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

all. There is nothing to argue about.”

20

Our company reached the glade, this time accurately determining its location.
“Listen, there is nobody here,” Slava said doubtfully. “Maybe this is not the right glade?”
“It’s the right one. I remember it well from the last time,” Andrew nodded affirmatively.
“Of course!” grinned Kostya.
We laughed recalling our last adventures. In about ten minutes, the senior guys started to arrive, joining our good mood.
“Oh, the Teacher is going to come now,” Victor livened up.
“Why do you think so?” I asked looking at the stars.
“Because of Samurai,” the senior sempai replied smiling.
I shifted my gaze to the ground and only then noticed how the cat paced grandly on a lonely fence in the light of a distant lamp, all the time almost falling down and trying to maintain his balance with his claws.
“He always comes to the meditation,” continued the sempai. “He sits calmly aside in full trance, and then without wasting his time with our conversations and impressions, leaves right away.”
“The first time we came, he stayed until the end. Sensei was trying to grab him out of the bushes,” I remarked.
“Well, that was probably a small exception from his rules.”
“Strange how it came out that time,” I thought, “Even the cat took direct part in that.”
The guys joined our conversation.
“Why did Sensei get a black cat?” asked Tatyana.
“He didn’t get him on purpose. When Samurai was still a kitten, the village kids would throw stones at him. So, Sensei picked him up from the street and cured him. Since then, the cat has lived with him and doesn’t leave him.”
“Who tore his ears up so much?” Andrew asked with a smile.
“Ah, he was sparring with dogs.”
“With dogs?”
“Yes. Samurai not only trains spiritually, but also practices martial arts,” said Victor, making everybody look at the cat. “Sensei has been teaching him, one could say, from childhood, the Wing Chun style, which is opposite to the Cat style. So now he picks fights with both cats and dogs.”
“You must be joking?” Andrew was sincerely surprised. “How is it possible to teach a cat Gong-fu? Not every human will understand it, and this is just a stupid animal.”
“It depends how you look at it,” the Teacher interrupted the conversation, coming out from the dark. “Sometimes a stupid animal proves itself to be cleverer than some Homo sapiens.”
“Still, though,” Nikolai Andreevich was interested in the unusual fact, “How did you teach him?”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Sensei simply said as if we were talking about something ordinary. “In the form of game. First I would clench his claws with my fingers and then in the same way would show him how to unclench. That’s how he learned… Now, he not only fights with cats but also picks fights with dogs. You see, he is not interested in mice anymore, they are not the right level. But why did I teach him? Now I have to run around with the mouse traps myself!”
Everyone laughed. I still didn’t understand whether that was a joke or not. If that was a joke, then why was it so serious? And if true, then one really needs to have remarkable talent to teach a cat.
During his story, Sensei was simultaneously shaking everybody’s hand, and when it was Andrew’s turn, he didn’t give his hand, but instead bowed politely.
“What happened?” Sensei was surprised.
“Well, I’m afraid to touch you after the other day’s events,” Andrew replied half-jokingly.
“What do I have to do with that?” said Sensei, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “It’s not me that you should be afraid of but him. He was next to you and not me.”
While Sensei was speaking with the other guys, Andrew pushed Kostya slightly to the side, “So it was through you!”
“What!? I’m smart of course, but not to that extent.”
“I’m serious.”
“And I’m serious.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Andrew waited until Sensei answered another question and asked, “Is it true that you’ve done it through a handshake?”
“Of course. Some day I will tell you about this.”
Then the conversation moved on to our home meditations. At first I wanted to call Sensei off to the side and speak to him alone about my thoughts because I was afraid of the reaction of the senior guys. Who knows, maybe they’d ridicule me with their picky jokes, like my friends. But Sensei patiently examined and explained every situation that happened to the guys. From Yura I heard a similar story, but not exactly so acute. Seeing the serious mood of the others, I finally decided to tell Sensei everything in the presence of everybody. And when another pause appeared in the conversation, I timidly started to share my achievements. Everyone listened calmly and carefully. Then I grew bold and told them about the dodger.
After my story, there reigned a short silence. “That’s it,” I thought, “Now Nikolai Andreevich will diagnose me with schizophrenia. Why did I blab it out in front of everyone?” But, to my surprise, Sensei said the following:
“It’s a good result. To catch a thought of your animal nature is hard and to fight with it, even more so. It is impossible to fight with this category of thought in principle because violence generates violence. And the more you try to kill it, the more intensively it’ll appear in you. The best way to defend against it is to switch to positive thoughts. In other words, the principle of Aikido of smooth withdrawal should be used here.”
“What if they are chasing me the entire day? Can’t I just chop them off with some swear word?” asked Ruslan.
“No matter how you chop them off, negative thoughts will keep appearing according to the law of action/counteraction. That’s why you needn’t fight with them. You should withdraw from them, artificially developing in yourself a positive thought. In other words, concentrate on something good or recall something good. Only in this way of smooth withdrawal will you be able to win over your negative thought.”
“And why can thoughts sometimes be absolutely the opposite of each other? Sometimes I too get confused by my thoughts.”
“Let’s say it this way: in the human body, there is a spiritual nature, or soul, and a material nature, or animal, call it as you wish. The human mind is a battlefield of these two natures. That’s why different thoughts arise in you,” Sensei replied.”
“And who am ‘I’, if thoughts are alien?”
“Not alien, but yours. You are the one who’s listening to them, the one who is choosing your nature. If you prefer the material, animal nature, then you’ll be evil and nasty, and if you listen to the advice of your soul, you’ll be a good person, and it will be pleasant for other people to be around you. The choice is always yours, you are either despot or saint.”
“And why did my admiration for taming my anger lead to pride, to the growth of megalomania? Because it seemed like I did a good deed, but the thought got carried away in a different direction?” I asked.
“You turned to the soul, your desire was fulfilled. And when you weakened your control over yourself, you were pulled over by the animal nature by your own favorite egoistic thoughts. You liked that you were complimented from all sides that you were so smart, so judicious, and so forth… There is a permanent war of two natures inside of you. And your future depends on which side you choose.”
I pondered a little and then specified, “In other words this dodger who reminded me about the pain and prevented me from concentrating, who inflated my megalomania…”
“Absolutely correct.”
“But there is an entire pile of these thoughts there!”
“Yes,” confirmed Sensei. “An entire legion. That’s why it’s impossible to fight with them. It’s not Gong-fu, it’s much more serious. It is possible to fight with the one who shows resistance. But fighting with a vacuum is senseless. Against a vacuum of negative thoughts, it is only possible to create the same vacuum of positive thoughts. In other words, I repeat, shift your mind to positive and good thinking. But always stay vigilant, listening what your brain thinks about. Observe yourself. Pay attention to the fact that you don’t do anything but the thoughts in you are constantly swarming. And not one thought. There can be two and three or more at once.”
“It’s like in Christianity, they say, on man’s left shoulder sits the devil, and on the right, an angel. And they are always whispering something,” remarked Volodya.
“Absolutely correct,” confirmed Sensei. “But for some reason, the devil whispers louder, he probably has a rougher voice. What’s called the devil in Christianity is the manifestation of our animal nature.”
“When I discovered this division of thoughts in myself, I thought that maybe I caught schizophrenia, because it also has to do with the splitting of consciousness,” I said more bravely.
Sensei smiled and jokingly answered, “There is no genius without a sign of madness.”
Nikolai Andreevich laughed, “Yes, indeed. I observe something similar in myself as well.”
Stas joined the conversation, reflecting aloud about his experience, “Well, if the mind is a battlefield of two natures, and as far as I understand it, their weapons are thoughts, then how can you distinguish who is who? How do the spiritual and the animal nature manifest in thoughts? In which way?”
“The spiritual nature means thoughts generated by the power of love, in the broad sense of the word. While the animal nature means thoughts about the body, our instincts, our reflexes, megalomania, desires, entirely devoured by material interests, and so forth.”
“Well, then we should live in a cave,” Ruslan expressed his opinion, “So that we have nothing and want nothing.”
“With a head like yours, even a cave won’t help,” Eugene teased him.
“Nobody forbids you to have all of this,” continued Sensei. “If you want, please, follow the modern world, use all the goods of civilization. But to live just for that, to place the accumulation of material goods as the main purpose of your existence on Earth, it’s stupid, it’s unnatural to the spiritual nature. This goal is an indicator of the predominance of the animal nature in people. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that you should live as a bum in a cave. No, I already told you that all these high technologies are given to mankind so that humans could free up more time for their spiritual perfection. But certainly not for a man to collect a pile of these iron things at home and blow up his megalomania because he possesses all that dust.”
After keeping silent for a while, Sensei thoughtfully pronounced, “A human is a complex synthesis of the spiritual and the animal nature. It’s a pity that in your mind more of the animal nature than the one from God predominates. The other day, I decided to give you one ancient practice to help you balance these two natures, so that the animal won’t burden you so much. It has existed just as long as humans have. This spiritual practice is not just for working on yourself, on your thoughts, but what is very important, it is for the awakening of your soul. In relation to life, it can be compared to a dynamic meditation because it is constantly functioning, regardless of where the human is located or what he does. A part of this human should always be in this state, controlling all that happens around or inside.
“This spiritual practice is called a Lotus Flower. It consists of the following. You imagine that you plant the seed of a lotus inside yourself, in the regions of the solar plexus. And