Shambhala (21 page)

A resounding, “yes!” echoes from Bahi’s mind, in relief as she presses her supple lips against his. Feeling her warm body, he wishes to stay there forever. Opening his eyes as they kiss, he notices the sky growing dark behind her as the trees rapidly begin to decay. The fruit grows rancid and brown and drops from the trees, which begin to whither and die. He notices her face begins to age, and as he pushes her away she laughs like a witch. He shrieks in terror, watching her jaw dry up and fall off as her eyes sink into her head and skin rots off, almost instantly turning to dust, leaving a laughing skeleton amongst the dead trees that fall to the ground and begin to suck into a whirling black abyss in the middle of the meadow, sucking in the dust from her bones, which blows away. The rivers freeze over and the air grows colder. He tries to move, but is frozen in this void and drops to the solid ice, which now engulfs the world. Shaking uncontrollably, freezing and curled up, he feels the void of black seep in darker. He can’t see anything. The ice has immobilized him in a shadowy emptiness. All comes to a halt in the darkness.

A small pocket of light twinkles, emanating from the black void all around him, beaming down upon his frozen body, warming him as he begins to thaw. The light’s a familiar glow. His eyes are frozen and fixated on the light as it begins to expand, thawing out the entire earth around him. He recollects the familiar light, which he realizes has always been there. Sprouting grass rises out of the now defrosted dirt as Bahi stands up, feeling a sense of refreshment. Sprouts of vegetation pop out in front of him, growing up a pea pod, which shoots out, dropping a fetus to the grass which rapidly grows into a small girl, morphing into a woman, who stands as the Goddess taking Bahi’s hand as they glide through this fantastic world. He notices they are aging with every second. Looking at his hands, he sees that they begin to wrinkle and dry, and soon are very old, as the earth around them grows and withers in cycles of rapid succession. As they begin to whither away, Bahi is not frightened. His fear is non-existent as they decay and drop to the ground. Skin and bones become the dirt below, and all that is present is consciousness of the moment, which observes his body seeping into the ground and breaking down into nutrients that are absorbed by a seed, which breaks the Earth and grows up tall to the light in the sky. Bahi’s consciousness pervades all things in flux around him, an omnipresence of indescribable bliss. The plant continues its growth and bears berries, which are eaten by small, majestic birds. He realizes he is all of this, all of this is he, and in that moment he realizes that all the suffering he experienced came from his isolated view of himself existing independent from the tree, independent of the world, independent from Shambhala. Suddenly a cocoon grows on the side of the tree, and he sprouts out a beautiful butterfly, he is Kamini as he floats gracefully across the meadow and sees the body of Ajee, which is being eaten by small animals as it decays into the ground, sprouting out a tree and growing flowers, which Bahi settles upon in his butterfly body, enjoying the nectars that flow out. A fetus again grows from a pod in the tree, which drops down and grows into a man, which is Bahi, Paul, Pawo, Ajee. Ajee smiles at Bahi, who floats around.
I am that which is! The sun shines down love and joy, pours out across the world, excluding nothing. Nothing is separate, everything ends, and death just places all in a different part of the whole we exist upon, constantly changing, constantly in flux, formless. All is impermanent and in perfect rapture
.

He flies off, watching the world in rapid change.
We all need each other, that’s what makes it work, we all are each other
, he thinks, as the light wind decays his butterfly body, blowing in fragments as the light shines bright. “Everything returns to the light from which it always was,” he hears as light pervades—bright, white pulsating luminosity, which glows in and out and is all that can be seen in a blinding burst before turning to a soft darkness, peacefully encompassing his mind.

Paul opens his eyes to see the deep blue sky above fixated on a puffy white cloud that floats along the sky. Sitting up, the lush land of beauty he sits in is not as dreamlike as where he just was with the Goddess. A waterfall streams down behind him, and he feels a sense of recognition in where he is. Looking down, he has no cuts, and his leg and arm are fine as he stands, wearing only blue boxer shorts.
I am back in Rishikesh,
he thinks as he feels the beard on his face still thick as he smiles, and looks around the forest, reveling in the bliss of peace that pervades him in the moment, realizing his revelations.
All is impermanent and in perfect order
. The words play in his being.

A rustle in the trees above brings his attention to some monkeys going about their business. One monkey drops down, eye level on a branch, staring at Paul.

“Bandar!” he yells out, excited as he runs toward the monkey, who screeches and shows his teeth before climbing further up the tree. “Bandar, it’s me, Bahi!” he says, thinking the monkey may not recognize him with the beard.

The monkey lets out a rant of hoots and haas as he shakes the tree before springing along, out of sight. Walking off in wonderment,
Did I dream all of this?
he thinks as he sits by the waterfall. Feeling a sense of deep unity with all that is, he remembers the world outside of the jungle. “It’s time for me to go,” he says in a whisper as he smiles at the waterfall.

THE LIGHTS SLOWLY
come up on the platformed stage-like perch of a New York City class center. Paul sits cleanly shaven and clothed. He is in mid-sentence, a sentence directed to a gathering of students: “And because we have this wrong view, this mistaken view that we are limited, fixed, unchanging, existing independent of everything else, we feel isolated and imbalanced, so we crave anything that will relieve this suffering. We grasp at people who we think will make us happy, things, places, jobs, anything that will dull the pain of our isolated view of ourselves. This is an utter lie we engage in every day, that somehow there is peace and light. But it’s not us. And therefore we must reach for it all day long. And finally these things we reach for do not keep us happy. So we grasp at more and more, like children in a candy store feeding their faces with chocolate, thinking the next piece will surely be the one to bring lasting happiness, final contentment. But instead they get sick to their stomachs. We are slaves to this independent self, which is insatiable because ‘an independent self, separate from everything,’ is a wrong view. So we will never be satisfied because we are seeing it all wrong. So we attach ourselves to people and things that make us happy and push away and get angry at things and people who cause us suffering. If only we relate to things how they really are, we realize everything is constantly changing, existing only because of others. And in this way we learn to respect this body, this Earth, and we realize we are all the light, and nothing is separate from that. Everything exists in dependence on all else. This is logic. Check up on this yourself. Don’t take my word on it. So we need to relate to the world as it is. We all need each other, and that’s how it works. We need to respect the Earth, our mothers, our friends, and our enemies, because none is separate from anyone or anything else. And our deluded view that we exist independent of the Earth or other people is a misconception of reality, a fantasy we have conjured up.

In this way, we can just relax and enjoy each moment, each person, each thing knowing we don’t have to grasp at them or push them away, because they will soon end, and change and flow back into that unending flux, which is all. You can think of it like this: Without the sun nothing here would be alive. A plant grows. We eat the plant, creating our muscles, or we eat animals who eat plants. And so the sun just moves through everyone and everything. The energy it creates enables us to create, build things, come to this lecture, and so on. There is a an untapped resource of this all-pervading light, and the sun is part of this as well, because one day it, too, will burn out, but it will not end. It is endless, beginningless.

A silence washes over the crowd as Paul looks out in thought. Taking a sip of water from his glass, which sets beside him, he notices a familiar face in the crowd. It’s Eva. She smiles at him. Returning the smile, he focuses again, placing down the glass.

“I would like to share a story with you for a moment. There was once a modest farmer who lived by the shores of India. Having lost his beloved wife, and fed up with the world of his village, he would walk down by the shore every day and stare off to the land far in the distance. He was told of this land. Shambhala, they called it, a place of peace and serenity, a place where men were so wise and enlightened that all of his suffering would be eradicated once he stepped foot there. Every day at dusk he would walk down from the foothills of the mountains and stand at the shore, yearning to go to Shambhala, until one day a boat pulled up to the shore with a sign that read,
Shambhala
. So the man got all excited and hopped on the boat. The captain looked down at him and said, ‘This is a one-way trip. Are you sure you want to go?’ Ecstatic, he yelled, ‘Yes!’ And so off they went, thrashing along the sea. And suddenly he missed his children back in the village and began to worry for them. This worry passed, and after sometime he realized what he thought would be a short trip had become a very long and arduous journey. On and on they rode, week after week, month after month, and soon he became complacent with the simple tasks of living on a boat, until one day the boat scraped ashore. Finally they were there. Excited, he leapt out of the boat and ran out to the island of Shambhala. And as he calmed himself, he thought, ‘I wonder what India looks like from here?’ Looking out he realized, there is no India, there is no Shambhala, there’s no boat, no farmer. He was always in Shambhala. Realizing this he surrendered, knowing that giving selflessly and enjoying every second is all he can do, all he wishes to do, and all he need do. For the divine light and bliss of Shambhala is within us all, within each and every thing. So we abide in this, enjoy without thinking, let go our fantasy of separation, and thus respecting ourselves we respect others. Because all we are is others. So to change the world around us we change ourselves, because we are the world around us. So we extend ourselves out to the world, destroying the lie that we need to fend for ourselves. We can easily tap into the joy and blissful light, which pervades everything, and then we will know Shambhala. Thank you.”

The lights go up as the crowd bursts out clapping, Paul smiles on the stage of life that he knows excludes no one.

About the Author

BRIAN E. MILLER
is a writer and teacher born and raised on Long Island, New York. Growing up, Brian was always crafting stories, whether written or verbal, exhibiting a passion for storytelling from a very early age. Today his stories invite the reader to view their own lives through the lens of his unique and interesting characters along their journeys. Inspired by the magical places and people Brian has encountered along his own worldwide journeys, he creates stories that are not only fun and engaging but often reflect an underlying truth of humanity. Drawing on the mythology and heroes journey that we all walk in our lives, his teachings and writings entice us to delve deeply into the often dark recesses of the mind, discovering truths that can lead us to a more balanced, harmonious and purposeful life.

After a career working in production for commercial television in New York, Brian’s dreams and ambitions of writing and teaching prompted him to leave it all behind in the midst of the worst recession he had ever known. A leap of faith took him on a journey to India, where he had visited a year prior working on a documentary film and recognizing a deep connection with both the people and the land, he knew he would return. This next trip, however, was taken alone, to travel, write and deepen his studies and practices of Buddhist Psychology and Yoga, both of which he had been a student and practitioner of for many years.

Brian followed his heart along a fantastic journey with which he still travels today. His current novel, “Shambhala” was inspired by the magical places and people he had encountered along his often arduous and life-transforming trip to India and South East Asia. Brian is always writing, recently finishing the rough draft of his second novel, with several more already underway toward completion.