The White Door by Stephen Chan Read Free Book Online Page B

seniors, scarlet cloaks.
     
    Now here is a great general. You must name him. You clasp him by the hand. With him, you plot strategy. The siege must have strategy. Perhaps he has a high command, staff officers. Name them all. They are your intimates. If they fall, the cancer will sweep through the rest with chariots of steel.
     
    The man with the long white hair and beard is a learned doctor. He surveys the scene from a high mountain ridge. Some days you stand with him. He nurses and heals the wounded soldiers. In this sense, he heals you. He wears the robes of a doctor. Imagine him as yourself from a former lifetime, here to help prolong this lifetime, for he feels it is not yet time for you to die.
     
    You must not come out of yourself quickly. Meditation is not a daydream. Exit slowly by the same blue caverns. You know how divers get the bends when they surface faster than they should? You will come to yourself and see yourself meditating. When the pure soulre-enters, you may slowly open your eyes. See the world as the pure soul saw the struggle for your liver, as it saw your forces rehearse your right to live.
     
    Open your eyes now, Dad. How were the blue caverns? You know that strange poem I had to learn at school, the first with oriental characters in it? Caverns measureless to man. A metaphor, I’m sure, of Kubla entering himself.
    I’m surprised your generals and army are Romans. Cornelius is the commander’s name? I thought they’d be Chinese. The doctor is Chinese, ah, that’s good. But Romans… I guess we went to too many Steve Reeves epics when I was a boy. The sun is shining on the New Zealand water. Let’s walk awhile.
     
    Dearest Marja,
    Sometimes it seems so futile and trivial. The masters say there are 7,000 steps in meditation. The first course lasts seven years, and you’re still an apprentice. I gave my father nursery lesson one. Like an unformed child trying to help a sick infant. What help it gives him can only be limited. The disease can circumvent such frail defences. Last night, after training alone at Tokei Dojo near Tower Bridge, I was myself meditating and felt his pain. I heard him cry, ‘the cancer archers have poison arrows.’ I began to weep, Marja, for I could see into my father’s meditation and his soldiers were dying.
    Then I realised that we were indeed meditating at the same time on opposite sides of the earth. London’s night was Auckland’s morning, his time to meditate. This is the conjunction of father and son, yes? That conjunction we never made when he was well. Now a bridge linked the boy beside the Thames and the father beside the Auckland waters. There was nothing his forces could do, the defences within him were falling. Marja, my teacher said this could be done, but I had never thought I might even attempt it. It is possible to detach a piece of your soul. Across that bridge of sorrow and pain I sent asuncrippled a part of me as I could. Reinforcements from outside. The cancer army can only strike down what originates within my father. This will set back my reincarnations a few lifetimes, ha, but I felt the soul part detach himself, asked me if this were my true intention, asked if this could be the trained soul’s purpose, then wrenched off and sailed the bridge from night to morning.
     
    Dear Father,
    You will have received a white warrior. In the mornings, when it is hard to enter yourself, you will see a white horse. It waits for you. You can enter as it leads the way. All you have to do is count. Count as you breathe in four, and hold four, then out four, and every four full breaths like that the horse will lead you through the doors of one blue cavern. Count the breaths and count the caverns. There are 44 caverns. Lose yourself in the counting. The counting will ease the pain of entering yourself. The cancer seeks to prevent your entry, but the white horse can be counted through.
    Take your time. If you lose count you will know the right number at which