The Sayings of the Master

Iluan-ga had not felt such excitement for a very long time. She was 81 years old, and a member of a well-disciplined order whose members maintained physical and mental health, and reasonable emotional control.

She paused in her study of the ancient manuscript. PÂ-EKLI-TÎ-ÂN she read. “The saying of the master.” Not PÂ-EKLI-ÂN “a saying of the master” or even yet PÂ-EKLA-ÂN “a saying of a master.”  More importantly not PÂ-IR-ÂN “sayings,” which would match the readings she knew from more recent manuscripts. In the current dialect it would be PA-IR-AN EKLI, as current speech avoiding the extra infix characteristic of the ancients. “The sayings of the master.”

Twice before she had encountered this reading, though in modern form, and had heard two different dismissals. In once case the suggestion was simple scribal error. In another, a collective usage. Yet she knew of no other instance of PÂ-ÂN used as a collective. Yet the reading seemed so strange to her as to be utterly impossible.

There could not be just one saying of the master. Perhaps there was one key saying of the master. That would explain it. Even that was somewhat heretical. The entire order lived their lives according to the sayings of the master. There were thousands of them. The master had spoken much wisdom during his life.

Yet in a lifetime of study of the manuscripts she had begun to wonder. In her own mind — and strictly in her own mind, as such a thing would never do! — she had formulated a hypothesis. She thought that there had been a smaller collection of sayings, large and full of wisdom, no doubt, yet much smaller than the ones possessed by the order today. To those original sayings had been added the sayings of disciples (specially inspired, she added piously to herself), which expanded the wisdom to meet new situations.

So she had spent her lifetime, using the blessing of her near photographic memory, to responding publicly to challenges of the wisdom of the sayings, while privately looking for the true core.

And here at Turio, high in the mountains, with the special blessing of the order due to her long service, she was looking at one of the most ancient collections. If the superscript was to be believed, it dated to a mere century after the death of the master. And it contained the one truly enigmatic reading.

She had established that earlier sources had less sayings. She had defended the missing sayings by the usual route — establishing their genealogy by tracing them to a reliable source. Yet she had never imagined a singular saying.

As she recovered from her original shock, her eye went almost automatically to the margin, only to be shocked further. “The story of the saying of the master,” the carefully written note said, “can be found in the inner vault of TU-Û-IZZI-ZHO.” “Where’s that?” she thought, but it hit her, almost before the thought was complete. The ZH sound dropping out in proximity to the hard Z, the common shift of the extended ZZ to something softer. Here she was.

And there in front of her was the inner vault. She didn’t have explicit permission to look in it, but she thought her commission from the head of the order would cover it. The question was, did she have the key? She worked through the set she had been given, and sure enough there was the key to the inner vault. It appeared nobody thought it particularly important. It was just another cupboard on which the relics of the order might be kept.

As far as she had been able to tell, nobody here could read the oldest syllabic script in any case. She had to oil the lock to open it, but once inside, covered in dust, she found a stack of manuscripts. She had to work her way through a stack of records from the first year of this monastery’s founding, a historical treasure, no doubt, but of no interest to her. She finally reached a single sheet that appeared to contain some sort of narrative.

It read (in modernized form):

This was recounted to me, the founder of this monastery at Turio, by the Follower himself. The Follower sat at the bedside of the the Master when he lay dying. He asked the Master what sayings of wisdom he should pass on to future followers.

The master spoke briefly, as always. “No saying, only thoughts and actions.”

Then the master passed on to live amongst the gods.

Iluan-ga looked at her own translation for a moment. Then she reconsidered the ancient forms and adjusted those last words: “No saying, only thinking and acting.”

And how, she asked herself, do I think and act now?