Asking for Bliss

My soul knew I needed to find bliss and balance long before my rational mind figured it out. I was standing in the pouring rain in an ancient Chinese temple in January 2005 partaking in an ancient ritual of writing wishes on red ribbons and tying them in the branches of a tree for the gods to answer. Beliefs older than western civilization foretold that the gods will answer those wishes. I could have wished for ordinary things like money, good health, or world peace, but I didn’t. My wish was simple, yet achingly complex: I wished to “find my bliss.”

I think back to that magical week I spent in China and realize there was something there that my soul recognized I needed. Despite years of communist rule, poverty, and backbreakingly hard labor, the people of China were warm and friendly and the country was full of ancient rites and magick that spoke to soul and made me believe again in a power higher than myself. Maybe breaking the week down and putting it in perspective, will help me figure out what the magick was and how to capture it again.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to spend a week in China for work and I was determined to make the most of it, I arranged to arrive on a Saturday and fly out the following Sunday so I’d have almost four free days in China. I spent the first weekend fighting jet lag and exploring Suzhou proper. I visited the Humble Administrator’s garden and marveled over the calm simplicity of the pagodas, the ancient walk ways, and tales of power summits that had taken place long before the time of Christ.

It was at the Temple of Mystery that I first realized I was truly in an enchanted land. I walked in the ancient building and found myself instinctively kneeling before golden Buddhas that had survived for centuries. The scent and smoke of incense filled the air and I knew instinctively that despite the communists’ best efforts, the mystery and religion of this ancient place had not been destroyed. I snapped photos so I would always remember the sense of something greater than myself that had filled me that day and when I was looking at the photos, I found one that showed an ancient worshipper fully formed in the smoke that had filled the temple. Some would say it was just an illusion of the smoke, but I knew it was something more.

It was the last weekend in China, that we visited the ancient water town of Zhouzhuang. It was pouring the day we chose to visit, but we didn’t let that deter us from wandering the ancient streets. We drank tea in an ancient tea house overlooking the canals and wandered the streets thinking about the lives of the peasants who’d live in the town before globalization, before US jobs moved to China, before we could communicate with someone on the other side of the world instantly, before there was a Starbucks on every corner. We wandered into the courtyard of an ancient temple and it was there I saw the tree filled with red ribbons. I asked our guides about the ribbons and they said that if you wrote your wish on a ribbon and tied it to the tree, it would be answered. Somehow my soul knew what I needed and I wrote that fateful wish that’s haunted me since the day I wrote it.