Read Online The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tan Twan Eng
Ads: Link
does to you, those are beyond my influence.”
Each lesson with him would be concluded by a half-hour session of meditation— zazen, sitting Zen. It was to free my mind, to achieve what he termed the “Void.” What exasperated him, though, was my inability to master this. It was hard to think of nothing and yet not think at all. Try as I might, I found it elusive. It frustrated me, as I wanted to show him that I could accomplish what appeared to me to be the easiest thing of all. Surely I had done enough of that in school to make me an expert?
“Picture your breath as a long slender string,” he said. “Now draw it in when you breathe, draw it deep. Beyond your lungs, right into the spot just below your navel, your tanden. Pause, let it swirl around and then imagine it being pulled out again as you exhale. That is all you think about in zazen —later, as you progress, you will not even think about that at all. You will not even notice your breath. Later on.”
It drove me mad, just sitting there in the Japanese way, my legs tucked under my buttocks. Inevitably my attention would drift away, a deluge of thoughts and images would crash into my mind and I would lose the thread.
But those were magical days, just before the threads that bound the world became unraveled. Europe was going to war, and Japan was setting up its puppet regime in Manchuria as a launching pad into a defenseless China. Dark days were coming. But for the moment the sun still shone on Malaya, on the endless rows of rubber trees, and on the tin mines with their melancholic lunar landscape, where the coarse and tough immigrant Hakka coolies crouched in muddy pools and sieved through tons of earth and water to find some tiny granules of tin ore. There were still parties to attend, weekend trips to Penang Hill, picnics by the beach . . .
Endo-san hit my back with his palm and I hurriedly tried to retrieve my own tangled thread.
I sat facing the sea, the waves rolling to the shore like the ticking of a natural clock. “Look out there,” he said, pointing to the horizon. “Do you see the spot where the ocean meets the sky? Sitting here, you think that spot is fixed. Yet as soon as you move, even an inch, that spot moves. That is where you must put your mind, that place where air and water meet.”
And then I understood what he wanted and, for the first time, I managed to achieve a state of total awareness, even if for just a few seconds. For that short period of time I was there at the spot, yet I was everywhere too. Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.
Chapter Four
Captain Francis Light obtained the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah, with dreams of turning it into a vital British port. He named it Georgetown, after the King of England. By the time I was born the original settlement had grown into a warren of streets stretching from the Quayside into the fringes of the thick, undisturbed jungle.
Georgetown was divided into sections according to race. The British took the best part, naturally. Hence the waterfront was dominated by Fort Cornwallis and the armed forces’ camps. The offices of the East India Company, Hutton & Sons, Empire Trading, the Chartered Bank, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank were all located within the vicinity of Beach Street.
Further in, the town was divided into Chinese, Indian, and Malay quarters. Each had its own characteristics, its own temples, clan associations, guilds, and mosques. The streets, all with English names but for a handful of exceptions, were narrow and hemmed in by shophouses on both sides. The shops at street level sold goods from China, India, England, and the various islands of the Malay Archipelago. Traders and their families lived their entire lives here; it was common for three generations to reside in the same building, and as Endo-san and I walked along Campbell Road we could hear the
Each lesson with him would be concluded by a half-hour session of meditation— zazen, sitting Zen. It was to free my mind, to achieve what he termed the “Void.” What exasperated him, though, was my inability to master this. It was hard to think of nothing and yet not think at all. Try as I might, I found it elusive. It frustrated me, as I wanted to show him that I could accomplish what appeared to me to be the easiest thing of all. Surely I had done enough of that in school to make me an expert?
“Picture your breath as a long slender string,” he said. “Now draw it in when you breathe, draw it deep. Beyond your lungs, right into the spot just below your navel, your tanden. Pause, let it swirl around and then imagine it being pulled out again as you exhale. That is all you think about in zazen —later, as you progress, you will not even think about that at all. You will not even notice your breath. Later on.”
It drove me mad, just sitting there in the Japanese way, my legs tucked under my buttocks. Inevitably my attention would drift away, a deluge of thoughts and images would crash into my mind and I would lose the thread.
But those were magical days, just before the threads that bound the world became unraveled. Europe was going to war, and Japan was setting up its puppet regime in Manchuria as a launching pad into a defenseless China. Dark days were coming. But for the moment the sun still shone on Malaya, on the endless rows of rubber trees, and on the tin mines with their melancholic lunar landscape, where the coarse and tough immigrant Hakka coolies crouched in muddy pools and sieved through tons of earth and water to find some tiny granules of tin ore. There were still parties to attend, weekend trips to Penang Hill, picnics by the beach . . .
Endo-san hit my back with his palm and I hurriedly tried to retrieve my own tangled thread.
I sat facing the sea, the waves rolling to the shore like the ticking of a natural clock. “Look out there,” he said, pointing to the horizon. “Do you see the spot where the ocean meets the sky? Sitting here, you think that spot is fixed. Yet as soon as you move, even an inch, that spot moves. That is where you must put your mind, that place where air and water meet.”
And then I understood what he wanted and, for the first time, I managed to achieve a state of total awareness, even if for just a few seconds. For that short period of time I was there at the spot, yet I was everywhere too. Spirit expanded, mind unfurling open, heart in flight.
Chapter Four
Captain Francis Light obtained the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah, with dreams of turning it into a vital British port. He named it Georgetown, after the King of England. By the time I was born the original settlement had grown into a warren of streets stretching from the Quayside into the fringes of the thick, undisturbed jungle.
Georgetown was divided into sections according to race. The British took the best part, naturally. Hence the waterfront was dominated by Fort Cornwallis and the armed forces’ camps. The offices of the East India Company, Hutton & Sons, Empire Trading, the Chartered Bank, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank were all located within the vicinity of Beach Street.
Further in, the town was divided into Chinese, Indian, and Malay quarters. Each had its own characteristics, its own temples, clan associations, guilds, and mosques. The streets, all with English names but for a handful of exceptions, were narrow and hemmed in by shophouses on both sides. The shops at street level sold goods from China, India, England, and the various islands of the Malay Archipelago. Traders and their families lived their entire lives here; it was common for three generations to reside in the same building, and as Endo-san and I walked along Campbell Road we could hear the
Similar Books
