The Void and the Seeing

The Myriad Academy's first lesson after enrolment teaches no spellwork. In the first week the new students of the five Colleges take it together, with the same teacher for 5 days running; ordinarily 5 teachers rotate over 5 days, but in the first week the ground is levelled first. The one who takes that week is an Indian man in his fifties, his grey hair bound at the back with a single silver ring, in a robe of saffron and white, barefoot; the students call him Acharya. The first thing he says when he steps onto the dais is to make clear why it is he who takes it: the Indic lineage's enrolment lesson is the simplest.

The classroom is a building of grey stone walls under a square roof, with five windows in the walls facing the five directions. Inside is a round hall with a low stone dais at the centre, and on the dais a small incense burner and a small drum; around it 5 low tables are set out by direction, a coarse-cloth cushion in front of each, and on each table a nameplate already laid out: East · Lan Yingchen. The floor is stone, and cold.

The first word is "Seeing". The five lineages see in different ways—some by eye, some by ear, some by touch, some by dream, some by omen—but wherever it is a matter of "noticing something that should not exist", all five call it "Seeing". The lesson is run by answering the same question in turn: this morning, what was the first thing you noticed that should not exist? Anyone who answers with a fine phrase is told to answer again the next day.

The second is the "Void". The first thing every morning: do not look, do not listen, do not think, stop for 5 minutes, and then begin the day. The instructor calls it the "Void". He does not explain why. But every time he says the word, the older students in the Colleges, the classmates of the Indic lineage, even the seniors over in the corner, all of them go quiet together for a moment.

Within a week the exercise gained three layers: first, the moment the Void is finished, write down what was seen, heard and felt, without polishing and without rearranging; the next day, hand the paper in; the day after that it changed into holding the other four people in mind during the Void; on the fourth day it became four sheets of paper, one for each person.

It is harder to practise than it sounds. One new student tried it alone for the first time: in the third second the voice calling his name came back, in the fourth the positions of the eight rings on the beam arranged themselves in his head, and in the fifth he opened his eyes. His palms were sweating. After that first week the Acharya vanished from the academy—not in the White Tower, not in any College, and never at the Forbidden Library; one student, 3 years in, had seen him only 3 times, in the first week of each year.