in the name of a nameless agreement, for the benefit of all living beings.

There, at the end of the corridor of countless worlds calling toward embodiment, there is a light without boundary and without meaning. I will pass it through.

5

The Land Of Eternal Sleep. The Ever-Sleeping Land - there it was, opening its icy vast emptiness before Wu Shi Yin. He had traveled a long way filled with dangers and enemies, leaving no traces behind, changing his face each day as the sky changes its own face while preserving its eternity. Within this Ever-Sleeping Land, Wu Shi Yin preserved what is not -  and vanished forever.

*

Where the Manchu land begins,
There was born Wu Shi Yin,

He was the third and most beloved

The sun and son

Of Mongol Khan

Far beyond the mountains

Deep in forest darkness

Follow path along the road

Lose the self

and name

you once were called.  

6

In the hall of secret practices and ceremonies lay the bodies of five monks. On the floor, a dried pool of blood held ants fast within its darkened surface. The altar had been destroyed. Everything that gleamed like gold or silver had been taken by the soldiers.

The main pagoda upon the hill had burned to the ground. And now, at night, the locals saw strange streams of light drifting above the monastery. No one entered the temple after the massacre carried out by the invaders. The villagers feared the angry spirits and guardians — but even more than that, they feared punishment from the occupiers and their snitches.

Lama Deidze slowly walked through the hall of secret practices and ordered the accompanying kempo monks to prepare the bodies for cremation.

He bent slowly over one of the monks and placed his hand upon the ajna in the center of the forehead. Rolling his eyes back, he read fragments from the monk’s final moments. Then he jerked his hand away sharply and said:

“They saved it”

The dullest of the kempo immediately blurted out:

“This? Or that?”

“That what is not,” the lama answered quietly, and left the hall.