A Haunting is Afoot

The lot of us were naive to think that we would face no consequences and in turn, save ample time, money, and resources by refurbishing one of the old abandoned buildings to build our medicine factory. While the idea was a good one, it seems to have brought with it enough adversity to compensate for the relative ease with which we managed to set it up.

I was one of the individuals who stayed behind to oversee the construction of the factory and was delegated the task of organizing our inventory of herbs and minerals as they came in. One day, one of our fellow doctors brought back with him some herbs that appeared to me as looking rather peculiar in appearance. When I asked him what they were, he told me he believed them to be wild cardamom. As I had never seen cardamom of this sort, I immediately isolated the herbs from the rest that I had set to dry, intending to take them home to get Pala’s opinion on what they might be and what they could be used for.

Strangely enough, that night, when I looked in my pocket to retrieve the strange herbs, I could not find them. Needless to say, Pala immediately began to tell me that I had been spending too much time at the factory, and that it was likely that my mind was playing tricks on me. Perhaps I had neglected to place the herbs in my pocket at the very beginning. Although I was positive that this was not the case, I resigned and resolved to bring them home the next day.

The next day, when I came into the factory, I was overwhelmed by the sight of a large pile of said herbs. When I enquired with one of the nuns at the nearby nunnery to see whether anyone had stopped by, she informed me that since leaving yesterday, I was the first person to arrive. I asked her whether she was sure in what she was saying because I had a very good reason to believe otherwise. Somewhat taken aback by my retort, the nun asked me what the problem was, and I explained to her what seemed to be the self-directed movements of the herbs. She made it very clear in her facial expression that she knew something that I did not, however, she did not tell me what that thing was right away. She started by asking me whether our team had done any research into what type of building this had been in the past, or who had resided here before the building was abandoned. I meekly responded that we had not, though we had made sure that we were not stealing anyone’s private property by clearing the plans with the local records office. The nun then explained to me that the building in which we were looking to make our medicines had, in the past, acted as the central slaughterhouse for all the neighbouring villages. It was run by a family that eventually died out because no one wanted to associate with individuals who constantly engaged in activities that would undoubtedly warrant bad karma. As a result, the building not only became a graveyard for the spirits of the animals killed there, but also for the family who, in their efforts to merely own a livelihood, earned the hatred of all the Buddhists in the vicinity.

It was my turn to be taken aback. I asked her what we might do in such a situation to once again retain control over the factory. The nun told me that it would be necessary to perform a Chod ritual, one of the first performed in the village in over 100 years. In this tantric ritual, we would seek to use the accumulation of negative energy that seemed to surround this building against the spirits themselves by visualizing offering our bodies in a tantric feast, essentially putting our understanding of sunyata to the test. She warned me, though, that this ritual, most effective if performed by the individual directly impacted by the negative energy (i.e. me), would not be easy to perform and would require at least a month’s worth of training and meditation to prepare the mind to comprehend the inherent emptiness of the universe. Sensing no other option, and not wanting to worry my teammates about the history of the building, I agreed to whatever retreat she had in mind and left the factory.

To my knowledge, my teammates still do not understand when, where, or why I have gone- and I feel guilty for leaving them in the lurch as such. However, I vow to make this absence worthwhile. I will not return until I have comprehended the universe’s sunyata enough to protect the future of our medicine factory.