(Spring of 2026, Kodai, Raj)
Life happens on the slopes of the
mountains. Not the peaks.
Peaks are for the eagles & for
the views.
Not for life.
Not for zen.
It is merely incidental that
peaks exist invariably where the slopes exist. There is no real need for those
peaks. Maybe except for these slopes to angle towards.
On the slopes of Perumal Malai,
which is itself a slope towards the larger peaks of Kodaikanal in a way, one
can see life. Monkeys & peacocks can co-exist. Of course, arguments happen
& get resolved in their due course. Pine trees grow high into the sky. They
make up for the little shelter they provide by making for a beautiful landscape.
Birds chirp the whole day and insects dominate the nights. Farms grow around
the forests and a naïve eye sees all of it as a just a lot of greenery, lacking
for words to do any justice to what it perceives.
You can have small villages on
those slopes as well and have people in those villages. Just like any other
kind of people, the mountain people have their lives and livelihoods, and kids.
And the kids can have their own dreams, like pursuing hot a career and living a
rich life in a rich city, a glamourous life. No harm done, but the monkey and
the peacocks know nothing of these dreams. They have other things to care
about.
These slopes are a good place for
a monastery, there are enough hillocks, nooks and corners in the valley, and
villages nearby for necessities. Maybe even a good place for a garden around
the monastery, call it a zen garden. Since this is a slope and not a peak, one
can have zen here.
Now, once one calls it a zen
garden, then it must be cared for. And caring for a zen garden requires people
to do the caring, given the monkeys are too distracted to do any real work, and
the birds, too beautiful. Of course one cannot have any kind of people, one
needs the kind of people who care about gardens. Not gardeners because rare is
a gardener who cares about the garden for itself, rather than the consequences
of tending to the garden.
What’s required is the kind of
people who’d care for the garden for the garden’s sake. For caring’s sake.
These are the kind of people that
must be attracted to the gardens, hence the need for a monastery. There is more
to a monastery though. Caring for a garden is a subtle thing. The people doing
this must know about “Quality” that goes into any kind of real caring. Caring
of this sort cannot just be instructed to people, cannot be a training regime. It
must come to people, as much as people reaching for it. One must be raised into
it. Like how there is a certain way to raise children for the child’s happiness’
sake alone, and they somehow tend do good for the world they were raised to
live it. However, it is not a stretch to imagine that, if you raise children
for the good of the world, you end up in a dystopia a few generations down the
line. In other words, you create certain conditions for the flower to blossom,
you don’t blossom the flower in any direct way. That is the way of Tao.
So for this garden to exist as a
zen garden, it needs people who grow up to care. And caring for the Gardens on
the slopes of Perumal Malai must be a natural consequence. At least, that is
all that these people need to know. They don’t need to realize that this is the
whole purpose for them to exist. Enlightenment is too much to ask for.
At any rate, these people need to
be zen people to fit the bill. Hence they need a zendo to do the zen in, and a
master to guide them on how to. Well, a master to tell them that there is
nothing to guide towards.
They need to become part of the
same nature that the garden lives in and contributes to. The walking sessions
in the early morning chill before the sunrise are important because one needs
to see how the garden is filled with the fog at that time. How the birds chirp
and Koyilas sing so incessantly that, one realizes, they are all really desperate
for romance out there. And these people definitely need to drench in the afternoon
drizzles and taste the juicy Sapota served for lunch. They need to
venture out in the dark into that garden, realize it is a bit too spooky for
them, at least the first dozen times before they see how darkness can be a good
place to be in, when you cry your heart out.
A library is a must, for how does
realize when they see Quality if they don’t know stories of people who have
come to realize it in various ways. And those books are best read in a garden
tended to by the hands holding the book, meandering about, around the muddy paths
and grasslands, looking at the cloud filled valley and wondering what they just
read, about how this whole zen thing is so close to absolute nihilism and how
they’d jump off this cliff someday unless they are very careful.
In short, these people need to
live like the garden, become part of its nature.
And they definitely need to
meditate for hours together to empty out all the dirt they accumulated during
the hasty months and years dwelling in crowded cities. The bells come and go
without anything to show for it, and as the silent retreat loses the energy of
the starting days but it is still too early for conclusions, people don’t know
where they stand anymore. Whether they should pack up and run away, or become a
monk for good.
But all that mental energy, it
needs to drain away, leaving a blank slate so that they have space for the Quality
required in the minds, for the garden to exist. So they need that middle part
where nothing goes nowhere, a slope to navigate. And it is tricky business,
this whole letting it happen thing, and again, the master is useless here – but
that is his purpose. To show how futile any kind of striving can be, especially
the kind where you expect answers from an enlightened being. They do have a
track record of talking people away from cliffs though.
The whole point then, is for
these so called zen meditators to become worthy of caring for a zen garden,
which also hopefully makes them worthy enough to hang around in it, to be
worthy of marvelling that such a thing of beauty can exist.
Well, the monkeys and peacocks
have little use for people or their zen, they just like to hang around the
fences and tree tops, snacking on the compost bin and berries. The squirrels
surely don’t.
For it is all about the ponds and
the fishes in them – swirling around in drastic shades of orange, blues and
dark black. The fishes are alright, they get to look at the fog all the morning
if they like, and enjoy the crystal clear water, chilly at nights and lukewarm
on sunny mornings. Some lucky days, a fat beetle or a worm may slip into the
depths and there would be a feast to last for days. They are alright, though
some dry breadcrumbs from these human servers tastes good too.
It is about the frogs feasting on
insects. and the sounds of an old Beatles song vibrating from a guitar practice
in a corner. Lovers looking to steal a kiss away from prying eyes of senior
meditators who warned the couple well before the start of the retreat, and old
men in pyjamas crossing perimeters, hoping no one catches the scent of the Beedi.
Lots of corners and secrets in the garden for stories to happen and to be
forgotten before the day runs its course.
The stone gardens are alright
too. People fuss about the patterns in the sand drawn meticulously by these
meditators, and the pretensions of inspirations all well tolerated by all
concerned. It is a nice touch of course, but it is about those stones really,
some placed symmetrically in the center of the patterns, some just about
scattered randomly.
And maybe it is about how
everything so random falls so perfectly into place in time.
