Fairy Tales # 7: Gone to Live in the Forest

A man in a certain town had lived there so long that one day he thought: what if it’s better to live somewhere else? He thought it and went off into the forest.

The forest was on a mountain. The mountain was two thousand metres high. The man knocked together a hut out of planks. There was nothing in the hut. No water, no light, no heat. There was only the man, and he was cold.

He went to the toilet on the next mountain over. He didn’t want to do it near the house, because he was a man of principle. The road there and back took an hour and a half. Sometimes the man would get to the next mountain and find he no longer needed to. Then he walked home, and halfway it turned out that he needed to again.

That’s how a year went by.

After a year the man found water under the ground. Until then he had drunk tea made from rain, and in dry weather he simply sat and looked at the kettle. Now he drank tea whenever he liked.

Then the man put a solar panel on the roof. The sun started working for him for free. In the town nobody had ever worked for the man for free.

Then the man built a toilet in the house. It was the greatest joy of all. Greater than the water and the sun put together. The man gained an hour and a half a day. He didn’t know where to put it, and at first, out of habit, he still walked to the next mountain, just like that. He would stand there a while and come back.

A year later the man brought in gas, and the floor of the hut grew warm. The man lay down on the floor and stayed there for three days.

On the third day he noticed something. In the town the water ran out of the wall by itself. The light came on by itself. The warmth came from who knows where. Here there had been nothing of the kind: the man had been cold all the time, had lived without water, and had tried to get used to all this and to the toilet on the next mountain. And suddenly everything changed and became so good that it made no sense, but, above all, couldn’t be explained. The man wanted to think it over, but he didn’t. He got up off the floor and cooked dinner on a real electric stove. It was the famous Sichuan chicken. Luckily, the fridge, which until recently had been warmer than the hut, turned out to hold garlic, black pepper and soy sauce. As for the chicken, it had been lying in the frying pan since summer; until now, food had always kept longer anywhere but in the fridge.

The dinner came out so good that a chef from a starred restaurant, had he tasted it, would have taken off his toque and gone into the forest. But he didn’t taste it. Nobody invited him.

The man put on his favourite music, the hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva. It helped him take in everything that was happening without breaking the silence of the forest. The man remembered the hotels he had stayed in. Some had five stars, others seven. He went out on the porch and began to count the stars above the hut. At the four-thousandth he lost count.

By then the man already understood the language of birds. The birds talked mostly about the weather and about other birds. And the two ugliest ones twittered every morning about the dreadful orange birdhouses the man had hung up in spring. A bear came to the hut. The bear was called Arkady. Five jackals came as well. The man told them apart by their voices. The fourth one was off-key.

Only one thing gave the man no peace. In the town he had left a family.

– It’s good here, – the man said into the phone.
– Our water comes out of the wall by itself too, – the family answered.
– Mine does too, but it’s very unusual.
– You’ve got a bear up there.
– His name is Arkady.

The family indulgently understood the man’s joys and maintained that they had all of this in town as well. Except Arkady and the jackals. As for the birds, they hadn’t yet tried to understand them, and besides, seagulls are rather primitive when it comes to expressing feelings.

The man thought it over and understood that a warm floor simply cannot be explained. And the next mountain cannot be handed over by phone. Everyone goes there himself.

He didn’t try to persuade anyone. He just put a few more cups on the table. Just in case.

Arkady decided they were for him. But he didn’t come, because the cold had set in that day and he was afraid he wouldn’t make it back to the forest in time for his winter sleep.

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The subtext. Buddhist thought: joy depends little on place and a great deal on noticing what is already here. In the forest the man is glad of a warm floor and tea for the first time, but the fear of cold and the longing for his family came along with him: they live in the mind, not in the house. Notice three warm things around you today.