Sensei of Shambala by Anastasia Novykh (poetry books to read txt) 📕

didn’t succeed except with board punching.
“It’s natural,” the Teacher uttered. “The mistake of many people is that they try to think too much, to analyze the situation. That’s why they are not successful.”
“Can you break bricks?” Andrew asked, unable to resist a temptation to see everything with his own eyes.
“It’s easy, just take a hammer and go forth,” Sensei joked.
“No, I meant with a palm,” Andrew specified.
“Why should I dirty up my hands? It’s better to break them with a piece of paper.”
“With a piece of paper?”
“Yes. I’m not sure about the bricks, but if it’s something wooden, easily. Does anybody have a sheet of paper?”
We started hastily looking for it in our pockets. Volodya tore a piece of paper out of his notebook, about five centimeters wide. Yura found a dry branch not far from us, around 3-4 centimeters in diameter.
“Does anybody want to try?” the Teacher suggested.
The guys in turn waved a piece of paper over the stick like true card-players, but nothing changed. Volodya had to tear off another piece of paper. Sensei wanted to give a piece of paper to me and Tatyana.
“No, no, no,” we waved our hands. “If these guys were unable to do it, what we can say of our muscles?”
“Muscles don’t play any role. It can be done by anybody who doesn’t doubt his abilities.”
With these words, the Teacher gripped a piece of paper between his forefinger and thumb in his outstretched hand. He concentrated and started to do a range of breathing exercises. After that, the paper started to vibrate a bit, its movement was gradually slowed down, and soon it stopped moving at all, becoming straight. In less than a minute, Sensei raised his hand slowly and cut the stick with one smooth movement. The cut looked as if it were made by something iron and sharp.”
“Gosh!” our amazed group exclaimed.
We looked first at the branch, then at the paper, and after that at Sensei with one silent question, “How did he do it?”
Nikolai Andreevich assumed with doubts in his voice, “Was it a trick? You might have broken the branch with your finger in the very last moment.”
“Really?” It was Sensei’s turn to get surprised. “Have you ever seen a trick like this?”
He threw a piece of paper that went into the nearest tree just like a knife blade, complete with a metal sound. We had hardly put our lower jaws back in place as we rushed to the tree, as if there were an answer to the eternal question from Shakespeare, ‘To be or not to be?’ Nikolai Andreevich himself took out a paper-blade, even tasting it. It was circulated. This piece of paper seemed to be an ordinary iron plate, with all typical features. We stood completely at a loss, unable to believe our own eyes. Suddenly the plate in Slava’s hands started to lose its shape, gradually turning into an ordinary piece of paper. Slava noticed it, threw it into the air, and jumped quickly away with a piglet scream, causing the same reaction not only in us but in the senior guys as well. Volodya was the first who collected himself. He carefully picked up the former page of his notebook and said in a bass voice, “Why are you making noise? It’s just a piece of paper.”
We looked at the Teacher.
“It’s all right. It has just lost its power.”
When we calmed our stormy emotions, Sensei explained, “You have seen one more feature of the energy Qi - its ability to accumulate ions of metal. Since Qi is constructive energy, I concentrated and mentally inserted ions of iron into this piece of paper. My thought was implemented by Qi which, through my breath, brought these ions from the air into the paper. That’s why the paper turned into a metal plate for a time. Qi is a free energy - that’s why it dissolved in a few minutes, thus returning this plate to its original form.”
“Great!” Ruslan said with admiration. “And is it possible to Qi something like 2 kg of gold?”
The guys burst out laughing.
“Theoretically it’s possible.” Sensei smiled. “But in reality it’s like the saying in the Winnie the Pooh cartoon, ‘If there is honey, there is no honey.’ Remember physics: in order to retain ions of metal, you need strong molecular links. And these ions are connected by the energy Qi mixed up with psychic energy. Qi is the connecting link between ions of metal, and psychic energy creates any shape for a short period of time. But there will be no density at all.”
“Wow!” A hum buzzed through the crowd.
“That is the practical use!” Kostya discovered for himself. “And here I was thinking what’s the use of all of this? That’s great!”
“We can do so many things with it,” Ruslan said with a smile.
Everyone’s eyes shone with joy, and the guys started to discuss how to make use of this knowledge. Sensei observed all our excitement, keeping silent. And the more we boosted the situation in jokes, the gloomier and more serious his face became. Finally he said, “I see, guys, that you have too much animal nature in yourselves.”
“We’re just joking,” Ruslan uttered, trying to make an excuse for all of us.
“Many a true word is spoken in jest.”
“Right,” Volodya agreed while he was silently observing our jokes. “Otherwise it will be the same story as with the ninjas.”
We didn’t understand whether he was joking or telling the truth.
“What do you mean?” Andrew asked.
“What I’ve said,” Volodya said in a bass voice.
We looked at Sensei with a question in our eyes.
“Yes, there was such a story,” Sensei said. “Once a whole clan of ninjas was liquidated because they used spiritual knowledge with selfish motives.”
“We have not heard about it,” Ruslan said. “Tell us.”
“Yes, tell us,” we backed him up.
“There is nothing to tell… So long as ninjas trained their body and mastered their skills, they flourished. Nobody paid attention to them, actually. They were just hired assassins. But when ninjas started to master spiritual practices and learnt something, they started to use this knowledge for their material enrichment. It was a real hour of triumph for ninjas, so to say, their heyday and decline at the same time. They won fame immediately as invincible superkillers. Due to spiritual practices, ninjas developed their extraordinary abilities. They were able to turn everything into a weapon: any piece of paper, anything available. They learnt perfectly how to camouflage, to jump into a space and from a very big height, without any harm to their health and so on.”
“That’s great! “Slava burst out.
“Do not admire them,” the Teacher said after Slava’s exclamation. “And moreover do not create idols from them. They were just a gang of hired assassins who killed from behind, from an ambush. They were foul dregs and nothing else. They were directed by their material nature… They didn’t have any honor. And honor is one of the features of the general spirituality of a human, not just of a warrior, that is, when he is guided by high moral values. A man without honor is nobody and nothing.
“And what happened to the ninjas?” Jura asked.
“As is usual in such cases, when they started to use spiritual practices for gaining their own material enrichment, they were liquidated.”
The guys bombarded Sensei with questions. But Ruslan was the most insistent of all, “How did they get this spiritual knowledge if they used it for their own devious purposes?”
“They didn’t get it. Ninjas stole it. More precisely, they wormed out the technique of meditations through deceit. And then they grew this seed of knowledge themselves. But they used it for bad things. That’s why they were punished.”
“Who punished them? You said yourself that they reached such a height that they became invulnerable to people,” Andrew put his question to Sensei.
Sensei grinned and cited his favorite saying, “You see, for every Vijai there is a Rajah… If there is military science, there is somebody who guides it. The same thing happens with spiritual practices. If there are spiritual practices, there is someone who controls the use of these practices. This knowledge is thus called spiritual as it is meant for spiritual enrichment of the individual, not material enrichment, especially not through killing living beings.”
“I have read that ninja schools still exist,” Kostya remarked.
“Yes, but the truth is, modern ninja schools are just a miserable parody of those that existed in ancient times. They still have their techniques and instruments. But all this training is focused on the material physical level. And the door to further perfection is closed. As the law says: spiritual for spiritual… And if you guys strive to learn the art for material profits or satisfaction of your megalomania,” Sensei shook his head, gazing upon us, “no good will come of it.”
“Why?” Slava asked.
“First, you will never learn anything. Second, if, of course, you are lucky enough, you will gain at least schizophrenia.”
“Yes, it’s a nice future,” Ruslan said smiling.
“Well, there is no such threat for you,” Eugene said chuckling.
“But we are not going to kill anybody,” Andrew was looking for excuses.
“Physically, maybe not. But your thoughts contain too much of a beast. And this is the first step towards aggression and violence.”
“What should we do now?”
“Control your thoughts every second.”
Keeping silent for a while, Sensei added, looking at Andrew, “Have you ever thought about who you are in fact? Who you are in essence? Have you thought how you perceive the surrounding world? Not from the point of view of physiology, but from the point of view of life… Who are you? How do you see, how do you hear, why do you feel, who in you understands and, who exactly perceives? Look inside of yourself.”
Sensei continued addressing the guys, “Have you ever thought at all about the infinity of your consciousness? About what is the thought? How is it born, and where does it go? Have you thought about your thoughts?”
“Well,” Andrew became confused, “I think all the time, reflect on things.”
“It seems to you that it’s you who thinks and it’s you who reflects. But are you sure that these are your own thoughts?”
“Whose else? This body is mine, therefore the thoughts are mine as well.”
“Try to analyze them, if they are yours, at least for one day. Where do they come from, to where do they disappear? Dig through your thoughts thoroughly, and what will you see there except shit? Nothing. Just violence, just ugly things, just the desire to gorge yourself, to put on fashionable clothes, to steal, to earn, to buy, to raise your megalomania. And that’s all! You will see for yourself that all thoughts generated by your body end with one thing: the material supply around you. But is it really you inside yourself? Look into your soul and you will face the beautiful and eternal, your true “I”. All this external vanity around is just nonsense… Are you aware of it?”
We stood silent. Suddenly the scene seemed very familiar to me. It already happened to me once, in exactly the same way down to the smallest details: this word-for-word discussion, and this glade, and these bright stars, and most importantly, this voice familiar to the innermost of my heart, this kind face… I knew that it had already happened.