"Роджер Желязны. Lord of Light (Лорд Света, engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

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Roger Zelazny "Lord of Light"
Original scan by none. Proofing, layout by Nadie. (v3.0)



I
It 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 emptiness --
signless and free --
his path is as unknowable
as that of birds across the heavens.

Dhammapada (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 spinning of prayer wheels, but
from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri, goddess of the Night
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.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique, but
the machine had been built and was operated by Yama-Dharma, fallen, of the
Celestial City; and, it was told, he had ages ago built the mighty thunder
chariot of Lord Shiva: that engine that fled across the heavens belching
gouts of fire in its wake.
Despite his tall from favor, Yama was still deemed mightiest of the
artificers, though it was not doubted that the Gods of the City would have