The Great Bowl of the World

Beyond the mountain of the Keeper, beyond even the Temple of Questions, there was said to rest the oldest treasure in the world.

It was called the Great Bowl.

No one knew who had fashioned it.

Some claimed it had existed before the stars.

Others believed the stars had been poured into it like grains of sand.

Every child learned the same story.

The mountains rested within the Bowl.

The forests grew within the Bowl.

The oceans filled the Bowl.

Birds flew through its empty spaces.

People built their homes inside it.

Wherever anything existed, it existed within the Great Bowl.

The story seemed beyond dispute.

Where else could the world be?

One day the traveller climbed the mountain once more.

"I wish to see the Great Bowl."

The Keeper regarded her kindly.

"So have many."

Together they wandered across the kingdoms.

They crossed valleys.

They climbed cliffs.

They sailed upon wide seas.

Everywhere the traveller found trees beside rivers, stones beside moss, birds beside clouds.

She found things beside other things.

She found things above, below, near, and far.

But nowhere did she find the Bowl itself.

At last she asked,

"Have we become lost?"

The Keeper smiled.

"Why?"

"We have searched everywhere."

"Indeed."

"And yet we have not found what contains everything."

The Keeper picked up an acorn.

"What contains this?"

"Its shell."

"And the shell?"

"The tree once held it."

"And the tree?"

"The earth."

He looked at her.

"And what contains the earth?"

"The Great Bowl."

The Keeper nodded.

"So the story says."

They continued walking.

That evening they reached a village of potters.

One woman shaped clay upon a wheel.

She pressed her hands gently into the spinning earth until a bowl emerged.

The traveller watched with delight.

"Now there is truly a bowl."

The Keeper asked,

"How do you know?"

"It has an inside."

"And an outside."

"It can hold water."

"It can be empty."

The Keeper nodded.

"A bowl distinguishes what it contains from what it does not."

The traveller smiled.

"Exactly."

They thanked the potter and walked on.

For many days neither spoke.

At last the Keeper led her to the summit of a high ridge.

Below them stretched forests, rivers, villages, deserts, and distant mountains.

"Show me the rim."

The traveller searched the horizon.

"I cannot."

"The inside?"

She looked again.

"I see only the world."

"The outside?"

Silence.

The Keeper sat upon a weathered stone.

"The Great Bowl has taught generations how to think."

"It has?"

"It teaches us to ask where things are."

"Yes."

"It teaches us to measure distances."

"Yes."

"It teaches us to imagine that everything shares one great dwelling."

The traveller looked once more across the valleys.

"It is a beautiful story."

"It is."

"And useful."

"Very."

She frowned.

"But we have still not found the Bowl."

The Keeper laughed so softly that even the wind seemed to pause.

"Have you ever noticed that every bowl you have seen possesses an edge?"

She nodded.

"And every edge separates an inside from an outside."

Again she nodded.

The Keeper spread his arms toward the world.

"Tell me where the outside begins."

The traveller searched until dusk.

She found caves within mountains.

Shells around seeds.

Walls around gardens.

Jars filled with grain.

Homes sheltering families.

Everywhere there were bowls within the world.

Yet nowhere did she discover the Bowl of the world itself.

As darkness settled, the Keeper lit one of the old Festival candles.

Its small flame illuminated only a little circle of earth between them.

"The Great Bowl is a faithful story," he said.

"It gathers many experiences into one image."

"It teaches us to think about place."

"It helps us speak of near and far."

The traveller watched the little flame.

"So why do you ask where its rim is?"

The Keeper smiled.

"Because every faithful story deserves to remember that it is a story."

They descended the mountain in silence.

Nothing had vanished.

The villages still stood where they had always stood.

The stars still appeared above them.

The valleys still stretched between the hills.

Only one certainty had become strangely transparent.

Whenever the traveller now heard someone speak of the Great Bowl that contained the world, she no longer hurried either to believe or to deny it.

Instead, she found herself wondering where its edge might be.

And in asking that quiet question, she began to see that perhaps the Bowl had first been fashioned not from clay, but from imagination itself.