The Wrong Way
Mogao Caves, Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China
In a cave in China, three people gaze upward at three hares.
Over a thousand years, these Caves of the Thousand Buddhas were carved out of the rock. Some were living spaces, but over half were decorated with hanging silks and sculptures, the walls and ceilings painted with mineral pigments, all depicting the Buddha in one manifestation or another.
“The lotus is highly significant in Buddhism,” says Fan Jinshi, a researcher at Dunhuang Academy and their guide for the day. “It roots in the mud of river beds, and blooms above the water. This signifies the transcendence of Buddha and how he moved beyond the world.”
The American man, who is named John Schoenfeld, makes an attentive sound but says nothing. The lotus doesn’t interest him right now. He’s been drawn into the circle of the hares. And he’s thinking about the boy.
John’s wife, Mary, is captivated by the ceiling’s border at the moment, lost in the mineral reds and blues that blend to eggplant and tobacco.
She does register the beautiful lotus flower, thinking of the beauty of their blooms but how their dried seed pods give her the creeps.
Trypophobia, John labeled the reaction: a fear or aversion to holes.
She presses a hand to the base of her throat, tilting her face further toward the ceiling. Then a little gasp rises from Mary’s open mouth when she sees the three hares.
“John,” she whispers, now thinking about the boy.
“I know,” he says, taking her free hand. “I know.”
Jinshi moves closer to his guests, pointing up at the Three Hares as he speaks.
“Sixteen of Mogul’s caves have this motif of the Three Hares.
Here, cave four-oh-seven, is the only depiction where the hares run counter-clockwise.
Most unusual. Movement in Buddhist art is always clockwise, mirroring the movement of the heavens.
We believe the painter simply made a mistake, as you will see the procession of divine bodies around the lotus is also moving counter-clockwise. ”
If not for the boy, perhaps John and Mary Schoenfeld would reflect deeper on the mistaken motion of the painted ceiling.
Perhaps monks and pilgrims sat in this space and meditated on the divinity within human error.
The beauty that arises in going the wrong way.
The wisdom of trying another direction. The courage to run against the tide.
But they are only thinking of the boy. The infant abandoned at a Goshen firehouse, dressed in tan brown pajamas emblazoned with running rabbits, and swaddled in a blanket.
Tucked against his chest was an antique-looking stuffed toy: three cloth rabbits sewn together in a circle, their bodies stretched long, nose to tails. Tucked in the blanket was a note:
I tried. I swear I tried, I tried harder than any time in my life. But I’m just no good at anything. I always go the wrong way. I fucked this baby up already and if he stays with me, I’ll just fuck him up more.
Please help him find a good home, not some shitty place like I came from. I was going to name him Ethan, after my grandpa, but forget it, let him start over fresh with a new name.
Please be kind. He cries a lot but that’s my fault. Any problems he has are my fault, not his. He likes music. And he loves his rabbits, please don’t lose them. They were mine when I was a kid. The only thing I wanted to keep from that life. Now they’re the only thing I have to give my own kid.
I’m such a fuck-up. I’m really sorry.
Please help him find a nice place to live. You’re all heroes.
Thank you.
John and Mary had fostered the baby a month, which was all the time they had before this long-planned, complicated trip to China.
They gleaned the plea in the mother’s note, and continued to call him Ethan.
He was in heroin withdrawal and cried non-stop.
He required all of their time and resources.
He turned the house upside-down. He was beautiful and brave and didn’t ask for any of this.
And by the time they started to love him, they had to leave him.
It broke their hearts to put him back into the system, and feeling selfish and loathsome, they flew to China.
They did what they came to do, and they worried.
They fretted. They sighed often. When John’s work was finished and two days remained in their trip, an excursion to Mogao was suggested and the Schoenfelds gratefully accepted the diversion.
Now John and Mary stand in Cave 407, looking up at three hares who ran the wrong way about the heavens.
I tried harder than any time in my life. But I’m just no good at anything. I always go the wrong way…
Fan Jinshi asks, “In America, who lives on the moon?”
Finally the Schoenfelds’ eyes come down from the ceiling. “Who lives… What?”
“When you look at the moon, what do you see? What is the story?”
“Just a man,” Mary says. “The man in the moon. He doesn’t have a name.”
At any other time, in any other place, this would be John’s cue to clear his throat.
Mary even sees his lips purse slightly, moving into position to form the W of the dreaded “Well, actually…” And then launch into a brief (to his mind) lecture on various men in the moon traditions.
Jewish lore declares the face of Jacob is etched on the moon.
Another legend names him as the transgressor from the Book of Numbers, who dared to gather sticks on the Sabbath and so God ordered him stoned to death.
Yet another tradition declares it is Cain on the moon, his cursed, eternal wandering not limited to the circle of the Earth.
An obscure Roman tale brands the man a sheep-thief.
Thank you, John. Most interesting. Oh, there’s more?
Thus warmed up, John would quote Dante and Lyly, cite the Old Norse myth of Máni and draw parallels to J.R.R.
Tolkien’s Middle Earth, reminding his now catatonic audience of the old elf, Uole Kuvion, who hid on the Ship of the Moon “and has been living there ever since.” He’d wrap it up with the Latvian legend of the maiden who dared to state her figure was more attractive than that of Dievs, the moon goddess.
As punishment, the maid was banished to the moon and it’s not her face etched there but her ass.
Ass. Moon. Get it?
But not a word from John Schoenfeld, professor of world mythology, specialist of signs and symbols, the endearingly bombastic nut.
“Buddha was born on a day of the full moon and reached enlightenment on a full moon,” Jinshi says. “Rabbits also have lunar connotations. In Chinese folklore we have the Jade Hare. The Moon Rabbit. He pounds herbs with a mortar and pestle to make the elixir of life for the moon goddess Chang’e.”
John’s Adam’s apple gives a tremendous bob as he swallows. “You said there are more caves with the hares?”
“Sixteen all together, yes. Come…”
They follow Fan Jinshi to Cave 205, the caisson of its ceiling painted in turquoise, lapis, gold and black. At the center of a four-petaled lotus, three black hares run clockwise.
The canopy of cave 237 is stunning, despite smoke damage that occurred when White Russians used the dwelling as a hideout in the 1920s. Its intricate patterned borders in soft blues, greens and pinks, grow progressively smaller until they surround three brown hares running.
The party must take turns viewing Cave 139, as it only fits one person. A Tang dynasty isolation tank. Green and white lotus motifs on an earth red background. The three hares are white, their black inked outlines crisp.
At the end of the tour, the Schoenfelds ask to see Cave 407 one more time, where the hares run counter-clockwise.
“Before we left for China,” Mary tells their guide, “we fostered a baby boy. A foundling left at a firehouse. He was dressed in pajamas with rabbits on them, and he carried a stuffed toy. Three rabbits sewn together in a circle. The mother left a note, saying she always went the wrong way.”
Fan Jinshi asks, “You said a firehouse?”
“Yes.”
The Chinese man tells them a story from the Jakata Tales, a collection of legends about the previous lives of Buddha in human and animal forms. In one such life, he was a hare.
One holy day, the lord of devas, Sakra, decided to test the animals’ compassion by disguising himself as a hungry beggar.
If virtuous of heart, the animals would offer the food they meant to eat themselves.
When Sakra asked the hare for charity, the hare had none to give. He told the beggar to build a fire, then said, “All I have to feed you is myself.” And he jumped into the fire.
Immediately Sakra extinguished the flames and revealed himself. Astounded and touched, the lord of devas declared the selfless hare’s act of compassion would never be forgotten, and so he painted the hare’s likeness on the moon.
“In legend, we have a hare who jumps into the fire to feed a god,” Jinshi says.
“In real life, we have a desperate mother who leaves a baby at a fire station, gifting him the only thing she kept of her childhood. Interesting coincidence. If you believe in them. I think the real point is that there’s no true faith without sacrifice.
Or maybe the wrong way is sometimes the most compassionate way? ”
“We need to go home,” John says.
Mary says nothing. She is weeping into her hands.
Above them, the hares run and run and run…