it is the same

A different part of the river. I’m in white robes, sitting on a rock across the river from the only limestone formation without growth. It is grayish tan with one tall chimney and shorter columns to its right.

I am apprehensive, as usual. Trying to experience and trying to learn, not comfortable with either. I don’t want to ask anyone to show up, but I’m sick of no one to talk to.

A bald man appears from the rock. Relief wells up that there is still something here for me and I fight the emotion that comes with doubting abundance and finding it anyway.

The karst isn’t a just a formation, it’s his abode. He’s smiling, his eyes nearly closed. For many uncomfortable seconds, he becomes a cartoon I imagine drawing.

He sits on a boulder in front of his home, one leg tucked underneath him, the other hugging the curve of the stone. I’m tense watching him sit like that (won’t his legs go numb? won’t he have to keep adjusting his spot?), but he is relaxed.

Are you a monk?

YES.

Did I summon you?

I BROUGHT YOU HERE.

Why?

I WANTED YOU TO SEE.

See what?

He just keeps smiling.

My impatience creeps up on me. I stretch out this time, though I am hungry and tired, not asking questions.

He gets up.

No, he’s still sitting on the boulder.

But … he also rises and heads inside.

I feel I am forcing this multitasking on him.

Did I do this?

He just smiles from his boulder, while inside, he folds a cloth into a neat square and places it on a low-hanging wood mantle next to a steaming cup of tea. He sits in a chair facing the mantle with his head bowed to the cup, but doesn’t drink it.

This seems like a later trajectory of his day.

He is still smiling with his eyes closed from the boulder.

Is it the same? You sitting on that boulder, you with your tea. Meditation, repose, action?

IT IS THE SAME.

I don’t know if those are my words. I suspect they are. If they are, am I meant to understand they’re the same as if he said them? I don’t like that.

Perhaps in response, the monk on his boulder makes a circle with his index finger and his thumb.

My view is suddenly closer: He’s trapped a butterfly in his pinch.

Closer still, zooming right in on his hand, and I see he isn’t touching the butterfly at all.

It is frozen mid-flight, its wing suspended between his fingerprints.