Richard remembered seeing the barefoot monks picking through the street market, being spat on by their Catholic counterparts. Their uniform magenta drapes were embroidered with a foreign script, same words it was said, that they chanted incessantly. From their tattered belts draped bells; and fragrant smoke curled upward from long pipes, beads, in the stead of crosses, adorned their exposed chest.
Popular belief told of these devotees as absconding from a diet of meat and liquor, yet the locals had seen them consume both, when grain and ordinary water was in short supply.
Richard mused at their economy of words. Privately he also delighted in silence - it was considered to be his own sublime paradise … to feel the peace orbit his quiet within … and he was of the constant opinion, that men too often wasted their words on half-worthy thoughts, and empty speech.
And so, with an uncommon likeness, Richard was already feeling a strong kinship with the brotherhood from the East.
He had been first introduced to the Bodhists by the Hode, who, it was said had first brought them into the district, housing the ‘oddball society’ within his forest quarters.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series
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