The Void

(from Chiang Ti Tales by Richard Seltzer)

Long, long ago, before man made books to talk across centuries, a young man, Chiang Ti, left his village in the valley and went up to the mountains. With all the comings and goings in the village in the valley, no one had time to think beyond the next harvest. But Chiang needed to know why the sun rose, and why the grass grew, and why men lived and grew and died. So he went up, close to the sky and the stars and the sun, up to the mountains.

After a few weeks in the mountains, Chiang Ti went running back to the village in the valley and gathered his parents and his neighbors, all the important people of the village and all the ordinary people too, like the young girl Lotus and her sister Little Blossom. He told them all, "Every child has this answer in his drawings. The sky is above; the earth is below; and man dwells in the empty space between. Life is just the journey of the soul from heaven to earth through this emptiness.

"A child knows of heaven for he has recently come from there. A dead man becomes a part of the earth. Therefore, let the knowledge of a man determine his tasks. Have babies for your priests and old weaklings for kings. The babies will teach you the language of the gods. And the old will teach you the value of life and the futility of greed and will pursue a policy of peace."

Many of the village folk were impressed with Chiang's words and were willing to do as he said. But the oldest man present asked, "If what you say is true, then you, Chiang, must be not yet halfway in your journey through the emptiness that separates heaven from earth. How then could you, far from both heaven and earth, have discovered the key to the universe?"

Chiang Ti paused a moment, then turned and slowly climbed back up to the mountains, to think once again about the problems of the universe.

(written December 1963)