timtv

a midsummer night's stream (of consciousness)



So there I was, lying on the warm tar in the cool night on a little country road up in the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan with three of my best students by my side, all staring at the stars. We were on a musha shugyo; a tradition of martial arts people from the ancient days of Japan to go up into the mountains, undergo harsh training and try to experience deeper levels of understanding of your self and your place in the Universe. (We do a lot of goofing around as well, I must confess!)

So in the middle of the night I went walking and three of the older teens went with me. While we walked I told them all sorts of stories, some real; some pretend, and interwove them with lessons and parables. When we came out of the forest, the road was quiet and calm, and so I laid down in the center of it and told them to do the same. For a few minutes we stared, motionless and silent and the winking, glimmering midsummer nights stars.

Then I told them to close their eyes. I asked What do you smell?

After a moment, one of the boys said Tar.

And I asked And on top of that?

He said Pine.

I asked What do you feel inside your nose as you smell?

They were quiet. I said Do you feel the dark cold smell of the forest at night?

Even though I didnt look, I knew that they smiled. I paused for a long contemplative moment and then I said Open your eyes. What do you feel on your back?

They said The warm tar of the road.

To which I replied What do you feel on your front?

They said The cool air of the night.

And it was exactly right. The warmth on your back is the man-made road. Its civilization. Its our created world The coolness on your face is the natural world. Its things-as-they-are. Its the Universe, regardless of us. Your body right now is the yin-and-yang of perfect harmony between the two. When we are in balance we can feel both with no confusion or displeasure, but instead a sense of inner and outer centralization and impermeable calm.

The Tibetan monks have an object called a Dorje: a small iron bar which represents a lightening bolt. Lightening is one of the few things which connects the sky to the ground, and that is what the monks are symbolically trying to become; a connection between the worlds of the physical and the divine. They study and seek understanding so that they can bring Universal knowledge and understanding to the world of men. Within their own lives they want to put the one and the all together as a connected and inseparable thing.

Right now WE are acting as a Dorje between the earth and the sky. We are the connection between the natural world and the civilized world of mankind. The heat at your back from the blacktop and the cool on your face from the forest is coming together because of you.

I paused a very long pause. And then I paused some more.

Armed with this knowledge and wisdom, I send you out into the world. You must again be a Dorje, to be the connection between this understanding and the people you meet. Some will be too full of their own lives and business and will not be able to receive anything you have to give them. Its just not the right time for them. Some will be able to catch parts or pieces, and they may understand or they may not, but still we have to try. And some will have the exact shaped hole in their understanding for the knowledge that you have to give them, and then it will be like putting a piece of this grand puzzle into its perfect place. This is what we have to do.

I smiled a contented smile as we stared, once again silently, up at the stars. I let them accept or discard my words for whatever they were worth. I hoped that what I threw was caught and would be held as a precious and sacred thing, but one never quite knows for sure

After that we got up and began our long walk back to camp, during which we spoke of many more things (and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings). The stars stayed there, but still they lit the way for us on our path of enlightenment the whole way home.


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