The Mad Monk Manifesto. Yun Rou

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СКАЧАТЬ second set of six should be done more as a whisper than a shout. I have found it best to practice each sound six times, adding an additional six repetitions when the organ system is “in season,” or to address a particular health problem in the relevant area. The sounds are:

      1.Liver. Spring Season. Wood. “Shhhhh.” Wood grows in spring and the liver is more active during that season. If the liver is weak, illnesses such as hepatitis may arise at that time.

      2.Heart. Summer. Fire. “Kuhhhh.” Fire happens in summer and the heart is active during that period. Same medical logic as above.

      3.Spleen. Transition between seasons. Earth. “Hoooo.” Same medical logic as above.

      4.Lung. Autumn. Metal. “Sssszz.” This sound has a buzz at the end. Same medical logic as above.

      5.Kidney system. Winter. Water. “Chuaay.” Same medical logic as above.

      6.Triple Burner/Heater/Warmer (digestion). All seasons. “Ssss.” All elements.

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      Noise pollution is an oft-overlooked culprit in the chronic, lifestyle-based diseases of modern society. Even those who are accustomed to noise, and temporarily uncomfortable with quiet, eventually experience lower heart and respiratory rates in a tranquil environment. Rectification requires some silence, for in silence, we confront our true nature and the sources of our stress, finding within ourselves creativity and spirituality, too. There are all kinds of things we can do to make our lives quieter, including the use of earplugs while flying, sleeping, and working, closing windows to reduce street noise, and reducing the volume on our speakers and headphones. We might also lobby to outlaw blowing car horns in urban areas, and levy fines on drivers who modify mufflers or don’t repair damaged ones, introduce nighttime fly-over legislation for communities near airports, enforce construction bans at night and on weekends, and encourage replacing leaf blowers with rakes. While we’re at it, let’s diminish background music in public spaces like malls and elevators, and reintroduce soft, courteous speech, too. Let’s go back to considering loud people boorish instead of encouraging them by paying them extra attention.

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      A great deal is made these days about the electrical nature of our bodies. This may be a direct consequence of our obsession with digital doodads and the unfolding of virtual worlds we have created in order to escape from the dire mess we’ve made of this real one. In addition to electricity, however, there is another form of energy with which we can express ourselves, and which is an integral part of who we are. That energy is light, and its units are photons, not electrons. Photons saturate our world, originate in the sun and distant stars (long burned out, by the way, but still sending us their celestial glory), and enter our bodies through both our eyeballs and our skin. The great fabric of existence is bolstered by the ongoing exchange of these photons—the fact that every time we look at each other, every time we so much as share visible space, we share photons instantly and pervasively. We give them to each other. They are gifts that knit together space and time. What we feel, intend, and do are all part of, and are actively contributing to, a vast landscape of light. Seen this way, photons can even be considered building blocks in the creation of a new self.

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      When considering relaxation and rectification both, let’s remember that we are not a single coherent entity, but instead a lively festival of worms, protozoa, molds, amoeba, bacteria, virus, and fungi—all cooperating over the course of our lifespan so as to simply survive. In fact, only 43 percent of the cells in our bodies are human! Each of the billions of organisms living within us has a role to play, and many are absolutely essential to the life of the host. Recent research into the wide-ranging importance of the flora and fauna in our gut is an example of how we are reordering our understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to be alive. More research into the genetic variability of this microbiome will likely lead to breakthrough treatments for a wide range of diseases. In the meantime, why not turn our meditative attention to the divine cacophony of tiny agendas, all being exercised upon our will and our well-being, so as to better understand who and what we really are? We can do this by experimenting with our microbiome through the use of food and supplements, but in seeking profound growth and change, it wouldn’t hurt to mentally ask for permission and assistance from all the little beings who make us who we are.

      The Way We Feel

      We must often yield so as to gain greater understanding and ultimately triumph; sometimes, on the way to both relaxation and rectification, it’s to our advantage to sometimes invest in loss, meaning give up some ground to gain some later or accept the loss of a battle the better to win the war. We must be willing to let go of people and things and ideas. We must never directly fight force with force, but rather spiral around obstacles. To see spiral movement in action, one has only to look through a good telescope and see what happened when the detritus from exploding stars and the rushing material of creation crashed together eons ago, leaving us spiral galaxies. It also happens that spiraling is the most effective way to move liquid through a solid matrix, which is why authentic tai chi is remarkably effective in aiding the circulation of blood and lymph through our body’s matrix of soft tissue and bone. The spiral, in short, is nature’s way of managing conflict.

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      Letting go is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing in the world to do. Easy, because it is simple, effortless, and natural; difficult because grasping is inherent in our lifestyle. We are commanded by corrosive religious traditions that tell us we are imperfect and must constantly strive to be godly or even worthy. This manipulative and twisted lie causes us to prize obstinacy and obedience over sensitivity, and to collide with difficult people and situations rather than circumnavigate them. If we are to evolve to the next stage of consciousness, we must relax, quit struggling, and accept ourselves as microcosmically flawed but macrocosmically perfect.

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      It is often hard to relax when we feel assaulted by daily stresses and pressures. These forces arise from a limited and often negative life narrative, one we have learned the way we learned language and customs and culture. The narrative is at best the partial truth about ourselves and our lives. Our planet is only a tiny speck in the cosmos and yet, even here, we miss so very much because of the limitations of our eyes, ears, noses, fingertips, and tongues. Lacking sonar, for example, we cannot detect bugs on the fly in a dark cave the way a bat can. We cannot feel the water column above us the way a deep-sea lamprey does, nor sense the electrical discharges of prey after the fashion of sharks, skates, and rays. We will never hear songs sent our way through thousands of miles of water by our cetacean kin. We will never hear the ultra-low-frequency vibrations of other elephants in our herd. Despite the revelations brought to scientists by computers, sensors, telescopes, and microscopes, on a daily basis most of us remain oblivious to the larger workings of the cosmos. Accepting how little we perceive of our world and how little we can therefore understand of it, we can abide in a place of wonder and respect for the world rather than attempting to dominate it.

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      We don’t all look like supermodels, think like geniuses, earn like moguls, own like sheiks, and rule like kings. Thinking that we do, indeed, thinking that we should, distances us from the bitter struggle that is life for billions of people around the globe. So distant, we become lost to greed and self-importance. We become graspers, forever discontented with what we do and what we have. This creates stress, which precludes relaxation. Let’s get real: Each of us does indeed have our place and our role in the world, but beyond rights and freedoms and the meeting of our biological needs, we don’t deserve a thing! The idea that we deserve anything at all is obnoxious, New Age, politically-correct puffery, and comes at a high price to those around us. It is high time we abandoned self-congratulatory narcissism. Instead, let’s frankly appraise our achievements and contributions СКАЧАТЬ