Chi Gung
Chi Work

A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE."

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: "TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE."

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you wrote on a stone, why?" the other friend replied: "when someone hurt us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it. "Learn to write your hurts in the sand and to carve your benefits in stone.

From the pine tree
Learn of the pine tree.
And from the bamboo
of the bamboo.

"A master dressage artist can enter a state of awareness in which the right physical movement takes place by itself, without any interference of the conscious will. Dressage rides the dressage. Nothing is done because the rider has vanished into the ride; the fuel has been completely transformed into the flame. We are able to relinquish control in this manner when we trust Universal Mind. The ecuyer masters dressage, not by conquering, but by becoming it."

 

"There is no gnosis without pain. One must come to know dressage, not just with the mind, but also with the flesh. Intimate, uninhibited contact between horse and rider is a prerequisite. The rider must become comfortable expressing unconditional love for his/her horse. The pain of destroying personal ego cannot be imagined or described: it is beyond words. The dressage artist must surrender the very core of his/her own private being, the sense of self. There is no anguish like that of relinquishing one's individuality, one's sense of control. For dressage to come into its rightful place as an art de vivre, the boundaries of personality must dissolve."

 

You will find that the mind enters a state of one-pointedness, a state in which your attention is focused. ...For a moment, thoughts fade into the background and may even cease to arise altogether. The mind is simply there, doing nothing and being nothing other than itself. This is your first moment of discovery that you, the real you, the essential you, exists separately from your thoughts.

 

"Think of meditation... in terms of process rather than of goal. Think of it as something that allows you to see more clearly what is going on inside yourself, in your own mind, in your own emotions, in your own body. And think of it as a process which allows you also to see more clearly what is going on in the outside world, what is happening out there as well as what is happening in here. And which allows you, once it has helped you reach something that looks like a goal, to see more clearly into the nature of that goal and to realize that, for all its value, it is not at the end of the journey. Other goals lie beyond, and other goals beyond them too, so much so that you may conclude that the process itself is the goal, and be content in that realization until the process shows you that even that is not the whole of the truth."

 

"And it is said that we should practice meditation as if it were a bird we are holding in our hands. Hold it too casually and the bird flies away. Hold it too tightly and the bird is smothered. Hold it neither casually nor tightly, and the bird rests between our palms and enchants us with its singing. In terms of our journey, what this means is that if we walk carelessly, taking no real heed of where we are, we lose our way; and if we walk doggedly, with our heads down instead of watching for the signposts, we lose our way just as surely, and often wander even further from the path."

 

"The only guideline is that there are no prizes for travelling quickly. Time means little in work of this kind. Rush ahead too eagerly, and you will soon find the need to go back and retrace some of your early steps. Travel at the right speed, and each step will take you, surely and steadily, to the next one. You still may find the need to retrace your steps from time to time. We never, in a way, outgrow the earlier exercises as we pass on to the later ones.
"But if you travel at the right pace, then retracing your steps will be done not because your earlier steps were misplaced, but because by retracing them you will (...) actually be continuing your journey forward.
"The paradox arises because when you retrace your steps you find the countryside around you has changed from when you first passed that way. Like revisiting scenes in dreams, nothing is quite as it was. The journey of meditation does not take place in a straight line nor at an even pace. We move in and out of experiences rather like a path winds its way up the wooded slopes of a mountain, sometimes almost losing itself, sometimes appearing to double back, sometimes rising steeply, sometimes gently and slowly."

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