"I understand the tides are favorable in the harbor of San Diego, but that it is very difficult to launch a submarine here on the second floor of this building."
"Talk to me," said Remo. "I'm the one who came to join."
"We are all made perfect," said the priest, "but we have been taught imperfection."
"If that were the case," said Chiun, "babies would be the wisest among us. Yet they are the most helpless among us."
"They are taught wrong things," said the priest.
"They are taught to survive. Some are taught better than others. They are not taught ignorance as you contend. And these passions you talk of as so holy are merely the basic thrusts of survival. A man taking a woman is survival of the group. A person eating is survival of the body. A person afraid is survival of the person. Passions are the first level of survival. The mind is the higher level. Discipline, properly pursued, brings together all rebellion into perfection. It is long, it is hard, and when doing it properly, learning it properly, man feels small and inadequate. That is how we grow. There has never been a shortcut to anything worthwhile." Thus spoke the Master of Sinanju, in truth, even as he looked at the silver marking.
Remo looked at Chiun and blinked. He had heard this before and had been taught it during many years. He knew it as well as he knew his being. What surprised him was that Chiun would bother explaining these things to a stranger.
"I see surprise upon your face," Chiun said to Remo. "I say these things for your benefit. Just so you do not forget."
"You must think I'm pretty dippy, Little Father."
"I know passage to Sinanju waits for us in the harbor, and we are sitting here with this." A graceful hand opened toward the priest, who sighed.
"Your way is the pain and inches and small costly victories over your own body," said the priest. "Mine is the immediate true enlightenment that even your own bodies will verify. We have three proofs first. One, the Blissful Master exists, therefore he is. He is reality. We do not ask you to accept anything that is not reality. Two, he, through his ancestors, has existed for many years. Therefore it is not just one of myriad passing realities. And, third, and finally, he grows. Like the infinite universe, we expand each day and each year. These then are the three proofs."
"They'd work just as well for air pollution," said Remo. Chiun was silent. There was no more need to banter words with the robed one.
"There is a pool of eternal and original force that your mind has been clouded from. This is because of your improper teachings. We simply, through the perfection of the Blissful Master, return you to that pool, show you the way to realize the truth about yourself. First. Close your eyes. Close them. Tightly. Good. You see little white lights. Those are the infinite lights in fragments. You have robbed yourself of the pure stream of life. I will give you the pure stream of life."
Remo felt fingertips press against his closed eyelids. He could feel the priest's heavy breathing above him. Smell the meat on his breath. Smell the sweat of his struggling body. The small globules of light that all people see when they close their eyes quickly and then look behind their eyelids, became a pure and relaxing line of light, unbroken and restful. It would have been very impressive, had not Chiun shown him something similar and more restful many years before, a simple exercise that was taught to children in Sinanju who were unable to nap properly.
"Wonderful," said Remo.
"Now that we have given you some power of release, we give you more. Say to yourself, 'my mind is at peace, my body is at rest.' Say it with me. My mind is at peace, my body is at rest. Feel yourself become one with the light. You are the light. You are pure. Everything that comes to you and from you is pure. You are good. You are good. Everything about you is good."
Remo heard very light footsteps enter the room. A soft linen quietly touched the carpeted floor. Another set of feet. More linen. Normal hearing would not have picked it up. The priest was setting them up for a surprise.
"Open your eyes," said the priest. "Open."
Two girls stood before them, naked, smiling. On the right, a mulatto, on the left a blonde, more blond on her head than elsewhere. Their only garments were silver lines painted down their foreheads.
"Americans," said Chiun. "Typical Americans."
"Do you think that is wrong? Do you think the body is wrong?"
"For Americans it is just fine," said Chiun. "How grateful I am that you have not infected Korea with your ways."
"Biggest whores in the world come from Korea, Little Father. You told me that yourself."
"From Pyongyang and Seoul. Not from decent places like Sinanju."
"Whore is a word that pollutes a thing that is good," said the priest. He clapped his hands and the two girls walked before Remo and Chiun. They lowered themselves to their knees. The blonde slipped off Remo's loafers. The mulatto tried to get beneath Chiun's robes, but the longer fingernails were always where her fingers were, darting to the palms of her hands, touching her fingertips, and pushing so that in face-twisted frustration she was forced to withdraw her hands and shake them out.
"They feel as if they've been in an ant's nest," she said.
"It is all right," said the priest. "Some cannot be helped. It happens to the old…"
Chiun looked around the room confused. Where was the old person this priest talked of?
The blonde took off Remo's socks and kissed the soles of his feet.
"Is that bad?" asked the priest. "Have you been taught that that is evil?"
The blonde brought her body closer to the feet and rubbed her breasts against Remo's soles. He could feel her getting excited. With his toes, he unexcited her, and with a squeak, she blinked out of her passion.
"Perhaps you prefer boys," said the priest.
"Girls are fine. I just don't have all that much time. I wish to join."
"Even before the body enlightenment?"
"Yeah."
"There are forms, you know. We provide you all your wealth and sustenance. You no longer have to worry about where your next meal will come from or what you have to eat. We provide all. In return, you must divest yourself of all your worldly goods."
"I'm wearing my worldly goods," said Remo.
"He has what you can never have," Chiun said to the priest. "What you can never take from him. The only true possession that lasts. What he knows in his mind and his body. And being unable to understand what he understands, you can never take it from him."
"Ah, so you think I'm pretty good, Little Father," said Remo.
"I am thinking you are not so low as this rut-faced pig's ear."
"Invincibly ignorant," said the priest to Remo. "I'm afraid your father, he is your father, isn't he, you call him father, I'm afraid there is nothing I can do for him."
"The worm never helps the eagle," said Chiun.
"I am but a new priest. We have priests who would, with their hands, turn you into molasses so that you would beg for mercy. They come from the Vindhya Mountains."
"Do they have the silver mark on their heads, like you and the girls?" asked Chiun.
"Yes. That is the mark of honor among the followers of the Blissful Master who have been to Patna. And those priests are most fearsome. They would teach you the error of your ways."
"When did they leave the mountains?" asked Chiun.
"When the grandfather of the Blissful Master told them to come. It was another proof of his perfection, his coming and his truth."
"They just left those mountains as free as you please?" asked Chiun.
"With singing hearts."