The Zenith Read Online Free

unwieldly curiosity obsesses him: Is it possible that they don’t feel pain and fear? Is it possible that they are completely detached from the feelings and needs of a normal person? That they hold no desire or anger; feel neither affection nor hatred, elation nor discouragement? No wishful anxiety; neither happy nor hopeless. Their lives flow like water in a canal—no falls or storms. If their lives really are that bland, he thinks, it would be an unimaginably heavy burden.
    Every time he looked at the faces, as calm as still water, of the two women in the temple, this question returns like a refrain—a math problem without a solution.
    “Mr. President, you should not stand in the wind too long,” says the chubby soldier who has just finished cleaning the two rooms and now stands behind him.
    “Don’t worry. I want to get some fresh air.”
    Then he looks at the bucket full of dead ephemera in his hands, and says: “Oh, there are so many night butterflies…”
    “Yes. Because it’s warm.”
    Suddenly the wind stops, then, as if by some coincidence, the sounds of the wooden bells and the praying stop as well. The branches of the plum trees are no longer moved by the wind, staying still as if fixed by a curse. After a split second, the old nun walks out of the temple, followed by her assistant.
    The president asks: “Your Reverence, today you pray past noon?”
    Each time he sees the abbess, he speaks first to greet her. When he was a young child, his mother had taught him to respect those older than he. The nun is possibly in her eighties, so she must be at least seven years older. Though she is small and slight, she is still quite strong and thoroughly alert.
    The nun turns to the president and replies, “Sir, this morning we cast the I Ching and learned that a misfortune would befall the people in the area, so we had to pray sufficiently for their protection.”
    “Then, Your Reverence, those with unlucky fortunes will be saved?”
    “Sir, we cannot answer that. Whether those marked for danger will live or not depends totally on their inherited karma and their preordained destiny. We pray to ask that the Buddhas alleviate their bad fortune somewhat. If their destiny is still weighted down with this world, then we ask for them a quick recovery so they may return to their families and share this life with their wives and children. If their current destiny has reached its end, we ask for them a quick liberation, so that they can leave this worldly existence without too much pain and suffering, allowing their families and loved ones to feel some relief, and they themselves to benefit from the good karma that will bring them to a quick reincarnation into their next lives.”
    The president remains quiet, but thinks, “If it is so, then the praying does not really help humanity that much.”
    As if she guesses his secret thought, the old nun continues: “Mr. President, you are a country-saving hero, the great father of the land, the one whom we Vietnamese completely respect and to whom we are grateful. From another perspective, we are cloistered: we live in a world in which leaders like you don’t live; we believe in things you neither know nor trust. That’s why, with your permission, I would like not to reply to questions that we cannot answer.”
    “Your Reverence, please don’t take offense. My concerns don’t merit any attention, I only wish to fully understand the Buddhist scriptures.”
    “You will if you are so destined.”
    “But if I am not…” He lets out a question he cannot stop: “If I don’t have such a destiny?”
    The old nun smiles, not offended by the question, which is a bit provocative: “Sir, if you are not destined, you will never understand, even if you read a thousand sutras in ten thousand volumes, or if you sit a thousand times to hear erudite sermons.”
    After speaking, the nun points her hand toward the western part of the valley, where a mountain ridge runs straight in