SHACK 3002 THE MONK THE MOUNTAIN THE CABIN

Ryokan

 There are these anecdotes of Zen Monks that have intuitive insights which are so profound that their 'brain and former concepts' are so shaken up that they are advised or feel to go into the woods or mountains and construct a simple hut and bring in food and wood for fire and some books to read during the long winter months.

There is one experience and experience that has always 'hit the mark' with me. ' The monk lives in the hut and come winter the birds fly off to migrate, the trees drop their leaves, the frost and snows arrive. Then comes the Spring the birds return, the trees bud and the weather gets warmer and the Monks exclaims ---'All this and I did not do a thing to make it Happen'.

It is a miracle, it is just the natural world and Nature and that which guides nature in her cycles, that Tao (The Way" 道), a philosophical concept, the natural order of the Universe) I can sense it in a way, I cannot grasp it, it is beyond thought and even feeling and yet there it is all around me.

Expect a miracle; I go to sleep, my hair grows, my nails get longer and all the natural functions of the body organise themselves and if healthy flow in harmony and who looks after the body in sleep and coma? 

My intellect tells me and logic confirms there is an intelligence at work here, silent, informing and beyond logic as it were, that knowing and peace that goes beyond all human understanding.

Somehow I try in vain to feel and connect with this 'beyond' all understanding and I know I have felt this shake up years back in my late teens and several times in my early twenties and felt so in touch with the untouchable, yet doubt has crept in and the way of the world has hijacked and usurped my naked mind and somehow lured me into deception and materialism and the desire for that which is mortal, fleshly and impermanent, that which decays and the power to keep it always fresh and virgin. This I sense is why I did not want to come to world to feel this opposition of the dual yin and yang and to find that peace of the middle way. Life is the paradox of the Koan.

Yet even nature has the birth, life and decay and death, the trees and grass have old age as does nature, the Cheetah slows with age and gets stiff but it does it with grace and surrenders to the natural order, but I resist and fight the natural order.

BBC

Yes my skin crinkles, my joints ache and my sporting injuries now take their toll as my second vaccine injury has. Yet I find the more I resist this natural process 'my leaves like the leaves of a tree shrivel and slowly await the winter of my disappearance and demise' and fighting the Tao the natural order of things just prolongs the agony.

So what does old age and the hut mean; The Natural Order does take care of one and everything, fighting it is Human's downfall, straying away from the Tao and going the way of human ego that is to hoard, make acquisition of things which rust and decay, to Seek power and lust after wealth and materialism, which nature does not do, the fight to dominate, torture and deny freedom which nature provides will result in short term happiness and fear when nature takes its toll. True the rich Baron and Lord dies in relative comfort, health clinics, warmth, food, surgery and pain relief and yet nature will have Its way, the homeless and less unfortunate suffer and cry in vain.

  

AZ QUOTES

Christmas Humphries was not only a poet and book writer but a High Court Judge at the Old Bailey and was a Judoka at The Budokwai and was my first introduction to Judo and I had the honour to get my first dojo named by Koizumi Sensei as Shindokwai at the Budokwai. My NDE as I have said many times set the Quest in motion the Koan given by Sensei(not koizumi tore the roots out of the ego and the mind shift so apparent and significant and as Sensei said 'Now your troubles begin' I understand that now, I often pondered this. Going into work  into the world of electrician apprentice into building sites and houses seeing the electricians who were my mentors being unfaithful to their wives, my boss being money mad, our poverty and dear mother striving to keep us gong and so on, then my transference to Forensics and then 670 workshop presentations, 3000 patients in psychotherapy, travelling Europe, taking four individual years off as a sabbaticals, marriage and so on, led me to be exposed to healing, meditation, the horror of Forensics and the healing venues, I saw the extremes of Life and this caused a dichotomy and I wrestled with them and I could not say with certainty like Jesus 'Get behind me Satan' 'To Be in the world but not of it' Now by repeating the hut and mountain many times I realise I have to intuitively go in the middle way and realise the one Unit, the diamond with many facets.

I need to meditate and this is to me the middle way, not this, not that and to go to that shift and realise these years of seemingly 'lost' inner something or other was and is the paradox life is teaching me, to clear the dross of ego bombardment, not my logic but none resistance to its tense urge to conquer by any means the objects of its desire with absolutely no moral compass and beyond psychopathic, sociopathic inhuman and monstrous grip that assails the human ethos.

Indeed as my Sifu, Sensei emphasised the true spirt of the Martial Arts is 'Give Way in Order to Conquer' and to try to give a phonetic phrase 'Mura ni Waza' (Too much physical strength) when I was doing Randori (free practice) I was tense and words were shouted 'feel through relaxing' and the few times this happened the throws in Judo, the cuts in Kendo, the smooth flow came in Aikido, the bout in Kung Fu was effortless and the letting go in Meditation brought about the joy of not trying but letting the Tao take over as it is always there wherever there is?

So that which runs the Universe and keeps me alive in sleep or awake and gives Life to Planets,, Stars,, bacteria and whales that silent something if it is a something at all is that of miracles and !!!!!????###.

SHACK