copyright © 2019 Ctopher Thomas
Remote Civilizations
In perfect weather that has been paradise for centuries, there is a group of beings that are envied through the galaxy over. These are the remnants of the buddhist monks from the twenty first century.
Being highly skilled in self control they have mastered the art of thinking, meditation, and the fruit of having done such is that they have become skilled in making of music, art, poetry, and are also exceptionally gifted writers.
After the war, most other civilizations had died off, or self destructed with a very high cost to their beings. Now in the late twenty-fifth century something has started to happen.
Peace has dwelled with me since the day that I was born. It’s been a kind world. Mostly because people have become kind in thought and deed and that the traces of hate and vile deeds has been wiped out for some three hundred and fifty years.
We have had the time to do our homework so to speak. We have found a happy balance of life, our work, and being compassionate. I’ve heard the world wasn’t always this way, but those records are sealed at the interior and no one is allowed to review them, mostly because we don’t want to go back to living and destroying ourself.
We are a happy people, our thoughts are good. Our actions are good. And in all that we do or plan there is good results that come from our actions.
The last hundred years have been a golden age of pure reason, for art, music, poetry, love, and social equality that the world may have never seen before.
We have advanced as a whole in technology and at our ability to add value to living each day. It seems everyone makes progress still despite having what many would consider a perfect system. Somehow it seems to always get better, every few years something changes and we look at wonder at how we didn’t know that already.
My parents named me after people that brought peace in the twenty-second centuries. My name is Luke Von Nance. Father a humble monk of the Shallot order is Vinderbock his parents thought he was a sour as vinegar. Mother thinks he is a sweetheart, the way he brings her fresh flowers every morning after having meditated for higher purpose. I think he finds his purpose in my mother.
Having a strong family in easy times is a cake walk. Some of the people that lived in the twenty-first century had broken families and bitter resentment and hated even among those that were living under the same roof.
Things are different now. Let us not speak of such things anymore, I fear that my thoughts of the past do not effect my soul for the better. The thoughts of my present situation have a better effect upon my psyche.
Today is nothing short of perfect. I hold no resentment towards any sentient being in this world. As my actions would show that there is perfect melody of peace within my being. And of truly awful things we leave those to the humans of the past.
Those who are dead and gone, not only in deed but memory. Their evil perished with them, and they are not remembered in this world any longer. They only speak of the hurt from the past, that living had become so painful that it’s a miracle that we survived as beings through the periods of time that we have.
Tomorrow will be the day my life changes from childhood to becoming a man. It will be the Thirteenth birthday for me, and though I am young; my skills in reasoning, meditation, self control, and peace have been instructed to me since birth.
This does not mean that I’m perfect, there is always something new to learn. However the Shallot monks of Sundogmingo know that the only learning and experience that I can gain now is what life choices I make in my life from these days forward.
Although no one is ever certain in life, there are things that I can look forward to with a satisfaction of knowing. Unless I should fall from the top of a roof while wild wolves run at the bottom of the castle; no harm will ever befall me.
I will grow from my present into a full eighty years or more before life departs upon my perfect life. I can lay my head down at night with the knowledge that when I awake I will have a full day of life ahead of me, and that it will be worthy of having lived it.
If there is one piece of knowledge that I have ever learned it is this; that love always sets you free. It does not enslave or seek to oppress others.
And as I close my eyes tonight to sleep peacefully I know that I will find happiness in my life, it has already began and tomorrow it will be confirmed with the SunDogMingo and Ma and Pa.
Chapter Two
Life unlike a dream has a certainty that can not be mistaken. The light coming in through the east window and the cool breeze that blows through the rooms west wing.
I wash my face and dress in my blue robe. Then with my head held high, but with a lowered gaze, walk into the west wing where Ma and Pa are waiting for me to appear.
“Doesn’t he look splendid today?” Ma asks Pa with flowers in her hand and a smile upon her face. “Yes, he does look dashingly radiant today.” Pa adds with glee in his step.
we eat a simple meal for breakfast, whole grains and fruit from a tree we have only one name for, which we call red white meat. The skin of the fruit is red, but once pealed it has a white fragrant meat to it. We eat them whole, and digest the seeds.
Today I will stand with the others in my group that are of the same age, with a ceremony to acknowledge my change from being a boy to becoming a man. It’s a simple day with simple pleasures to be found in living and the enjoyment of new experiences.
We walk across the plaza of Del-lima to be greeted by the others. I see a crowd of some fifty people gathered together. Together thirteen of us stand upon the stage and look out at the audience before us.
There is Nat Hanh on my left, Alexey II on my right, and his right are the twins Wayne and Bruce. On their right are Smyth, Wallingford, Grigori. On his right is Gregor, Mark, and Lucas. Griff the tallest and Benedict are furthest from me, even though we have been closest friends since I could ever remember.
It starts in a low chant, ‘O, ‘O, ‘Om. Gradually getting louder and louder and standing here now, this moment in my life seeing my friends with me, my loving neighbors in front of me, and the chanting I know that my life though pleasant will never be dull.
The chanting ended with the throwing of the balls at the fifth stanza of ‘O, ‘O ‘Om. Then we all chanted, “Om Mani Padme, Hum” for a cycle of forty-two seconds. Thereby completing a total of one minute and thirty seconds of what flashed before my eyes even while trying to slow time down, it went by all too quickly.
I had seen it while growing up, that these big men stood on stage and where celebrated by the whole gathering of SunDogMingo. Today looking at it from my eyes, I see the passing of a child and birth of a man.
Though I will live with Ma and Pa some six more years into the future. Which seems so certain for me that any other idea would be absurd.
Now we distribute through the town and in the morning we will all be assigned our stations of employment to SunDogMingo and what our responsibilities will be in the years to come.
In my peace, in the serenity of the moment; the facts did not register with me. It did not feel a lie, there was no untruth in my heart or mind. And of the village only truth was to be found.
A simple people with simplicity without needless absurdity. In the morning we would begin to work as under scans of the order in ways which are more than two thousand years old.
Chapter Three
Sitting in my final day of passing into manhood, while in meditation of the navel fruit, I discovered that perhaps something had changed within me. It is more than just a feeling, it’s a continuum of thoughts that have summed together in my life to form a new thought, and a new feeling within my breast.
The thought is atman. But the feeling is a fire that burns like a furnace with boiling water that the fire flies up and licks the water bowl clean. And then I knew the passing of my childhood a certainty and that my manhood was not only truly beginning, but evolving.
After ending my meditation, I walk to the family study, where Ma and Pa are. “There is a roaring fire within me, oh Pa will it consume me?” I exclaim upon walking into the room. Then Ma and Pa rush to my side and hold me tight, then Pa says, “We know son, we all have this fire within us. It’s who we are, it’s why we are here, and it gives us our strength, our might, and our peace.”
Then Ma takes me by the hand and sits down upon the sofa, and she says, “Now we know that you are our son, for the fire doesn’t lie, neither does the force by which we live.”
Pa still standing looks within my eyes and searching says, “You can learn to control it, to master it; to let it guide you, to protect you, to always guard you, and to be stronger than you will ever imagine.”
“It is Atman”, Ma says to me, “And now that we know, we can be sure that these are truths that we have been blessed and loved.” Pa walks through the study, doing something I hadn’t known of before, brings forth something I have never seen as if by unknown power.
Pa takes what seems to be a black box on five sides with a lightbox in the front of it, and using his finger touches the light several times then holds the box close to his ear.
“He’s ready. We can be certain. He will report tomorrow morning as we had planned. Only spare the report, and mark him for average.” Then he placed the black box back within a fold in his garment and looks at me. Then the question in my mind could not be spared, for I asked without thinking, “I’m not average am I really?”
“No son, not average. But many will have questions that need not be answered now. It’s best to keep this a private matter, we do not speak of this to the others.”
With just a look I could see that it was time for my next training and I bowed twice, once to each of my parents and excused myself to holy absolutions.
Twice my mind calculated the distance. The span of time that stretched from this morning until the moment of my awaking. It was not more than sixteen hours today. It had been one hundred and fifty-six months since I was born into this world, yet today felt like the first day of life for me.
It’s more than a feeling, it’s a living force that flows through every living, time, space, existence; if it was something you could physically see it would flow through all matter and anti-matter.
Chapter Four
Yellow leaves, blowing upon the walk; through the air and upon the branches of trees. Autumn, like a silent Om driven in. It’s not resistance to change, it is acceptance of more than star systems in flux. Ma says the tree’s are called Maidenhair tree; they have such pretty leaves in the fall.
I stretch my mind often. Sometimes slowing time and covering great distance while moving no further than in a sitting position that is motionless. The experience leaves one to ponder, there is more to life than superficial existence.
When thoughts are not painful, one is free to experience the joy of freedom of thought, and make gains from its value. Such is the life of the SunDogMingo. We simply extract the force through the fire and bring forth pure reason.
There were many things that people argued about in the late twenty first century. However pure reason can not be condemned. It what is accepted after the ash has been separated from the iron. We keep the iron, and use the ash to make soap.