that only I can see and that are a danger only to me. I have sat by the masters in penance for each failed lesson, and while at peace that I was going to learn more, have been ecstatically slaughtered during my meditation. My masters have been wise, have been patient, have been generous; they cleaved me from each life just when I had learned what I could from it and needed to move to the next. They were ruthless with my heart that way, so that it would not pull my soul away from the stars, and of course, so that it would always want more. And they were dedicated. I was not to live each life for its own culmination; no, they made this clear: I was to live each life for the culmination of my soul. Damn the life itself. Damn what is left undone, damn the loves left behind.
As I moved from one life to the next, I looked down, once or twice, despite the fact that they told me not to. I saw the weeping. I felt the bewilderment of those left behind like waves beating against a breaker. I saw her crumpled on the edge of the dock looking out and waiting for me. I know I have left her. I have promises unfulfilled---and not just for her heart, but also for mine. But we all must walk our own paths. That is what They say. They also say that there is no distance in time and no time in distance, and so as I am being pulled away from the sight of her pressing her cheek into her knees to still the terrible pain and confusion, I yell down from the sky, “I am right next to you! There is nothing that separates us! When you can see, feel and hear this, we will be together forever.” Of course, forever is now, and then, and one life is separated from the others only as sent is from sight--nothing less and nothing more. But she does not yet see this.
Then They pull me away from my transgression--my melancholy for the distance between here and there and now and then, between she or he and me--and into the great Coral Hall.
The first time, it is a balm, bathing one in the comfort that what They said was true: Here, Lady Wei dances with Lao Tzu, and then with your father. Issa dances with Basho. Sun Su smiles as she passes by a monk I used to be, before what I am now. The monk does not smile, but his energy reverberates in appreciation. The floor, like the walls and the pillars, are a soft coral, like peach skin stretched over a distant sun. There is a fountain, down which the water makes love to white and coral lights. The dancing never stops, but the music changes, and those who are dancing shift positions. In this place, all dance to the same music. This is where everything comes together, the place where everything turns out okay, turns out correctly. It is created and sustained by the faith of those who cannot see it--each time they override their fear of the unknown and have faith in the way, believing that somewhere, at some time, all will turn out correctly. This is where clouds make the shapes of souls so that the people do not need mirrors. This is where immortals can touch the hands of mortals. This hall is between the arch of the the gods’ smiles. This is the dance in which all is exactly as it is. There are no lost souls here, there are no mismatches here. All is in balance and harmony.
I have been there, to this great hall. I .know it exists. Perhaps it is a kind of heaven. I have danced there. But that does not mean that I am not afraid.
“Master, I am still afraid. I have seen the eternal, danced in the coral hall, heard the music which sustains all life and danced to the harmony in which all things are as they should be, but I am still afraid.”
