Descendancy, Ascendancy

A wise and gentle monk in the denouement of his morning rituals 
thought to walk beyond the familiarity of the monastery's walls. 

The monastery itself did not require him to do so. 
There were animals for slaughter, plenty of grain, vegetables, 
clean water. Nor did they require clothing, furniture of 
any kind, nor psychological, nor medical assistance. 

The monk was guided by individualistic motives. 

A voice much like his own rose from the depth of 
his chakras, his being, commanding the monk to 
eavesdrop on the laypeople of the world to 
perhaps reconsider their vanity and the delusions 
thereof. 

This monk had lived several lives, and he thought about 
these as he made the journey from his temple 
to the larger, outer world. There was no deficit of errors 
in his history. He'd been a disobedient child and a thief 
and a liar. He'd been covetous, an adulterer, a scam artist. 

He'd yet to deprive another of their most critical breath, 

or even entertain the morbid possibility of violently renouncing 

his own, although the judicial gods that assign souls their 

fates would readily agree that such instances of bloodlust 

far exceeded halfcertainty had the monk not been reborn 

in this world and life 

and not some other, more vulnerable and more tempting one. 

The monk noted the presence of many 

things in the world: butterflies and insects 

moving in the brush and grass, automobiles 

manufactured by every great nation on Earth, 

driven by almost every description of human, 

the pulse and hum of time and activity 

that bursts from spontaneity and drives 

a predictable route to entropy no matter 

no matter no matter how many passengers 

add their fates to the eternity of shared legacy. 

The monk saw the humble routine of a God 

whose busy, adroit hands moved like chemistry, 

like hardwon physics in the play and scheme 

of the vast number of lives that Earth calls forth 

from the void 

to dance in the light of day, 

sing meaning to its neighbors. 

The monk arrived at that common, skyhigh house of commerce known 

as a mall. Its structure was sound and free of blemish and 

the monk could see & hear hundreds of people all drifting 

through the various shops and eateries and the more sizable 

outlets, or they were sitting on benches near fountains and 

planters, or they were exiting their cars or returning 

back to them. 

The monk knew idolatry and idle chatter were superfluous where he was. 

These were among his most reviled qualities of other humans. 

He noticed how the lesser character flaws often authored more 

grief than the wrath of disfigured psyches and the 

absolute unappeasability of the gluttonous combined. 

Small sins, small trespasses against development 

so frequently played as camouflage to 

their own disruption: the petty violators simply 

had to point to the epicly disastrous tragedies of life 

to assuage the misgivings of their noble, reasonable judges. 

The monk moved into a small crowd listening 

to a man give a lecture from a podium. 

The man was white, middleaged, and wore a clean 

buttondown shirt and handsome slacks and 

professionally polished shoes. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, 

"what I'm offering to you today is made in America, by 

Americans, and specifically for Americans. 

It's not some Ancient Russian trick made of dust 

and food-coloring. It's not some poly-named chemical 

synthesized in a jungle lab on some island where they 

still worship dinosaurs. 

It's a natural supplement. Put in the Earth by God. 

And it will make your boys jump higher and your girls study harder 

and pretty much everything excepting to remind you the day before 

trash pick-up..." This got a chuckle from the audience, 

all except the monk. The monk, rather, thought 

of tonic & elixir salesmen from the old days -- 

hustlers pushing one exotic brew after another 

on the impressionable, poor and ill-fated masses. 

Modern progress had relieved animals of burden 

from their ritual labor, and afforded humankind the means 

of communication to disseminate messages faster 

than the sun could shine in earlier centuries. Alas, 

the weakness of a mortal's heart was plagued by superstitions 

and inventions and outright lies and indefensible beliefs 

more pervasive than the logic of any benevolent creator. 

The monk studied the salesman/grifter with shrewd contempt. 

He'd learned, over the course of his lifetimes, which defilers had 

committed minor trespasses, and which ones were on a direct track 

for the sixth realm, the bottom one, the one of centuries of agony 

begat by the rude clingings of madmen and demented rapists 

and connivers who'd sell their own children if the lecherous 

voice within implored them to. 

This salesman was sure-money for the realm of hell-beings. 

He flamboyantly praised the doings of his "miracle supplement." 

He flirted with old ladies and amazed and delighted small children 

and drew curious-yet-tolerant glances from the men in the crowd 

whose better judgement told them to denounce 

the phoney doctor and his misguided prescriptions for health. 

But not the monk. The monk stared deeply into the salesman's 

cold, deathful eyes where the furnace of his cheap, undisciplined 

soul made fire and music for a fugitive martyr who disappeared 

everywhere logic entered and reigned. The monk, in some quantum 

flash of his interoceptive anatomy, penetrated the willful 

ignorance of the salesman and made him dumb and frozen 

where he stood. 

The monk was imbued with pride, and yet unswayed by arrogance 

or hubris or any other such foolishness. 

The monk felt the cloth of his robes 

and prayed Namaste to the soul it carried. 

And then he moved away from the crowd, 

thinking of the soft bed that awaited him. 

****