Welcome to Sue Quiet Sleep.
I am so glad you are here.
Before we begin our tonight's story.
Find a comfortable position.
Let your body settle into the surface beneath you.
Your shoulders can soften now.
If there is any tension in your jaw.
Let it release.
Soften the small muscles around your eyes and brow.
Let your hands rest gently and easily.
If your eyes are not already closed.
Allow them to close now.
Take a slow breath in through your nose.
Filling your lungs.
And.
.
.
Breathe out through your mouth.
And again.
Breathe in.
And breathe out.
Let your shoulders drop a little more.
And allowing your whole body to grow heavier and supported.
With each slow breath.
The sounds of your day begin to fade slowly into the background.
India please.
A gentle mist.
Begins to rise.
A quiet bridge between now and then.
And as tonight's story begins.
.
.
Emerging yourself,
Stepping lightly through the mist.
Leaving the present behind.
And drifting into another time.
A slower,
Quieter warmth.
Tonight,
We step quietly into a small mountain nunnery.
Deep in the Jonan mountains south of Chang'an.
Nearly 1,
300 years ago.
In the high of the Tang dynasty.
It is the hour before dawn.
The sky is still dark.
Early spring.
Mist rests thick between the pine trees.
In this nunnery lives a small community of Buddhist nuns.
One of them rises each morning before the bell to sit alone in the meditation hall.
To light the candle.
To breathe in the mountain dog.
And to be still.
She has kept this hour for many years.
It is as familiar to her as her own breath.
This morning.
She wakes before the bell as she always does.
The sleeping quarters hold a particular kind of call.
Not the hard cold of winter.
That has already passed.
This is the damp of cold of a spring mountain before sunrise.
The kind that settles slowly into wooden walls.
Into folded clothes into the space between the body and the rope.
She has slept lightly as she always does at this hour.
The body knows when to wait.
No bell is needed on the mountain.
She sits at the edge of her sleeping bed for a moment.
Quiet still.
She draws her folded rope over her shoulders.
Gree as Ali Cloud.
Grey as the hour itself.
The sleeve settle over her wrist.
The hem falls to the floor.
Half feet,
Find her cloth sole slipper.
On their cool boards.
She stands.
She breathed once.
Pine risen,
Gemstone.
The particular stillness of the pre-dawn hour.
And then she moved towards the door.
The courtyard is small and deeply familiar in the dark.
She crossed it slowly.
Each step placed with care on the stone path won't smooth by years of the same quiet morning.
Her feet and the feet of those who came before her.
And the feet of those who will come after.
The stone is cold and slightly slick with moisture.
The mist is already here.
It rests low between the pine trunks at the nanary compound edge.
Soft and pure and damp.
Settling close.
The smell of it is immediate.
Wet pine needles.
Demstone.
The cool clean air of the mountain before anything else has stirred.
She does not hurry.
The mist touches her face lightly as she walks.
Cool and almost weightless against her skin.
The whole is ahead.
Its dark wooden door closed.
Its shape solid and familiar in the gray of the pre-dawn air.
She reaches it.
The door surface is smooth and cool underneath her palm.
Wound at the edges where hands always reach.
It opens slowly.
The hinge giving a low and hurried creak.
Into the dark.
The whole breathes out to meet her.
Siddha.
Cold stone.
The faint lingering memory of incense.
She steps inside.
Inside.
The dark is deeper in.
Drier than the courtyard.
She moves to the outer shell by feel and by years of practice.
Three steps.
Than the edge of the shelf under her fingers.
A single candle rests in a small ceramic holder at the shelf center.
Beside it,
A shallow bowl of clear water sits undisturbed.
Its surface still as a held breath.
She reaches for the taper and strikes the small flint.
The flame catches.
Small ember.
Nearly still.
She transferred it to the candlewick and then stepped back.
And in the moment,
The flame settles.
Its reflection appears in the water bowl below.
A second flame.
Patient and calm.
Burning downwards into the clear water.
Two flames.
One above and one below.
The whole brightens a little around them.
Cedar walks taking on a faint warm color.
She lets out a slow breath.
Then the incense.
One stick only.
She lifted to the candle flame.
Holds it briefly.
And set it in the holder.
From it,
A thread of pale smoke rises upward through the still air of the hall.
The end.
STRAIGHT.
A faint sandalwood sweetness threading through the cedar.
Now the magic.
She carries it before the altar.
Laying it flat and smoothing it once from the center outward with both palms.
Firm and slightly duller beneath her fingers.
Woven clothes.
Familia.
It is ready.
She kneels.
She lowers herself onto the mat.
Her legs folding in the way her body has long since memorized.
The rope settles around her.
Heavy and warm at the shoulders.
She brings her palms briefly together towards the altar,
Then draws her hands into her lap.
Palms open and upward.
Thumbs resting lightly against each other.
The weight of her body finds the mat.
Finds the boards below.
Finds the mountain itself.
She is still.
The candle flame has no move.
Its reflection in the water ball holds the same amber stillness.
Two flames.
One above and one below patient in the pre-dawn dark.
Outside the half-open door,
The mist gathers close.
White,
Luminous,
Damp.
Carrying the cold breath of the mountain into the hall.
The wall has narrowed.
To this hall,
To this floor.
To this candlelight and to this quiet stillness.
She reaches beside her knee for the wooden striker.
A small hollow drum used to keep a steady rhythm in meditation.
Its surface won't smooth from years of the same quiet morning.
Settles into her hands with the ease of something entirely known.
She holds it.
Breathe once,
Then strike.
A hollow knock.
Clean and sound and breathe.
Rising into the Siddha-centered dark.
Then it is gone.
The silence returns.
And it is fuller than before.
The sound fades.
She does not strike again.
She sits inside the silence that returns.
Fool on now.
As if the sound has opened a small space in the air.
And the quiet has moved to fill it.
Her hands are open.
In her lab.
Hot breath ease.
Even and unhurried.
The incense smoke rises in its thin pale column.
Drifting slightly now.
Where the mist cold breath from outside enters the whole.
Outside,
The mist rests close against the door frame.
Damp pine and cold stone reaching in.
The pine trunks at the cordia edge have disappeared into it entirely.
Only the whole remains.
Within the hall,
The candle,
The water.
The smoke.
And the breath.
After a long and marked moment,
The striker moves again.
A hollow knot.
Little softer this time.
Absorb,
Find the stillness before it fully arrives.
Then the silence falls back around it.
And disturb.
The mind settles slowly.
The way water settles after a stone has passed through.
Ripples spreading outward from wherever they began.
Slowly losing their edges.
Becoming still again.
A thawed rice.
A day of rain.
Water falling from pine needles in long and even intervals onto the courtyard stone.
The sound irregular and patient and then Gone.
She breathes in.
The mist moves slowly beyond the doorway.
Take a breath.
Move through her.
Ewww.
A slow pause.
Then out.
The cold cedar air of the hall surrounds her without asking anything of her.
Somewhere in the high pines above the nunnery A brief breath of wind moves through the branches.
Then gone.
She sits in the center of the stillness.
No thinking.
Nor waiting.
Only present in this cold cedar-scented dock.
In this hole.
On this mountain.
In this hour.
She is aware of the weight of her body on the mat.
The wooden boards beneath.
The rope warm and heavy at her shoulders.
The coolness of the whole against the back of her hand.
These things are simply present.
Nor demanding attention.
Only resting in awareness.
The candle flame has not moved in a long time.
Outside,
Something has shifted.
The mist beyond the courtyard has brightened.
Nor yet light.
Nor yet dawn.
Bat.
No longer the same opaque white of the deep night hours.
The pine trunks at the compound edge are just beginning to reappear.
They are dark shapes emerging slowly from the white.
First as suggestions.
Than something more solid.
She breathes in.
The A is still cool.
Still damp.
The incense has burned fully away.
Its thread of smoke has thinned to nothing.
But its faint sandalwood memory still lingers in the cedar air.
She breathes out.
The silence does not change.
The whole is no longer fully dark.
Gradually without announcing itself that darkness has themed.
The cedar walls have taken on a pale grey quality.
Fate.
Barely visible.
But no longer entirely depending on the candle to define them.
The outer shelf holds its object in stillness.
Small.
Amber.
And horrid.
Outside the mist carries color at its edges.
The peerless goal from the eastern slope of the mountain.
Arriving without announcement.
It finds the door frame and lies along the doorway stone in a thin bright line.
She does not turn towards it.
The candle burns on.
Small,
Ember and steel.
And below it in the shallow bowl of clean water.
The reflection holds the same light.
Steady in.
As it has since the flame was first lit.
Nothing asks anything to be different from what it already is.
She breathes in and breathes out.
Her shoulders softened without her having decided once.
The morning light continues to arrive.
The water bowl holds both lights now.
The ember of the candle.
And the pure gold of dawn.
Two flames still.
The one above burning steadily on the outer shelf.
The one below,
Resting in the clear water in its patient reflection.
Neither one has changed.
Both remain.
The wooden striker rests beside her knee.
Its wood warm now from the hand that has held it.
She breathed in and breathed out.
The hole is very still around this breath.
The morning has arrived.
She is already here.
Two flames have burned on through the whole morning's arriving.
One above and one below.
The candle on the shelf.
Its reflection in the water bowl.
Study through the deep dark.
Through the first grey lightning.
Through the slow goal of dawn entering the doorframe.
The mist that lingered so close at the beginning has thinned and lifted into the higher pines.
But the smell of it remains.
Pine Risen.
Damstone.
The cool,
Clean air of the mountain before the war begins.
The candle bends on.
It will burn for some time yet.
The mist has nearly released the pines.
Their shapes are clear and dark against the brightening sky.
The mountain holds all of this in its patient and unhurried way.
And so the nun sits.
The dawn settled quietly around her.
The candle still burning on the altar shelf.
Its reflection resting in the bowl of clear water.
The mist releasing the pine trees one by one in the pale gold light outside.
The mountain holding the new morning in its patient and unhurried way.
The world we visited tonight is quiet now.
N You are here again.
In the comfort of your room.
Your mind can rest.
Your body can relax.
If you are already drifting into sleep,
Allow yourself to think deeper.
If you are still awake,
Simply listen to the quiet.
Thank you for joining me at Sue Quietly.
I'll be here again soon to share another peaceful moment in time.
Bed for now.
Sleep well.
Good night.
