4:11 AM, KYOTO, JAPAN

Ryunosuke enjoyed the cool mornings. He had awoken upright, just as he’d slept. His small closet was just big enough to fit his legs when crossed. It helped him to stay upright, to maintain a lightness of consciousness even in dreams. The wheel of luminosity turned, day and night within him, and he continued that consciousness as he rose, slowly and carefully donning his robes. He stepped from his closet into the main hall area, then out into the garden. He found his simple wooden rake, and carefully walked to the large square garden of rocks. His mind was focused and serene, and he felt the pressure changes on each part of his foot as he walked over the uneven terrain. He watched the world move by him with each carefully measured step, and began to think on the nature of that world.
There were many strange distractions, both pleasurable and painful, to be had throughout the world. He knew there were delicious foods he had not eaten, technologies he had not seen nor would he understand, people he had not met that would broaden his view of things in ways he certainly could not predict. He knew there were forbidden pleasures as well, things he must avoid even thinking about for the damage they could cause to his quest for ceaseless mindful attention. The human condition provided many of the best circumstances necessary to find enlightenment, but it was easily distracted by sensation or imagination. He thought about enlightenment. Intellectually, he knew what it should be like. Suzuki roshi had said that it was not a goal to be sought after, and yet he did not know how he would find it if he could not seek it.
His steps brought him to the garden and he began to rake the gravel slowly, ensuring that each stroke lined up properly with the last, and that the lines created by the rake were smooth and uniform as they meandered between the larger rocks jutting from the center of the rectangular garden. Long ago he had stopped wondering what the purpose of this raking was, and accepted it as the wisdom of his teachers. He had become focused on the rake, yet was dimly aware of his body posture, his breathing, the sensation of cloth against his skin, light, cold breezes upon his face. The tines of the rake were an inch apart, each one like a large pillar in comparison with the pebbles in the garden. These pillars ploughed slowly through mountains of pebbles, pushing each one in an unpredictable direction. There was no way to control the flow of pebbles, but only to move the rake very carefully, mindfully through them, like a sailboat cutting through the ocean. The pebbles themselves were nearly indistinguishable from each other at this distance, although if looked at closely, one could see an infinite variety of shapes and textures, as well as subtle variations in the grey and white shading found on each one. Some had a hint of sparkle to them, some were flat and dull, many had pock marks and ground spots from years of being moved by the wooden pillar’s of Ryunosuke’s rake.
This tiny sea of pebbles seemed to flow itself. The changes were slow, and without the monks’ interference it might take thousands of years, but there was a certain movement to the stones, waves and eddies that broke upon each other, and dashed themselves against the larger central rocks of the garden. They swirled and tumbled about each other in a completely unpredictable and chaotic pattern. And yet, there was a certain beauty about the rocks, a smooth, rhythmic migration that Ryunosuke contemplated. He felt a connection in all of this. The rocks of the garden, the trees surrounding the monastery grounds, the breezes flowing through them, and even the people; there was motion, and chaos, but it all had a flow, a rhythm, like the breathing in and out of a child. The world was breathing somehow, with births and deaths, with wars and summits, storms and growth and blood and decay. Somehow, it was all as it should be, and all of the strange temptations, unexpected upheavals and broad strokes of human history, geologic changes over immeasurable years; all of these movements had the rhythm of breath. They were confusing to the human mind, impossible to organize and label, and yet the vast panoply of events and instances were, as a whole, exactly as they needed to be. The suchness of things was beautiful, blemishes and all.