Текст книги "Sensei of Shambala"

Andrew continued, “What?! Punishment by Sensei for my thoughts?! For which thoughts? Are you crazy? And it means you knew all this time and said nothing to me? What a friend, damn it. And I was puzzled why he was cracking jokes here looking at his watch. Just so he could relate Sensei’s words on time. So, have you told? Enjoyed the spectacle enough, you idiot?!”

Now it was Kostya’s turn to blush, “You are stupid! Sensei asked me to stay close to you so that you wouldn’t break your empty blockhead against the asphalt. And then, if you were able to listen, I had to tell you these words.”

Andrew was taken aback as if doused with a bucket of cold water. We stared at each other. The conversation came to a strained pause. We also stood bewildered by such a turn of events.

“And what did Sensei ask you to tell me?” Andrew asked, still irritated, but already more self-retained.

“Sensei asked me to tell you that even a thought is material and that one should not use the Art against people.”

“What does this have to do with the Art? Which thought? What do you mean?!” Andrew was dumbfounded.

“You must know which thought. You were thinking over something the whole way, not me.”

“When?!” He was surprised even more. “Well I, I, I,… in the tram I was scrolling in my mind the whole training from beginning to end,” Andrew said, full of indignation.

“I am not speaking about the tram. When we walked with Sensei, what were you thinking the whole way over?”

Andrew frowned, intensively trying to recall that stretch of time.

“Well, we were laughing and telling jokes…”

“That were us, and you?”

“And I…And I… What was I thinking about? Hmm…”

After a time of concentrated thinking Andrew spoke out, amazed, “Shoot! Is it possible that it was for…”

He stopped in the middle of the sentence and his indignation quickly changed to reflection on some shocking discovery. This event intrigued us even more and our curiosity brimmed over.

“What for? What for?” We threw questions at Andrew.

At first, he tried to get rid of our intrusive questions, but he confessed, “Well, it’s an old story… I found some freaks who beat me up hard five years ago. Do you remember, Kostya, those lanky fellows?”

“Ah, those whom you swore to revenge all your life.”

“Well, that’s an exaggeration.”

“Your words,” Kostya said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Well, yes, mine. But let’s say it this way, those guys were the reason to start my intensive karate trainings… So… When I was walking that time… I was thinking over…”

Andrew got somewhat embarrassed, hanging his head. Evidently, it was not easy for him to confess it. But plucking up his courage, he continued, “In general, I thought… that with the help of this Art… they can’t hide anywhere… from my… revenge.”

After his words, silence fell. Kostya said with a sigh, “Yes, well… You see, it’s your own fault, you dream about God knows what, and I turn out to be guilty.”

“Are these also the words of Sensei?” Slava hemmed, trying to joke.

Kostya looked at him in such a way, that Slava at once was confused.

“And now imagine,” Kostya continued addressing Andrew, “how shocked those lanky fellows would be. Because they are ordinary people, with their own merits and demerits, just like us. But you are at least somehow prepared mentally, or rather you know about this power. And they?… Even if one of them survived after such a fright, just imagine what would happen to them later. Each of them would have thought that he was sick with epilepsy… You felt unpleasant, and how would they have felt? Sensei asked me to remind you that any blow caused by your rage will come back to you in the end… And something else, ‘You should not wish bad to other people, even in your thoughts. Because with the power of your thought, you are setting a trap for yourself, for your body and mind. And the more you think about it, the stronger it keeps you, the tighter its loop becomes. The only way out is to become a friend to your enemy and to forgive his deeds because you are also imperfect.’”

Pondering a little more, Kostya added, “Well, I don’t think I forgot anything to say… That’s all, now you can be free.”

“In what sense free?” Andrew didn’t understand. “Does Sensei drive me out?”

“Well, he told me nothing about that… It’s me who lets you go.”

“Ah,” Andrew drawled with a smile and started to get up from the ground with Kostya. “And why have you fallen?”

“Why? You shouldn’t be so fat and heavy. I’m not Rambo to catch such a bull!”

We laughed and said goodbye to each other, in a cheerful mood. I was very happy that everything ended so happily. In my soul there was another revolution of feelings. And really, whose fault is it that there is so much evil around us? We are guilty ourselves. Because we don’t control our desires. And then we just get what we deserve. And then we yell and rebel, but what for? We should think more often about good things and be good to people, and maybe the world around us will change. At least in our mind. And our mind is our real world… If I had realized that earlier, I wouldn’t be paying now for my egocentrism and megalomania with my own health and life… Oh! If only I had known it before, I would have been more confident in tomorrow. But since I’m doomed to such a destiny, at least I will try to live this time with dignity, as a human… Sensei was right when he said once, ‘The quality of instants lived by you in this life are much more important than senseless years of existence. How you lived, and not how many years you lived, is important.’ Yes, we are responsible for all that we think and do. Why was I angry with Sensei? We are guilty ourselves, and he is just an observer of our reality, our irresponsibility and disorder. He judges from the point of view of his internal world, his knowledge, and his high moral values. In order to understand him, we first need to become humans.

19

At home I pondered over the events that had occurred recently. And then I remembered my body. All the time that my thoughts were distracted, the pain was hidden and existed on some distant level of thought. But as soon as I thought about my overtrained muscles, they immediately replied with a sharp pain, just as a loyal dog responds to the call of its owner by barking. My entire body started to cry out and break apart, and my mind began to feel intensively sorry for my poor body, blaming my real “I” for the trial I sentenced it to, to sympathize with and be compassionate to my extremities.

I forced myself to sit in the lotus pose to meditate. It was very hard to relax and even harder to concentrate. But still, my persistence brought me small results. In one of my attempts at purposeful concentration, the pain was forgotten. Meditation went smoothly. Only when a foul thought flashed across my mind did the pain commence again. At that time I clearly was feeling a streamlet down my hand. I thought, “This hand muscle hurts the most. Stop! Aha, I got you, leader of distemper. It’s you who spoils all my attempts. Alright, alright. This time I didn’t manage to start a conversation with Sensei, but next time at the meditation training I will certainly find out how to cope with you.”

When I came out of the meditation, I started to reflect logically, “I wonder if I have schizophrenia. I start to speak with myself and try to catch someone inside of me. Maybe I am already going crazy?” And at the same time another thought appeared in my mind, “It’s a good indicator. If I were to think like that more often, I would reach my goal faster.” At some internal, inaccessible level, I understood what it meant. But my mind yelled, “What goal? Who’s speaking again?” Completely confused by my thoughts, about who is who and what I really wanted, I fell asleep, following the example of my flesh, which was ruthlessly exhausted during the training.

The next day, my body became completely alien. Not only that, it was hurting and moving like a rusty robot. I got even more interested, as I had never seen myself in such a state. The autopilot evidently got turned off. I had to invent new ways to operate my body, even just to put clothes on. It was good that my parents went to work and didn’t see all of my comic horrors. Since I was busy with this disobedient machine, I was almost late to school.

I felt pretty much fine during the lessons, although it was strange to feel like a robot. The very last lesson was gym class. This was the end of everything. I tried to obtain leave from the teacher, but he was a rather conservative man and an awful bureaucrat. Our pains didn’t worry him. My only chance of leaving was by bringing him an official permission slip. I had an official note at home, hidden far away from my parents, because I liked gym class and didn’t want to sit aside during them, despite the opinions of the doctors. Even more so, the exercises we did were never very difficult, in my opinion. During the trainings with Sensei, we tortured our bodies much more. But today for the first time I regretted that I didn’t bring this paper with me.

Though during the day I had managed to move somehow, I had a hard time with the warm-up. And today, as if on purpose, there was a test on push-ups. “I certainly won’t survive. I won’t be able to do even one, especially after yesterday,” I thought. “He is such a bureaucrat and will not even listen to me without a note…” And I began upbraiding this man in my evil thoughts.

During the next break, while thinking of a word worse than the previous one, suddenly the words of Sensei softly arose in my mind, ‘You should not wish bad to other people, even in your thoughts.’ “Oh! What am I doing,” I woke up, “I am creating a trap for myself.” Cooling my temper down a little, I started to think soberly, “What’s the point of swearing at him in my thoughts and looking at him gloomily? I will just be more upset and will be rude to him during the test. He will return the favor, will give me a bad mark, and will call my parents. My parents will find out that I haven’t brought my paper to school and also will become upset. Why do I need all of this? And what if, as Sensei says, I try to put myself in his shoes? After all it’s not his fault that I came to the lesson down and out. Does he know that all yesterday evening, I was in fact preparing for the test? He doesn’t know. Then why should I be angry with him? He simply does his best to fulfill his job. And as far as my doctor’s note is concerned, he also needs to report for his lessons. What if the director or some revising commission comes to check on him? I can understand his position in this case.” Thus having put my thoughts in order, I noticed that my anger vanished and now I was able to think about how to solve this problem in peace.

After the warm-up, I again went to the teacher and calmly explained the situation to him. I said that the day before I had trained intensively and had suffered terribly, but for the next lesson I would certainly do push-ups, even twice as many. I also added that I completely understood that he’s fed up with our constant complaining.

“Well, you understand, you were also young once.”

That last sentence burst from me by accident, but obviously stirred up some good memories from the teacher’s past, because the next fifteen minutes we listened to stories about his active youth. And when the test finally began, I asked him, “So, should I do push-ups?”

“Alright,” he genially waved his hand, “you will do it next time. We’ll consider that you didn’t have time today.”

To the great joy of the others, half of the class also “didn’t have enough time.” When the bell rang, my classmates said with smiles, “Great! Listen, maybe for the other lessons you’ll evoke the teachers’ memories of their far-away youth, and maybe they won’t have time to ask us about homework. That would be great!”

“I’m not a wizard,” I answered jokingly. “I’m just learning.”

After class, I had a rather pleasant feeling inside. Nobody suffered moral damage and, more than that, all remained satisfied. This pleased my vanity, and my megalomania started to grow by leaps and bounds. I didn’t notice, though, until my friends listened to me in the evening and joked around.

“You inflated this story like a soap bubble,” Andrew remarked with a smile. “What’s so special in that? I do such tricks almost every lesson. You simply need to act with ingenuity and humor.”

“Yes, but do you tame your anger every lesson?”

Andrew thought about it and said, “That’s true… but humor so far has always helped me to understand teachers.”

“Listen!” Kostya tapped him on the shoulder. “This is a brilliant method to fight with anger… Do you remember Sensei’s guys: Eugene, Stas, and others? They never stop joking.”

“Exactly!” confirmed Andrew.

“You see, everything is simple, as Sensei said. You were wondering the whole night how to fight with your anger. Here is an answer for you… Well, now you’ll have to joke with your mind all your life.”

And then Kostya added calmingly, “Don’t worry. We will bring you tasty cakes at the mental hospital…”

“Stop it! You always confuse everything.”

The guys laughed and we went to attack the overcrowded tram. On board of the tram, Kostya said to Andrew, “By the way, I have also spent this night not in vain.”

“With whom?” Andrew inquired with a smile.

“Dirty mind! Not with whom, but on what, think deeper. I made a brilliant discovery!”

“In the sphere of self-love?”

“I’m serious. Listen, I’ve discovered a chain of events. If you weren’t beaten up by those lanky fellows five years ago, you wouldn’t have started to practice karate. And if you wouldn’t have started to practice martial arts, you wouldn’t have pulled me into this business. And if you hadn’t dragged me, we would have never met Sensei and wouldn’t have found what we have found and what we are now learning. At least, if we had read about this information somewhere, then certainly we would’ve considered it complete nonsense. While this way we were convinced and have seen it, as they say, with our own eyes. In short, if you hadn’t been beaten up, we wouldn’t have found this gold-bearing spiritual vein! That’s it!”

“I agree. But what makes you think that it’s because of you we met Sensei? The address of his school was given to us by a complete stranger from that previous school of Wushu. Neither you nor I knew anything for sure. We simply started a conversation about psychic phenomena by chance, and later found out about Sensei.”

“Yes. But I dragged you to this training,” Kostya defended his theory. “You were so resistant, remember, and didn’t want to go. And that guy appeared exactly that day by chance. He was waiting for his friend in the changing room.”

“Yes, he was waiting, but he would’ve kept silent if he hadn’t seen our magazine with an article about psychics.”

“Which magazine?”

“Well, remember, Tatyana brought it from home that day. You and I were indignant that we would have to drag this burden with us all day instead of just giving it back in the evening.”

“Ah! Exactly!” Kostya recalled.

“Well, I put it on the windowsill. And that guy was probably just bored sitting around, so he asked if he could read it. As you know, one word led to another, and he gave us Sensei’s address.”

“Right, that’s exactly how it was.” Having sighed, Kostya added, “It is always like that: such small facts kill the most beautiful hypothesis… Alright, then my theory will look this way. If you hadn’t pulled me into martial arts, I wouldn’t have brought you to this training. And further, had Tatyana not brought a magazine, our group wouldn’t have met Sensei, and so forth.”

“Still, everything started with the magazine,” persisted Andrew, further developing his thought, “and with the article. We became interested in these articles because… why?”

“What do you mean why? Because… Ah! It was she who launched all of that, she infected all of us with stories of phenomenal people,” said Kostya nodding towards me.

“Exactly!”

The guys looked at me. “And why did you become interested in them?”

“Me?” I was a little confused and right away wiggled out. “Me… I was inspired by movies.”

“Oh! And movies were shot by…”

The guys were carried away, untwisting the whole chain of imaginary events.

Tatyana smiled and said, “You guys, I’m ashamed to say, will come soon to primitive man,” and she mimicked them in a funny way. “If that man had been caught by a saber-toothed tiger, then you wouldn’t have existed and therefore wouldn’t have met Sensei.”

“Hey, that’s a thought,” smiled Kostya.

“Men,” complained Tatyana. “They always find logic in everything. We have met Sensei, that’s great. That’s the way it should be, it’s destiny. And that’s all. There is nothing to argue about.”

20

Our company reached the glade, this time accurately determining its location…

“Listen, there is nobody here,” Slava said doubtfully. “Maybe this is not the right glade?”

“It’s the right one. I remember it well from the last time,” Andrew nodded affirmatively. “Of course!” grinned Kostya. We laughed recalling our last adventures. In about ten minutes, the senior guys started to arrive, joining our good mood.

“Oh, the Teacher is going to come now,” Victor livened up.

“Why do you think so?” I asked looking at the stars.

“Because of Samurai,” the senior sempai replied smiling.

I shifted my gaze to the ground and only then noticed how the cat paced grandly on a lonely fence in the light of a distant lamp, all the time almost falling down and trying to maintain his balance with his claws.

“He always comes to the meditation,” continued the sempai. “He sits calmly aside in full trance, and then without wasting his time with our conversations and impressions, leaves right away.”

“The first time we came, he stayed until the end. Sensei was trying to grab him out of the bushes,” I remarked.

“Well, that was probably a small exception from his rules.”

“Strange how it came out that time,” I thought, “Even the cat took direct part in that.”

The guys joined our conversation.

“Why did Sensei get a black cat?” asked Tatyana.

“He didn’t get him on purpose. When Samurai was still a kitten, the village kids would throw stones at him. So, Sensei picked him up from the street and cured him. Since then, the cat has lived with him and doesn’t leave him.”

“Who tore his ears up so much?” Andrew asked with a smile.

“Ah, he was sparring with dogs.”

“With dogs?”

“Yes. Samurai not only trains spiritually, but also practices martial arts,” said Victor, making everybody look at the cat. “Sensei has been teaching him, one could say, from childhood, the Wing Chun style, which is opposite to the Cat style. So now he picks fights with both cats and dogs.”

“You must be joking?” Andrew was sincerely surprised. “How is it possible to teach a cat Kung-fu? Not every human will understand it, and this is just a stupid animal.”

“It depends how you look at it,” the Teacher joined the conversation, coming out from the dark. “Sometimes a stupid animal proves itself to be cleverer than some Homo sapiens.”

“Still, though,” Nikolai Andreevich was interested in the unusual fact, “How did you teach him?”

“Oh, it’s easy,” Sensei simply said as if we were talking about something ordinary. “In the form of a game. First I would clench his claws with my fingers and then in the same way would show him how to unclench. That’s how he learned… Now, he not only fights with cats but also picks fights with dogs. You see, he is not interested in mice anymore, they are not the right level. But why did I teach him? Now I have to run around with the mouse traps myself!”

Everyone laughed. I still didn’t understand whether that was a joke or not. If that was a joke, then why was it so serious? And if true, then one really needs to have remarkable talent to teach a cat.

During his story, Sensei was simultaneously shaking everybody’s hand, and when it was Andrew’s turn, he didn’t give his hand, but instead bowed politely.

“What happened?” Sensei was surprised.

“Well, I’m afraid to touch you after the other day’s events,” Andrew replied half-jokingly.

“What do I have to do with that?” said Sensei, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “It’s not me that you should be afraid of but him. He was next to you and not me.”

While Sensei was speaking with the other guys, Andrew pushed Kostya slightly to the side, “So it was through you!”

“What!? I’m smart of course, but not to that extent.”

“I’m serious.”

“And I’m serious.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

Andrew waited until Sensei answered another question and asked, “Is it true that you’ve done it through a handshake?”

“Of course. Some day I will tell you about this.”

Then the conversation moved on to our home meditations. At first I wanted to call Sensei off to the side and speak to him alone about my thoughts because I was afraid of the reaction of the senior guys. Who knows, maybe they’d ridicule me with their picky jokes, like my friends. But Sensei patiently examined and explained every situation that happened to the guys. From Yura I heard a similar story, but not exactly so acute. Seeing the serious mood of the others, I finally decided to tell Sensei everything in the presence of everybody. And when another pause appeared in the conversation, I timidly started to share my achievements. Everyone listened calmly and carefully. Then I grew bold and told them about the dodger.

After my story, there reigned a short silence. “That’s it,” I thought, “Now Nikolai Andreevich will diagnose me with schizophrenia. Why did I blab it out in front of everyone?” But, to my surprise, Sensei said the following:

“It’s a good result. To catch a thought of your animal nature is hard and to fight with it, even more so. It is impossible to fight with this category of thoughts in principle because violence generates violence. And the more you try to kill it, the more intensively it’ll appear in you. The best way to defend against it is to switch to positive thoughts. In other words, the principle of Aikido of smooth withdrawal should be used here.”

“What if they are chasing me the entire day? Can’t I just chop them off with some swear word?” asked Ruslan.

“No matter how you chop them off, negative thoughts will keep appearing according to the law of action/counteraction. That’s why you needn’t fight with them. You should withdraw from them, artificially developing in yourself a positive thought. In other words, concentrate on something good or recall something good. Only in this way of smooth withdrawal will you be able to win over your negative thought.”

“And why can thoughts sometimes be absolutely the opposite of each other? Sometimes I too get confused by my thoughts.”

“Let’s say it this way: in the human body, there is a spiritual nature, or soul, and a material nature, or animal, call it as you wish. The human mind is a battlefield of these two natures. That’s why different thoughts arise in you,” Sensei replied.

“And who am ‘I’, if thoughts are alien?”

“Not alien, but yours. You are the one who’s listening to them, the one who is choosing your nature. If you prefer the material, animal nature, then you’ll be evil and nasty, and if you listen to the advice of your soul, you’ll be a good person, and it will be pleasant for other people to be around you. The choice is always yours, you are either despot or saint.”

“And why did my admiration for taming my anger lead to pride, to the growth of megalomania? Because it seemed like I did a good deed, but the thought got carried away in a different direction?” I asked.

“You turned to the soul, your desire was fulfilled. And when you weakened your control over yourself, you were pulled over by the animal nature by your own favorite egoistic thoughts. You liked that you were complimented from all sides that you were so smart, so judicious, and so forth… There is a permanent war of two natures inside of you. And your future depends on which side you choose.”

I pondered a little and then specified, “In other words this dodger who reminded me about the pain and prevented me from concentrating, who inflated my megalomania…”

“Absolutely correct.”

“But there is an entire pile of these thoughts there!”

“Yes,” confirmed Sensei. “An entire legion. That’s why it’s impossible to fight with them. It’s not Kung-fu, it’s much more serious. It is possible to fight with the one who shows resistance. But fighting with a vacuum is senseless. Against a vacuum of negative thoughts, it is only possible to create the same vacuum of positive thoughts. In other words, I repeat, shift your mind to positive and good thinking. But always stay vigilant, listening what your brain thinks about. Observe yourself. Pay attention to the fact that you don’t do anything but the thoughts in you are constantly swarming. And not one thought. There can be two and three or more at once.”

“It’s like in Christianity, they say, on man’s left shoulder sits the devil, and on the right, an angel. And they are always whispering something,” remarked Volodya.

“Absolutely correct,” confirmed Sensei. “But for some reason, the devil whispers louder, he probably has a rougher voice. What’s called the devil in Christianity is the manifestation of our animal nature.”

“When I discovered this division of thoughts in myself, I thought that maybe I caught schizophrenia, because it also has to do with the splitting of consciousness,” I said more bravely.

Sensei smiled and jokingly answered, “There is no genius without a sign of madness.”

Nikolai Andreevich laughed, “Yes, indeed. I observe something similar in myself as well.”

Stas joined the conversation, reflecting aloud about his experience, “Well, if the mind is a battlefield of two natures, and as far as I understand it, their weapons are thoughts, then how can you distinguish who is who? How do the spiritual and the animal nature manifest in thoughts? In which way?”

“The spiritual nature means thoughts generated by the power of love, in the broad sense of the word. While the animal nature means thoughts about the body, our instincts, our reflexes, megalomania, desires, entirely devoured by material interests, and so forth.”

“Well, then we should live in a cave,” Ruslan expressed his opinion, “So that we have nothing and want nothing.”

“With a head like yours, even a cave won’t help,” Eugene teased him.

“Nobody forbids you to have all of this,” continued Sensei. “If you want, please, follow the modern world, use all the goods of civilization. But to live just for that, to place the accumulation of material goods as the main purpose of your existence on Earth, it’s stupid, it’s unnatural to the spiritual nature. This goal is an indicator of the predominance of the animal nature in people. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that you should live as a bum in a cave. No, I already told you that all these high technologies are given to mankind so that humans could free up more time for their spiritual perfection. But certainly not for a man to collect a pile of these iron things at home and blow up his megalomania because he possesses all that dust.”

After keeping silent for a while, Sensei thoughtfully pronounced, “A human is a complex synthesis of the spiritual and the animal nature. It’s a pity that in your mind there predominates more of the animal nature than the one from God. The other day, I decided to give you one ancient practice to help you balance these two natures, so that the animal won’t burden you so much. It has existed just as long as humans have. This spiritual practice is not just for working on yourself, on your thoughts, but what is very important, it is for the awakening of your soul. In relation to life, it can be compared to a dynamic meditation because it is constantly functioning, regardless of where the human is located or what he does. A part of this human should always be in this state, controlling all that happens around or inside.

“This spiritual practice is called a Lotus Flower. It consists of the following. You imagine that you plant a seed of lotus inside yourself, in the regions of the solar plexus. And this small seed grows due to the power of Love generated by your positive thoughts. Thus, controlling the growth of this flower lets you get rid of negative thoughts that constantly turn over in your head.”

“Do we really think about negative things all the time?” Ruslan asked.

“Of course,” Sensei answered “Just follow your thoughts carefully. People spend a lot of time visualizing different conflict situations, negative memories of the past, they imagine as they quarrel, prove something, deceive someone or hit back, they think of their illnesses, material deprivations, and so on. It means they always keep a lot of negative thoughts in their mind.

“By doing this practice, you intentionally get rid of all these negative thoughts by internal control. And the more positive image that you keep in your mind, the quicker the growth of the seed of Love. In the beginning, you imagine that a seed starts growing, and a small stalk appears. It grows further, leaves cover the stalk, then comes a small flower bud. And finally, getting more and more of the power of Love, the bud blossoms out into a Lotus. The Lotus Flower is at first golden, but on growing it becomes dazzling white.”

“How much time does it take it to grow?” I asked.

“Actually, it depends on you. Some people need years, and others just months, or days, or even seconds. It all depends on your desire, whether you will make efforts. It is necessary not only to grow this flower, but also to support it by the power of your Love so that it will not fade or die. This constant feeling of growth should be held at the level of subconscious or, to say it more precisely, at the level of a controllable, remote consciousness. The more love you give to this little flower, the more you cherish it in your mind, take care of it, protect it from surrounding negative influences, the more it grows. This flower is generated by the energy of Love, I emphasize, by the inner energy of Love. And the more you feel Love towards the whole world, to all the people and to your surroundings, the bigger the flower becomes. And if you start to get angry, the flower becomes weak. If you yield to anger, the flower fades and becomes ill. Then it is necessary to put forth the maximum effort to restore it. It is a kind of control.