RSS Feed

 Home
 Most Recent
 
 Authors
 Titles
 Help
 Search
 Log In
 
 

From the darkness of enlightenment by wongkk
[Reviews - 1] Printer

- Text Size +
FROM THE DARKNESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Sanzo was enlightened. He had all the wisdom, and more, expected from someone in his position as a high priest and a teacher of religion.

He understood, for example, that an apparent contradiction usually contained the source of its own resolution, if pursued in a logical direction. So, he knew that life was, in the end, death, and death was freedom, and freedom was being without any attachments, and that being without any attachments was the only way to make existence wholly coincident with truth, in the purest sense of the word.

Which was a fine philosophy when considered outside a situation when the attachment decided – out of apparently irreversible and permanent animal delusion – to attach itself to you! Sanzo looked down at Goku and at the bandage that Hakkai had put over the wound on his shoulder; the boy would mend fast enough, but it was fact that the injury had occurred only because Goku had been distracted by a threat to Sanzo that annoyed the monk so much. That had never happened before.

Fingers felt automatically for cigarettes and lighter; he needed something to calm his nerves and his irritation – and to give him some space for thinking.

Honestly, he had thought that Goku knew better than that; Sanzo hadn’t been in any danger that he couldn’t handle - and, if it hadn’t have been for a lucky swipe from the quick-wristed kappa’s shakujo, Goku wouldn’t have walked away so easily either. And that was what was actually the most frightening part of the whole episode.

The boy had allowed his emotions to interfere with the efficiency of his fighting, when Sanzo had relied on Goku’s better control of himself.

Sanzo leaned back against the window frame and inhaled to the very limit of his capacity, feeling his diaphragm pull down and draw the nicotine into parts of his lungs which were normally spared. He deliberately held his breath, clamping his lips into a narrow, bloodless incision and fixing his eyes on a crack in the ceiling.

So, he was angry with himself because he had mis-read the monkey’s ability to be disciplined in battle. Gods knew Goku had little enough discipline at his command, so it had been stupid of Sanzo to overestimate the boy’s control. Sanzo had been guilty of allowing optimism, or he could say “denial”, to blind him to the reality of the situation; hence he was angry.

The increasing ache in his chest demanded release and he slowly let the air escape, gradually sending his anger away with the smoke. Jikaku had had a point there – the clever old sod! – though Sanzo couldn’t help but hope that the technique didn’t always result in such prodigious eyebrows.

He turned his head and looked up through the window for the round, silver moon which had first brought him into contact with Jikaku through a joke, but the sky was cloudy and there was nothing to be seen. There was none of the clarity of atmosphere which had given the favour of moonlight to that particular scene, where Jikaku introduced an immature and highly strung Genjyo Sanzo to both the metaphor and the fact of using cigarettes as an aid to enlightenment.

So, older now, and wiser, Genjyo Sanzo had become a man with a fine mind and a highly developed personal philosophy.

He also acknowledged that, as a student of Koumyou Sanzo, he had been accorded the greatest privilege that he was able to imagine, either then or now, in being permitted to follow a master who was, on this earth, so far in advance of everything.

He lowered his head and swallowed awkwardly, pushing the image of that smile, and those kind, accepting eyes, away from whatever part of Sanzo it was which still hurt so badly when Koumyou Sanzo came into his thoughts.

And – oh! - Sanzo still thought and thought and thought: how many times had he thought about his master’s last words, “Be strong”? More times than the number of hairs he had on his body? More times than he had blinked in his life?

Be strong. He had considered those words long and hard and often and with every insight which he could uncover within himself. Yet the words remained so impossible to apply, and his heart burned with the frustration of his failure in understanding.

Be strong. What did it mean?

To be strong was not to be weak – but, in truth, what were his strengths? And which of his strengths were not also weaknesses?

There was a tiny twitch in his hand, as the long ash of his burning cigarette fell onto the window sill. He quickly flicked it into the dark and ground out the lighted end in the bottom of the bronze ash-tray, even though the cigarette wasn’t finished. He wasn’t in the mood for tobacco now and it was cold, so he put his hands into the sleeves of his robe and looked over at the bed where Goku was sleeping. It was really quite cold and the blanket needing pulling up over the injured boy’s upper body, so he moved across the room and lightly tucked the covers under Goku’s chin.

As the monk folded the blanket upwards, half a meat-bun was revealed, still spilling its crumbs on the bedclothes.

Slight as they were, Sanzo’s movements provoked a soft, drawn-out noise, somewhere between a snore and a croon, and the body in the bed wriggled itself a little lower into the warmth of the blanket. The priest pulled a face. The monkey couldn’t be in too much pain then. He’d soon be back to his annoying familiar self: fidgeting, meddling, asking endless goddam questions, following him everywhere like a shadow, climbing on everything, talking too much, and talking too much nonsense.

Yeah, if you asked Goku about Sanzo’s strengths, Goku would probably talk some nonsense about him being brave. Yet, Sanzo knew the reality, that he was brave only through fear – through his fear of cowardice and of a sickening remorse which would prove fatal, either to his sanity or to his life. This was hardly a strength when its roots were planted so firmly in such weakness.

On the other hand, Hakkai would most likely say that one of Sanzo’s strengths was his determination – his stubbornness even. Yet, surely this too was only a strength so far. There came a point when, if he was honest, Sanzo himself knew that his stubbornness made him weak; it prevented him from adapting, from seizing other opportunities, from admitting things which he had come to know were indeed truths.

Gojyo might say that Sanzo was too damn smart, but Sanzo knew that he was only too damn smart for his own good: the layers of thinking and articulation and explanation and extrapolation made him feel stupid. His mind was too full of the clutter of being smart and too empty of the simple, balanced serenity which burned thin and clear like an all-consuming flame and which Koumyou Sanzo had always possessed to light his way.

Sanzo’s own way was still in darkness. The contradictions of the world Sanzo could rationalize well enough, but the dark paradoxes of his own heart continued to defeat him.

How could he “be strong” when his “strengths” worked against him, when even his faithfulness was a betrayal?

To be faithful to the fierce identity package he had constructed for the figure which the world knew as Genjyo Sanzo was to betray so much: the golden-eyed adoration of that idiot monkey, the patience of also-tortured Cho Hakkai, the generosity of the slack kappa and, above all – above all else in the whole of the universe – the gentle, serene and beautiful trust which his beloved master had had in him.

A wind had got up and was rattling the shutter softly against the outside of the building. Sanzo, who had been standing still by the bed, took a step away and leaned his back against the wall, clasping his hands to his elbows, inside his sleeves, for warmth.

Hadn’t the Three Aspects feared that Koumyou Sanzo had made a mistake in raising the ragged, purple-eyed boy, which he had been then, to the title of sanzo?

But Koumyou Sanzo only made mistakes when they were the right thing to do. So, even if Genjyo Sanzo’s appointment was a mistake – and gods knew it felt like it often enough! – it was one which Sanzo had to prove right.

Absolutely had to prove right. Which meant change, growth, release, uncertainty, vulnerability.

And the main obstacle to this was?

His strengths.

Somehow, he had to find the courage to overcome his strengths – the stubbornness, the faithfulness, the smartness, the “bravery”.

Otherwise, if he ever found that he did wake up one day with a heart, the failings of his strengths would break it beyond any repair. Beyond the chi of Hakkai. Beyond the muscles of Gojyo.

Beyond even the faith of his second shadow.

From the bed came the rustle of sheets as Goku stretched in his sleep, giving a slow, contented grunt, which Sanzo took as an affirmation.

The priest looked down at the unlined, slightly sticky, slightly smiling face under the diadem. The reservoir of wonder, which Sanzo kept a secret behind the walls of his cynicism, stirred as his gaze rested curiously on the oblivious features of Son Goku: so many years alive, so much other-worldly physical power, so little care!

And half a meat-bun still spilling its crumbs on the blanket. Messy animal! The monk pulled himself away from the wall and delicately removed the congealed and disgusting remains of the bun.

Sanzo didn’t need to find another reason to be strong but, if he ever wanted to show himself one, it was lying right there in its crumbs.

And, whatever “be strong” might mean, and whether he wanted it or not, that particular reason was likely to be with him – attached to him - for a long, long time to come.

Whether he would ever have the strength to break the attachment was a question for another day.









Skin Design by Amie of Intense-Illusions.net