The Mad Monk Manifesto. Yun Rou

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СКАЧАТЬ afar and reporting on the effects of his needle? He realized that in order to phrase things that way, the patient had to be watching the experiment unfold from some place deep either within or high above.

      There’s more. When Penfield stimulated a place in the brain that made the patient clench his fist, then said, “Look, I’m going to do that again, this time try to resist the clenching,” the fist clenched to a lesser extent. Because of the way the patient reacted, Penfield inferred that the person whose hand was moving, and the person who was trying to stop the hand from moving, were in some fashion not one and the same. Penfield called the person he was talking to the “watcher.”

      Depending upon how much experience we have meditating, we soon discover that we can watch ourselves watch ourselves watch ourselves, and so on. Daoists make the same observation Penfield did and take it a step or two further. In our tradition, the first level of occurrence is the external, objective fact—there is a table. The second level is the sensory register of that fact or event—seeing the table, for instance. The third level is interpreting what we see—“Ah. That’s a table.” The fourth level is the emotion that arises—“What a beautiful table!” The last, fifth level, applies to our response to the previous four—“I move that table so the puppy doesn’t chew on its legs.”

      Once we understand that there is a watcher, many previously impossible tasks become trivial. Moreover, experiences we may have had, like time slowing down during a mortal encounter of a car accident or shoot-out, make a new kind of sense. Given this hygiene of distance, keeping our equilibrium becomes much, much easier. Dangerous and stressful events have less immediacy, leaving us free to respond rather than react, and to stay calm and make better decisions. Last but not least, we can, at any moment, find new coaches in our efforts to relax and rectify ourselves. We have only to check in with our watchers.

      Cycles and Motion

      Many Western exercise programs emphasize the way the body looks as opposed to the way it functions, isolating muscle groups with specific exercises and sometimes even puffing us up with artificial nutrients and stimulant drugs. This method appeals more to vanity than to good sense, benefiting appearance over function. Instead, let’s see the body and the way it works in terms of systems, not individual organs or anatomical structures. Tai chi, qigong, and the herbs and acupuncture pull together organs, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. Linked properly to the mind, the entire body becomes healthier and stronger, and performance improves. This is real rectification.

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      The burgeoning field of epigenetics tells us that our DNA is not a life sentence written in stone, but more a loose guide to our characteristics, health, and disease. As we interact with our environment, our lifestyle, feelings, and thoughts switch our genes on and off. In this heady respect, we literally are what we think and feel. Interactive genetic mutability has health, longevity, and spiritual enlightenment resting upon a foundation of a calm mind and a life lived in harmony with nature rather than one in opposition to it. Unquestioningly accepting stereotypes limits us in so very many ways. The narratives we tell ourselves about our physical abilities, the inevitability of our genetics, the limitations of our circumstances and educations, are all wrong and needlessly constrain us. Relaxing turns off dangerous genes. Rectifying ourselves means understanding that while our genetic code may be written, how it is expressed depends upon our reactions to stress and what we do to reject what others have told us are our limits. The first step in growing past old boundaries, breaking old bonds, and rejecting stories we tell ourselves and stereotypes others apply to us is to understand that we are changing and evolving in each moment of our lives. The step after that is to take conscious and deliberate control of that change through the various suggestions offered here.

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      The inevitability of aging turns out to be a fallacy. Despite popular belief, older people’s brains don’t become slow and weak but rather more densely packed with information. Experience does this to us. It creates new webs of association, and links recollections and connotations together in strange and wonderful ways. A pause to gather our thoughts is not a sign of our decrepitude; it’s a sign of the richness of our understanding. Also, scientific research shows that the more competently we mentally adapt to changing circumstances, the less rapidly we physically age. Adaptation requires relaxation. The more we honor ourselves as wise, experienced, and emotionally flexible, the younger we stay. Healthy aging is just one more way we come to understand the world more clearly and more deeply.

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      Sitting is the new smoking. Spending hours at a desk or computer is an act of self-destruction. Our circulatory, lymphatic, immune, and endocrine systems all require physical exercise to function properly, and the more we get, the better. Our bodies evolved to move, not to sit. By remaining stationary for too long, particularly on chairs, we interrupt the natural workings of our body, many of which occur beneath our conscious awareness. What’s more, the air indoors is often polluted and full of mold, dust, and industrial pollutants. Set an alarm to remind you to get up, stretch, take a walk (outside if possible) every twenty minutes or so. Make it a habit, and you will live longer, suffer fewer afflictions, and have more energy, too.

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      Extreme exercise—indeed extremes of all kinds—is best left to entertainers. While very much in vogue in a culture that embraces risk and requires constant titillation, extreme exercise is incongruent with health and longevity. Despite generating short term pleasures, seeking thrills by flirting with injury and death reveals a numbed, desensitized state, completely contrary to a quiet, harmonious, awake, aware, and sensitive mind and body. Life-affirming pursuits such as swimming, traditional Asian martial arts, yoga, walking, or jogging are better long-term rectification options. Beyond that, or perhaps even better, how about vigorous sex with an enthusiastic partner?

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      Dependent upon artificial energy sources and confined in buildings that insulate us from both the elements and natural light, we lose touch with the circadian rhythms upon which a healthy body depends. If we cannot live in an unadulterated natural environment—and both the burgeoning need for sustainable agriculture and the communication options opened by the Internet make this more feasible than ever—at least we can make healthier lifestyle choices. Work when the sun is out and sleep under the moon’s watchful eye. Slow down in winter, relax when it rains, and take advantage of brisk temperatures to exercise. These habits put us in better accord with natural cycles.

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      My teacher’s teacher, Chen Quanzhong, seventeenth-generation teacher in his family’s line, may be the greatest living practitioner of the martial art of tai chi ch’uan. In his nineties at the time of this writing, Great Grandmaster Chen lived through some of the toughest times in modern Chinese history, including the so-called Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), during which as many as fifty-five million people were murdered or starved to death. During the inaptly named Cultural Revolution, the Maoist government expropriated his factory and reduced his position there to that of floor-mopping janitor. Despite this, and at times nearly starving while raising seven children on a handful of dollars per week, he managed to lift his personal practice to dizzying heights. To this day, Great Grandmaster Chen strides about with the gait and the physique of a healthy, powerful, much-younger man, eclipsing his rivals in the martial arts and setting an example for us all.

      Decades ago, I interviewed him for a leading martial arts magazine. One of the first questions I asked him was about cross-training, as exercise gurus and advocates then and now continue to advocate the practice.

      “Cross-training?” he asked.

      “Using weights, running, swimming, rowing, bicycling.”

      “Ah,” he said, as I scribbled his response on my notepad. “Very, very important. СКАЧАТЬ