He stared into the moon, deeply, endlessly. It had been many years since anyone had seen him do anything besides stare at the moon. All night, his irises would flicker to and fro as his gaze traced the outline of the heavenly body in the sky. The roundness of the full moon, the sharp points of a crescent, and the abject nothingness of a new moon. Each crater and pockmark on the face of its surface was caressed and memorized by him, though no one could be sure why. Many had tried to ask, but not once in his life had he answered.
When the sun would rise, his eyes would fall closed and his body gently followed a protocol drilled into him by years of habit: stand from his meditation cushion, flip it over and give it a light fluff, then lie down flat on his back using the cushion as a pillow. The process took only minutes and once his eyes slid shut, there was little way to tell the man from a corpse. His breathing slowed, his sleep deepened, and his body grew cold to the touch. He'd earned the nickname Vampire from his frozen sleep, but he paid it no mind. All he ever showed any interest in was the moon. As surely as the sun would set, his eyes would open and he would flip his cushion once more, sitting cross-legged upon it to stare up at the moon.
His lunar meditation went beyond mere insomnia or disordered sleep. He had lived decades at the monastery, and not a single person could recall the last time he'd eaten, bathed, or defecated. The man had lived almost his entire life here, relinquished by his parents at a young age. He had gone through childhood here, developed into a man, grew round and hairy, and began balding on the crown of his head. Yet in all that time, no one could recall his robes ever being changed, nor ever being dirtied. Some of his fellow monks debated that he was close to achieving true Buddhahood in his lack of worldly needs, while those more skeptical and more superstitious claimed he was possessed by something evil, like his namesake.
Nothing else mattered to him but the moon, and so his endless gaze would continue.
Have feedback on this story? Email me here!