Zen and the art of making arhar ki dal - Part III

Yada..Yada..Yada...

A few days had passed since he had last walked into the kitchen. The memory of his fall still plagued him, yet was dulled in his mind. The sharp stabbing pain of his failure had been replaced by a throbbing ache. There had been a blizzard over the weekend. Everything was covered under a thick blanket of snow. He decided to walk. The air stung with the cold of a thousand needles, yet he was glad to be outside. The cold numbed his brain and his hands and his feet. He walked till his legs ached and his mind had walked itself into oblivion.

He wondered what to do with the rest of his days till summer came. Summer would come, he knew as it had last year and the year before, and for all time before his consciousness existed. He thought long and hard until one day, it came to him. He would leave his hearth and seek out his peace in distant lands. He would travel, he would search for a meaning, for a spark to re-ignite him. He would ask questions of himself that made him squirm. He would go places in his mind he did not dare. He had once read that fear cuts deeper than swords, so he knew he must let the fear wash over him, to hold him fast, to burn him and to cut him deeper than he imagined. Whence that was done, he would attempt to do battle again with his fears of making dal. Safe in the knowledge that he had weathered this blizzard, he slept. To be continued.