Chicken Soup (Fiction) by Ashley Hibbert

Chicken Soup
by Ashley Hibbert

In the beginning, when Lama Yeshy was first initiated, he looked down from his immense mountain in Tibet, and saw greatness in the land and people. He thanked Buddha for creating such a beautiful world of harmony for the people, plant life, and creatures to live in, in peace and harmony. It was then that he came up with the idea of Chicken Soup. His new fellow Monks became fascinated by the idea of Chicken Soup, and soon merged it into the Monastery's diet.

That was many years ago. Lama Yeshy has worked and lived at the Monastery ever since then. Every morning, at sunrise, he looked down at the land below, and thanked Buddha. Each sunrise, the land in view changed a little. Time went by, and the Lama would look around. He saw his old masters dying and new Monks initiated into the Monastery, while in the land below, Yeshy saw greater changes; floods and droughts, war and peace, the exile of great men, the coming of evil men, nations born, nations destroyed.

The slaughtering of many men occurred, but the same was applicable to the chooks. Then one day white men came to his monastery breaking the harmony, as if destroying the walls of a temple. They left, but they took with them his Tantra, his totality.

Yeshy now lives with a few others at the Monastery, looking out in the sunrise during the cold mornings, as the earth warms up like a lizard basking beneath the sun, seeking his Tantra, searching for Buddha. Asking why Yin is slowly invading Yang; asking why The Whole is now an imbalance of power; asking why Buddha does not answer any more.

Yeshy continues to search for the Buddha within himself, and seeks his answers in Chicken Soup.

Author bio:

Ash Hibbert has been published in the English-Arabic journal Kalimat, the University of Melbourne journal Strange2Shapes, and can be found at A Cold and Lonely Street.