The room had been cleared, and as I shoveled in the last of my gruel he began to speak with both his voice and his body. “Five Elements, five cuts,” he said dryly. With his right arm he traced a large X in front of his body as he faced me. Then, holding an imaginary sword with two hands, he began.
From top right to bottom left a diagonal slash, “One.” He turned his hands rotating the unseen edge and then back on the same line, from bottom left to upper right, “Two.” He drew the imaginary blade back slowly past his ear and down in a graceful half circle until it rested at his lower right. He brought it up and to the left, “Three.” At its apex his hands moved again rotating the invisible edge like a swallow’s flight, and then down smoothly from top left to bottom right, “Four.” The momentum of the phantom blade spiraled steadily forward as his two hands came up to torso height and then became a center thrust. “Five.” The sword tip’s target was the intersection of the X, the middle of the body line.
His body faced me squarely, and he began the count once more. Both hands flew up to the handle at his back. The sword came up, out, and down to the left. “One.” From lower left it retraced its path up and to the right. “Two.” It drew back gracefully, circling down to the bottom right and up. “Three.” The blade turned over and from high left cut down, and to the right. “Four.” Moving upward it gathered momentum as its point flashed precisely through the center. “Five.”
“Eventually the five cuts will become only one cut.” He moved again, and in less time than a nod the sequence of five blurred together and became one. It was faster by far than the eye could follow. He laughed at my open mouth, and said, “Ring by ring, Arkthar. Now five cuts, but not five elements, for before there was steel, there was wood.”
We moved outside into the clean morning air, the wood felt heavy in my hands. Once I had gotten comfortable with the five cuts from a square unmoving stance, we began again. The first cut with the right leg leading, the second with the left stepping forward, third in harmony with the right step, the forth with the left, and the fifth thrust with the planting of the right. “Five cuts, five paces.” Mah Lin said and asked, “How fast can you run?” I didn’t have any real answer and so I replied, “As fast as I have to.” His frown told me he was not joking, and he sprinted to the count of five, covering about four body lengths along the ground.
Mah Lin raised the sword and ran at full speed toward a bamboo grove. This tall plant stood in clusters everywhere upon this land. It was most utilitarian, used to craft everything from furniture to cutlery. It would grow the length of fist to elbow in a single day, and it would reach the thickness of a man’s arm. What made it unique was not its girth, but that inside it was completely empty. So it seemed that it should have no strength at all, but like many things of this world the opposite was, in fact, the truth.
By the time he reached it, he was at full stride and the sound of steel on wood rang out. Every step a cut, he had traversed four body lengths in the time of one breath. Only as he impaled the last trunk with the metal tip did the diagonally severed victim of first blow reach the ground. With a tilt of his head three more in sequence followed suit.
Sweat glistened on his muscled chest when he rejoined us, sword in hand. “Arkthar,” he said as he touched the wooden sword within my hand, “Keep it with you and let it grow to become your fifth limb.” I was touched by his gift and bowed with deep respect. He had called it an oar, I knew that it was now a necessary part of my journey, an implement that if used well would propel me forward. So it was that a new element had been added to the structure of my day.
Before first meal and with Selah near me, I voraciously studied writing, reading, and wisdom past. To the accompaniment of morning birdsong, I practiced the slow movements of the dao yin. At midday from flower to acorn, and from bud to leaf, the oak and the raven would watch over me as I held my quiet stance beneath them.
The daily pounding of the falls with my friend and teacher, signaled and conditioned my body for the fast and hard training of limb and movement that we practiced inside the cavern. I returned home every evening and with arms held at shoulder height, carrying two pails of bat dung to feed our thriving plot.
During the day my heavy wooden blade never left my back, but the time of its training was sunset. Bathed in the warm blood red light of day’s end, I held the oar within my hands, and traced the pattern of five cuts until every muscle of my body held their memory. I remembered also the sword art of the fierce Norse raiders, and learned from it. With every new skill that my right arm learned, I trained my left to be its equal.
As well as arts of war, I mastered what I once considered women’s work. I tended the livestock. I learned to flavor well most of what we ate, for I enjoyed the new experience of spice. At evening meal I learned to follow by ear their conversation, and now could add my simple point in the language of this land. Sometimes speech switched from my language to theirs, and like spice, perhaps a flavor of Latin, Norse, or Celt would surface in the mix.
In my new world, the monk Mah Lin taught me the ways of the warrior priest, while with Selah I learned the arts of the scholar and the methods of traditional medicine. I had often heard father and daughter speak of the natural world reflecting the movement and balance of opposite forces.
Through conflict to peace, from soldier to healer, now with the passage of time I was beginning not just to understand this concept, but to embody it.
The Light Within The Darkness
Within the darkened shadows of the cavern’s forge, my training with Mah Lin continued. He spoke of the new form that I would learn, “It is older by far than many,” he said, “first brought by a brown southern giant to the temple we call Shaolin.” I recalled the name from our conversation of long ago in the presence of the sacred oak. The priest nodded with pleasure when I remembered its name, “vajra fist,” and nodded once more when I remembered that its meaning is “thunderbolt.”
He began his instruction without fanfare; the form opened slowly, and was initially not unlike the “dao yin sequence” that Selah had taught me. After its slow opening all similarities vanished. I watched in awe as his movements transformed from the slow power of twist undulate and coil, to the blinding speed of limb and leg. This speed was not yet within my reach, for full mobility had not yet returned to my battered body. The priest assured me, however, that it would, but for now I was to be content to imitate his motions as accurately as possible.
By month’s end I had learned all the movements, but the real skill would come only with practice. Day by day we trained the motions of the vajra fist, and day by day I did become more fluid in its powerful execution. Steadily I grew stronger and more confident, I was indeed happy to push myself once more beyond the limits of flesh and mind.
Satisfied at last that the form was in my body and that my mind no longer needed to focus on recalling the next sequence, Mah Lin bid me pause and reflect. “Now that the first stage of your training has ended, the hidden truths of this ancient exercise can be explored.” He reached high into a crevice and drew forth a work of wonder. It was beautifully crafted and old beyond measure. “This relic, too, came to us with the journey of the southern monk. It is a steel they call wootz, and its making is the secret of our sacred forge.
He held it with reverence in his strong hands and showed it to me to examine only with my eyes. “It is the earthly symbol of what you now study through the flesh,” he said, and as I looked upon it he continued to explain. “This is the vajra. In a time long past it was held by the hand of the Bodhidharma, and aided his meditation.” I looked at what he spoke of and could think only that for such a powerful object it was indeed quite small. It rested comfortably upon his outstretched palm. It shared the texture of Mah Lin’s sword, perfectly symmetric in shape like two oaken acorns joined by a straight silver bridge.
Mah Lin was not one to use words carelessly. With explanation he was more than sparse, assuming, I think, that my understanding would catch up
over time. He stated simply that, “this object is a symbol. The twofold meaning of vajra is thunderbolt and diamond—the blinding light of enlightenment that crashes unexpectedly to permanently illuminate the darkened mind and leaves in its wake a new consciousness as clear and resilient as the hardest jewel in nature’s crown.”
As I listened mindfully to his words, he added one more thought, “The hammer of Thor has traveled far.”
He led me now to a small grotto at the cavern’s far end, where he bid me sit in the uncomfortable cross-legged style of his custom. He had me close my eyes lightly and direct my breath to my center. My fingers he placed in a specific way, he called “a mudra.” The fingers of my right hand surrounded the extended index finger of the fist of my left.
He answered my bewildered look with another short explanation that was not much of an answer at all. “The vajra mudra transforms ignorance into wisdom and symbolizes the five elements: earth, water, wood, fire, and metal.” I accepted his request that each day following the physical movements of the Vajra Fist, I continue in darkness the quiet seated practice of the mudra.
The words of my teacher were still well beyond my mind’s understanding, but in the monk and his daughter my faith was now unwavering, and I would do my best in anything that they asked of me.
The Vajra And The Mind
The seated meditation of the vajra mudra was harder for me then the movement of the vajra fist form. But eventually and with work I became comfortable with both. As always Mah Lin knew the moment of this transition, without ceremony he passed the vajra to me, and I touched it for the first time.
I held the solid but beautifully delicate object in my hand and in my mind. It was short and heavy, double-ended, perfectly symmetric, and balanced. Its size was the length of my palm, a figure eight, like the symbol of infinity. It felt familiar, the echo of a distant memory. I knew it was a sacred object of symbol and ritual, but I was already in motion. I had a fighter’s knowledge and a pugilist’s mind. Many times for sport and money I had held a weapon like this, I knew well the feel of a caestus strapped into my hand. But this was not strapped, it was free, and I could pass it hand to hand. It moved my body like lightning and made my fist as hard as diamond, and I thought then that they had named it well.
Mah Lin said nothing but allowed me to move as I felt. When I was finally spent, Mah Lin said, “You move well, but a striking tool was considered by the monk who carried it only the basest of its properties. In the hands of healer it is a tool of massage,” and he bid me to push against my muscles and source out any pain. Mah Lin made a motion like striking and suggested a beating rhythm. “Light now, every day a little stronger, for health,” he said. “An instrument of healing is a much more worthy purpose than a weapon of destruction.”
He held out his hand and I gave it back. He drew fresh breath and released his mind from the strict channel of rational thought. It swirled and tumbled over time and place like a mythic river. It flowed freely southward from the cold homeland of Thor to the kingdom of the ancient Aryans, where the northern god was embraced, altered, and released into the world. The mind of the monk surged eastward, tracing the thunder god’s course, as he streamed out over vast distance and desert sand, only to spill and gather in the lush and fertile valleys of the vast southern continent. The monk saw the northern lightning bearer take root there and transform once more. He saw him rising with hands that reached to heaven, remade as mighty Indra, ‘the wielder of the thunderbolt.’ As the speed of turbulent thought slowed to pools of quiet reflection, he saw this wielder carried northward across the roof of the earth by the Bodhidharma himself, and settle here, reborn now, as the guardian Vajrapani.
The glint of the metal vajra caught my eye as the monk smiled and bid me, “Take it.” As I reached again it was not there. I could feel only its lightest touch against my wrist, and then with only the slightest of his movement, the pain came. It made my body shift, and Mah Lin followed and interpreted these shifts like the reading of manuscript. From wrist to elbow, shoulder to neck, and then down again to wrist. He controlled my movements both offensive and defensive over the entire expanse of the forge. The harder I tried to retrieve it the more intense the painful lesson got.
Mah Lin pressed or pulled me at will with never anything more than the strength required to comfortably shake hands. He, finally tired of this sport, released me. “The real martial power of the bolt lies in the skill of softness coupled with the knowledge of healer. The full power of the timeless vajra, however, lies only within the mind of the enlightened.” In the darkness of the cavern, Mah Lin left me to nurse my aching limbs and injured pride. He bid me only “breathe deeply and grow quiet,” and left me to myself.
The monk strode through the raging water of the falls without slowing and burst into the bright open sunlight. Suddenly his vision was pulled skyward by the distant cry of a bird of prey. On high, two mighty eagles crashed together. With talons locked they began the dangerous free-falling spiral of their courtship ritual. The priest watched the speed of their earthbound plummet increase and their wing tips trace the graceful outline of the double helix, the timeless pattern of life. Mere seconds from earthly impact they broke apart to climb and begin their mating ritual anew.
Mah Lin contemplated the mystical divine energy of the universe itself. He knew that Arkthar and the symbolic metal thunderbolt were also joined, locked, and entwined. He understood that both had somehow plummeted through vast distance and far place, falling and for now intact, through the ascending layers of history, legend, religion, and myth.
To See Beyond
She had wandered for months through the blind madness that took her mind whenever it desired. Her gnarled fingers clutched at her bag of bones and tortoise shells as if its touch might keep her sane, but it did not. She no longer controlled her walks between the world of spirit and the world of flesh. Visions emerged unbidden, reflected in full moon’s light by the shattered mirror of what was once a healthy mind. She could not remember clearly what she had seen and from what she had escaped.
The old one ate when she remembered and that was inconsistently. When her mind was lucid she picked the roots and berries of the wilderness. Safely stowed within her bag, she would find them later, and devour them hungrily. She was grateful that at least her bag had somehow retained its power. The steady supply of refuse from the marching soldiers was no more, and so her body withered. What was consistent was the need to put distance between her and them, and this burning need to be far away from the commander and the cold north region. From north to south blew the winds that filled her ragged sails.
The oracle moved like a strange animal, from hamlet to house with little rhyme and no reason. She would on occasion be asked to divine, but since her night in the commander’s tent she could not see clearly in any direction, and so no coins would come her way. She had assumed the habit of looking to the sky, and searching every bird that flew there. The one she sought was oily black, but it did not fly above her.
He was a creature living and moving on the instincts of his kind. The beggar did not rave, nor was he mad or possessed. He was workmanlike as he went about his business. He traveled mostly at night, for the stars gave him comfort and direction. Patiently and methodically he moved from south to north, and moving as a bird flies, he followed a long dead trail that he saw from his great height.
He avoided the society of men as much as he could, not because he hated them, but because their world and their way was simply not his. His way was the way of forest paths and meadow streams, or the way of clouds that cross the sky. He knew where he was going, but paused occasionally searching for her among the shadows. He at least was not among the lost.
Long before he saw the twinkling firelight, he smelled the smoke and heard her howls rise up into the heavens. She was astonished when he came upon her, relieved that her cries had finally drawn him from the skies. They sat with few words, and on her fire he cooked a meal for her that warmed and nouris
hed her fragmented mind. She had settled now that she had eaten, and looked at him anew, and wondered how he came.
She saw the feathered rags that adorned him, and thought that his plumage was the darkest of his kind. She wanted to reach out and touch, but she dared not take the chance that he would fly away. He offered her a warm twig tea which she held between her palms and sipped. “You have seen much old one,” he said gently, and was warmed by her toothless smile and eyes that sparkled almost human. “It is time to let it go,” he soothed, “You have given freely of your gift.” “It is gone now,” she answered, not sure if this was good or bad. “I saw too much.”
With a slow deep breath the beggar answered, “If men could see their fate, they would not rise from their beds.” The beggar looked deeply into eyes almost blind with cataracts and said lovingly, “You have seen enough.”
In stillness and at peace she rested and sat quietly by the dying fire. At half-moon’s highest point, the beggar stood. He arranged and smoothed his ragged plumage, as the oracle watched and wondered if she could make him stay. But she could not, for he was a wild bird, and he was free among the stars. With bowl in hand, he reached out to touch her wrinkled face, and then in an instant he was gone. He disappeared into the dark night, yet she had not seen him fly away.
Alone once more, she thought of looking up into the blue-black sky to see if she could catch another glimpse. She rose with a mind as clear as crystal, and to no one but herself she whispered, “That would be foolish, for he is walking as a man.”
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