Arunachal Pradesh Folk Tale – Flying Monks – {Ep.232} – Stories From India – Podcast

Today’s story is an Arunachal Pradesh Folk Tale. It’s about students at a monastery, whose teacher really wanted them to learn flying before they could learn their textbooks!

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

In this episode, we’re doing an Arunachal Pradesh folk tale. We haven’t previously covered any folk tales from this state in North-Eastern India, so this was long overdue.

Let’s jump right into the story, which begins in the Urgelling monastery where a teacher, Ekaijinko, was patiently trying to teach his class. His class consisted of one hundred students, a curiously round number.

“No, no, no!” said the teacher. “We’re here to find focus, not locus.” 

At that remark, a few disappointed students put away their compasses and protractors back into their geometry boxes. 

Ekaijinko shook his head. He had been teaching many many years, but this latest batch seemed to be the toughest. They weren’t deliberately trying to be tough. They just weren’t getting it.

Their meditation progress seemed like extended naptime. And the only thing they were getting good at mastering was their mindfulness at mealtime. You could set a clock going purely by the time the students lined up outside the mess hall.

These students were certainly capable of hard work. They had cleared the JEE. The Jhana Entrance Exam. Jhana in case you don’t know, is a Pali word that is synonymous with Dhyana, which means contemplation or meditation. Students ranked highly in the JEE were the cream of the nation. The best and brightest students in the next generation. And if this is how they approached a lifetime of learning and meditation, they were actively distancing themselves from Nirvana.

Ekaijinko assigned his students to 15 minutes of silent self-contemplation. But he kept worrying about how he was going to get them to learn to focus and give up fear, give up material desires. As if to prove that his concerns were well founded, there came in through the window a bee. A real, physical bee to go with the metaphorical one in his bonnet. 

The room was buzzing. With excitement. No one was in silent self-contemplation. Certainly not the bee, which though it was deep in self-contemplation was certainly not silent. It kept up its steady drone.

Given these were monks, they couldn’t just tell the Bee to buzz off. They instead politely beseeched it to leave.

Ekaijinko sighed. If his students couldn’t even withstand distraction from a simple bee, how could they guard themselves against all the distractions in the world?

Ekaijinko stood up and dismissed the class. Not just for now, but until he was done meditating himself. He locked himself in the meditation room. Which presented a problem for the students. They weren’t very independent. They didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Without direction from their teacher, they mostly ate meals. Sometimes they would sit in a place and think about the next meal.

This went on for 6 days until suddenly one day the doors of the meditation room flew open. Ekaijinko walked out. But he was a very different person than the one who had walked in. Ekaijinko had a very peaceful expression on his face. Gone were the signs of worry.

The students looked at him expectantly. Now, their master would whisper words of wisdom that would solve everything!

As one of the students approached Ekaijinko the professor addressed him and spoke. “Go away,” he said.

The student reeled. Such amazing insight. But he was curious, what did the master mean? 

Ekaijinko didn’t say anything. Other students asked. But Ekaijinko remained silent. 

He did answer finally. But not under the threat of an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference. It was to address the immediate annoyance. If a hundred students all ask you what they mean, at some point you don’t have a choice except to give in.

Ekaijinko pointed to nearby Mount Gorichen. There. “Go there,” he told his students. “Observe and absorb. Don’t come back until you have learned to observe and absorb everything around you”

Some of the students wanted to protest that they were already great at observing and absorbing. They had done a good job observing the bee, hadn’t they? But they kept silent. Ekaijinko didn’t seem like he might answer their question readily.

Given a direct order like that, they obeyed. The students began fetching all kinds of climbing gear – ropes, oxygen tanks, ice boots with spikes, pickaxes, heavy jackets. But Ekaijinko saw that and stopped them. They were allowed to take nothing. Not even a backpack or water or food. They had to go there, just as they were.

If that seems dangerous, believe me, it was. Gorichen is over twenty one thousand feet above sea level. At that altitude you need specialized equipment to survive. And there was no established path to the summit either. Using a Harry Potter crossover analogy, any of those students would have considered it much less dangerous to go into the Forbidden forest blindfolded and without a wand, than to try to climb this mountain.

They went. All one hundred of them. Despite the difficulty and danger, this was not like the charge of the light brigade. For one thing, they were not riding, they were walking. And it wasn’t the valley of death, but the mountain of death. And there were no physical cannons, but every moment every little gust of wind hit them and hurt them in the unusually cold weather.

Gorichen seemed pretty close by, but as they approached it its massive size seemed daunting. All that the students could think about was food, of which they had none. This was a desolate landscape. There was no vegetation around, not in this season at least. And therefore no berries, fruits, or roots. No water either. There was ice, which could have quenched their thirst, if they found a way to melt it in freezing temperatures.

To the students’ credit, they tried. They went closer and closer to the mountain peak. But beyond a point, they simply could not proceed.

“Observe and Absorb,” Ekaijinko’s parting words rang in their ears. But what could they do? Their stomachs were growling with hunger, and their throats were parched. They couldn’t sit still – not when they were trembling from the cold. They couldn’t stay silent, not when their teeth were chattering. There was only one thing to do – to head back down. The decision was unanimous. I suppose if it hadn’t been, this whole thing could have been the real “hunger games.”

On the way back down the mountain, they met Genkei, a hunter. Genkei was a very thin man, he seemed to be very weak. And yet, he was casually carrying a massive deer on his shoulder. The whole scene reminded the monks of an ant carrying a load that is several times its own weight. They walked alongside the Genkei making polite conversation, but also trying to figure out what was the secret of his super-strength.

When they reached Genkei’s home, the hunter politely thanked them for their company. And requested the monks to please do him a favor. As they went further downhill, they would come across the Kameng river. Could they please request the river to come visit Genkei, because he needed to do his dishes?

The students didn’t say anything. What was this crazy man saying? He was expecting all the laws of physics to be broken suddenly because he wanted to do dishes? But being polite monks they agreed. And what’s more, when they got to the river, they did actually carry out his request. They asked the river to do exactly what Genkei asked for. Imagine their surprise when the river did change course. No sooner had they made the request, the river suddenly changed direction. It started flowing upstream! Seeing the now dried-up river bad was an unusual experience, you might say it was ex-stream.

The students really wanted to see the rest of this miracle. Their hunger and thirst was overpowered by their curiosity to watch this live stream.

Back at Genkei’s place, he was casually cleaning his dishes in this temporary river basin. He had the air of someone who had done this everyday, as if there was nothing unnatural about this. When Genkei was finished, and after he had filled up his water pitchers, and gardened his plants, Genkei thanked the river for the “live-streaming” service as he called it. The river then went back its merry way.

Ekaijinko’s students were still watching all this in amazement. They observed that rivers were normally lazy, they didn’t get out of their beds. What then was the secret behind this physics-defying miracle? They asked Genkei but he said nothing. The students hounded him with this question, showing more persistence than they had back in the monastery. Irritated by the hunter’s continued silence they threatened to tear down Genkei’s house.

His initial response was that he just had a subscription to a streaming service, but that was met with plenty of dissatisfaction. Genkei then admitted that he indeed had magic. The students then wanted to know how they could get similar magic themselves. Was there a jewel they had to dig out of the ground? Was there a radioactive spider they had to be bitten by? Or did they have to survive a blast of DNA-altering gamma radiation?

“No, of course not, what a ghastly idea!” Genkei said. It was a lot simpler than that. He pointed to the tallest tree in his yard. That tree was magic, the hunter said. He had gotten all his powers from there. All the students had to do was to climb up the tree and meditate there for an entire day and then they’d be blessed with similar magic powers as well!

How are we supposed to climb such a tall tree? The students asked.
Genkei said they were welcome to chop down another tree and make a ladder for themselves. He was cool with that. Maybe they should take down that one over there, the one that seemed dead, and which was dangerously leaning towards Genkei’s house.

Hunger and thirst were forgotten as the students got to work. When there are a hundred pairs of hands, bringing down the tree and making a ladder did not take time, even if those hands belonged to hundred underfed and weak people. And while you might wonder how come students learning meditation and such were capable at constructing a ladder – it’s really not hard. As the students realized, creating a ladder was a straightforward series of steps – you work on step 1, then step 2, then step 3 and so on.

Once the ladder was all done, all the students climbed it up the tree. The smart money would have been on sending just one student, a pilot up the tree. But none of them wanted only one of them to acquire magic. So all hundred students found a place in the topmost branches of the massively tall tree, and stayed there. 

They continued to observe everything happening around them, but were still not immune to any distractions. They observed Genkei starting a fire, they observed Genkei collecting firewood here and there and feeding it into the fire. 

Then they observed to their collective horror that Genkei took their ladder, took it apart and fed it to the fire. Screaming did not help. Genkei’s reaction was no different than earlier – he pretended not to hear.

There was no way the students could descend on their own without a ladder. It was a sheer drop. Loss of life and limb was guaranteed. The students were very worried now.

Genkei came strolling over and said he had prepared hot tea and samosas for all of them. Would they like some? Well, all they had to do was to get down.

They didn’t call him any names, because of course they were monks. But they merely asked him how they were supposed to get down.

“Cry me a river,” Genkei remarked. And then added that they could fly down, of course. If they set their minds to it. If they moved past all the other distractions they could do anything.

But don’t take too long or the tea will get cold, Genkei reminded them.

A hundred monks shivered in the cold and wind on their branches. They were already weak, and without any food or water, they were going to only grow weaker. 

That was when one of the students tried meditating. And it worked! As he slipped deeper and deeper into his own mind, everything external disappeared. Hunger and thirst were forgotten. Now that he had learned to let it go, the cold did not bother him either. His own fears, his anxiety was gone. He was at peace. Calmly he stood up, perfectly balanced on the very thin branch. The other students, who hadn’t similarly mastered their thoughts yet, thought lack of nourishment had made him delirious. Some screamed as he jumped off the branch. But those screams were immediately followed by gasps as they saw that he wasn’t on the trajectory they might expect from a projectile subject only to gravity. Why, the boy was twisting and turning in mid-air. He even did a loop the loop a few times!

More students followed. Ekaijinko’s instructions echoed in their minds, and not long after, all hundred students had mastered their thoughts. Yes, they all had learned to fly, but much more importantly to the students, they had learned meditation. They had understood what Ekaijinko had been telling them about the need to master their own thoughts. And when they got down, 

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

I like this story. It has a lesson on focus, which is one of the hardest things to achieve. It may not appear so until the end of the story, but the students are developing behaviors that will eventually lead them to their goals. Their attempts to scale the mountain, despite the harsh conditions and lack of equipment. Their decision to climb back up the hill to Genkei’s home. Their decision to build a ladder, ultimately culminating in a complete mastery of their thoughts.

It isn’t explicitly stated in the story, but Genkei was obviously Ekaijinko’s friend and had similarly helped train other students.

Needless to say, many of the actions in today’s story should not be tried at home. Certainly do not try to climb Mount Gorichen without proper equipment, and certainly do not try to learn flying without the aid of a plane or a glider. But you can try to request a river to change course. That seems harmless enough. In the worst case, the river will acknowledge it and move on.

Mount Gorichen and the Urgelling monastery are real places in Arunachal Pradesh. In that region, sometimes when the sky turns shades of crimson and orange, the locals know that what you’re seeing is a busy cluster of monks who have just been taught by Genkei how to fly. The colors obviously match those of the monks’ robes.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll hear another story from Vikram and Betaal. Vikramaditya is presented with yet another puzzle that he must work out.

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

Shalu – thank you for those kind words. It was heartwarming to read your comments.

Aarush, I’m thrilled by the number of times you’ve heard the episodes, and I’m excited to keep bringing you more stories! If you have any suggestions, please share them so I can make this show better than ever!

Aniv, I wish you a happy upcoming birthday! I will begin on Ponniyin Selvan soon enough.

Harish, I will give it a thought. There are many rarely heard stories that are funny, some that are scary, but not a lot that are both. I’ll see what I can do.

Moshroom, you and a few others asked for Vikram and Betaal – so that is indeed coming up in the next episode.

Vishruth – thank you for the feedback. And yes, I can. I’d done one on Vishnu’s upcoming Kalki avatar back in Episode 155. If you want to hear that while I work on more such stories.

Hariprasad, you’re correct. Vikram Betaal stories are found in the Kathasaritasagara. But that “Ocean of the stream of stories” is itself based on older material, including the Brihatkatha and 6 other books that are now lost in history, and can only be accessed by a time-traveler such as your humble narrator.

If you have any other comments or suggestions or if there are particular stories you’d like to hear, please do let me know by leaving a comment or a review on the site sfipodcast.com, or reply to the questions on Spotify Q&A. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook, and on X.

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A big thank you to each of you for your continued support and your feedback.

The music is from Purple Planet.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!