There, sitting on the rock that Priya had claimed as her own, sat Tohki.

“Hello, Priya,” Tohki said, smiling. “I thought I might find you here.”

Suddenly, the spring didn’t feel as special anymore. How many times had Priya been there alone, sitting on that rock, and finding the stillness within her? She had never ever seen anyone else here and yet, here was Tohki, sitting and smiling at her special place on her special rock.

“Come with me.” Tohki waved her over. Pushing herself up from her seat, Tohki moved further upstream towards the source of the spring. Priya followed.

Bending down, Tohki pointed at the large boulders that circled the spring. “Do you know what this is, Priya?”

Priya shrugged. “Moss?”

“That’s right. Very good. Do you know why we drink from this spring?”

“Because the water is clean?”

“Well, yes. But it’s more than that. You could go to any of the streams that carry the melted snow down from the mountains and drink from it, but your belly will ache for hours after. That water is clean, as well, but not as clean as the water from this stream. It’s because of this.” Tohki points again at the moss that grew on the boulders, hanging down into the waters. “The nutrients in the ground help this water stay pure and the moss removes any remaining uncleanliness.”

Tohki pulled out a small knife, turning over a small patch of moss that had grown into the surrounding dirt, she cut away a loose patch, holding it up for Priya to see. “Terra provides nutrients through the water that feeds the moss. Here, on the other side of the spring, the moss grows into the ground, pulling out other healthy nutrients. This—” she shakes the moss, pieces of dirt falling back to the ground “—when dried, can be packed into cuts to keep rot from setting in.” Rolling the moss, she placed it into the satchel that was around her neck and shoulder.

“Why are you here?” Priya asked.

Tohki smiled, her eyes crinkling. “Because I thought you might have questions.” Priya opened her mouth to speak, but Tohki raised a hand, silencing her. “I have a question for you first: why do you come here?”

Priya looked back at the rock she used to sit on for hours at a time, watching the water of the spring flow past her. “I like the quietness here.”

“It is very peaceful here,” Tohki agreed.

“I come here to help me find myself. The sound of the water or the wind through the trees help me find a quietness within me. It’s calming. It makes me happy.”

“That quietness within is a very special thing to have discovered,” Tohki said. “Not many are able to find it. Even fewer make the time to find it. How does the quietness feel to you?”

Priya paused, turning inward, trying to calm the fluttering of her heart, trying to temper the anger that had sparked when she had seen Tohki here. She closed her eyes, still feeling Tohki watching her, and started to focus on her breath. Breathing in peace. Breathing out the anger. Over and over and then, like a small flame she felt the stillness with her come to life.

“It feels warm,” Priya began, “like a small fire. Not too hot, but enough so you know that it is there. It is warm and feels loving, like my mother’s love, or how I felt The Mother hold me last night. It feels as if it burns through me. As if it is me. As if it is all of us: our village, all of Terra.”

“When you feel this stillness, how does your body feel?” Tohki asks.

“It feels calm,” Priya says, keeping her eyes closed. “I feel loose, relaxed.”

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“How do your emotions feel?”

“I’m not sure,” Priya says, scrunching up her forehead. “I feel calm, if that counts. But I don’t feel anything big. No anger. No sadness. I don’t feel overly happy, but I am not sad, so I suppose I feel happy?”

Tohki chuckled. “And what about your mind? How does your mind feel?”

“I don’t know,” Priya sighed. “Confused? I don’t usually sit here thinking about how I feel. I find the stillness and hold it in my awareness for as long as I can.”

“How do you feel from all those vantage points, right now?”

The fire within Priya froze. The internal visual of a flame stopped moving. She felt as if she was suddenly doused with a bucket of cold water. The internal dialogue of how she was feeling and what she was feeling was gone and all that remained was a radiately unmoving and still awareness that was everything and nothing. It was her, but it was more than her, stretching up through the tops of the trees, across the vale, and up over the ridges of the mountains.

“Did you feel it?” Tohki asked.

Priya opened her eyes and nodded.

“That is what we feel the moment we enter the world from our mother’s womb. Then it is gone, vanished, sucked away by a flurry of needs and desires. And as we grow, we lose sight of that feeling. We become creatures that have thoughts of our own and get caught up in those thoughts and begin to analyze them, judge them, condemn them, feel shame for them. We forget this true and vast and infinitely deep sense of self that resides here!” Tohki emphasizes this by striking her chest with her fist. “We forget and we make our lives full of our own suffering; making it intolerable with our doubt and anxieties and despair and tears. That is why we do the passage as we have done for ages: so that we can wake up and find the stillness with us once again.”

“Is this feeling—this stillness—is it Eusou?” Priya asked.

Tohki smiled. “Years ago, a prophet wandered these lands. On the top of a distant peak, after taking shelter for the night, he heard a whisper on the wind that was the voice of God. The wind spoke its name and its name was Eusou. As the prophet listened to the wind, he began to hear the voice of God echoed in the rocks beneath his feet, in the song of the trees as they moved in the breeze, the rippling of water, and then he heard it within his own self. Eusou has always existed. And that center you have found in yourself is him. There was never a point where he didn’t exist within you or you without him. What you are at your most deepest self and what Eusou is as well, is part of Terra: every deer, fox, ant, tree, every child, your parents, Serah, Galia, everyone in our village, all one and the same, bound together in spirit to Eusou.”

Priya is silent, letting her mind separate out the meaning behind Tohki’s words. “Are you saying that this stillness is Eusou, but it is also me?”

“There is no separateness between what you are and what Eusou is. Just as Eusou was, so you were. And as Eusou is, so are you. You, me, everyone and everything was there when Eusou breathed the universe into being. We were there as Terra was broke open and formed and reformed, remade time and time again from fire and ash. We were there when life first formed, becoming more complex and more and more whole, becoming more defined in their form and function, after each generation. We were there when the first forests grew and when Terra cracked open to heave the mountains onto the plains. We were there through it all, joined in the consciousness of Eusou. Eusou is timeless stillness. He is us and we are him.”

“I don’t understand,” Priya said, her voice brimming with frustration.

“I know that it is a lot,” Tohki said. “This type of knowledge, if it is gained, is shared over years, not over the course of an afternoon.”

Tohki settled down and patted the ground next to her. Priya sat down, folding her legs beneath her.

“Let's try a different approach,” Tohki said.

“Okay.”

“Close your eyes.” Priya did. “Who are you?”

“I am Priya,” Priya replied.

“Who are you?” Tohki asked again.

Priya paused. “I am a girl, a woman. I live in the village.”

“Who are you?”

“I have brown hair, brown eyes. I like to sit by this spring, alone.”

Tohki laughed at the edge in her voice. “Who are you?”

“I am tired of this game.”

“Look deeper, Priya. Be quiet and look within yourself and ask yourself who you are.”

Priya is quiet. She rocks from side to side, becoming relaxed, and begins to find the stillness again, resting inside of her.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who?

Am?

I?