“Because we loved thee. It is only the fever of the blow. I myself am still sick and shaken.”
“No! It was because I was upon the Way—tuned as are si-nen (cymbals) to the purpose of the Law. I departed from that ordinance. The tune was broken: followed the punishment. In my own Hills, on the edge of my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the buffet—here!” (He touched his brow.) “As a novice is beaten when he misplaces the cups, so am I beaten, who was Abbot of Such-zen. No word, look you, but a blow, chela.”
“But the Sahibs did not know thee, Holy One?”
“We were well matched. Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust upon the road, and they begat Anger. The blow was a sign to me, who am no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. Who can read the Cause of an act is halfway to Freedom! ‘Back to the path,’ says the Blow. ‘The Hills are not for thee. Thou canst not choose Freedom and go in bondage to the delight of life.’”
“Would we had never met that cursed Russian!”
“Our Lord Himself cannot make the Wheel swing backward. And for my merit that I had acquired I gain yet another sign.” He put his hand in his bosom, and drew forth the Wheel of Life. “Look! I considered this after I had meditated. There remains untorn by the idolater no more than the breadth of my fingernail.”
“I see.”
“So much, then, is the span of my life in this body. I have served the Wheel all my days. Now the Wheel serves me. But for the merit I have acquired in guiding thee upon the Way, there would have been added to me yet another life ere I had found my River. Is it plain, chela?”
Kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. From left to right diagonally the rent ran—from the Eleventh House where Desire gives birth to the Child (as it is drawn by Tibetans)—across the human and animal worlds, to the Fifth House—the empty House of the Senses. The logic was unanswerable.
“Before our Lord won Enlightenment”—the lama folded all away with reverence—“He was tempted. I too have been tempted, but it is finished. The Arrow fell in the Plains—not in the Hills. Therefore, what make we here?”