Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

22 Beelzebub for the First Time in Tibet

22.258

“But when, as I have already said, they, having settled down, set about carrying out in practice the special form of ‘suffering’ which they had invented, and their wives, having learned its true nature, rebelled, then many of them, having fallen under the influence of their wives, declined to carry out the obligations they had undertaken while still in Pearl-land—and as a result, they then divided into two independent parties.

22.258

“From this time on, these sectarians, formerly called the Self-tamers, now began to be called by various names; those of the Self-tamers who remained faithful to the obligations they had taken upon themselves were called ‘Orthodoxhydooraki,’ while the rest, who had renounced the several obligations they had undertaken in their native country, were called ‘Katoshkihydooraki.’

“It transpired that at the time of our arrival in Sincratorza those of the sectarians who were named Orthodoxhydooraki had their well-organized what is called ‘monastery’ not far from this original settling place of theirs, and there the said special form of suffering was already proceeding.

22.259

“On resuming our journey the next day after a restful night, we passed very near the monastery of these sectarians of the Buddhist religion of the Orthodoxhydooraki doctrine.

“At that time of the day we usually made a halt to feed our quadruped workers, and so we asked the monks to allow us to make our necessary halt in the shelter of their monastery.

22.259

“Strange and unusual as it may seem, the beings there bearing the name monks did not refuse our objectively just request, but at once, and without any of the ‘swaggering’ that had become proper there to monks of all centuries and of all doctrines, admitted us. And we thereupon entered the very center of the sphere of the arcana of this doctrine, the kind of sphere which, from the very beginning of their arising, the beings of the planet Earth came to be very skillful in concealing from the observation even of Individuals with pure Reason. In other words, they became skillful in wiseacring something or other and in making of it, as they say, a ‘mystery,’ and in so thoroughly concealing this mystery of theirs from others by all sorts of means that even beings with Pure Reason cannot penetrate them.

22.259-60

“The monastery of the Orthodoxhydooraki sect of the Buddhist religion occupied a large square with a strongly built wall around it, which protected everything within, both from beings similar to themselves and from wild beings.

“In the middle of this enormous walled enclosure stood a large structure, also strongly built, which constituted the main part of the monastery.

“In one half of this large structure their ordinary being-existence was carried on, and in the other they practiced those special manipulations of theirs which were just the particularity of the form of belief of the followers of their sect and which to others were arcana.

22.260

“Around the outside wall, on its inner side, stood a row of small, strongly built, closely adjoining compartments, like cells.

“It was just these same ‘cells’ that represented the difference between this monastery and other monasteries in general on the planet Earth.

22.260

“These sentry-box structures were entirely walled in on all sides, except that near the bottom they had a small aperture through which, with great difficulty, a hand could be thrust.

“These strong sentry-box structures were for the perpetual immurement of the already ‘deserving’ beings of that sect—and they were to occupy themselves with their famous manipulation of what they call their ‘emotions’ and ‘thoughts’—until the total destruction of their planetary existence.

“And so, it was when the wives of these ‘self-tamer-sectarians’ learned of just this that they made the said great outcry.

22.260

“In the fundamental religious teaching of this sect there was a full explanation of just what manipulations and for how long a time it is necessary to produce them upon oneself in order to merit being immured in one of the strongly built cells, there to receive every twenty-four hours a piece of bread and a small jug of water.

22.260-1

“At that time when we came within the walls of that terrible monastery, all these monstrous cells were already occupied; and the care of the immured, that is, giving them once in twenty-four hours, through the aforementioned tiny apertures, a piece of bread and a small jug of water, was carried out with great reverence by those sectarians who were candidates for that immurement, and who, while waiting their turn, existed in the said large building that stood in the monastery square.

22.261

“Your immured favorites did indeed exist in the said monastery sepulchres until their existence, so full of deprivations, half-starved and motionless, came quite to an end.

22.261

“When the companions of the immured learned of the cessation of the existence of any one of them, his planetary body was removed from the improvised sepulchre and immediately, in the place of the being thus self-destroyed, another similar unfortunate fanatic of that maleficent religious teaching of theirs was immured; and the ranks of these unfortunate ‘fanatic monks’ were being filled up by other members of that peculiar sect, constantly coming from Pearl-land.

22.261

“In Pearl-land itself all the adherents of that sect already knew of the existence of that special ‘convenient’ place for the actualization of the finale of their religious doctrine, purporting to have been based on the exact instructions of Saint Buddha; and in every big center they even had what are called agents who helped them to get there.