Finding The Way Read online

  Yin nodded. “And what of the King’s twin Princes? I have heard so much to suggest they were fire and water to one another.”

  Lao took a deep breath. “The court was a rarefied world where silence and submission ruled. Precise rituals, rigid and meticulous minutiae framed every aspect of official business. Matters of state were typically conducted with a remote detachment. But the twins stood out and could not have been more different. Both lacked the aloofness of most courtiers and Royal family members. Each constantly betrayed his innermost thoughts by word and by deed, and also by the language of his body.”

  Lao Tzu sat forward, his old bones creaking with the effort.

  “I learned details of the court that no scholar dared speak of. And you are right. While the brothers were of similar blood, they were as different as wind and rain. They could not be separated, for they were two halves of the same tree, each completing and balancing the other. Prince Meng, the eldest, was at first reluctant to stay in the court. He preferred contemplation in the many gardens, attending to his birds, or studying with me in the Archives. He left most court matters to his brother and father. At school he had excelled in music, mathematics, rituals and writing, cultivating his mind as finely as wind sculpts pebbles smooth and round. He was no warrior. He had a milky white face with thoughtful eyes, and little taste for the courtesans and luxuries preferred by his younger brother. For a time, Prince Meng may have been the last in the court to understand that when the Way does not prevail in the world, warhorses breed on the border. Through him, the Way might have brought order to stop the endless wars.”

  He paused again.

  “Prince Chao, on the other hand, easily bested Prince Meng in all activities related to soldiering, such as chariot-riding and archery. Yet he also hungered for the spoils of the court and easily maneuvered himself amongst the web of governance and politics. He wore the finest silk robes, each tailored with his signature wide red cuffs.”

  Yin at first positioned himself across from Lao Tzu, eyes riveted, ears focused. Then he sat cross-legged on the ground like an eager pupil. He had never before heard such intimate details of the Royal Court in which his grandfather had served.

  Just then, a soldier escorted in a man carrying a small bundle. Both bowed towards Yin with clasped hands.

  “Ah, excellent timing!” Yin exclaimed. “Master, I sent for our…”

  “Scribe.” Lao Tzu smiled. “The wares of a learned man are comforting to me, no less than nectar to a bee.”

  The scribe inelegantly dropped his bundle of blank bamboo strips. He had either missed Lao Tzu’s homage to scribes or was indifferent to it. He wore a simple cloth robe tied with a hemp rope. He belonged to the General’s astrologer and had traveled more than twenty li from the next county. Judging by the scowl on his face, he was likely not pleased to have been summoned.

  The scribe unwrapped several brushes, chipped off a chunk of black ink cake and carefully mixed it with water before grinding it with a polished stone. He mumbled something about the cost of his materials and said that should the General learn of what was happening in his prefecture, all hell would break loose. Yin threw him a few spade-shaped coins, which quickly silenced the scribe’s grumblings – for now. He would have to think of some explanation for the General, who generally didn’t tolerate independent actions among his officers.

  “You expect much, Captain,” Lao Tzu said. “Tell me, you say you wish to record my wisdom and my memories of the Royal Court. Is that all? Do you also have questions that need answers?”

  “What else could possibly stoke my curiosity, Master? Yes, I would be most pleased with a scholarly lesson and a portal through to my grandfather’s time.”

  Yin filled the sage’s teacup and handed it to him.

  “You move and speak with grace,” Lao Tzu remarked.

  “You mean for a soldier?”

  Lao Tzu nodded imperceptibly.

  Yin smiled. “Perhaps I was born in the wrong time and place. A general once said that I drank water as though it were fine wine. He said had I been born the son of a nobleman, I would have made a fortune many times over.”

  “Captain, think. What matters to you most: fame or your own self? Which should count most, your own self or things bought? Of the getting or the losing, which is worse? He who grudges expense pays dearest in the end. He who has hoarded most will suffer the heaviest loss. He who delights in the slaughter of men will never get that which he covets. Captain, be content with what you have and who you are, and no one can despoil you. Then you shall forever be safe and secure.”

  “Your counsel might be more comforting and credible had you not been so ready to stagger off to certain death yesterday.”

  Lao Tzu heaved a sigh. “True, my death might be welcome as my life now lacks fulfillment. It seemed that the Way miscalculated and consigned me to a most inopportune place in time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Captain Yin, you search for wisdom while others pursue authority. You search through history while others seek fortune. What I had once espoused is either too stale or not yet ripe. It has not been the time for the Way. And for those such as yourself with a natural curiosity and hunger for enlightenment, you may be similarly disappointed.”

  “You are so cynical, Old Master. Surely that was not always the case?”

  “You are correct. I once saw the world with wide-eyed amazement and eagerness.”

  Yin motioned for the scribe to start writing as Lao Tzu began his story.

  ******

  Our family was smaller than most. I was the youngest of five siblings, three brothers and two sisters in the village of Li in Hu County in the State of Chu. My father and number one brother, Foo Gun, were conscripted into a local militia which in turn was absorbed by a larger army in Chu. Thus I had no early memories of my father other than people remarking on his calm heart and sharp mind. My other brother Gao La and my sister Gong worked the fields. My eldest sister Lin Lu was married at age twelve to a widower in a far-away district. I was two years old when my father and Foo Gun left home. I longed to go and join them both: to polish my armor of leather, to stand at attention with my fellow soldiers, to wield a halberd, to hone my own sword into a fine edge to kill bandits and rebels. In the eyes of a child, a life in the fields offered little glory and no hope for honour.

  My mother often scolded me for shadow sword fighting. She would say that fighting never fed anybody, and that killing was not praiseworthy. But I paid her little regard when it came to the affairs of men.

  One day I found a special fallen branch—straight, thick, perfectly weighted and well suited for my grip. I stripped off the remaining twigs and marveled at my new sword. I lunged at an elm tree, swatted at low-lying twigs and kicked at the thick trunk. My sparring was interrupted when I spied a soldier in a torn tunic with a walking stick, hobbling toward our farm. As he got closer, I saw that his left leg was missing from the knee down. He had thin, graying hair tangled haphazardly.

  He stopped before me. “So fearsome and skilled you are,” he said. “But should little warriors not be doing something other than slaying trees?”

  I made several more slashing motions towards the tree. “Mother wants me to pick goji berries,” I said. “But that will not rescue my father and brother. This tree must die in order to save them.”

  “Then that old elm tree has but one chance.”

  I stared at him. Dried blood and dirt caked his uniform so heavily that I couldn’t distinguish for whom he had fought. Then he smiled. Despite his rotting and missing teeth, he radiated warmth. I lowered my sword and flexed a bicep. “What chance would a mere tree have against the bravest of warriors?”

  He chuckled then hobbled on towards our house.

  “Wait!” I raised my sword towards him. “You have not answered me.”

  He turned around. “Dear child, show me
your sword.”

  I hesitated, then handed him my weapon. He took the branch and checked for its trueness. From his tunic he retrieved a sharp stone. He balanced the length of the stick on two fingers and determined its levelness. Once satisfied, he stripped off the thin bark then chiseled a cleft at the tip.

  “Stop!” I protested. “What are you doing?”

  “A sword has many uses. Fishing is one of them.”

  He grinned like a child with a new toy. He started towards the river before I had an opportunity to object further to the transformation of my sword. He beckoned me to join him. Who was this man? I asked myself. And why had a soldier, one who was injured beyond usefulness and unlike what I expected a warrior to be, bothered to speak to me?

  I followed him. We stopped often. He told me to close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the forest—leaves falling, birds in song, insects in flight, small animals scampering through the bushes, water trickling in the distance. He told me, still with my eyes shut, to follow the reverberations and smells of the surroundings. At first I thought he was playing a trick on me. I peeked out at him but he was standing silently and peacefully, as if he were part of the forest.

  He showed me plants that healed fevers and itchiness, the most delicious of mushrooms, the lairs of foxes. He taught me how to catch grasshoppers, gently remove their wings, then had me stuff them into the folds of my shirt. As we approached the river, we saw several old men fishing, all of whom I recognized. None had caught anything. They stared warily at my new friend.

  The one-legged soldier smiled and walked along the river’s edge for a way, before stepping into the water up to his remaining knee and running his hand beneath the surface. He closed his eyes and caressed the water as though he were lulling it to sleep. He dropped his walking stick, lost his balance and almost fell in before I caught him. We both laughed.

  “Thank you dear child. Now I am no longer missing a leg.”

  I liked how he called me ‘dear child’. It felt like he was calling me ‘son’. It felt safe. He motioned me to a spot on the river bank, then tied some hemp rope to one end of my branch and the other end to a piece of sharpened bone. He took one of the grasshoppers and hooked it onto the bone before casting the short line into the water. Within moments he got a bite. The old man looked like he was struggling to balance himself in the water and I tried to take the branch, but before I could do so, the fish swam off. All of this happened a second time, and just as I was losing my patience, he whispered to me, “The restless mind catches disappointment. Be still, child.”

  I did as instructed, yet still no fish were caught. I was about to ask for my sword back when he suddenly caught a trout. Then he caught several more. With each catch he blessed the fish and the river.

  He had me forage for reeds to tie up the fish. Then he had me divide them into four small piles, one pile for each of the fishermen along the river. He asked me to distribute the fish while he took the opportunity to bathe in the warm current. When I returned with the other fishermen following me, much of the dirt had been removed from his heavily-creased but contented face.

  “Thank the gods, Lao Kun, you have returned after all these years,” one of the fishermen said as he patted the one-legged soldier on the back. “Forgive us for not recognizing you.”

  The others joined in, celebrating their bounty and the man who had my father’s name.

  He reached for his tunic.

  “Where is your respect?” one of the fishermen said to me. “Help your father.”

  I stared at my new friend.

  “Father?” I said, almost to myself.

  Despite his limited mobility, he moved with an easy grace. Father waved his friends off.

  “Gentle friends, my son is courageous and keen. Above all he is one with all that is about him, this I can see. How could I feel any more respected? He has honored me so.”

  With those words it was as though my world had suddenly found symmetry where nothing previously had seemed to fit together. We walked home with our dinner. Father held out my branch of elm and re-examined it.

  “The one chance that old elm tree had against you rested not in the weapon you wielded, but in how you chose to see the world. Soldiering can be glorious. But with this weapon, one can also feed the bellies of our family, seek the contentment of our neighbors, and nourish the land. That choice comes not from power, but from vision. Would soldiering bring you contentment?”

  Though I was still a child, the answer to his question was self-evident.

  I had many questions of my own, all of which he would answer soon enough. Together we returned home, with me racing ahead, yelling out to my mother that Father had returned. She stopped her planting in the field and stood up, shielding her eyes from the late day sun. At first she didn’t seem to understand what I had said and who the man limping towards her was. Then she called his name, dropped her basket and walked towards him. When she noticed Father’s missing leg, she stopped and fought to contain her tears. He reached her and comforted her by stroking her cheek, but she waved him off.

  “Foo Gun, where is Foo Gun?” she asked of my eldest brother.

  He shook his head. My mother gasped and staggered but quickly recovered. She turned to me.

  “Bring the fish into the house. Tonight we welcome your father home with a feast.”

  We had many questions for Father. With a heavy sigh, he told us that number one brother Foo Gun had been killed not long after he was conscripted. Father wanted to run home in grief but knew he would be caught and executed and then the rest of us would be killed as well. So he stayed on and fought with his infantry unit. He had lost his leg four years ago while repelling a chariot assault. He was left to die among the many other wounded soldiers until a general learned that Father could read and write and, above all else, was considered trustworthy. The general ordered his best surgeon to save my father in return for scribing duties. Later, when the general retired, he released my father from duty. He had been making his way home for many months.

  Injured though he was, Father found ways to help on our farm. At first he and Mother squabbled over what to plant and how to work. But he convinced her to try new methods and a variety of crops. He possessed a mind that was constantly stirring but he never appeared to be busy. There seemed to be little he did not understand or know, few things he could not do.

  One day, our Warlord came by to see how his share of our farm’s bounty was increasing. He was impressed to discover how learned Father had made himself and offered Father a job as a clerk. Father accepted but only upon agreement that he would be allowed to speak to others of his farming methods. He came to advise the Warlord on many matters. His views on farming drew the ridicule of many at first, but he persisted for he felt the incremental betterment of the world, one plot at a time, was a duty that no one should shirk. Before long, the Warlord’s farms and those around them were yielding the most abundant harvests ever, season after season. I was as tall as my father by age ten, but I never ceased looking up to him.

  He smelled of damp bark and earth, no doubt from the pot of licorice roots he always had brewing. He claimed they cleared his stomach and focused his mind. Perhaps it also gave him great patience, for he always encouraged my curiosity and had answers for my never-ceasing questions:

  “Father, is it true that Qi warlords boil children for breakfast?”

  “Father, how do you always know where to catch the biggest fish?”

  “Father, why do some fields go dry after years of good harvests?”

  “Why are your farms so bountiful while others are bare?”

  Once I said I wanted to be as clever as he. He stopped what he was doing and looked at me with a trace of disappointment in his eye.

  “Cleverness takes all the credit, but it is not the clever mind that is responsible when things work out. It is the mind that sees what is in front o
f it and accepts its course. Cleverness devises craftier means, knowledge tries to understand it, but doing nothing is the most astute approach of them all.”

  He nicknamed me ‘shar pei’ after the breed of dog which his warlord owned. He said they could be ill-tempered but were quite independent and intelligent if properly loved. Father knew there could be no life for me except as a peasant farmer if I did not become learned. And so he occasionally took me to the Warlord where I watched the business of landownership and large-scale farming. He taught me to read and to scribe, as well as to do numbers. I hoped to follow in his footsteps and make him proud by becoming a scholar or a magistrate.

  But life has few paths of certainty. Our home was located near areas recently overrun by tribes of barbarians. One day when I awoke from an afternoon nap atop a hill overlooking our farm, I saw the barbarians with their dark, crinkled faces and long wiry hair blowing in the wind, charging down the valley on horseback like angry devils. I grabbed a stone and raced down the hill and was about to let out a challenging scream when Shun, my older cousin and my Aunt, who had been picking plums, tackled me down. Shun muffled my mouth with his hand and pulled me behind a bush. I struggled unsuccessfully to free myself from his hold.

  “Look!” he said. “We’re too late.”

  Waving axes, swords, sabers and spears, the barbarians howled and screamed as they descended onto our farm and those of our neighbors. It seemed like there were hundreds of them. They struck quickly. We could see Father hobbling in from the field, yelling for my mother. They surrounded him on their horses.

  Shun pulled out his slingshot and searched for a rock.

  “Put it away you fool, you are too far away,” my aunt said. “Besides there are too many of them. We will be cut down with arrows before we get within half a li of your parents. We can only watch and hope these barbarians will be satisfied with thievery alone.”