17. Daoist (1)
Daoist (1)
17. Daoist (1)
"Disciple. The time has come."
"Time?"
After breakfast, while I was enjoying a moment's leisure over a cup of tea—cheap green tea we had only just managed to procure—my master spoke to me.
"Time for you to become a Daoist priest."
"Already?"
"Ordinarily, one must spend at least a year as a trainee before undergoing the ceremony. At present, however, Yeongsan Sect has no one else to teach you, and a Daoist sect with no Daoist is hardly proper. Your studies will not end once you become a Daoist. This is only the beginning of ceaseless study."
My master spoke with an uncharacteristically serious expression. Well, I had no objection to going through with it, but was becoming a Daoist priest really this easy?
"In three days, when the full moon rises, you will enter the ceremony. The ceremony requires seven days and nights of devotional prayer in the Great Clarity Palace. While performing the ceremony, you absolutely may not take a single step outside the Great Clarity Palace, so you must be careful."
She was clearly speaking in earnest this time, even adopting the dignified bearing of a sect leader, her very tone shifting. But seven days? I had assumed that Yeongsan Sect, with its relaxed and leisurely ways, would make the ceremony nothing special, but this sounded seriously grueling.
"Then what about meals and such?"
"Do not worry. That is precisely why we have our female disciples. Jeong-hyang will assist you. She will bring you meals, wash water, and a chamber pot every day."
"A chamber pot?"
"Of course. A person cannot hold their urine and feces for seven days. If that were possible, they would already be an immortal, would they not?"
Ah... No. Absolutely not. Every morning, that lovely Jeong-hyang would be cleaning up my shit and piss? I felt like I would die of shame. Could I just starve myself instead? If I used my internal energy to endure, I figured I could somehow get through a week without food, but when it came to water, I had no way around it. Still, if I just didn't defecate, wouldn't urine alone be slightly less mortifying? No, fuck. It still made me want to die either way.
"You are happy, aren't you, Disciple? Once you are a Daoist priest, you may now embrace women. For the union of man and woman is the Way of natural nonaction. Now even if you go to the village's pleasure house or the red-light district, no one will say a word."
My master congratulated me with a beaming face. No, I didn't even have the nerve to say, "I'm off to the red-light district," so for fuck's sake, just do something about that chamber pot. Please.
I probably deliberated more over this than anything else in this life and my past life combined. A seven-day ceremony. It would be tough, but not impossible. I could open a book and read prayers, and if I got drowsy, I could lean back and sleep sitting down even if I couldn't lie on the floor. The problem was that damn chamber pot. I agonized hundreds, thousands of times, but there was no solution. I would starve myself to avoid defecating. As for urine, I'd just give up on that.
I told Master that since I was doing this anyway, abstaining from grain and purifying myself would surely please Taishang Laojun and the Primordial Heavenly Worthy more, and asked her to bring me only water. Whether she understood my true motive or not, Master looked impressed and gave Jeong-hyang those instructions. I began fasting the day before the ceremony and made repeated trips to the latrine to empty my bowels. Only then did I understand why martial artists in closed-door training ate Fasting Pills rather than nutritious nuts or dried meat. If waste began piling up inside a sealed room, enlightenment or not, anyone would want to smash down the door and escape.
The seven days in the Great Clarity Palace were truly a tedious stretch of time. As a result, I found myself reading and re-reading the Taoist texts placed there, over and over until I grew thoroughly sick of them, unlike usual. Natural nonaction. It was written that to oppose the natural flow and forcibly twist it in an artificial direction was not right. Frankly, I did not like it. When hardship came, the world did not change if you simply resigned yourself to the natural order and waited. It had to be changed by human effort.
But I agreed that it was the truth. In the end, no matter how much humans strove, it did nothing to alter the course set by Heaven. No matter how diligently an ant captured as a specimen dug its tunnels, it could not escape the specimen box. Artificial effort, compared to the scale of the world, was precisely that—utterly meaningless.
In my painful past life, my father had been in a vegetative state and my younger sister half paralyzed. My mother and I struggled desperately and tried everything we could to support them, yet the world did not change. In the end, it was not my effort that rescued my family from hell, but the good fortune of being chosen by a demon with godlike power. That was why, in this life, I had decided not to waste effort on an impossible future. Becoming a master, winning fame, and succeeding in society—establishing one's name and attaining glory—were Confucian goals. Perhaps Daoism was a refuge for a coward like me.
There was no protagonist-worthy stroke of fortune where I suddenly achieved enlightenment and gained several decades of internal energy, but I thought those seven days in the Great Clarity Palace, where there was nothing else to do, were not without meaning of their own, for they gave me time to think.
"Disciple. It is finished now. Can you rise?"
My consciousness had grown dim, whether because my strength was gone and my mind was failing or because it was night and I was simply sleepy. Master's voice reached me through the haze. It was finally over. The exhaustion and hunger were brutal. When I tried to stand quickly, my legs, stiff after a week of sitting, cramped and refused to move. Jeong-hyang and Son Yeong began massaging them, and only after nearly ten minutes could I finally rise. Starvation hadn't been the real problem. The posture had.
"Congratulations, Disciple. At long last, a new Daoist priest has been born in our Yeongsan Sect."
"It was hard, wasn't it, Junior Brother?"
"You've worked very hard."
Orthostatic hypotension? Anemia? Low blood sugar? I didn't know exactly, but the moment I stood, my head spun. As I staggered, Jeong-hyang and Son Yeong supported me and led me to the dining hall. When I sat down on a dining hall stool, Lee Eun-ha held out white porridge mixed with nuts like walnuts and peanuts.
"Junior Brother. Devotional rites are important, but you must do them in moderation. Starving yourself for seven days was reckless. Please, eat."
Food. Food was finally before my eyes. I mustered what strength I had left and lifted my spoon to devour it ravenously, but Son Yeong's hand gently caught my arm.
"No. If you eat like that, you'll give yourself indigestion."
Jeong-hyang took my spoon, scooped up some porridge, blew on it to cool it, and held it to my lips. It was embarrassing, but they were right: I had been far too reckless. Wu wei was supposed to mean following nature, and there was nothing natural about a human starving. I meekly swallowed the porridge she fed me, spoonful by spoonful, and strength gradually returned to my body as though by magic.
"Is there one more bowl?"
"Of course. You must have at least three bowls."
Lee Eun-ha smiled at my slightly improved state and brought another bowl.
"I'll eat on my own now. Give me the spoon."
When I extended my hand to Jeong-hyang, she stared fixedly at my face.
"Do you dislike me feeding you?"
"It's embarrassing."
"Why? I have been emptying your chamber pot all week."
Jeong-hyang teased me with a mischievous face. Really, beautiful women were so unfair. Even when she said such rude things, I didn't feel the slightest bit offended.
"I changed Junior Sister Cho's diapers too, and even gave her my nipple to suckle when there was no milk. You entered the sect even later than Junior Sister Cho, so you don't need to feel embarrassed."
No... if you wanted to do something for me, forget the chamber pot and let me suckle at your breast instead. The Jeong-hyang I had come to know was gentle like Master and quietly something of an airhead, yet she was innately gifted at winning affection from the opposite sex through both her beauty and her personality. Senior Sister Jeong-hyang, the sect's chief disciple, handed me the spoon with a captivating smile. When I scooped up porridge, Son Yeong placed a small piece of kimchi on top. In the end, I finished all three bowls.
"What about Senior Sister Cho?"
"She stubbornly insisted on waiting for you, and in the end fell fast asleep."
Good. Children needed to sleep early to grow up big and fast.
"Now, the meal is over, so Jeong-hyang, Yeong, and Eun-ha, go in and rest as well. The final part is my responsibility."
"Then, Master, we will take our leave."
"Please take care of the rest."
Jeong-hyang and Son Yeong bowed to Master and stepped out of the dining hall. In a sect that did not light oil lamps, going to bed early had become a habit, so even without Cho-ryeong, everyone grew weak at night. But Lee Eun-ha looked at Master with a troubled expression.
"Master. Will you truly be all right?"
"Of course. I am your master, am I not?"
"Still... No, forgive me. I will take my leave as well."
Lee Eun-ha bowed with a worried expression and left the dining hall. What was this? Was something else going on?
"What do you mean, the final part?"
"There is no need to worry. Now that you have become a Daoist, you must wear a Daoist robe. Before putting it on, however, you must wash away the last impurities from your time as a trainee and don it in a purified state. Come. I will wash you."
"Pardon?"
"For a master to wash a disciple who has entered the path of a Daoist is an old tradition unique to Yeongsan Sect among the many Daoist sects, because we possess a hot spring. Come, let us go."
Taking hold of my arm, my master strode briskly toward the hot spring. Was it something akin to the Christian baptismal rite where water was touched to the forehead, or Christ washing his disciples' feet—something along those lines?
I tried not to dwell on it, but my unease kept growing. If she merely intended to wash my feet, Senior Sister Lee would not have looked so worried.
"Now, undress."
"Pardon?"
"You have come to the hot spring, so you must remove your clothes."
"Surely I don't have to take everything off?"
"Of course you do. You need not be embarrassed. I will undress as well."
My master said this as nonchalantly as ever.
"W-Wait a moment! Th-this is a bit..."
"It cannot be helped. It is a rule of our sect. I am the first female master in Yeongsan Sect to take a male disciple, so I am embarrassed as well, but a rule is a rule."
My master stared into my eyes with an intensity unlike her usual self. I could see no way to evade or make excuses and escape this place. Swish—she stepped up to me and loosened the drawstring of my trousers.
"M-Master!"
"You are too tall, Disciple, so I cannot undress your upper garments for you."
My master busily untied my trouser string and pulled down my trousers. Without a moment's hesitation, she even stripped off my undergarments.
"Ooh. Disciple! You must truly have accumulated great virtue in a past life. What a magnificent penis you have—you are truly blessed!"
My master looked at my cock, exposed in the night air, and marveled with pure admiration. I did indeed possess memories of a past life, but weren't concepts like past lives and reincarnation part of Buddhist thought, not Taoist? And as for accumulating virtue, far from it—I came here after destroying an entire world.
Rather than stand there with my lower half exposed while still wearing a shirt, I decided it would be marginally less humiliating to enter the water. I quickly stripped off my top and stepped into the hot spring. Ruler, teacher, and father were one. I should not be embarrassed. A master was the same as a parent. She was my mother. She was my mother. A mother washing her son. Everything depended on one's state of mind.
At the whisper of cloth brushing against skin, I inadvertently turned my head, and there, bathed in the bright light of the full moon, my master's dazzling naked form was seared onto my retinas. She was my mother...
Damn it. How could a state of mind possibly make any difference? If you could overcome reality with self-suggestion alone, you would have become the greatest master under heaven long ago.