Bodhicitta's dream

When Abishek woke up there was still the taste of cherry Vișinată in his mouth. Hundreds of bird species sang happily from the sighing ferns, disturbed only by the buzzing of an insect inside the tent.

He strained to check his solar watch, blurry eyed to see it was still only 4am. And yet, his legs were already being cooked in the feather weight sleeping bag like a portable sauna.

It had been a hot, but comfortable night among the mountains and under the influence of the cherry vodka. And for a while, alone, he had left the others by the fire and took time to gaze up at the blanket of stars. The thin canvas door, normally shut tight in colder weather, had been kept open throughout the night for better air. While the cosmos or the rest of the universe played out its own story, it meant insects could creep their way in.

Whatever it was that flew around, he now had two nice itchy bites neatly planted on the boney-side of his left ankle and another slightly above the crotch. As he lay there, he allowed a feeling of despair and sadness to wash over him. At other times, he felt elated. Sometimes people wondered if he had ADHD.

He thought about that himself too from time to time, but treating emotions as if they were the tidal movement of waves gave him a sense of freedom. He could understand the ankle bite, but the other puzzled him and just like his frequently shifting emotions, he let it go. How could it have crawled under his shorts though?

A grey-blue light pervaded the morning, while the sun crept over mountains cast in dark shadow to the east; they were like ragged towers and the shards of light split on a pinnacle of rock like a distant star. He decided to look for the culprit. As it was still dark-ish on this side of the campsite, between several young silver birches. He took out the little silver torch from his pocket and shone it on the tiny invertebrate inside. It was hanging, sideways, on the far side (where he kept his feet) on the synthetic tapered wall.

Its pin head jutted from its size-able belly - it was an ugly little thing with a menacing white and purple streak on its black body; nature’s warning sign? It reminded him of an American horror movie from the ninety-nineties about giant killer flies in the subways. This thing had six straightened legs like that of a long spindly table, sideways, and rooted to the spot. He could have swatted it to death with the flat of his hand; so easily.

But he didn’t. Instead, he emptied a coffee mug of its liquid remnants onto the ground. Then, he gently tried to prod the little guy in. It was too quick. In an awkward movement, it somersaulted and tumbled down, rather than flew, landing somewhere further inside the tent.

Abishek lost his patience. Rather than waste any more time he got out and removed the orange mat, ginger coloured shirt, red alpaca wool socks (bought in Slovakia) and the light-weight sleeping bag. ‘You will have to make your own way out,’ he said softly.

A fern cone landed directly on his tent, making a loud thump as it impacted. He stretched his arms and then went to sit on an embankment hung over a cool spring. Some hikers had left a case of Corona beers on the bottom to get them ice cold and forgotten them.

White streaky clouds brushed over the mountain. He and his team of five porters had found a flat spot among tall ferns late the night before. ‘Why had they abandoned the Europeans yesterday?’ he considered, ‘but it was suicide to go on up the great mountain in temperatures reaching over 40 degrees Celcius and as the leader he had made the call that the conditions were too dangerous to continue.’

The spring shimmered and followed the movement of a morning breeze, while the corona liquid in glass glittered gold. The water eventually disappeared under a natural culvert, more like a half hollowed tunnel in the earth. The dark tunnel said something to him which he tried to push away. He saw that soon all of this part would be covered in light as the sun climbed higher and he expected everyone would be up by then.

Cows with orange and white patterns on their backs grouped around the tents. Some were drinking from the spring while others stood, watching.

At 6 am, everyone was out eating a light breakfast of Langos. They’d managed to buy the Hungarian pasties at a village stall five miles away, run by a lady who the locals called ‘Santa Maria’.

Abishek savoured the yoghurt and cheese inside the Langos and listened to the bells of the cows which rang methodically; a cacophony of noise that took each person in the group to distant lands in their own minds to hundreds of years ago; and yet they were there, still in that land, with all the illusion of society around them.

While technology advanced at a phenomenal rate these days, the world’s simplicity rang true to the hearts of men and women in places like this. Peace and stillness continued to preside, despite humanity’s stupidity. Something, though, troubled him. When Abishek had woken up, there were images of the star filled night still vividly swirling around his mind.

He had dreamt of an Asian man, like him but from a different region, who stood in the middle of the stars like a phantom constellation. The figure wore a simple robe and emanated a peace and joy long lost from this world. A Bodhicitta, fully ordained from a long time ago, had entered his dreams: a vocation he strived for every day in his practices, himself. The Bodhicitta said to him, ‘I turn all darkness into light, and breathe gold.’ And that was all. Then he woke up. What did it mean? He wondered.

He watched the slow movement of the cows around the people, unhurried on their daily ritualistic walk toward the dense forest across the road, once they’d drunk their fill. Soon it would be the group’s time to go too. Their plans had been to walk home over the wide expanse of flat lands in the lower regions between the mountains - thousands and thousands of miles away from home.

That way, at least, they couldn’t be detected by those they’d abandoned; if they were still alive. Abishek’s heart was in deep pain at having abandoned them, but the leader of the Europeans had seen no sense: only the pursuit of the summit. They might have been all dead by now.

‘At all costs it had seemed!’ thought Abishek, and he tried to shrug off the heavy guilt that had wrapped itself around his shoulders that morning.

By 6.15am everyone was packed to go. All were required to take in the cool fresh air with a deep lung wrenching breath and then share something with the other - a thought, a thing. It was their daily chore as a group and kept up the connection and morale. It said to the other ‘I care’.

They walked all day in the heat it seemed and only reached the caves as the evening arrived. Through wide stretches of Scottish ferns, bracken and flat grounds disturbed by smooth hills. The cave was at the bottom of a gorge full of toppled over trees due to either movement of unstable ground over time or a wood wrecking disease. When they got to the cave, there at the entrance, Abishek saw the man from his dream.

‘Do you see him?’ asked Abishek.

‘What do you mean?’ Priya asked.

‘The man, by the cave,’ he said and pointed.

‘Stop it,’ Priya said, ‘you’re freaking me out.’

When they got to the cave, the man or apparition was gone. Abishek looked inside the depths of the cave from a distance next to a bubbling brook. Inside, for a moment, he thought he saw the glinting of something gold. In his heart he knew they should go inside, not over as Sharma had suggested.

‘What would they find inside?’ he wondered, ‘what did gold mean to them now, with their mission and vows nothing but charred dust?’

Gold meant nothing to the porters and this place was sacred, and yet, they followed their leader in.