Disposition 6
A sense of calmness was felt by everyone in the village as we were going about our daily business. There were not many people who succumbed to illnesses and we were more productive. We had more crop yield in months. Our trade has started to increase which means that we were earning more money to start improving our city. Our rebuilding efforts are finally coming to an end. For the most part, our village looks as good as it used to before the hailstorm.
As more traders were coming into our village to trade, more rumours about things happening around our village started spreading around. Soon it reached the ears of our head monk. He asked all villagers to gather so that he could address this rumour and many other situations in the village. He started off by saying that the Lama has given us enough resources to start building a factory to producing medicine. He asked if there was any of us that wanted to be involved in it. Many volunteered but I was more interested in hearing about the rumour. The second was about getting a printing press in a new library that is being built in the nunnery. Majority of the monks and nuns opted for that.
Lastly, the head monk talked about the rumour. He said that there are rumours going around about a cave opening near our village that has just been hidden to us for hundreds of years. The opening has been revealed to us when the hailstorm and rain washed it away. It is said that the cave housed one of the largest collection of Buddhist texts. It would offer us great knowledge and understandings of how people lived in the past and the way they understood Buddhism. I immediately volunteered for it. I always liked the outdoors and wanted to explore the village’s surroundings.
I was placed in a group with nine other people. Most of them were either artists or traders but there was one doctor called Chogyam Dorje, a farmer and a scholar which was me. I could recognise a trader whose name was Tenzin. He was an expert in making tools for the village. I was happy that he was in our team as he would be important for providing the tools for our expedition. The head monk assigned us our first task to find a hunter called Chodak to get an understanding and the general location on where the cave is. It was said that he knew about the cave and what is lies inside in.
We went in search for Chodak. After a half day of searching, we finally found in at the outskirts of the village. We invited him back to the temple for a cup of tea and asked him some questions. He told us the location of the cave and what might be inside it. We were each given tasks to do and I was in charge of bringing the maps. I ran to the library to search for maps of that area. Knowing that the terrain would have definitely changed due to the hailstorm, I took as many maps of the general area as possible so that I can use it as cross reference. I also brushed up my understanding of Tibetan Buddhism as I would be the translating the first person to translate the texts in the caves. One of the traders was able to get us amulets to protect us during our journey. Chogyam Dorje the doctor, was in charge of packing the medications and bandages. I met him after I found the maps so that I could assist him with packing. I had some knowledge of medicine and was able to do simple first aid. So he gave me some bandages just in case there are some casualties and I am able to wrap them up in bandages. The traders were in charge of gathering food for the expedition. The artists were there to draw new maps of the area when we are on the expedition. Some of the artists made special amulets and they pack as many as they could. The artists would also be there to interpret the drawings and mandala on the cave walls.
We met up a few days later to decide on a plan to get to the cave. Due to the remoteness of our village, we are not able modern motorised vehicles to go up the mountain side. In our group, there is a trader who also works as a farmer. She said that she could provide us with some yaks for transporting our equipment up the mountain side. The journey was estimated to take seven days to the cave opening. Before long, the day has arrived and we had to move out for our expedition to the cave.
