The Virtual Temple
Zen — light. Here the ember is kept for all who come. Stand, with open eyes. Light a lantern; sit by the fire a while.
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“Prayer among us is speaking with Šahanû, standing, with open eyes: reporting, thanking, asking counsel.”Jedîyah · Chapter 26
Write what you carry tonight — a thanks, a report of the day, a counsel you seek, an intention for the road. Then light it.
The teaching of the flame
The flame upon the candle is the infinite choosing to be intimate. So it is with Šahanû and us. His light within our soul. But even when intimate He remains infinite, and our soul is both the candle and the flame.Jedîyah · Chapter 26, the Candle Practice — “to be learned by heart”
On prayer and the Stillness
14 The child asked the Mejâ, "Is the Stillness a prayer?"
15 And the Mejâ answered, "Prayer among us is speaking with Šahanû, standing, with open eyes: reporting, thanking, asking counsel. The Stillness is the listening half of that speaking. When you talk with your grandmother, do you only talk?"
16 "No," said the child. "Sometimes I listen. Sometimes we only sit together by the fire."
17 "Then you already know the Stillness," said the Mejâ. "It is sitting together by the fire."
Jedîyah · Chapter 26, Section I
Never kneel before the candle. Never pray to the candle; speak with Šahanû, if you speak, standing, eyes open. — Chapter 26
The Stillness — the Four Breaths of the Road
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How the breaths go
5 The Four Breaths. Every breath of the Stillness has four parts, and these are called the Four Breaths of the Road, for they are the four steps of every journey: setting out, arriving, leaving, and the pause before the next road.
6 The First: the Gathering Breath. Draw the air in through the nose, slowly, letting the belly swell first, then the ribs widen, then the top of the chest rise a little. Do not heave the shoulders. Let the drawing be smooth, as water is drawn up a well-rope hand over hand. As you gather the air, gather your attention too, from wherever it has wandered: from the quarrel, from the ledger, from the noise of the market. Bring it home on the breath.
7 The Second: the Holding. At the top of the breath, rest. Do not clamp the throat shut; only let the drawing stop, as a traveller stops at the top of a pass and stands looking out. The Holding is short: a heartbeat, two, three at most for the beginner. This is the still point, the summit, where the road is neither climbing nor falling. Here the flame is steady at its root.
8 The Third: the Giving Breath. Let the air go out, through the nose or through softly parted lips, slower than it came in. Let the ribs fall and the belly draw gently home. As you give the breath, give with it what you do not need to carry: the tightness in the jaw, the hunch of the shoulders, the grudge that has ridden with you since noon. Give it out as the body gives out the smoke of its burning, without anger, as a matter of course.
9 The Fourth: the Empty Step. At the bottom of the breath, rest again. The lungs are quiet. The next breath has not yet come. This is the pause between one road and the next, when the wagon has stopped and the horses stand and the new way has not been chosen. Do not hurry out of it. Wait until the body itself wishes to draw again; it always will. Then the Gathering Breath begins, and the road turns once more.
10 The Measure of the Breaths. For the beginner, let the Gathering be a count of four, the Holding two, the Giving six, and the Empty Step two. The Giving is longer than the Gathering, for a long out-breath slows the heart and calms the body; this the healers have measured, and the sernî teach it to every child. As the practice ripens, the counts may lengthen: five, three, seven, three; or six, four, eight, four. Never strain. A breath that is forced is a breath that is fought, and the Stillness is not a fight with the body.
12 The Round of Twenty. The sernî count in twenty, and so the Stillness is counted in twenty. Twenty breaths, each with its four steps, make one Round. Twenty is the number of completion: twenty fingers and toes on the body, twenty codes on the Short Road, twenty years to the end of childhood. A Round of Twenty is a small completion, a whole thing, done.
14 At the end of each Round, pause, and say in the heart one word: "Round." Or say "sabahr." Then begin the next if you will.
16 When the Count is Lost. You will lose the count. Every sernî loses the count, from the youngest child to the oldest Mejâ. The mind wanders off like a goat from the herd and is found three hills away chewing on something it should not.
17 When you find you have lost the count, do not scold yourself. Smile, as you would smile at the goat. Then begin again at one. The finding is itself the practice. The one who loses the count a hundred times in a Round and returns a hundred times has done a hundred times the work of the one who never wandered.
The Candle Practice
Watch the small birth. A screen is not a flame; if you can, light a real plain candle and keep it in sight. Never leave a candle burning untended.
- 1. The hour. Choose the hour when the day folds itself away: the dusk, or after the evening meal. It may also be done before dawn in the dark of the morning.
- 2. The candle. Take a plain candle. The plain ones are best, for they hide nothing. It may be of beeswax or of plant-wax; let it not be shaped into the likeness of anything. Set it on a table at the height of the chest when you sit, or on a shelf at the height of the heart when you stand, a little more than an arm's length away.
- 3. The room. Let the room be dim. Let there be no draught. Let the door be closed against interruption, unless you are keeping watch over children, in which case let the door stay open and let them come if they come; a child at the candle is no interruption.
- 4. The shape. Stand in the Standing Shape or sit in the Sitting Shape. Let the back be straight but not proud.
- 5. The lighting. Strike the light and watch the small birth. Say nothing. See that the fire on the match and the fire on the wick are not two fires; one became the other without being divided. This is the Shared Fire and the Own Flame in a single motion of the hand.
- 6. The first Round. Breathe one Round of Twenty with the Four Breaths of the Road, the eyes resting on the flame.
- 7. The three looks. Then, with three slow breaths: with the first breath, see the flame as a thing — its colours, the blue root at the wick where the burning is hottest, the yellow body that glows from tiny grains of soot made white-hot, the thin tip that wavers into smoke (dimr). With the second breath, see the light falling on the table, on your hands, on the wall behind; the light is not only there in the flame, it is here, touching you; ask, where does the candle end? With the third breath, let the question turn. Do not ask, "What is the flame?" Ask, "What is seeing the flame?" Do not answer. Let the question be warm in you, as the light is warm on your face.
- 8. The staying. Stay as long as you are able, and then a little longer. If thoughts come, let them be moths: they circle the light; they are drawn to it; they are not the light. Do not swat them. Let them circle and go.
- 9. The words. Before you put out the flame, say softly, in Seren or in whatever tongue your heart was born in: "I know you. You are fire." And then, standing taller: "And so am I. The candle is mine; the flame is His; the soul is both."
- 10. The putting out. Put out the flame gently, with a snuffer or with wetted fingers, as you would close a door on a sleeping child. Do not blow it out in a gust. The fire is not ended; it has only taken off its small shape and returned to the great Fire from which it came, and you will call it again tomorrow.
- 11. The closing. Say "sabahr." Rise, and carry the warmth of it into the next room.
Jedîyah · Chapter 26, Section IV — “The Practice”
Words for the flame
Every word here is taken from the Jedîyah or The Kindled Table. Read them standing, eyes open, aloud where you can.
Closing words of the Candle Practice
The flame upon the candle is the infinite choosing to be intimate. His light within my soul; His light, and mine. Even near, He is infinite; even infinite, He is near. I am the candle. I am the flame. I am both. I know you. You are fire. And so am I.
Jedîyah · Chapter 26
The blessing at the Table of the Ancestors
For the meal that was, sabahr. For the meal that is, sabahr. For the meal that will be, sabahr.
Jedîyah · Chapter 39
Invocation
Spoken before the first page is turned
Before the word, the warmth. Before the warmth, the kindling. Before the kindling, a hand that gathered wood in a forest no one remembers.
Come in out of the dark, you who have walked far. Shake the road from your cloak. There is a candle in the window. It was lit for you before you knew you were coming.
I do not say: believe. I say: look. I do not say: obey. I say: sit down, the bread is warm.
Let these words be a hearth and not a fence. Let whoever comes find a chair. Let whoever leaves take an ember. And let the one who reads remember what the reading cannot give — that the fire was never elsewhere, and the meal was cooked a long time ago.
The Kindled Table — spoken before the first page is turned
Closing Benediction
Spoken when the book is closed
Now close the book, traveller, and look up.
There is a candle somewhere near you — a lamp, a window, a screen of sunlight on the floor, the light in the eye of someone who loves you. Look at it. You know what it is.
May you know it immediately, without reasoning, without doubt, the way fire knows fire.
May you remember, when you eat, the long cooking: the stars, the soil, the rain, the many hands, the ancestors, the Host who moves unseen among the tables.
May every road you walk have been laid before you by kindness, and may you lay a little road for those who follow.
May every threshold receive you, and every inn be warm, and every stranger turn out to be kin.
May you carry fire to new lands and sweeten every cup you touch and spill nothing.
May your dead be at peace, their embers kept in your keeping. May your silence be full. May your homecoming be ordinary and astonishing.
And when your own small candle is spent, may you go into the great burning without fear, knowing you were never anything but fire, and that the meal you leave behind will feed those you will never meet.
The light is fire. The meal is history. You are not a stranger to either.
Go in peace. Come back hungry. The table is always set.
Sabahr.
The Kindled Table — spoken when the book is closed