THE TEMPLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
I have devoted more than one day simply to the discovery of it, ensconced upon its steep cliff of black rock, and it is not till late afternoon that I know myself to be upon the right path. From the giddy height where I climb, the wide rice-fields seem designed like a chart. The brink along which I move is so narrow that whenever I lift my right foot it is poised over the yellow expanse of the sown village fields spread out like a carpet below.
Silence. By an ancient staircase covered with a hoary lichen I descend in the pungent shade of the bay-trees, and, as the footpath at this turning is suddenly barred by a wall, I arrive at a closed door. I listen. No word, no voice, no drum! In vain I shake the wooden handle of the door, and beat upon it rudely with both hands.
Not even a bird cries as I scale the wall.
This place is inhabited after all; and while, sitting upon the balustrade where domestic linen is drying, I sink my teeth and fingers into the thick rind of a haddock stolen from the offerings, the old monkinside prepares me a cup of tea. Neither the inscription above the door nor the dilapidated idols who are honored with a thin spire of incense in the depths of this humble cave seem to me to constitute the religion of the place, any more than the acid fruit that I munch; but here—on this low platform, which incloses a piece of muslin,—this circular straw mat where thebhikuwill come soon to squat for meditation or sleep—is everything.
Let me compare this vast countryside, which opens out before me as far as the double wall of mountains and clouds, to a flower of which this seat is the mystic heart. Is it not the geometric center where the scene, united into an harmonious whole, virtually takes on existence and a consciousness of itself; and where, to the studious contemplation of the occupant, all lines converge?
The sun sets. I clamber up the steps of velvet whiteness where open pine-cones are strewn like roses.