“You have a beautiful monastery, master.”

“Thank you, Evan. Please, call me Li.”

“How about Master Li?” Evan offered.

Li shrugged, and moved to stand beside his visitor. They looked out over the moss-covered temple walls, past the small fields where the monks grew their vegetables and down to the Yangtze, where a fisherman in a junk was watching to make sure the wake from a passing hovercraft didn’t swamp his boat. Li looked out into the distance, at something Evan couldn’t see. Evan’s gaze returned to the mysterious statues near the entrance to the monastery. There were so many of them, too many to count, all so oddly and complexly shaped, but all so badly kept.

Evan took a breath. “The trees, the old stones here in the courtyard, everything is, well, everything I hoped for. Well, everything except…”

“Yes?” Li prompted gently.

“Well, I didn’t expect the statues.”

When Li didn’t answer, Evan tried again. “The art. Those two lines of statues of men standing in funny postures, all grim and metallic, and covered with, um…”

“Pigeon shit?”

Master Li smiled at Evan’s startled look. “I have to surprise you some time,” he said. “Or, what kind of monastery would this be? But I tell you, there are no sculptures in the monastery.”

Evan tried again. “Well, not in, of course, but just outside the gate, standing in two long lines on both sides of the dirt road.”

“Yes, yes, I know what you mean. Sit. Let me tell a story.”

Evan took a seat on the stone bench, eagerly folding his legs into the lotus position. His first teaching story on his first trip to China!

Li perched one hip on the side of the bench and slowly filled his pipe. Lighting it, he took two good puffs before beginning to speak.

“Forty-three years ago, when I was a young monk, another American came here on a visit. He hoped to get enlightened in his six week stay. When he left, he made a generous gift to the monastery, in gratitude for all that he had learned. Soon after he left, a big truck arrived at the front gates. Workmen from Peking, with a special overseer from Taiwan, a cyber-netisixt.” Li smiled at his English tangle.

“They unloaded two huge boxes. Big, big boxes,” Li said, spreading his arms like uneven wings. “Is the word crates? When we open up the big boxes, there were two men made all of metal. Well, I later learned that most of them was made of plastic, but anyway, they were--"

“Robots?” Evan finished for him.

“Exactly. This man, so generous, so giving, but not so smart, wanted to give the monastery the best that American science had to give. Do you know why that wasn’t so smart, Evan?”

“Because a spiritual place like this doesn’t need the fruits of Western materialist technologies?”

“Shit, no.” Li laughed. “See this eye?” Li asked, pulling down the lower lid of his left eye.

When Evan nodded after peering closer, Li said, “Two times, the doctors have taken cataracts out. Only American bio-chip technology keep them from reforming.” How odd it is, Evan thought, that his accent seems to come and go. “Bio-chip” is so clear, but “reforming” is blurred. Is it the sounds, or how familiar he--

“No, he was generous in his gift, but not so smart because the last thing China needs is more workers. We make workers day and night. We make them by accident.”

“And he was not so smart because he didn’t think about history. Maybe you can do that in America, where the land is young and history is thin. In China, no matter what you do, there is always history. The Shaolin monks, who studied kung fu, didn’t study kung fu because they wanted to. They studied kung fu because a visitor found them all fat and lazy, with servants doing their work. That’s why we do chi kung and tai chi today.”

“I know tai chi, but, I’m not familiar with chi kung?” Evan pushed a question in, to prove he’d been listening, and to cover the way his mind wandered earlier. Judging by Li’s small smile, he wasn’t completely successful.

“Chi kung. Kung is work, practice, way of developing. Chi is energy. Tai chi chuan is a martial way of developing energy. Chi kung is the larger… family? of exercises. Tai chi is only a part. A twig. Standing meditation is chi kung.”

“We mostly do chi kung here. We hold specific…is the word ‘postures’ in English? We hold postures until we feel the energy moving in our bodies, and we become the ridge pole that holds up the roof of the universe.”

“So. The man gave us these robots, and the senior monk wanted to show his gratitude for such an expansive gift.”

“Expensive?”

“I think I mean expansive,” Li said. His tone sharpened for a moment, as if to remind Evan he was the teacher here. “The monk put the robots to work in the monastery. This was good, at first. The robots were new, and they had, what is the word for animals developing, going from simple to busy?

“Evolution?”

“Yes, they had evolution minds, made to learn from being shown and explained to. You show them, you talk to them, they don’t understand, but they do the same thing you do, and eventually they do it right, and maybe later they understand.”

“Like children.”

“Like people,” Li countered. “So even though we didn’t need them, we used the robots in the fields. They were good with cabbage, better than Americans.”

Evan smiled. Li didn’t.

“They cleaned the walls, they cleaned the stones. There was no moss on the temple walls then. They made high pitched sounds that kept the crows away from the beans.” Li made cleaning and flying motions as he described the robots’ activities, then gave a high pitched squeal. “The robots were useful.”

“The robots were like ghosts, polite metal ghosts. They would follow us around, and stand behind us while we hoed, then make hoeing motions in the air, then get a hoe and hoe a long way from the cabbage, then work in like a good gardener.”

“But when the robots learned how to hoe and clean, and the monastery looked perfect, the monks had too much time. We had ‘spare time.’ ”

“That’s good.”

“Good for some, not so good for others.” Li said, puffing smoke. “One young monk got curious about how much the robots could learn. And what they could learn about things of the spirit.”

“This monk let the robots into the private courtyard where we meditate. He explained meditation, and he show meditation. He explained tai chi, showed tai chi. He explained chi kung, showed chi kung. Talk, show, talk, show.” Each time Li said “show” he accompanied it with odd arm gestures. His aged limbs would flow into odd shapes—as if hugging a thick tree, or supporting a ball overhead—then drop to his sides easily.

“For some reason, the robots didn’t do much sitting meditation. Don’t know why. Not enough feedback? Maybe the robots are really Americans after all, Americans in metal suits.” Li stopped and gave a dry little laugh. “And they tipped over too much when they tried tai chi. The gears that keep them upright would whine and lock. They stopped doing that.”

“But chi kung, chi kung they listen, watch, follow, do.”

“Every night the young monk led the robots into the private courtyard, to see how much they could learn. He was young, he didn’t need much sleep, and didn’t care if he banged his toe on the stone steps.” Li smiled. “He bang his toe many times. The robots didn’t need sleep, and had inf- infer-ed, had eyes to let them see in the dark.”

“Like ghosts,” Evan said brightly.

Li nodded. “Just like ghosts. And every night the robots came into the private courtyard, and every night they stood still a little longer. After a time of standing still, they started doing different postures. One would stand and do ‘White Crane Spreads Wings,’ from the tai chi form,” Li stood for a minute lifting one arm up, the other down, and opened his palms. Then he sat again, in one fluid motion.

“Others like zhan zhuang, standing like a tree. This is the most basic stance, just stand, arms all round like hugging a tree.”

“People, when they do this, they get tired. The robots just stood. The young monk got excited. He wanted to teach someday, so he stood by them and whispered into their ears, even though he know the robots had many places to hear from. He poured all he knew about standing meditation into their ears. He told them all the stories that he knew. About how standing meditation transformed the physical. I-- he told them how meditation was work, the most important work of the monastery. How the chi from meditation spread to the surrounding countryside, make people happy and calm, put the universe in order. How standing still was the greatest freedom we could have, the hardest work we could do, the greatest gift we could give to the universe.”

Li fell quiet and watched a crane wing its way above the paddies at river’s edge. Evan sat as still as he could, waiting. Eventually, Master Li spoke again, very softly.

“Do you know that in an evolution brain there is a place that can set importances?” Li stopped for a moment.

“Priorities?” Evan offered.

“Yes, yes, prior-ities,” Li said. “If you tell one of these robots something enough times, with enough…heart in your words, they believe. They write themselves over, deep inside. In that they are not like most people, who take one writing, one program, and follow it through their entire lives. Do you know that, Evan?” Li asked, his voice suddenly sharp.

“Um, I don’t know, Master. I’ve never seen an evolutionary robot. I guess there was a problem, and they stopped making them.”

“Yes, they stopped. That is my fault, Evan.”

“Your fault?”

“There was one true fact I did not know about these robots. I knew they stay in contact with the factory, and that they always got updates from the factory via radio. I do not know that the factory was trying something new. These robots were set up to learn from one another.”

“These robots were sending radio messages to their brother robots across China, along with their chi. I did not know this. I did not know they could send new importances through the radio, like they sent skills and facts . I did not know any of this until a strange and wonderful thing happened.”

“All across China, mostly in the cities, but also at some farm research stations where they needed detailed work, there were robots. Not too many robot, but in a land as big as China, there is some of anything. All at once, all across China these robots stopped working. They stopped working, and they began to walk.”

“The newspapers said their human co-workers tried to stop them. Some, the army blew up.” Li smiled for a moment. “They brought out an old tank, and little missile launchers. Ppprch! Some refugees built a pit. Two robots fell in. The news showed them at the bottom of the pit, standing in zhan zhaung, but looking up to heaven. The government scientists shut those robots down.”

“The rest of the robots walked across China. Some walked thousands of li, one step at a time, silent and always forward, walking day and night. Old women followed them, making signs. Old men tried to sell them things. Boys and girls followed them. One man cut at a robot with a sword. Many threw rocks.”

“The robots walked here. When the robots arrived, the head monk was waiting at the gate. For the first time, the monastery robots acted not like workers, but more like monks, good Chinese monks. They met the other robots at the gates. It was quiet, because they could use some good Chinese if they had to, well, Mandarin anyway, but they didn’t have to speak out loud to speak to their brother robots. But the monastery robots touched the other robots, one robot at a time. They showed their brothers what they were doing.”

“Silently, silently, like good spirits, rather than dark ghosts, the other robots followed them. They lined up along the road to the gate, where you see them today, and they took up their chi kung postures. Do robots feel the little tickles of electricity they need for their eyes and ears? Do the gears that keep them upright work like perfect alignment, so this challenge makes sense to them? Is that why they like this? I do not know.”

“I do not know that, Evan. I do not know. What I do know is this. The robots took the young monk very serious. Serious, like he took himself. They all settled in to do perfect standing meditation forty-three years ago. Except to correct their postures, a little little bit, they have not moved since. They let birds build nests in them. They have gotten stiff and rusty. I know, because one fell, and I had to help set it back up. It creaked. It thanked me, then it went back to doing chi kung.”

“The head monk tried to talk them out of standing for a little while, using reason, but the young monk had been too persuasive. Too much fire in his chi. So he switched techniques, and started teaching them how to do better chi kung. When scientists came from the provincial capital to shut them down, he said this would make a great research project to show the power of traditional Chinese culture, and how it was the programmers’ fault, really, and now the scientists come every season, to measure the waves the robots send.”

Li sighed. “So. Now all the robots in China stand outside our monastery, collecting dust and weeds, and the monks hoe the cabbages themselves. Will the robots walk again? It could be a thousand years ago. Those could be statues, like you asked me.”

Li stood and stretched, then knocked his pipe on the side of the bench. “Shall we go have lunch? The bells say that it is almost time.”

Evan started. That’s it, he thought? “But-- what does it mean? And how is it your fault?”

Li smiled. “Didn’t your books tell you any story is a teaching story? And that it would always be about either you or me?”

“Well, yeah, essentially.”

“Well, were you the fiery young monk who taught the robots to meditate?”

“No, master.”

“Then it must have been me. And as for what it means…it could be a story about pride and being over-excited, and how these lead boys to bad ends. It could be a story about be careful about the distance between what you’re teaching and what you’re learning.”

Li smiled. “It could be those things. Any of them. All of them. Those could be statues outside the gate, and I could be playing ‘fool the round eye.’ ”

“That’s a fun game. But if you look on the computer, you will see. For the last forty-three years this has been a happy province. Disease is down. Violence happens, but not as often as in the North. Babies are born healthier. And if you talk to any of the computer companies in America, or Japan, or Taiwan, you might find that they get letters from the monks at this monastery asking them to make more of these robots. Perhaps the monastery files include very polite answers that say no. They tell us that there is no profit in making robots that do any ‘real work,’ but only stand and meditate.”

“But your books also should have told you that I would answer any question with a question, so let me fulfill my program too, and ask you one question, to think about over lunch.”

“Yes master?”

“Chi kung does all those things that young monk said it did. It heals, it aligns energy, and all those things. But chi kung is also transformative. It uses the energy of the universe to change those who meditate, and lift them to the next level of spiritual development. Few—very, very few-- have the endurance to make it to that next level, at least in this life. But those who do are living avatars, embodiments of the Tao.”

“So my question is, what happens when the robots wake up?”

Li knew when he had said enough, and he stopped and looked off into the distance. Evan tried to find whatever it was that Master Li was contemplating, but he couldn’t quite locate it.

Evan’s gaze found its way back to the figures beyond the gate, with their limbs arranged in those odd, striking postures and draped with moss. The one nearest the gate had a bird’s nest near its right shoulder. Before, they had been mysteries, but cultural mysteries, something Evan didn’t know about because he wasn’t from around here.

Now, he recognized many of the arm postures as those with which Master Li had punctuated or illustrated his story. So that is chi kung, he thought, as if mapping a strange land. But what did it mean?

Evan looked around. Master Li was nowhere to be seen, and Evan was alone with his mystery. Evan laughed. Somehow, that seemed appropriate. Before the story, the statues were a worldly mystery. After the story, they were a metaphysical mystery.

Evan had an image, just the briefest, disturbing glance, of what it might mean if the robots woke up. Like most people, he had gotten used to machines being stronger, and, more recently, being smarter. He wasn’t ready for them to be more spiritual too. The idea of living in such a world was both electrifying and terrifying.

Evan still didn’t know if Master Li was telling him the truth, or just telling him a teaching story. But he figured he’d better get ready in either case, and he settled in for a long session of chi kung, in an attempt to get ready for this strange new world.

The End

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