TATHAGATAGARBHAThe world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.—Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms"And then they take it all awayAnd then they take it all awayAnd then they take it all awayHow many years have I been away?—LowFar away and long ago, in the kingdom of the Mad King, there was once a dungeon, and in this dungeon there was no light; in this lightless dungeon, no prisoner ever again saw the sun, and no prisoner ever left alive.One day, a man was arrested for a crime that was never named; the exact nature of the alleged crime itself is unimportant, and perhaps it had never actually even been committed by the man. Regardless, without trial, this man was taken by royal guards down stone steps that grew colder with every turn and shut behind an iron door thicker than the torso of a giant; the iron door was closed and locked, and all light was gone.Sometime later, the Mad King came to the dungeon to visit the man, because it pleased him to do so; the Mad King was a swinish king, a sadistic king, a tyrannical monster of a king who believed, by virtue of his regal lineage, to be a breed above that of the citizenry of his realm, and whose rages were fed by the screams and cries of anguish of his subjects, and thus he stood before the man and spoke.“You are here,” said the Mad King, smiling with quiet glee. “No one imprisoned within these royal dungeons ever again sees the light of day or leaves alive. You will rot here. You will be forgotten here. You will die here, and the rats will pick your bones clean.”
>>25345370The man sat in the straw of his cell, looked at the Mad King with solemn eyes, and offered no reply, no cursing or protest, no plea for mercy; his silence was equanimous, as though the words of the Mad King had fallen into deep, black water and sunk without a ripple.The face of the Mad King darkened at this, and at once, he ordered his royal torturers to begin immediately their grim, grisly work, and to perform it with excruciating slowness, so that the unmaking of the man would last many, many weeks and many, many months.Thus, the torturers came with knives and saws and irons and needles, and set about their grim, grisly work; first, they took the fingers of the left hand of the man, joint by joint. The man screamed and cried in anguish when the blade penetrated his flesh and screamed and cried in anguish when the bone was parted and screamed and cried in anguish when the stumps were sealed with fire... but when the screaming and crying stopped, he was again silent and composed; his spirit was not yet broken.The Mad King returned, much later. “I have taken your fingers,” he gloated. “You cannot grasp. You cannot point. You cannot make any sign. Why do you not beg? Why do you not curse my name?”But the man said nothing.
>>25345371The torturers later returned again, and this time took the fingers of the right hand of the man, and then, over subsequent visits, the hands at the wrists, and then the arms below the elbows, and then above; they took the toes of the man, the feet, the legs to the knee, and then to the hip. Each time the man suffered the rending and the burning with screams and cries of anguish, and each time, when the wounds were closed, he returned to his silence and his composure; his spirit remained yet unbroken.Again and again and again, the Mad King came to the lightless dungeon, and with each visitation, his voice grew louder and more angry and his eyes more manic and bloodshot, because the man would not break as all of the countless others before him had broken.
>>25345373Many, many months later, after interminable sessions of agony, the torturers scalped the man, peeling away the thick, hairy flesh of the crown of the head and leaving only a glistening, smooth white expanse of exposed skull; they took the ears of the man, first the lobes and then the whole, and they took the nose of the man, creating a great, black hole in the center of the face, and they took the eyes of the man, first the lids and then the orbs, with great care such that the man might feel the unbearable, searing falling of each separate, endless darkness. They took the lips of the man and pulled out the teeth, one by one, roots and all, over many, many days; they cut out the tongue of the man at the root. They castrated him, root and stem, and sealed the wound with hot irons and needles, and, at last, when of all his insensate screaming and crying in anguish had subsided, of the man there remained only a torso with a head... the head had no hair and no eyes and no nose and no ears and no teeth and no tongue, and the torso had no limbs and no sex; it lay in the straw of its squalid cell in the depths of the lightless dungeon and breathed and felt pain when its wounds were dressed, but otherwise it made no sound and offered no reaction... through all of the godless atrocities rendered unto it, it did not squirm or flail or scream or cry in anguish, but rather maintained a demeanor of something akin to silent composure.
>>25345375The Mad King stood over the helpless, mutilated abomination he had ruthlessly designed, but he showed no sign of triumph; rather, his face was purple and spittle flew from his lips when he spoke. The Mad King had done this to innumerable others throughout his long and bloody reign, and they had all broken or died or gone mad... but this one had not. The Mad King screamed then at the terrible creature before him, until the stones of the dungeon seemed to tremble: “I’VE TAKEN EVERYTHING FROM YOU, YOU SIGHTLESS, WORDLESS, SEXLESS WORM! I’VE UNMADE YOU AS MUCH AS IT'S POSSIBLE FOR A LIVING, SENTIENT THING TO BE UNMADE! WHY WON’T YOU REACT, GODS DAMN YOU?! SAY SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING, YOU WRETCHED PEASANT! YOUR KING COMMANDS IT!”The torso turned its ruined face then toward the sound of the voice; it turned slowly, blindly, with the clumsy persistence of a plant seeking light... the lipless mouth, empty of tongue and teeth, curved upward at the corners... and then it smiled, like it knew something of which the Mad King could never be aware; the Mad King howled with apopleptic wrath, drew forth from the scabbard at his side the sword that had opened so many bodies, and drove it through the torso where the heart still beat; the blade pierced the heart, and the man died.The Mad King stood panting above the lifeless, mutilated body, when suddenly a pain seized his own chest, a crushing fist inside the ribs... with a short, sharp cry, he first dropped his sword, and then he dropped to his knees; he fell beside the man he had systematically unmade, and the swinish, sadistic, monstrously tyrannical heart that could not bear the existence of one unbroken spirit burst within him, and he died there on the floor of the lightless dungeon.
>>25345380The Mad King has been dead for many, many years, but today in this faraway kingdom the lightless dungeons remain; new prisoners are brought and new screams rise and fade... but in the darkest cells, passed from lipless mouth to maimed ear or only thought in the silence between screams, there is sometimes told this preceding story, of a man who lost everything and smiled, and of the King who possessed everything and died of the smile he could not destroy. As you make your way throughout your own journey through space and time, may this story stay with you, and provide you some scant consolation as the lightless dungeon that is all our lives inevitably sinks its knives into your flesh again and again and takes away from you piece after piece after piece until nothing remains.Even emptiness is empty.—Nagarjuna
>fake and gay(thx anon)
>>25345370All that nihilist garbage when Buddha-nature is primordially free, indestructibly-present, spotless, vividly aware, luminous and unbound!Sad!
