Oct 28 A Summer’s Day Meditation

The sun was fading to the west, spreading glorious pinks and reds across the afternoon sky.  It was the “dog days” of summer.  The fragrance of flowers hung in the warm, dry air in their last burst of life before wilting in to the autumnal brown.

I sat with my back against a tall, majestic oak on a pile of freshly cut grass and absorbed the magical changing of seasons, a time where one fades into the other.  Whilst we still had the warmth, leaves and late flowers, they also contained the premonition of winter as they gradually dried out, began to change colour and prepare to be harvested by autumns sickle…..

I straightened my back, sat on the “meditation bone” (tailbone) to close the “Hua Yin” and placed my tongue on the top palette just behind my front teeth. I deepened my breath by bringing it to the Seiki Tanden and thought of the Buddha doing the self same thing under the Bodhi tree some three thousand years before on the evening preceding his enlightenment…… 

I could hear dogs barking and children playing in the background, the gentle trickling of water from the nearby stream, an ice cream van was playing chimes somewhere in the distance, a gentle breeze brushed my face as an insect buzzed by……..

I could feel the gravitational pull of the earth, easing the tension out of my body, I continued to straighten my spine suspending my form between heaven and earth as mother earth took my anxiety, tension and stress……

Mother earth…….. healing, and nourishing, our physical form rising up from her and returning to her, meanwhile she feeds and heals us……  I felt my physical form sink down into the moist earth below to commune……..

As I became the earth I could feel the roots of the tree penetrating right through me as I fed and nourished them.  I felt myself travel right up through the tree, through the trunk, the branches and right out to the surface of the leaves, absorbing the sunshine and the rain to produce a perfectly balanced, still “earth monitor” watching all that took place around me……. 

Back down in the earth, I could feel the worms travelling around in me, working their way through the moist parts waiting for the coming rains to be able to move to the surface, the roots of the plants and grasses searching ever deeper for moisture and nourishment…….

I could feel the innate power of the urges hidden deep within the earth, the urge for sustenance, for procreation, for safety….. creating the survival instinct that fuels so many of our primal fears. I could feel the gravitational balance of the other planets and the sun, all gently changing the energies within me.  I was the mother, everything rose up from me, was driven by me, nourished by me and returned back to me. 

Nothing died, it simply changed form, a perpetual recycling of the same energy……  Is this what the Buddha meant when he declared that there is “no self”?  What Lao Tsu meant when he declared that “heaven and earth are like a bellows, the shape changes but not the form”?

The balance between the planets, the heat of the sun, the moon, the rains, the winds, this is because that is…….  Now I understood the concept of interdependence, everything is because everything else is exactly like it is……  We are not independent beings walking the Earth, but interdependent on everything else being exactly as it is…….  Now I could see the “oneness” of all things that had previously eluded me……

So any harm that you caused, came back to you because you were interdependent on everything else being just as it was…..  This is why a Martial Artist only ever seeks to restore balance not to cause harm….  “Cause no harm”  the first Buddhist maxim and the law of Wicca.  “Do unto others as you would have done to yourself” the Christian version of the same thing……  The Karmic truth behind “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, that whatever harm you caused, you were ultimately doing it to yourself…….  What Alan Watts meant when he said that life was “universal energy playing hide and seek with itself”……

This is why the “empty”(Kara) in Karate, means empty of intention, the Martial Arts are really simply all about restoring peace and harmony by negating aggression…….. 

The cold fingers of darkness began to creep into the earth, as I rose up like Adam, the first man, into my human form and unlocked my stiffened legs.  I felt different.  I had finally realised that Martial Arts training is all about peace and harmony, that the efficient Martial Artist is not training to hurt or destroy anything, but simply to restore balance…..

Many Martial Artists pay this code lip service but do not live up to it.  Their practise is aggressive and hurtful, enlightened Masters pass down the codes but the students pay it insufficient attention and continue to pass their fears and aggression on to their own students.

As I walked home the stars were just beginning to peep through the darkness and as it was a clear night I could just see the steam on my breath….  The moon was nearly full and I could feel it’s pull, powerful enough to lift our seas……

I realised that it didn’t matter, everything was just as it was…….  The interdependence of all things meant that we were all aspiring upwards, it is meant to be like this, it’s not all a ghastly mistake, we are evolving as a planet, as a universe, when the Buddha became enlightened he declared that there is no self…….  No individual self, that all truths are empty of “self”, that we are all simply part of one interdependent evolutionary cycle, that earth returns to earth, fire to fire, water to water and air to air.  Energy can not be destroyed, it simply changes form……

Well, this form was ready to have its tea and lose itself in the dreamtime……

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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