by Tendai Mwanaka

I am running harder and harder, it’s a cliff I am ascending. It is a very long cliff. The way down from this cliff has been enjoyable. I didn’t have to put a lot of effort. It’s always easy to say you are going running, long distance running. The school, Marist Nyanga, where I am an A level student, is just below the Nyanga range of mountains, so that running back to this school is running up the cliff. That’s the hardest part of this long distance running for me. Twenty years later, I am on the floor, hard on my bum. I am in a lotus position. My knees are like corkscrews, the soles of both feet point, roughly, to the skies, giving thanks to the powers above. I am saying a mantra in Sanskrit, Om mani padmi hum. Why don’t I say it in English or Shona? Om mani padmi hum, are there no Shona translations for this? For goodness sake we are in Zimbabwe, not India. I don’t even know what they mean.

In the lotus position, I am reminded of twenty years ago. Running was something that was cool with my gang then, the school-going chums. Lotus is what is cool with my midlife chums, and that’s why I am trying to find my position. Back then, even when I was running 6 plus miles from the school down to the junction on Nyanga road, and back to the school, I didn’t still like it. But I was trying to create community with the cool kids. I never liked running, in general. Why bother. I would never be an accomplished runner like Tendai Chimusasa, Abel Chimukoko, Haile Gebre Selassie…no, I will never. But, I would still do it during every sports hour. I was doing this, I had been told, to gain fitness, physical fitness.

Now, I am doing this lotus to gain wisdom. Who said you have to turn yourself into a plant, or into a plant’s posture to be wise. Are plants any wiser than us? The instructor told me wisdom comes from making the mind totally blank. Do plants have blank minds? Isn’t a dead person supposed to be blank minded? Free from what, I asked her. From intrusive thoughts, unmuddied by flash floods of emotions, she said. But I didn’t know how I could empty my mind. I suppose I could empty it the way we empty our bins on Tuesdays. But, it is the smell that stays, and a hallow place where the dirty was. Is that empty? Om mani padmi hum, is it the same as hiha, hiha, hiha, punting out steam, dirty, shit… My body glistens in sweat. I can barely hold my breath, only emptying it out concurrently with the ha, in hiha chants. Every muscle in my body is stretched.

I was told that after every run, when the body has cooled down, I would find peace, relaxation, improved digestion, and a joyous merging of the Cosmic energies in me. Om mani padmi hum, the instructor is telling me the same now. The extra benefits, she says, is it would cure my backaches, and any other aches. Om mani padmi hum, but it is creating some new aches, all over my body, my knees and feet are full of tremors, of aches. My being is becoming blank, my mind must be becoming blank. My feelings are on the lower simmer, the floor is harder and harder on my bum.

It starts with believing. When you believe in it, you don’t think of anything else, thus you get into this blank world. So, I tell myself- I believe I could reach peace of mind. I have the very best of instructors, a black belt welding instructor, a Zen roshi. Rice? It reminds me of rice fields in the south East Asian’ sweltering, waterlogged lands, but this Roshi is an African princess. She is powerful and she carries a bamboo stick, and walks around softly- like a cougar. Om mani padmi hum, hiha, hiha, hiha.

I remember, one of my lower secondary school teacher, Nyamavhuvhu. He was also our sports master. He was a cruel lion. He was a bastard of the first order. He carried the unfurled, pointed thorny part of a strong fibre stem, behind us when we were running. If you were to be caught by him, he would bore your bum with this strong thorn, and it would pain like hell. My bum feels like that now. The floor is harder into it like those fibre thorns of Nyamavhuvhu. But you would cry out in pain, back then, and bolt at a high speed, away from, WHACK!, the bamboo stick. It hits me on my back. I blink harder, shake my head, and then try to concentrate on the lotus, on my mind. Om mani padmi hum. The bamboo stick, just like the thorn fibre, has prevented me from backsliding.

I am chanting, Om mani padmi hum, Om mani padmi hum, Om mani padmi hum, fervently. Why am I bothering taking this run, this lotus position? Ideas, intrusive, start spinning in me like Catherine’s wheels. Who has said the body has to be exercised? Who said the mind should be exercised? Why? I can barely raise my legs- but I am still a kilometer away from the school. I could just let it go, walk a bit, cool down. My heart is on fire- I feel blood in my nose, in my head. My mind seems mixed up with hot blood, broiling steaming-hot water, it is a burning mind. I have since stopped the hiha, hiha, hiha chants, as I climbed the foothill, Mount Love. I don’t have extra energy for that, anymore. The gravel road makes it so difficult to my footing. The road is too heavy.

Imagine yourself. There you are, a simple peasant, seeking enlightment. After a barefoot walk across the foothills of the Himalayas, in the snow, you arrive at the appointed (who appointed it?) Bo tree. You are the Buddha, in a session now. So that, after three hours of it, you open up your blank mind, and then you clear your throat- nothing is quiet. Birds are all over exploding in song, in the trees, the caw and roar of the bears, the wind whistling… This isn’t quietness, WHACK!

Om mani padmi hum, Om mani padmi hum, I am trying again. Hiha, hiha, hiha, I have found my voice again. I have cleared away Mount Love, but it is still steep running. I am urging towards school. I know I would make it. It is just three hundred metres away. I know I would just bowl over in the grass, by the dorms, cool off a bit, get a nice drink, sip it with other cool kids, and talk about the run as if I had accomplished something worth the chatter. What?

Then, I would have my bath, and then go for the evening studies. It’s just 45 minutes of evening study, but I hate it. It is so taxing to get through that, because one is anxious to discover what’s beyond that. It would be supper, at six. Today it’s a Friday, so it is my favourite dish- Sadza and chicken. The other days, it’s always Sadza with beans, milk, beef, or worse with plain vegetables. My mouth waters, WHACK!

Om mani padmi hum, thank you Master, Mistress, I don’t remember. But we are supposed to thank them for every bamboo connection with our flesh. There is no easy walk to enlightment. My mind is full of pain. It is not blank, it is not blank, but it is now wiser. Doesn’t pain and chaos make the mind wiser? It is the pain of hunger that has consumed me. I look around the room. All the other meditators are sitting in a lotus position, eyes closed. I suppose, their minds are a full of nothing. Mine is full of hungry pains. I can’t concentrate when I am hungry. I would stop doing any work when I was hungry. I would stop ploughing the fields. I would unyoke the cattle, and sleep off, or meditate the hunger off. Until someone who is cooking our meals comes with something to eat, I wouldn’t wake up from this sleep. I would be so angry, so miserable, my mind so full of hunger. Nobody would talk to me. I would beat them if they tried. I would concentrate on my mind.

Now, I am older, I know what to do. You learn how to survive, to make decisions without always resorting to violence and brinkmanship. The Roshi is gazing out the window, Om mani padmi hum. My back is sore, my bum is numb, my feet are upsides down, and my entire mind is burning in hunger. I am still running harder, though. There is only some fifty metres to the grass, but it seems the longest fifty metres, I have ever run. Inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, I am crawling, in my lotus position towards the door. Om mani padmi hum, must mean, running away from the lotus position. What else would it mean? Nobody is noticing me, not even the Roshi, who is absorbed with the outsides. Inch by inch, I am getting there…, everything is darker and darker. My head is a cauldron of dark hot energy, and my chest is a blast furnace. Will I ever feel my knees again, my back, my feet?

I am still crawling in my lotus position. I hit the steps on the doors, and just tumble onto the walking path outside. There is screeching, whistling, and beeping of car horns, the steady hum of people passing by. I have unscrewed myself from the lotus position. I am up and bolting away as the Roshi’s bamboo stick tries to connect. I am running harder even as I pain, like hell. My friends are off at the chicken place, I know. I am off to the corner of George Silunduka and Innez Terrence Street. There is a big chicken place there.

A moment later, here I am in the Chicken Inn, on my chicken-eating position, consuming a chicken burger with chips and coke. We are talking with my friends about the 6 mile run. Running from what? The lotus position? The chicken burger is really good. Om mani padmi hum. The chicken is good hahi, no, its hiha, hiha, hiha. Who cares, really? The coke and chips are heavenly, Om mani padmi hum, the Sadza is so filling, hiha, hiha, hiha. Wisdom must come with food.