230408 - Day 4
I haven’t felt in the mood to write anything since I came here. I haven’t felt in the mood at all, if we’re being honest.
All my doubts, insecurities, everything, has just been bubbling up to the surface since I came. A constant nagging feeling, more a voice, really,
Why did I come here? What am I doing here? I should leave.
And so on.
It’s not really what I imagined. Which, of course. It’s real. The spirituality seems, often enough, lost in translation.
Hidden behind business and I language I have yet to penetrate. The shifu has 3(!) people living here full time working with advertisement, content creation etc. At the same time, the home is very honest. Everyone is really nice, despite nobody except my teacher speaking english. It certainly is genuine, but often feels more like living with a Chinese guy in the countryside than anything else. Especially as he has a lot of other things to attend to. One must of course walk the path alone, in the end. I guess I just thought I could circumvent the discipline by coming here. It’s ironic really, as I came to such a “loose” place because I thought I wasn’t ready for the real thing. Yet, more discipline is required when nobody is there to force you. Being able to communicate is at least a very good motivation for learning the language. I thought I’d be fine, because I don’t speak a lot normally either. But now I can’t even listen. I find myself constanly coming back to a promise I made myself.
At least stay a month. At least give it an honest shot, while you’re there. At least show that you tried, that you could fulfill a promise.
I’ve been reading “The Myth of the Eternal Return” the last few days. It’s a decent book, the first half is filled with a lot of anthropological justification which one often have to suffer through. It has a very fascinating topic, however. It explores self-actualization through the topic of archaic time. Let me give you a taste, some notes that I wrote today.
Archaic man imitates, repeats, re-enacts, the mythical. In this way he is immortalized.
In fact, only then does he truly exist. Reality does not fit personal quirks.
When hunting, he does not ask favor from the Hunter-God. He becomes him.
> …
Could we perhaps liken this to the ‘enlightenment’ found through dispassion, through detachment, in the East, particularly in Buddhist and Hinduist thought?
The Bhagavad Gita shows us that we should not attach ourself to the fruits of our actions. In Buddhism, in parallel, or rather, going a bit further, we see how this detachment when carried out to its fullest means that we become our action. When doing something, we fully commit to the act. We are nothing more or less than that doing, than the act. We are the act. Thus, when hunting, we become the Hunter; the original - the only one that has ever been - the Hunter God.
I suppose, out of context, the “archaic time”-angle doesn’t really shine through. Well, all in due time. Anyways, this has been a comfort, has been motivating me today. I am committed to the act, to the training, to the study. I shall do everything I can, and then, in 30 days, we shall see. One last thing. Ram Dass has been speaking to me today. Of course, if you must ask, in the form of a memory of words he wrote in his book before he died. Communicating, nonetheless.
“Get what you can from your teacher, respect his knowledge, respect his flaws. When you feel finished, leave. The path is yours to walk.”
Something like this. Maybe not even remotely close to a quote, but this is what he says in my mind.
Thank you. Goodnight.