Sleep Over

by H. G. Bells

  The next day I helped beat out the rugs. I did not see sheep as they were sheared. I did not see the threads as they were spun. I did not see the dye maker blend the beautiful colors. I did not see the creativity in the design that had been woven. I didn’t even see the hands that had tied off the final knot. All I could see were the thousands of shoes that had walked upon it, the sand, dirt, grit, ash, and dust that had accumulated on it. When I beat it out, I was in that unproductive place of grumbling obligation.

  Everyone has their off days.

  Give us a few nights without sleep and us pre-enlightened can become a little irritable, just like the rest of the world.

  Guru Loka was there, a hand on my shoulder, and all it took was for him to say, “The hands that made this knew it would be walked upon.” And just like that, I remembered the wool workers, the dye blender, the weaver.

  Awareness practice, and the practice of loving-kindness, was so deep within me that it took only a few words to remember it, if I forgot it at all.

  The New Ones that came to us had the potential for awareness and loving-kindness, but it was buried under so much other baggage that it would take much longer than they were willing to take to bring it to the surface. Instead, the thing that surfaced was mostly the garbage that would have to come out before they could shine. It was very unpleasant for them.

  When the New Ones came, a trickle at first, like the tour groups, we were tested again and again. Their distress was so overwhelming that it brought some of us crumbling down in the face of such pain. Perhaps not if we had been in our normal state, I mean, with proper sleep to back us up.

  The lack of sleep was such a devastation to us because it hindered our ability to concentrate on the work. Where once I could drop into the state of calm, the silence where I could hear nothing, no words, no sounds, no thoughts, absolutely nothing, became harder to find. I had trained my mind well, and, while it took longer, it managed to follow the path I had worn in my mind with many, many journeys before, to that state. Practicing patience was the name of the game for most of us. When you see your life’s work become harder, harder than we were used to it getting, it can incite panic, but we used the work to deal with that, too.

  I’m sorry if this seems all so abstract. I am used to talking with people that know what I’m talking about. But as the New Ones came, we had to adapt and express these grand concepts, these ideas which take a lifetime to explore, in bite-sized pieces, breaking them into small ideas. And your people, your city dwelling anger-as-a-mask-for-pain people, were harder to teach than anyone I’ve encountered before or since.

  We did though. We taught. At first it was like the tour groups; they would arrive in little fits and starts. Sometimes as an office retreat, still utilizing a booking made months before, sometimes a family, and always the trickle of one-by-ones, people that had been wondering about what we did, and really they’d been meaning to come and ask us about it, but they were just so busy. But now, they had so much time! They could finally do all the things they wanted!

  Challenging them on their justifications was difficult; we wanted to help them, get them asking themselves questions, so it needed to be done, but we had to be so gentle so as to not drive them away.

  Our Loving-Kindness practice was tested to the very limits as we explored every facet of those trying situations.

  The news of the terrorist attack in Phoenix sent more our way. Shaky handheld footage of Americans killing Americans. Those seeking escape from the violence the world was churning out came to our temple, and we received them with open arms.

  Then they started showing footage of monks doing the work, trying to explore possible options for relief. Sitting against beautiful backdrops of mountains with sunsets, in the snow as it fell all around them and melted against their shaved heads, on the sidewalk of a busy city. It all looked so peaceful. They must have a secret. We must have a secret. Then the masses really came.

  Anyone who was perceived to be able to somehow manipulate their mind, or other minds, was a target. Not for elimination of course, but it might as well have been. The hunger for knowledge was so great that the crush of desperation destroyed whatever the public set its sights on. No one could hope to handle the numbers.

  We had a huge property to work with. The temple’s gigantic grounds could hold several thousand people, and once the footage of those monks appeared on the news, we knew it would be utilized.

  I helped move the bee hives to the other side of the temple grounds so that they would be away from the field. I was only stung a few times, and each time I apologized to the bee for causing its death.

  We made a sort of stage, just to raise up the person who would lead the sit. The sit. The work. The practice. I still resist calling it meditation, because of the connotations the world has put on that word. We took that tact with the New Ones as well. The notice on the temple doors read:

  We are not sleeping either.

  We welcome you with open arms.

  Come join us in awareness practice

  and cultivating loving-kindness,

  for the benefit of all living beings.

  We held many levels of sits. Guided sits were led, taking half an hour, to help develop the techniques that people could use to learn the work. The energy changed dramatically when our numbers swelled. Yes, it was stress and fear and anger and pain, all those things, but also the excitement of learning, and the relief some people were feeling for the first time was palpable. There were a lot of questions and a lot of tears.

  We couldn’t hold enough lectures. The New Ones were so eager for knowledge that there were never enough talks to satiate their curiosity. How wonderful to find you have a cup that can never be filled! Wonderful for some anyway, frustrating for others. Others that were used to Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Finished! No such system, bub.

  We had many rooms to work in, and could offer many levels of sits. There were some more advanced meditators who joined us, and some even helped us manage the influx of New Ones. Those times when we, the ones that had been practicing before the event, could sit together were really something special. We developed a bond that went very deep.

  The largest sit we ever held was on the back field, but also spilled around the temple and into the hall inside, and even in the little parking lot down the embankment of the garden which used to hold tour busses and then held a tent city. Someone went up to the roof and took panorama photographs of it, of the sea of people crashing against our life raft, unable or unwilling to see that it was also sinking. We estimated nine thousand people were in attendance.

  Guru Loka led that sit, and it was quiet. The sounds were quiet, I mean. The energy was almost louder than I could tolerate. He led them from a basic level on to complete silence, utilizing a microphone which connected to speakers that extended his guiding out into the crowd.

  The following paragraph is an example of what he said, but realize that it was said over the course of perhaps twenty minutes. Each sentence was slower than regular speech, and there were great pauses between each one to allow the participants to take in and address the instructions as they were meant to be explored.

  “Become aware of the smells around you. Explore what they might be. And then, there’s taste. Maybe it’s the coffee you had earlier, or just the innate flavor of your mouth. If your eyes are open, you take in what you see without focusing on what you see. If your eyes are closed, notice the darkness behind your eyelids. Take a moment to notice the way the clothes feel on your skin. When you breathe, the fabric moves with you and brushes against you. Feel the breeze play across your face. Is it warm? Is it cool? Is it neutral? The sounds around you wash over you, coming and going without disrupting you. If one of these senses detects something which you feel yourself drawn towards, answer it with an, ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting,’ and continue on your way, acknowledging it, but not dwelling on it. Lastly, feel the earth under you. Your weight pressing down onto the ground, which holds you, and has always
been there to hold you. Your entire life it has been there, ready to catch you, and now you feel its support, unconditional, constant. Now, focus on your breath.”

  The sit had been silent for another twenty minutes after Guru Loka finished leading it, and he chimed the bell to signal to the participants that it was coming to an end.

  Just after the first chime, a man in the middle of the field stood up, flipped a switch in his hand, and blew himself up.

  Nails and ball bearings exploded away from him and went ripping into the people that sat nearest to him. I dove for cover around a giant planter near the back steps, on the edge of the field. While I was steadying myself to stand, becoming aware of the ringing in my ears, another explosion sounded out, from the other side of the temple. Two bombers working in tandem to end their lives, and end the lives of whoever happened to be nearest them.

  I waited to see if there would be another blast. My ringing ears slowly let other sounds filter in; terrified screaming, people moaning in agony, shouting. I stood from behind the planter and held on to keep myself from falling back down as I physically recoiled at the sight of the blast.

  At the very edge of the radius, people were sitting on the grass, clutching their wounds, which didn’t look severe. I didn’t fully realize then just how dire any wound was in that time. I went towards the blast center to see if I could do anything to stabilize someone long enough for better help to arrive. I came to a man whose left arm was severed, his bicep hanging in shreds.

  I’d never before successfully envisioned the human body as meat, just meat. But seeing his arm like that, just, bits of meat swaying with every move he made; then I knew it.

  “Just keep still,” I said.

  “Where’s my arm, do you see it?” he asked.

  I stepped over someone with nails protruding from the side of their head to retrieve a belt from another body. I went back to the man looking for his arm, and slung the belt up as high as I could around his arm, pinching his armpit and the top of his shoulder.

  Guru Loka approached.

  “Good,” he said, louder than his usual volume, “good, yes, see how many we can save. I will tend the dying,” he said, striding further forwards to the heart of the blast.

  I went to another person and pulled a nail out of their side, stripped them of their shirt, and got them to put pressure on the tiny hole.

  Such tiny holes, deceptively small wounds. Even if the nail hadn’t been terribly long, it was enough. Breaking the skin turned out to be problematic enough; we were about to find out just how deadly it was to have any sort of molestation of the flesh.

  Guru Loka was speaking loudly, not shouting, but trying to have his voice reach out to everyone near enough the center of the field blast that they were beyond physical help. He took them through a fairly accelerated version of dying rites, to try and bring them some peace in their last moments, amidst the screaming and moaning.

  The other monks helped me in my task of stabilizing whomever we could. Once I got someone out of the immediately-dying zone, I helped them to the temple. The upper rooms were soon filled with injured people.

  “How long until the paramedics arrive?” I asked one of the scribes as soon as he hung up the phone at the front desk. His face was ashen.

  “No one’s there,” he said.

  “What?” I asked. “What do you mean no one’s there? Where are the ambulances?”

  He gulped, then shook his head slightly.

  I went back out onto the field.

  “If anyone has any first aid training, please, we need your help,” I said. Obviously there were some that did, as they were already helping tend to people. But some had been shocked into a stupor, and my call to action seemed to bring a fresh surge of people out into the bloody mess to help.

  “Got any medical supplies?” asked an elderly man as he climbed the back steps. I nodded and took him to the temple first aid kit, which was, as most casual kits were, woefully inadequate to treat such wounds as had just been dealt. He took it and then asked if we had sheets. I showed him the closet and he got to work ripping them into bandages.

  Guru Loka was still in the center of where the blast had been, still calling out rites and visualizations for those who were dying. We worked around him, clearing those who might make it to a room in the temple, staying with someone if we thought they were in their final moments.

  I was with one such person, an older man with stubble on his tense face. His neck had been wounded by shrapnel such that he had bled out gradually. He realized he was near the end, and took my hand and squeezed it. I was about to offer some words of comfort, but he preempted me with a chilling portent as the last of his strength left him.

  He squeezed my hand tighter.

  “The body needs sleep to heal; all these you have saved today will die slow and painful deaths.”

  I smiled, trying to exude the loving-kindness I had spent my life cultivating, despite the nature of his prediction.

  “Kill them, mercy, mer—” he said, then was unable to continue. I kept my eyes on his as the life left him. I saw the very moment of his death, the exact time when he ceased to exist. And I saw a truth that had been hidden from me before: that when we die, we die. I did not see any sign of continuation, or any sort of transformation. Not that I had thought before that such a thing would be visible, but somehow seeing the moment of death, of looking into his eyes when his life ended, I knew in my core that there was something false about what I believed.

  A crisis of faith on the battlefield, hardly a new experience.

  I had to save it for later; there was too much else to do. I continued on, managing to salvage a last few survivors, until the blast area was littered only with bodies and limbs, and was still.

  Guru Loka remained standing in the center, his arms stretched upwards in his final blessing. I saw that he was wounded—a small patch of his saffron robes, just under his right collarbone towards his shoulder, was dimpled inwards; the head of a nail was just visible amidst the folding towards the center.

  “Guru,” I said, attempting to draw his attention to his wound.

  He drew his arms down and smiled at me, radiating such a calm that I could not help but accept some of it into myself. He simply reached up and plucked the offending nail from his chest, holding it up to get a better look at it. It was a small finishing nail, silver and thin. It didn’t even have any blood on it.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “There’s much to do.” I nodded, and together we went to the temple to help with the living.

  It wasn’t until that evening when we had most of them stabilized that we began tending to the dead.

  The crowd had dispersed; many of those with medical training stayed to help us, but the others fled. We didn’t have a large work force, and so we opted for a pragmatic solution to the one hundred and seventy three people who had been killed outright by the blasts; we made a large pyre at the center of the bomb site in the back field. The one around the temple had gone off too close to the building to light a fire there, so we took the bodies to the back field for a single pyre.

  Each body underwent the same ritual.

  I searched the pockets first, and took out anything I found in them. And because I was unable to stop my well-practiced awareness, I saw into what their lives had been as I stripped them of all evidence that they had lived. Movie theatre ticket stubs from a night out with friends merely a few days before. A hair elastic with a cartoon character on it, ready to secure the hair of their child. Breath mints to cover a coffee addiction. Shopping lists of all sizes for all households. Their wallets, each in a style that had appealed to that particular person, saying something about the aesthetics of their eye, the color pallet of their lives. Then I took off any jewelry they were wearing. Watches from loved ones for anniversaries. Necklaces of favorite animals. Earrings of birthstones. Glasses, some scorched, some broken, some as intact as the day they had been purchased.

  The women with purses had all
these things put inside their bags. Men without any sort of bags got a Ziploc from the kitchen to contain their effects.

  With each one, I took the pad of sticky-notes from my pocket and wrote on each one.

  I simply took down their name, birthdate, and other vital statistics from their driver’s licenses. I put the note in the Ziploc bag, facing out for easy reading, and put the bag in a large bin that had once held extra sheets. The purses got the sticky note stuck to the inside of the main compartment.

  Then, with a helper, I moved the body to the pyre we were constructing.

  Once every person had been dealt with like this, we had several bins, and one suitcase, full of the purses and Ziploc bags.

  We lit the base of the funeral pyre at several places just as it was getting dark.

  Human fat kept the flames fed for hours and hours. No one could escape the smell, a smell that we would all become far too used to in the coming hell.

  The ones with more serious wounds were the first to show infection. The more of their flesh was compromised, the quicker all the microscopic predators that wait for human weakness took hold inside them.

  The man with the severed arm died that morning, despite one of the first aid attendants doing an admirable job of cleaning and dressing his stump. If something got into the blood, there was nothing to be done.

  Nails that went in even a mere centimeter were enough to push ravenous attackers into the body, enough to undo even the healthiest person.

  Aside from those with major wounds, the others began to fall ill as well.

  Scrapes didn’t heal. A redness grew out from them until it was a throbbing, hot patch of infection. Simple nail punctures became like bullet wounds, rendering first the nearest limbs sore, then immobile, and then the mind shut down as fever destroyed their brain.

  We eventually brought those with fevers outside on the back steps, to hose them off, trying desperately to cool them down. I had to duck inside, hiding the sudden alarm that washed over me as I remembered the dying man’s portent.