Waiting for divine help.- SHORT STORY. A finishthestory entry
The story of Mr. Renhe Ren
It is said that Mr. Renhe Ren, of Daochu village, in the province of Quan Shijie, in his forty-second year of life, was seized by a great rage because of his long-standing enemy, who was constantly working to hinder and ruin any of his activities and projects. Faced with the umpteenth abuse, Mr. Renhe Ren felt that his harmony and self-control were going to be lost. He was no longer able to feel the noble sentiments worthy of a superior man.
Then he remembered the words of the wise man. "Sit down along the river bank and wait, sooner or later you will see the corpse of your enemy pass". So, he left the village of Daochu and went down to the river. He found a willow with a wide foliage that bent gently over the water, and sat down in his shadow, determined to wait until the wisdom of the ancestors had brought a solution to his problem.
He awaited for days and nights, meditating. Sun, rain, wind and fog alternated tormenting him, but neither the heat, nor the cold, nor the humidity, nor the insects distracted him from his waiting. Time passed, until one day in late autumn, the stream swollen for the rains brought a corpse to its feet, face down. Mr. Renhe Ren shook himself from his meditation and leaned towards the muddy water, his heart finally calm.
Great was his surprise when he saw…
-MY ENDING:
It was a young man no doubt. Even death could not so soon take away the majesty of broad shoulders and sinewed arms. He was unnaturally tall and Renhe had trouble just lifting him up the bank a few steps. Death had affected the body- his face was bloated, skin blotched in shades of grey and pink. It was nobody Renhe knew. The marks on his ruined neck, shoulder and chest clearly were from a wild cat- a tiger, most likely. Yet apart from the half torn neck and the badly mauled chest and shoulder there were no other signs of fight on his body. For a moment Renhe sat puzzled, till he concluded that the tiger must have attacked when this strong man was asleep. Hence no other signs of fight. Or of the dagger and crossbow normally carried by travelers for jungle crossings.
The clothes were ordinary, but around his neck was an exquisite silver chain with a small tube like locket hanging from it. Renhe pulled the locket free and saw that one end of the tube was a cap. Renhe managed to unscrew the cap, it held a tiny scroll which proclaimed.
"I Beni Sem, Supreme Archer of of Quan today take an oath: I will not hurt any living thing nor carry my weapons and will not fight any one or buy and sell to earn a living till I have gained wisdom to foresee the consequences of my actions."
Renhe stood up in shock, throwing the locket and the message away he scrambled towards his place of meditation. He was shivering as if cold- the warrior had not saved himself; not helped himself but just sat there as the beast mauled him. Was this wisdom? This was so wrong! He sat facing away from the river bank and started deep breathing to calm his heart. Less than a minute later a wind blew across the river carrying the tiny scroll into Mr. Renhe Ren's lap. He looked at the scroll and started to cry.
"Father! Wake Up. Father." It was his twelve year old daughter shaking him.
"What happened. Are you OK father?"
"Fine, just slept off. What are you doing here. Alone?"
"I wanted to see you. Grandfather was scolding everyone today. Not to help you in this... madness." She looked into his eyes. "You are not mad!"
Renhe blinked back tears. "No. Ancestors have blessed me. Come let us go home little one. I have a lot of work to do and damn! I will keep trying. I will try and I will wait, I will do both."
The Contest: https://steemit.com/finishthestory/@bananafish/finish-the-story-contest-week-44
Oh i like how you've taken a different sort of approach to this. The body belonging to someone else entirely, and then the scroll, you bring in new elements that really add to it. The message on the scroll is interesting, was he trying to attain the impossible in being able to foresee the consequences to this actions (a nice moral within a moral there), had he doomed himself? Then that ties into his realisation, death is inevitable, he could sit and wait forever and yes, his enemy would die eventually, but he is able to see the possible price of that, without having to experience it. Then the exchange with his daughter, and the family focus there. I very much like the ending, that in meditating on waiting for his situation to resolve itself, he came across the real answer he needed, and returned home to his family.
Full Marks for you @calluna . That was my aim- waiting does not mean sit and stare - rather it means live and prepare And it applies to waiting for help, for a break, for good times, for the right girl, for the Divine even!
I also love your approach. Clever and original. Apparently, there were many "wise" ways to end this story but the risk behind was that of an easy moralistic or superficially spiritual interpretation. Marco made things quite easy but tricky at the same time. In your story, I appreciate the effort of communicating something new and personal.
Thank you!
Takes a breathe If @amirani was existential spirituality, @felt.buzz existential nightmares, @wakeupkitty on perverted faith and @agmoore on reconciliation, then yers is on culture shock. Particularly the disdain from his culture to the subculture (and religion of) Zen Buddhism. For which he then saw into it what he was doing and found disgust in himself. Of which that could only arise when he finally knew the serious threats of his actions and stopped believing in the tale. To which he can finally charge of his life and not ask dieties for any divine help. Of which we can make an easy analogy towards the override of diestic roles and powers, for which it takes immense rumination and seeing a changing event for himself to enact that change.
By here we can easily trip into an analogy of general Societal development. By this it could be poised towards a reflection of superstructural development of Culture and the distancing away from Nature. While also a changing aspect of the ruling class from religious fear to becoming the religious figure (or start taking religion’s superstructural power and start rooting it out). In the end, a new class consciousness is formed and this is a massive step away from mysticism and a step towards the bland, horred, reality... like to see yer comment on my ending~
All that.
Yes....Yes..
Gotta remember that I am a Polish person that didn’t had the help of learning English from my parents while suffering a speech impediment and being shy as a kid. Things of the past still haunt me and my ways of iteration; nobody was born a perfect mirror of society unfortunately. Also comment fixed as I was pretty much hopping around the area I was volunteering at.
Keep Steemin! Have a nice Sunday!
Yah too!
A terrific interpretation of the wise man's wisdom, Sarez! Bringing in the tiger and the archer (cleverly incorporating a second story within this story 👍) drove home the message to Ren (and the readers) in a visceral way. Better to live and seek answers through your efforts and patience instead of passively waiting for the knowledge until the end of your days.
Thank You! Tried my hand at a "wise man" ending.
Renhe discovers himself to be a sort of Hamlet, passive to the point of ruin. Inaction it turns out is not the wisest course. This I think is the message he received from his dream. Waiting by the side of the river for something to happen, or becoming compliant when violence strikes may not be wisest course. It is likely foolish and self-defeating.
Nicely told.
Congratulations @sarez! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click here to view your Board
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
I have to admit that I am a bit surprised by the fact that practically all of you have negatively connoted Mr. Renhe Ren's meditation, temporarily turning away from the anguish of life to "wait" for illumination from the wisdom of the ancestors.
But it is also for these surprises that I like to be, from time to time, the author of the first part of the story.
Your ending is divergent from the others, and in some ways more original, to the identity of the corpse, unrelated to the previous life of the protagonist and carrying with him a message that is almost a zen koan: an archer who swears not to to kill until a humanly impossible goal is achieved (to know all the consequences of his actions), plus he's a dead killer, which is an oxymoron in the oxymoron.
This fact amuses me a lot, and the fact that's the flywheel for the protagonist's return to inner peace your ending is fully in theme with the setting.
Foating face down in a river should be a great indicator of the wrong actions to take. lol