Day Twelve: Water and wine

I met Rainbow at the Yongning subway station. We drove to my last crunching at the chiropractor. We then decided to visit the town spa which had natural hot springs. There were hardly any people. It had every kind of water faucet imaginable. It wasn’t terribly clean but it wasn’t terribly expensive. For two hours, we moved from one experience of water to another. 

The Taipei subways are clean, bright, and wide.  People speak on cellphones but in voices so quiet you don’t hear anything but the whirr of the electric wheels. It was meditative to ride the subways, very respectful to the citizens.

When I told Rosa yesterday that I was planning to shop for a big suitcase for the Kwan Yin crown that Mr. Sun had given me, she told me to come by her office. She then gave me the largest suitcase I’d ever seen in my life. “Whew,” she said. “I never thought I’d get rid of it! Its disappearance is almost like having a new room. Thanks for carrying it away.”

Later that evening I arrived by myself at a banquet for Monkey King’s birthday. Jeremy was already there. Mrs. Lin introduced me to their daughter , Jasmine who translated for me. There were people of all ages, including young men with good appetites. I wanted to make a donation to the Temple but Mr Lin refused.

Jasmine told me that her father had a gift for me. “It is very special. He says you are kindred spirits so he wants you to have it. If you wear it all the time, your project will succeed.” Mr. Lin came over and asked Jasmine to translate. “There are ten dimensions,” he said. “We see only two. Buddha sees ten; the other gods see seven or eight. Sound waves allow us to see more. Monkey King is a god because we believe he has power. People pray to him for what they want.” My father wants you to know that whatever you dream of you should do.”

It was an impossible journey that the Tang Priest Tripitaka set out on. How was he to travel by himself with one servant 108,000 miles across huge mountains that reached into the skies through blizzards, raging storms, enormous rivers? In reality, it was not possible. It could only be dreamed of. Or set out upon. For me, the story of Monkey King is above all about dream and determination. Perhaps these masters understood that if I’d come from the other side of the world, I was on a quest.  The quest I began to realize was similar to that of Tripitaka—to understand more profoundly the nature of reality.