Chris Daly
Marco and the Sutras con Vivace
…excerpts from Polo’s later jail version of China mixed with a few words edgewise from Trung Trac re: the selling of the buddha…
Marco-marc:
Astrologers and enchanters were called bukshis. If you took a dump or went to war you had to have bukshis along. When they told Kublai that the town, Khanbalig, was destined according to prophecy to be a seat of rebellion, he built a whole new town across the river. It was like nothing you’ve seen. Twenty-four miles of walls. In the suburbs there was a red light district with 20,000 prostitutes and hardly a bad one among them. In the middle of all this was Kubla. When he raised his glass to drink music played and people bowed.
Trung Trac:
The Diamond-cutter Perfection of Wisdom sutra started out as 8,000 lines of wisdom somewhere around the time my sister and I came too briefly forever into our own, late first half of the first century. From there it expanded to 100,000, everybody had to get into the act, until it had to be cut down again into two sutras, the Diamond and the Heart. Perfection of Wisdom literature is about the beyond. It’s tricky because analytical thinking is a subtle form of intellectual grasping. We are getting deep into the emptiness school.
Markymarc:
Bukshis told the Big Man that he should, contrary to his tartar nature, give alms to the poor and in fact you could always get a bowl of rice in Cathay, if sometimes not much else for free. The bukshis did alchemy on pieces of paper to make currency, they made black stones burn like logs to heat baths. They made letters fly on horses over great distances. Other idea men filled the buddha-like head of the immortal Khan, I refer to the various neoconmen descended from traditions measureless to man. Family dishonor was punishable by law, criminals were branded on the jaw. Gambling was prohibited.
Kubla:
I own everything you see, what’s to bet?
Trac:
The hard-ass Diamond types had various austere practices. Live only off alms food. One meal a day, about 10 in the morning. Live 1/2 mile from the nearest village. For extra credit you could live at the foot of a tree and sleep in a sitting position.
Markymarc:
The Big Man liked my knowledge of customs, and the way I was good with dialects. I had picked up four central languages and methods of writing. Send me on a mission and I’ll get to the matter at hand, and also note the novelties and curiosities along the way. He had things in mind for me. There was something almost Italian about the guy.
Trac:
The Lotus of the True Dharma sutra took the following position about getting hung up on contradictions. Sometimes the early simplified lessons that got you in the door had to be reversed at a higher level. Also: the buddha was the buddha is the buddha, he is he of countless eons. Not just some one guy. The Lotus sutra was written in 200.
Marky:
My first fact-finding jaunt for the Khan was to Kara-jang, near Burma, where the Tart were fucking around with a brush fire war. To begin at the beginning, you crossed the great bridge out of town, 30 miles to Cho Chow, 10 days to a silk & wine center, 7 more to Ping Yang, near the ancient castle of Caiche, built by the “Golden King.”
Kubla:
I like this story. Let me get a drink. All right, cut the music, maestro. Go ahead, pisan.
This local king was getting a little too golden with the trash talk so Prester John, the man of that particular Neoprenestorian moment, put him in the field with the cows for a couple of years, after which the little guy was heard to say:
Chorus of mandarin’s mandarins:
My mistake!
Marky:
From there we made Yunnan, wisely ravaged when necessary by Mangu, son of the great Khan. Giant bamboos there explode when burned. Virginity is considered a defect in brides.
Kubla:
Fuck you, you Mediterranean freak.
Marky:
I swear to fucking god. Girls are offered to passing travelers, with tokens bestowed to denote each schtupp. Most tokens equal most favor from the gods. I barely made it out alive. Not for the first time being in business for myself saved me, I had to put up some numbers. You wouldn’t believe the rogues, the robbers, the salt-barterers, the provincial bukshis with last year’s enchantments and diabolic arts. The king was cool of course, your son Essen Temin, good name, that. Then there were the huge snakes and serpents good only for one’s gall bladder, the jointless horse tails, the poison arrows, the doggy-doo emetics. If you cut a good figure and cast a fine shadow you might be wined dined and killed to partake of your spirit. They liked the complex tatts, gold teeth. Sometimes fathers took care of new babies for the first 40 days, give the old lady a break.
Mandarin:
Might as well be a eunuch.
Eunuch:
Kubla:
Knock off the philosophical crap at the table. Now.
Marky:
We finally made it to the gold-domed city of Pagan way down upon the Irrawaddy River, where the Tartar defeated man and war elephant so handily in ‘72. Great stupas, elaborate tatts, good tiger hunting.
Trac:
Pure-Land refers to mystical universes created by appropriate buddhas who use their minds to conjure cool worlds for others where it is easier to hear and practice dharma conducive to enlightenment. If not outside the system it’s at least a karmic advance. The buddha does a lot of the work for you. What you mainly have to do is pray and your man gets you right in. Pure-Land buddhism has been especially important, not to mention popular, since 459, when the world began to seriously degenerate.
Marko the Mark:
My other big land trip was to the near southeast and beyond. Talk about cool Cathay girls, I fell in love several times a day and stallions like me never fall in love. It’s a land of idols who are good at helping you track down lost items. It was here that of course in ‘62 they committed the error of the Golden King. I will not speak of governorships of storied provinces or siege engine help against the last Sung holdouts.
Mandarin & Eunuch:
Good choice.
Kubla:
What?
Markio:
I didn’t want to mention the 700,000 secret professing Neonestos. But that Hangchow is a town that never sleeps. The bridges, the markets, the baths, the university quarter, the doctors, astrologers, teachers of reading and writing, the books. And all of it great for business. The warehouses beyond belief. Full. Say a man is in porcelain products. To get that you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it blue sheen he makes a mound of that special earth that has to sit there in the elements for 40 years before it can be touched. He does it for his son.
Trac:
Chan means meditation or trickster buddhism. It’s hard to imagine someone topping the semi-legendary bod-hid-harm-a, who sat and stared at a wall till his legs fell off. He later told Wu, a serious man of power and desperate philanthrope, that good works are for shit, it’s the insight, stupid. Works, study, devotion can be important or not, attachment to them can be a hindrance. For no particular reason I’ll mention the Platform sutra of the Patriarch, copyright 820. We have always been in an Age of Sudden Enlightenment as well as the in-stages variety. A master who triggers an awakening gets a notch on the staff he uses to continue his work.
Markus Po Lo:
I took a big boat trip in ‘85. I was advised to skirt the area to our immediate south where some sort of maneuvers would be going on. I did land briefly at a place called Chamba where the king had 326 children and was barely breathing hard. Yes, he would submit to Kublilai, not a problem, send the papers to his attorney. There were elephants, aloe wood, ebony and nothing else worth noting, so we sailed the sea of green down to some islands, then around to India, eventually to Maarba, famous as the place where Doubting Thomas ended his life.