I
If is said that fifty-three years after his liberation he
returned from the Golden Cloud, to take up once again
the gauntlet of Heaven, to oppose the Order of Life and
the gods who ordained it so. His followers had prayed
for his return, though their prayers were sin. Prayer
should not trouble one who has gone on to Nirvana, no
matter what the circumstances of his going. The
wearers of the saffron robe prayed, however, that He of
the Sword, Manjusri, should come again among them,
The Boddhisatva is said to have heard...
He whose desires have been throttled,
who is independent of root,
whose pasture is emptinessч
signless and freeч
his path is as unknowable
as that of birds across the heavens.
Dhanunapada (93)
His FOLLOWERS called him Mahasamatman and said he
was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the
-atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never
claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to
be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither
admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though,
could.
Therefore, there was mystery about him.
It was in the season of the rains ...
It was well into the time of the great wetness...
It was in the days of the rains that their prayers went
up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or
the spuming of prayer wheels, but from the great pray-
machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the
Night
9
10 ROGER ZELAZNY
The high-frequency prayers were directed upward
through the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into
that golden cloud called the Bridge of the Gods, which
circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze rainbow at
night and is the place where the red sun becomes
orange at midday.
