Young Samurai_ The Way of the Sword - Chris Bradford [79]
Throughout all this, no explanation was given.
‘What’s all this for?’ whispered Jack to the monk who was helping him to dress in the strange assortment of clothing and equipment.
The monk, busy with wrapping the rope round Jack’s waist, looked up.
‘You’re wearing a robe of white, the Buddhist colour of death, to remind you of how close you will come to the limits of life itself,’ he whispered. ‘The rope is known as “the cord of death”. This, together with the knife, serves to remind all novice monks of their duty to take their life if they do not complete their pilgrimage, either by hanging or self-disembowelment.’
Not being a monk, Jack was glad this rule didn’t apply to him.
The preparations complete, their lanterns were lit and the six entrants were led outside into the darkened temple courtyard. The rain had eased, but there was a chill wind blowing and Jack gave an involuntary shudder.
The priest, sheltering beneath an umbrella held by one of his monks, beckoned them into the centre of the courtyard. The six of them gathered round, each shivering in their own pool of lantern light, their faces drawn and anxious.
‘You are to complete just one day of the Thousand Day Pilgrimage my Tendai monks have to accomplish as part of their spiritual training,’ he announced. ‘Our temple believes challenge is a mountain with enlightenment at its peak. Climb the mountain and satori is yours.’
The priest pointed into the darkness. Against the thunderous sky, Jack could just make out the shadowy outline of a mountain backlit by sheet lightning.
‘You will go to the top of the first Circle of Three and back, praying at each of the twenty shrines marked in your books,’ explained the priest. ‘You will undertake this challenge alone. You cannot stop to sleep. You are not allowed to eat. And you must return to this temple before the first light of dawn strikes the eyes of the wooden Buddha.’
The priest looked at each of them in turn, his gaze seeming to penetrate their very souls.
‘If you hear my monks complete the Mantra of Light, then you are too late.’
38
RUNNING ON EMPTY
Jack had hit his limit.
He couldn’t go on. His body was rebelling and a lonesome desperation descended upon him as he listened to the sound of his straw sandals squelching in the mud.
The rain, which had slackened at the start of the challenge, was now cascading in a torrential downpour and Jack was soaked to the skin. His feet were aching blocks of ice, his second pair of straw sandals were already disintegrating, and his muscles burned with a sickening pain.
But he couldn’t stop.
He wasn’t allowed to.
‘To reach the top, you have to climb a mountain step by step,’ the High Priest had told the six Circle entrants prior to commencing the Body challenge. ‘You will experience pain on this journey, but remember the pain is only a symptom of the effort you’re putting into the task. You must break through this barrier.’
But Jack was finding the pain too great to overcome. He’d been running for over half the night. He was hungry and weak from exhaustion; the energy from the pitiful last meal was already burnt up and he had visited only fourteen of the twenty shrines he had to reach before dawn.
Jack stumbled on.
But the fifteenth shrine was still nowhere in sight. Surely he must have passed it by now. He began to question whether the Two Heavens could be worth such physical punishment and all the momentum from his body ebbed away as his mind took hold, coaxing him to stop.
‘Climb the mountain and satori is yours,’ the priest had told them.
Jack no longer cared for enlightenment. All he wanted was a bed and to be warm and dry. He felt his pace almost grinding to a halt.
This challenge was impossible. How was he supposed to find his way along mountain trails, made treacherous by the rain, in complete darkness? Somehow he was meant to cover a distance equivalent to crossing the Channel from England to France,