A Buddhist monk escorted by three well laden Chinamen approach a customs post on the Kashmiri border. The party is observed by a lieutenant and his commanding officer and they question them about their stay and their future intentions. It is the second half of the seventh century A.D. and the party are destined to bring Buddhism to the Great Tang.

A Conversation on Buddhism and the Vedic Sciences of Ayurveda and Jyotish: 
The middle path of the Lord Buddha should involve no straining to resist thoughts in meditation or straining in activity to perfect life ⋅ By taking the principle of ‘Safety First’ and acting in a balanced way you cannot be defeated from any direction ⋅ The Surangama Sutra suggests that the best way to meditate is to use a meaningless sound to take one to the transcendental source of sound, the Eternal Buddha Nature ⋅ 
By repeated exposure of the mind to this source of sound one arrives at the state of ‘True Mind’ in which one does not split the One Reality into a subjective Self and an objective world ⋅ This does not involve straining to forget thoughts because putting one’s attention on trying to forget thoughts only brings one’s attention back to them ⋅ The state of inner silence gained during meditation is perfected through alternation with activity ⋅ Then activity and silence form one undivided whole ⋅ One should not look for any particular experience on the path as that clinging to an enjoyable experience can block the development of the next step of unfoldment of life ⋅ Go for the ‘Highest First’, the infinite bliss of Nirvana and then all the other riches of life will be yours for the taking ⋅ 


The Chinese Negotiate the Passes
The tree's commentary:
Ayurveda is for immortality ⋅  Ayurveda’s definition of health requires that one should be established in the Self, be full of bliss and have a well ballanced physiology ⋅ To ‘avert the dangers that have not yet come’ Ayurveda provides the technique of pulse diagnosis and various herbal remedies and rasayanas to restore balance ⋅ To completely avoid doing harm to oneself or to others one has to create a state of mind that is spontaneously in accord with Natural Law ⋅ When one does no harm then no harm comes back to one ⋅ Jyotish and Yagya allow one to avoid specific dangers that are coming back ⋅ Yagya enlivens specific impulses of Natural Law from their basis in Nature’s Transcendental home where all the Laws of Nature are lively ⋅ By imbibing the infinitely dynamic field of all possibilities at the basis of Nature’s functioning into every phase of daily life one becomes infinitely flexible ⋅ Then no amount of change overshadows the unchanging nature of the Self causing the body to age ⋅ This flexibility in the field of consciousness ensures that nothing causes stress which is the basis of 80% of modern disease ⋅ 


One should not let oneself become tired but always be recharging ones batteries by the deep rest of Transcendental Meditation ⋅ A battery which is discharged only a little before being recharged lasts longer than one which is constantly being completely discharged ⋅ So for that reason Transcendental Meditation allows one to stay younger and reverses all the risk factors and bad tendencies that lead in the direction of ageing ⋅ By settling into the least excited state of consciousness during Transcendental Meditation one’s body acts like a quantum computer calculating the path of least action, or least effort, that is most in accord with Natural Law ⋅ As in the phenomenon of quantum teleportation, if one supplements the quantum mechanical knowledge from the level of Being with intellectual knowledge gained through the senses one enjoys Total knowledge ⋅ This is the basis of Jyotish Mati Pragya that all seeing light of truth that allows nothing to remain hidden. 
This conversation leads to the conversation in the 4th book which looks at a collection of Christ (the Isha Putra's) sayings in the light of Maharishi's Science and Technology of Consciousness.
See BOOK 4: The Isha Putra's People and the Maharaja