The Path (23 page)

The Dalai Lama held up his hands. “No, no, Duncan MacLeod,” he said. “Teaching is never a hardship. For what other purpose
am I here, yes? These hours in the garden are a joy in my day. But now there are preparations to be made that eat away at
the time I would spend doing other things.”

The young man crossed over to the stone bench where he habitually sat. As he took his place, he breathed a deep sigh and lifted
his face to the sun.

“Ah,” he said, “it feels good to sit in the warmth and the quiet, yes?”

Duncan nodded as he, too, sat in the dapple sunlight on the flower-studded grass. “What preparations are you making, Your
Holiness?” he asked. “Is there some way I can be of service and help ease your burden?”

The Dalai Lama looked at Duncan with a slightly quizzical expression. But it was fleeting and he smiled.

“Sometimes I forget that your time in this land has been so brief and that you do not yet know all our ways,” he said. “We
prepare now for the great Kalachakra Mandala ceremony. In three days it begins and does not end for twelve days after that.
Many, many people will soon arrive in Lhasa. Monks and nuns from the monasteries throughout this land will come. People from
other towns, from farms and villages, from high mountain camps all will come to Lhasa. Some will stay here at the Potala.
Others will stay with friends and family in the city. Many more will bring tents to cover the land outside the walls. Two
cities almost, we will become, with the gates between us always open. There must be food available for so many, needs anticipated
for their comfort. Many details and decisions.”

“Before I came to Lhasa,” Duncan said, “the nomads with whom I stayed spoke of this ceremony. I promised them I would attend
on their behalf, but when I arrived I thought I had missed it after all.”

The Dalai Lama shook his head. “We wait until this time so that no rain or cold will disturb the meditations. Even if one
is trained, it is a difficult thing to sit at prayer for twelve days if the rain is pouring on the head or too much cold is
filling the body. Yes?”

Twelve days of prayer and meditation; Duncan tried to put it in perspective with the hours spent on a single move in sword
or
kata
, weeks spent on the open stillness of the sea, years of lonely travel. The difference, he realized, was that each of these
things, occupations that had so far defined his life, were physically
active
. Even the time he had spent at Brother Paul’s monastery had been quiet and restful, but it had also been filled with the
gentle activities of communal life.

Perhaps it is time
, Duncan thought,
to learn the activity of being still
.

As was so often the case, the Dalai Lama seemed to know what he was thinking. “Twelve days seem a long time to you, yes?”
he said. “I tell you, Duncan MacLeod, they are not. It is only once, maybe twice in a man’s lifetime that this ceremony occurs—only
once every forty years. What are twelve days out of forty years? Nothing? But they are also everything, for they are days
which build us and bind us as a people.”

MacLeod felt humbled by the religious leader’s words. They reminded him that this young body housed the soul of someone who
was truly holy.

Duncan thought back to his own land, half a world away. What did they have, he wondered a little sadly, that could be said
to bind them together, to define them as a people and a faith? Memorials of battles, athletic games, religious holidays such
as Christmas, Lent, and Easter—but did these unite the clans or reinforce their separation, their sense of competition?

They had put aside their differences rarely. Most recently, many of the highland clans, especially the MacDonalds and the
Camerons, the MacPhersons, and MacGregors, had united around the Bonnie Prince. Even his own clan had been divided in this
cause. But why? Duncan asked himself. For war; to separate themselves from the English with blood and battle.

Was it the worthy cause Duncan had once thought? Charlie had said that peace would follow victory, but now, with the perspective
of the years, MacLeod doubted that would have happened. The clans would soon have pulled apart again, each vying for the royal
favor.

Well, Culloden Field had ended the dream of Scottish sover-eignty, and the clans had returned to their long history of petty
skirmishes and hatreds. Nothing changed.

Perhaps
, Duncan thought,
it takes a land as isolated as Tibet to be able to find a way to put such differences and discord to rest
. For the sake of the years that were to come and the world he might well live to see, Duncan MacLeod truly hoped not.

“Now, Duncan MacLeod,” the Dalai Lama said, his voice pulling Duncan’s thoughts from the morbid path they threatened to take,
“where did we leave off our discussion yesterday? Ah, yes—with the
bardo
, I think, the state of
between
death and rebirth.”

Duncan could have said that he knew that state well. How many times had he “died” in the last two hundred years?—A dozen?
More?—but by the Dalai Lama’s words he had not died at all.

“Death does not come with the ending of our breath, the stopping of the heart and the blood,” the young man was saying. “Death
does not truly come until the mind changes into the clear light. This often takes three days or more. Only then, when one’s
mind has changed, does one enter the
bardo
, the between, and begin toward the process of rebirth….”

When Duncan went down into the city he noticed the subtle changes that had come over the place. People were still as pleasant,
smiling as he passed, children still played in the streets, dogs still barked and romped among them, but there was an air
of expectancy and a greater sense of purpose in the way the people were going about their daily tasks. Everywhere doors and
windows stood open, welcoming in the fresh air of the day. Time and again, Duncan saw people washing the front of their houses,
scrubbing away the grime of winters past, trimming overgrown bushes and cleaning out garden beds. The already bright fairy-tale
city of Lhasa was becoming a wonderland.

Perhaps, he admitted, these things had been happening for days and he had not noticed. His mind had been too full of Xiao-nan
to notice much else but her.

When he reached her home, he found that her family was also busy. Furniture was being carried out into the garden so that
the house could be scoured from ceiling to floors while the bedding and sleeping mats were aired and the rugs and cushions
beaten free of dust. Duncan, who had come to appreciate cleanliness during his months in Japan, did not hesitate to join in.

He enjoyed working beside Xiao-nan. She smiled at him often while he moved and carried at her direction. It was like a gentle
preview of some of the moments their life together would contain—a life he wanted more with each passing hour.

Soon all of the furnishings were outside. While Xiao-nan helped her mother in the house and her father worked on the front,
Duncan aided Mingxia with the rugs and cushions. It was the first time they had been alone together since the incident with
Father Edward. Duncan was uncertain what she would say to him.

Mingxia, however, acted quite happy to be working beside him. She laughed and chattered as if there had never been anything
amiss between them.
Is it her youth and the natural flexibility of mind that is part of the young?
Duncan wondered as he swung the bamboo rug-beater against the heavy fabric.
Or is it something more—a practice of forgiveness woven into the very bones of this society? There is so much for the world
to learn here
.

Yet, Duncan also found himself hoping that the world, with all its ways of hatred and pain, would never come to this land,
never contaminate its peace and beauty.

“If you become a farmer, Duncan MacLeod,” Mingxia said, “what will you grow?”

“I thought I’d let Xiao-nan and your father guide me,” he answered.

She made a face at his words, and Duncan almost laughed. “They’ll only tell you to grow rice and beans and cabbage,” she said,
her disapproval as obvious in her tone as in her expression.

“Those are good crops, Mingxia. People must eat.”

“But anyone can grow them.” She stopped swinging her rug-beater and looked at him.
“You
should do something else, Duncan MacLeod,” she said emphatically. “You must do something
special.”

Again Duncan held back his laughter. “What would you suggest I do then?” he asked, quite seriously.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I will think about it.”

They resumed beating the rug in silence, in rhythmic, alternating strokes. While Mingxia concentrated on the problem of his
future, Duncan had the chance to watch her out of the corner of his eye, and he smiled to see she wore the same little frown
that appeared on Xiao-nan’s face when she was deep in thought.

“Mingxia,” Duncan said a moment later, “what would you say if I raised horses as well as vegetables? Would that be
special
enough? I could train them and trade them with the other farmers or even the nomads.”

Mingxia considered. “Yes, Duncan MacLeod,” she said at last. “I think that is what you should do.”

“Do you think your sister and father will agree?”

“Xiao-nan will agree to whatever you want,” she answered, “and my father will wait to say anything until you have spoken all
of your reasons why horses are a good choice. He will ask you many questions—then he, too, will agree.”

“If you wanted to come stay with us sometimes, I could teach you to ride, and you could help me with the horses,” Duncan told
her.

Mingxia stopped beating the rug. She turned to MacLeod, her eyes wide with sudden excitement.

“Truly?” she asked. “You would teach me?”

This time Duncan did laugh. “Aye,” he said. “I think you’d be very good at it.”

He did, too. She was much like many a wild colt he had known—headstrong, vibrant, unwilling to be broken by harsh methods
but responding well to a gentle touch. He thought she and the animals would quickly understand each other.

“Yes,” Mingxia said with a nod as she went back to her chore with renewed energy. “I will be good at it. You will teach me,
and I will become
best
at it.”

Duncan smiled; it was good to be part of a family again. Soon he would have a wife to cherish and care for, a little sister
to watch grow, parents… only children would be missing.

And he would have peace. Here in this land where peace and compassion were more than words spoken by mystics and idealists,
he would live out the fulfillment of too many a lonely dream.

He had been alone far too long.

Nasiradeen ground his teeth together. His hands clenched on the pommel of his saddle as he struggled not to strike the messenger
kneeling in the dirt. Anger and frustration gnawed at him, but it was not this man’s fault, and Nasiradeen never punished
one of his men unjustly. His men knew that, counted on it, took pride in it. Punishment was swift and often brutal when it
came, but it was never unjust.

No, the snail’s pace at which the army moved could be blamed on no living thing. It was the mountains. Even the passes seemed
determined to stay closed. There were rocks and logs and other debris, not there when Nasiradeen had scouted this route the
year before, that had to be cleared so the supply carts could pass. New trenches had been formed by snows and rains and runoff
that were treacherous to horses’ hooves and wagon wheels alike.

Well, the incalculable strength of the mountains had just met the indominability of Immortal will. Nasiradeen would not allow
even the mighty Himalayas to keep him from his prize.

“We will stop here until the wagon is repaired,” he told the still kneeling messenger from the rear guard. “Take as many men
as you need to get it done
quickly
. This is no place to camp for the night, if we can help it.”

“Yes, Great One,” the man answered before running back through the troops.

After he was gone, Nasiradeen raised one hand in gesture and immediately his second-in-command rode to his side.

“Take twenty men,” Nasiradeen ordered, “and clear the road ahead until you find a wider spot to make camp. We’ll catch up
with you soon.”

“And what if the road narrows?”

“Then we’ll sleep on our feet,” Nasiradeen snapped, furious
at being questioned. “Or we’ll march through the night. Take the men and go!”

The man touched his hand to his heart and bowed as well as his saddle permitted. Then he wheeled his horse back toward the
troops. Nasiradeen heard him shouting orders but did not bother to turn; his will would be obeyed.

Instead he kept his eyes fixed on the great peaks.
You won’t stop me
, his thoughts snarled at them.
I’ll dig a path with my bare hands if I must, but nothing will stop me
.

The population of Lhasa nearly doubled in the space of two days. People from throughout Tibet arrived in a steady, seemingly
endless stream. Duncan watched with something akin to amazement as strangers were welcomed into the city like family members
returning from a journey.