The Dream about the Dying Monk

The other day I baked apricot thumbprint cookies from a recipe I found on this beautiful blog. They were delicious, unfortunately so much so, that this morning, almost without thinking, I consumed a handful of them with my coffee!

Like most kids, my son sometimes falls prey to nightmares, which leads to endless discussions on the topic. We talk about the difference between dreams and nightmares (not always so clear); we talk about those who can (or believe they can) predict the future through dreams, and we talk about the eerie quality of dreams.

I’ve never been very interested in the interpretation of dreams, nor am I the type of person who remembers my dreams. They usually fade the second I wake up. However, as a child I had one dream that was so unusual in both story line and quality that I not only still remember it clearly but also have kept it with me through the years as a story.

My son sometimes asks me to tell it to him. It goes like this:

There was once a monk who lived in the land of Kohla. He was the oldest monk, and therefore referred to as the wisest of them all. In fact, he was so old that he could only sleep on the wooden floor in the Skete, and could no longer consume any food. The younger monks fed him broth and water twice a day, and he gnawed on an old stick. One day, the youngest monk discovered that his old brother’s hair and beard had grown into the wood panels of the floor, upon which he slept.

“Dear brother!” he cried in alarm. “You are now so old that you have grown into the very wood. You have become one with the wood.”

The old man replied thus:
“Fetch me a knife and cut me loose.”

The younger monk ran to fetch a knife, he ran swiftly for he feared the older monk was on the brink of death. Upon his return, it indeed looked like the older monk was about to perish. Meanwhile, the other monks in the Skete had gathered around him. The old monk repeated his request:
“Cut me loose, brothers, cut me loose.”

But when the other monks saw the youngest monk with the knife they cautioned him:
“Wait dear brother until morning, because we do not wish to take destiny in our own hands. What is meant to be; will be. Our brother here is old and he no longer knows what he is saying.”

But the youngest monk knew that the dying old monk had years and years of wisdom in his heart and in his soul, wisdom that could not be muddled by age. He did not listen to his brothers. Instead he took the knife, and with one swipe cut off the old man’s beard and hair, setting him free from the wooden panels of the floor in the Skete. All the monks watched as the dying man’s heart opened up from underneath his coarse linen habit and saw how from it an eagle rose, flapping its wings over their heads.

“What does this mean?” one monk whispered.

“It means that though the rooster heralds the light, it is the eagle which is the courier of God,” said another.

Being the seven-year old that he is, my son is adamant about solving this dream.

“It’s just a dream!” I tell him.

“Did the old man die?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I think he died.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

But seven-year olds don’t like maybes, and I can tell it doesn’t satisfy him.

“Why did an eagle fly out of his heart?”

“Perhaps because he was set free?”

“So being set free and dying is the same?”

Instead of saying “maybe” again, I just say:
“I think so.”

There’s a slight pause. Then he says, more to himself than to me:

“Now I understand everything.”

The eerie quality of dreams, here in Henri Rousseau’s The Dream, from 1910. It can be seen at MoMA in New York.