Klesa
In the end, the place he arrived at was a forest whose name he did not know.
The Sage drove his fist into the ground and smashed his head against the earth.
Thud. Thud.
With every blow the ground split open, beasts fled, and nearby mountains crumbled — yet the Sage had no strength left to notice any of it.
You fool. You abandon revenge for a reason that petty? For a scrap of pity? You have a duty to avenge the grudges of your people.
No.
He stopped berating himself and shook his head.
The truth was, the Sage already knew. What he had been about to do to the people of Kosala was, at its root, nothing more than venting. The ones truly responsible were already dead — king, generals, common soldiers, every last one of them. Virudhaka, who had ordered the massacre, had met a cruel and wretched end, even if it had not been entirely satisfying.
And still the Sage had meant to destroy the Kosala Kingdom — not out of duty or conviction, but for emotional reasons alone. He wanted to discharge his rage. He wanted the satisfaction of watching them suffer.
But it was impossible now. He had already begun to see the faces of his own vanished people in theirs. Even if he slaughtered every Kosalan, what he would feel would not be satisfaction but revulsion. It was uncomfortable. It was agony. He and Virudhaka no longer seemed so different. To go any further would only destroy himself.
Anger and hatred with nowhere to go. Grief for those he had lost. Attachment to what would never return. Belated regret. Guilt. All of it tangled together and tormented him. Above all, a bottomless emptiness dragged him toward an endless abyss.
"What… am I supposed to do now?"
The Sage sought the cause of every problem within himself. He believed his own arrogance, complacency, stupidity, and selfishness had brought him to this. And so, rather than try to change anything outside, he chose to refine what lay within.
"Kraaaaaagh!!"
He drove his hand straight into the center of his own chest. What he drew out was something like a lump of iron, riddled with impurities. The mass was sharp and irregular, shaped almost like a flame given solid form. It was a portion of the Sage's own emotions — the klesa that tormented him.
An ordinary human could never have done such a thing. But as a god, a being both material and spiritual, it was possible.
Like a blacksmith, the Sage took up a hammer and began to beat the white-hot klesa. He cooled it and heated it again and again, compressing it, forcing it into a deliberate shape.
"Is that all right, sister?"
Raga asked Tana, watching the Sage hammer the metal day after day. Thirty years of nothing but sleep and that endless forging — of course she was worried.
"I don't know."
"Shouldn't we stop him?"
Arati offered her own opinion. But Tana shook her head without hesitation.
"Leave him be. This is his way of healing."
"But…"
"There's nothing we can do for him anyway. Or are you going to tell him to lose himself in pleasure the way Father did? That only pushes it down for a while. It isn't a real solution. It would only rot him from the inside later."
"…"
"…"
"And what right do we have to speak to him? We couldn't even repay his kindness. We just stood there watching, too afraid of the seal to do anything else."
They had no standing. That thought was not Tana's alone, eldest though she was. In the end the sisters could no longer bear to watch the Sage destroy himself, and they left.
But contrary to their expectations, the Sage did not collapse.
Not long after Mara's three daughters departed, he finished forging a single sword. It was Paramita — the blade Inanna had once seen.
Empty the mind.
Judging the form of Paramita complete enough, the Sage began to grind it against a whetstone. Exactly one hundred and eight times. He sharpened the edge while calling to mind each of the hundred and eight afflictions that tormented him.
Nearly another decade passed. The klesa that had once surged in every direction had become a single keen blade — yet the Sage did not stop. His goal was to grind the sword away entirely, until nothing remained.
Be humble. You must be humble. …Please, become humble.
In the process he reflected on the arrogance he had once worn and continually lowered himself. He lowered and lowered until he sought to erase the very existence of "I." Paradoxically, as he did so, his spirit kept expanding. Without realizing it, the Sage was becoming one with the world, ascending toward a higher state of being.
"You broke yourself so thoroughly, only to come full circle and try to become an Awakened One… The Will of Order really isn't something you can ignore, is it?"
Then one day, a strange woman came looking for him.
She had a gentle face and was a beauty to rival Tana, yet an indescribable madness swam in both her eyes. He had deliberately settled deep in a jungle where no human set foot — how she had found him was a mystery.
"You… are not human."
Ordinarily he might have ignored her. But her presence was too vast for that. A deep, lethal pressure stirred his soul; he could not pretend she was not there.
"Nice to meet you, Siddhartha. Or should I call you Buddha? Though you haven't become one yet."
"…If you have business, please state it quickly."
"Wow. You've completely rewritten your own nature. The Vaishnavastra's influence must have been huge."
"If you have nothing to say, I would like you to leave. I am in the middle of something."
"All right, all right. So impatient. I should introduce myself first, shouldn't I? I'm Kali."
"…Siddhartha."
The Sage knew of Kali. Only from legend, of course. He knew of two: the goddess Kali, wife of Shiva and the dark aspect of Parvati; and Kali, the god of chaos who ruled the final age of the world — the Kali Yuga. She wore a goddess's form, yet the Sage was certain she was the latter. He did not even need to look with his "eyes." His instincts and his soul told him so. The being before him was fundamentally something else.
"Good. Now that we've exchanged names, let's get to the point. The reason I came here is to plant a klesa in you."
"A klesa… You mean to tempt me with your body?"
The Sage asked with a touch of sarcasm. He could see no good intention in her.
"Pfft! The word 'klesa' and that's all you can think of? Mara's little games really left a mark, didn't they? I could give you a turn if you want…"
"…If not that, then what?"
"Why so scared the moment it might actually happen? This is why virgins are hopeless. You look like the type who could make any number of women cry, so why live like that?"
"Tsk."
"Fine, fine. Don't get mad over a joke. What I actually want to talk about is the concept of 'time travel.'"
"…Time travel?"
It was a notion he had never heard. The Sage looked puzzled. Kali chuckled softly at his expression.
"I'll explain with an example."
She drew a single thread from between her breasts.
"Let's say this thread is time."
"Is that even a proper analogy?"
Time, by nature, flowed. Comparing it to a fixed thread did not seem right.
"Just assume it is for now. The middle is the 'present' we live in. The right side is the past we've already left behind. The left is the future still to come. Picture that."
"…And?"
"What if I snip this part right here?"
Kali cut the right-hand portion of the thread with a sharp tug.
"You mean the present and future disappear?"
"You could see it that way. Or you could see it like this."
She slipped her hand between her breasts again and drew out a new thread. From time to time a large-chested woman would produce small objects from that space, and for the Sage — who still carried a man's heat — it was frequently awkward.
"You're staring awfully hard."
"…Forgive me."
He had not yet fully erased the lust Mara had planted in him.
In any case, Kali joined the severed threads together.
"Ta-da!!"
"…?"
"See? Change the 'past' like this, and the 'present' and 'future' change with it."
Boom.
The instant he heard those words, a bolt of lightning drove straight through the Sage's skull.
"That is…"
"'Go to the past and change the present.' That is the concept of time travel I was talking about."
"…Something like that can't be possible."
"You're right. Time is an immutable law. No divine being, no matter how great, can reverse it. Under 'ordinary' circumstances, that is."
As she spoke, Kali wore a smile that raised the hair on the back of the neck. The Sage could not begin to guess what that smile meant.
"But for someone with special 'eyes' like yours… the story is different, isn't it?"