User:Gavinnauss/Ottoman Empire

The wind and the rain come at his call; Undying Wind is their master.

They say that he wanders the lands of this holy Earth, seeking his moksha that, after all his mortal years, he has yet to attain. He has been to the great capitals of China and India and Siam, and he spoke to the lords and ladies there; they could offer him no insight. And he has been in the great forests of the Himalayas, and the distant jungles of the Lao and the Khmer, and he spoke to the tigers and the elephants there; they could offer him no insight. It is a surety that he has climbed everyone of the mountains we can see here, and that he has climbed yet an infinity more, and he has spoken to the spirits and the gods that reside in those high places; yet again, they could offer him no insight.

He is an old man, it is certain, for I can remember my grandfather speaking of him with the same fondness and mystery that I do, and how his own father had met him at the monastery that is not far from here, on the first day of his journey. But, today, my grandfather is dead, his father longer so, and I myself have grown to an elder age. But, regardless of everything, Undying Wind still wanders, perhaps two generations after any mortal’s end.

My great-grandfather, as I have told you, met Undying Wind on the first day of his journey; he was – like my grandfather, my father, myself, and my descendents – a shepherd, and he had come to the monastery to trade goat’s milk in exchange for corn and rice, as he customarily did every ten moons. But, in contrast to the monastery’s usual peace and calm, a great conflict and tension was floating in the air. The monks seemed restless, and there were noises like shouting coming from the interior places where the scriptures are learned, the rituals are exercised, the arts are taught, and which no common man may see. My great-grandfather – Careful Monkey, as he was called – was a tame man, and not one to question events of a sensitive nature, but this strange air over the monastery was enough to make even him stand up and accost one of the monks for the story. The monk, rightly offended, explained to Careful Monkey that a pupil of the monastery had broken the rules by penetrating the library before he was ready. (A library, of course, is a room filled with books, and the secrets of the books can only be unlocked by those well-versed in the art of reading. But, you see, Undying Wind was not supposed to be proficient enough as a reader in order to read a book.)

In the library, as the good monk reluctantly explained to my rude ancestor, this young pupil – Undying Wind, of course – had not only managed to read the books, but he had managed to learn things from them, and these were things that no other monk since the founding of that place had ever mastered. Undying Wind had, in his youth, attained power over the currents of the air, and over the direction of the precipitation, and even over such things as the heat of the Sun on any given day, or the moisture of the soul, or the tremors that sometimes rumble in the ground. With great candour and pride, Undying Wind had approached the cabot and demanded that he take control of the monastery, for he had become more learned than any other within its walls.

What happened, you ask?

Well, calm yourselves down, little ones, and let me explain!

The cabot demanded that Undying Wind “unlearn” his new skills, but, as anyone of any sense will tell you, it is very hard to forget something once you know it. You don’t understand what I mean by this? Then I will give you an example: I would like you all to clear your head and your thoughts of rivers.

It is impossible, is it not?

Yes, yes, such is true, and Undying Wind informed the cabot that he could not remove knowledge from his head, and that even if he could, he wouldn’t; it was asinine to destroy knowledge, when knowledge was the only reason to exist. But, the cabot, calm in the face of Undying Wind’s anger, asked him if knowledge was power.

Undying Wind said that it was.

The cabot asked if ignorance was bliss.

Undying Wind said that it was, though he was more reluctant this time.

The cabot asked which Undying Wind wanted to pursue: bliss or power.

After a long pause, Undying Wind screamed that it was bliss that he desired, but that there was still no way that he could remove the knowledge from his mind. At the top of his prepubescent voice, Undying Wind demanded that the cabot step down and offer him his authority, or said authority would be taken.

The cabot, rising but ever-tranquil, said that anything could be done by anyone who wished to achieve it. There was a long pause, and Undying Wind attacked. I have heard many stories in regards to their battle: some have said that they fought for many hours, and that Undying Wind was eventually defeated, but it spent the old cabot’s remaining life force to best him; some have said that it was short, and that the cabot let Undying Wind kill him, when it had only been his any attention to defeat. I do not believe these stories, for they have shown the cabot to be a man of unimaginable wisdom and control, to be a guru among the ranks of Buddha. This could never been the case. Instead, I believe my great-grandfather’s tale – which was, in fact, the offended monk’s tale – which accounts the cabot as having been taken completely by surprise, as having defending himself vigorously for a few minutes, and then as having fallen to Undying Wind’s hand when his technique collapsed under panic. He was a good man, but he was not a guru, because no monk could have disobeyed the command of a guru.

Undying Wind proceeded to yell at all the monks in the monastery to respect him, but they did not, and this was the yelling that my ancestor Careful Monkey heard. Frustrated, but wise enough not to spill the blood of anyone else, Undying Wind stormed out of that place, and he whisked by Careful Monkey, and my great-grandfather said he was stared in the eye, and how he did not see those powerful, hard eyes you might expect in a killer, but, instead, he saw the eyes of someone lost, like the frozen eyes of the young goats that had wandered from the flock and been torn apart by the wild beasts.

Undying Wind and Careful Monkey had no other encounter; the former left for far lands, like the desert-realm from where I have heard a Kache say their prophet Mohammed descends, and even the homelands of those white men who rule the ports of India, and lands that I believe may not even exist, like “the jungles of the black men,” and “the inland seas,” and where great monsters live on the land and in the sea. In comparison, my great-grandfather the latter remained, and he died, as did his son, and his son after that, and, in the coming years, I will die, too. And, though you may have much more time than myself, know too that you will die, too. It isn’t that it’s unavoidable, but it’s that it shouldn’t be avoided.

Undying Wind sought power, whereas Careful Monkey sought happiness; Undying Wind lived, and Careful Monkey died. But is it not better to die happy than to live powerful? For, if you haven’t noticed, Undying Wind controls the wind and the rain, the snow and the quakes, and all the weather in between. And yet, I do not think he has ever used this power, because if he had, we would be destroyed, no? Undying Wind is no longer among us because the path to power is the path to separation, and he is so separate as to remove himself from even the cycles of life and death. In comparison, the path to happiness is the path to integration. Follow it, children, and your lives will be complete.