Training

Training

or

To Be a Nature Spirit

The student of internal martial arts had been studying diligently for many years with her master and had worked her way up through the school. One day her master said, ‘It is time for you to go and work for two years with the old woman on the mountain, you are ready to study with her now.’

Feeling rather pleased with herself, she packed her bundle and practice swords, and said goodbye to her class mates, who were all very impressed with her, which she secretly loved, even as she brushed it off. She headed up the mountain the following day, looking forward to learning secret techniques and special moves, maybe some subtle power-building nei-gung breathing exercises.

She passed quickly through the ancient forest and up to the top of the tree-line, not noticing how the birds fell silent as she brushed her way through their territory. At the edge of the forest was an old shack, quite run-down, with a veranda around the front and sides. ‘Right, you’re here,’ said the old woman, ‘put down your things and come sweep this porch, then you can make me some supper.’

Not even asking her name! What an affront. This old lady has forgotten all her social skills… thought the younger woman. But she knew it would be a grave offence to say anything, and cause loss of face. So she bent to the tasks and at nightfall slept like a dog on the veranda on her bedroll.

In the morning she had decided to put the slights behind her and was again looking forward to her special training.

‘Follow the sound of water and make your way down to the river side,’ said the old woman, ‘you’ll find the whole area coated in fine clay washed down from the glacier. I want you to take a handful of it and roll it between your hands until it is a perfectly spherical ball, then place the clay ball on the flat rocks beside the river to dry. Do this all day as many times as you can. Come back when it is time to cook my supper.’

Mortified, the young woman headed straight to the river, muttering under her breath and wishing herself back at her teacher’s school, pushing hands with the lads or cracking jokes whilst drinking jasmine tea, telling tall tales of scrapes and clever escapes. All day long until her hands were chapped and chilled, she rolled the balls, returning back to the shack in time to sweep and cook food, then fall asleep, shattered.

The next morning, expecting another crazy task, she got only a nod and a dismissive wave of the hand to send her back to the river bed, to roll clay balls and leave them drying in the sun. At the end of the week she thought ‘Surely some change is due?’ At the end of the month she thought, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ After two months, she thought, ‘Is this a kind of hell, a punishment?’ After six months, she’d been though all five stages of grief, and made up a few of her own, based loosely around fury and retribution. After 11 months of this working , sweeping, cooking, sleeping, she had accepted that this was her life for the next 13 months, and she stopped thinking about it at all, and found she could hear the birdsong changing as the day progressed and as the seasons transformed. After a year, the entire river valley was covered with even little clay balls, as far as the eye could see, on every flat or nearly flat surface. There was no clay left to use, not even any rough silt.

The following day, the old woman called the student into her hut and said, ‘Today, I want you to go down to the river and taking a clay ball in each hand, squeeze your fingers together until the balls are crushed back to dust. Then sweep this dust back into the river bed, from where you got it, and leave no trace at all. Do this with every single clay ball, be sure not to leave even one unpulverized.’ The student got up in a daze, and headed back down to the river, cursing the stupid crone under her breath. Mindless, idiotic, ridiculous work, backbreaking, limb-chilling pointless task… Within a fortnight she was settled in the rhythm of the days again, and had stopped swearing under her breath, or going through revenge fantasies in her mind. In fact, sometimes when she tried to recall what she had been thinking about all day long at the water’s edge, she found she couldn’t. Perhaps her mind had wandered-off, perhaps she had ‘vagued-out’. But no, when she paid attention to what her mind was doing, well, it wasn’t wandering, it was just very still, no chatter, no matter.

After another year and a day, the old woman came out early to where the student was sleeping and woke her with her bundle and some tea. ‘Time to go back down the mountain. You have done everything you came to do.’ And with that the old woman went behind the huge old tree that grew beside the hut, or perhaps into the tree, it was hard to tell. The younger woman shouldered her bundle, took a last glance around the glade, bowed almost imperceptibly and headed down the mountain path. The birds were singing as she stepped quietly through the trees. Mosses cushioned the ground in every hue of green. Beetles drummed their feet on the soil.

Half way down the mountain, in the thick of an old-growth wood, too steep for coppicing, a band of thieves was hiding out, after robbing carriages on the valley-floor road. Seeing a lone woman walking through the woods, the four men rubbed their hands together in spiteful glee, the universal gesture of corruption. This would be fun, they thought, as one. Together they approached the woman, whose expressionless face proved just how stupid she was to be walking there, and how richly she deserved what was coming. She looked right at them then, put down her bundle and reached up spontaneously above her head. Effortlessly grasping the thick branch of bony oak in her hands, with an echoing ‘crack!’ it came away from the tree, and she stood, naturally, holding it like a staff, or perhaps an oar, as though to push out a boat upon a still lake.

The men took fright at such unexpected power and grace, sudden movement, and most unnerving all, the lack of fear. ‘A nature-spirit! Run!’ cried their leader, and off they sped, leaving their booty, forgetting their weapons, pissing themselves.

The woman watched until the thieves were gone, the noise of their escape making it clear as day where they were heading, into the next valley. Gazing around, she quietly took in the beauty of the place where she stood. She put down the branch underneath the tree from which it came, picked up her bundle, and carried on back down the path, towards her classmates, her teacher, and home.

This is my version of a superb teaching story I read in a book of Mark's many years ago. The book is packed deep in a box somewhere and may one day see the light of day again, and if it does, I will post it here. The story made a deep impression on me, and I have always used it for teaching, both T'ai Chi and art. It is a classic story of training the mind in meditation: repetitive tasks and particularly 'the robbers' feature in so many Buddhist or Taoist mind-training stories. The robbers are thought, opinion, emotions, etc. Ah but it is even a good tale taken at face value, as an illustration of hubris melted by sincerity, naturalness, perseverance.