Inside, the entire community sat frozen, suspended in time. Although the rice grains had fallen to the floor, many young hands remained in the air – still throwing rice. Others held sticks, poised to strike their bells and chimes and others held their lips to silent trumpets and horns. All, just like the butter lamp boy, gazed into another place. All, that is, except for the abbot. His eyes followed us even if his body remained held in stillness. I could feel the intention in his gaze. It was ugly, dark and mean – no longer hidden from the world by the veil of well-rehearsed kindness he had learned to portray with his body and smile. His darkness was held in check by his incapacity to reach into his robes and wrap his fingers around the bronze double dorje that had passed through the hands of a long line of abbots practised in darkness and deception. I took it for myself and I plucked a few gems from within the subtle threads of his energy body. I could feel a little of his darkness touch me and felt a cruel joy as I looked into his eyes and saw evil with no power. I resisted the temptation to gloat once I saw that he had nothing more to tell me. I turned away, back to Judith and the cat. “He cannot help us. He has spent his entire life here and played the role of the abbot for years but he is still nothing more than the discipline master. The only tools he ever used were the smile and the whip. The double dorje was wasted on a man with no protection against stillness. There is another. Somewhere here there is another but I cannot feel his breath.”

From STILL, Howard Evans, Double Dorje, 2019

Double Dorje publishes the fiction writing of Howard Evans.