Wisdom Mind

Memory spoke: After they cut my tongue out during my re-education through shit labor experience I started writing script. I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire.

I added a little water to a recessed gray stone surface. I placed the ink in the center. Then, using my right hand, as Master Liu in Chengdu taught me, I rotated the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid as a drop of water rippled a pond.

After collecting ink I selected my white wolf hair brush. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin rice paper. I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, with my left palm flat on the table and fingers spread.

I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink and slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess. I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality and character. There are 7,000 characters in my written language.

My Chinese script is about unity of mind and spirit.
I have much to see and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

My teacher recited a poem.

A mountain loses its spirit without cloud,
loses its peculiarity without stones,
loses its elegance without trees,
and loses its life without water,
and in painting,
one should concentrate the mind,
and hold the breath,
with concentration of the mind,
serenity is maintained,
with the breath held up,
preciseness is attained.

One should be as serene as an old monk in meditation and be as precise as a silk worm in spitting silk.

The spirit and real fun of painting are from nature and beyond brushes and paints.

I stood up straight inhaled three deep breaths and exhaled into emptiness. I centered my unconscious on blank paper filled with nothing. Respect white emptiness.

My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus. I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit. Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.

Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.

The Language Company

Burma

Myths, Legends, Stories

Down in the southern province of Suhag in Egypt where King Scorpion lived 5,300 years ago I worked with archeologists discovering clay tablets.

Humans recorded taxes on oil and linen - a material Egyptians considered ritually pure under the protection of the goddess Tayt. The hieroglyphic line drawings of animals, plants and mountains revealed stories of economies and commodities.

In Nevali Cori we found 9,000 year-old shards of ceramics pottery depicting dancers.

“These images,” said a metaphorical digger, “reveal a common ancestor creating to integrate their community.”

A camelhair brush cleaned shards. “Anything else?”

“Well,” one said sifting dust, “we surmise these images established a collective discipline in their community. See how the figures are holding hands? What do you see now?”

“I see a circle of movement. A connected unity, a language in space.”

“It’s more than that. There are five rhythms in dance. You start with a circle. It’s a circular movement from the feminine container. She is earth.”

“Earth?”

“Yes, then you have a line from the hips moving out. This is the masculine action with direction. He is fire.”

“Fire is the driver.”

“Chaos is next, a combination of circle and lines where the male and female energies interact. This is the place of transformation.”

“I see. And then?”

“After chaos is the lyrical, a leap, a release. This is air. The last element of dance is stillness. Out of stillness is born the next movement.”

Language dances in space.

Every fourteen days a living language dies on Earth. The last speaker says good-bye.

6,100 and counting.

Storytellers sing oral traditions. They memorize stories, songs, poems, seasons, celebrations, rites, magic and ceremonies. They create and exchange family, clan, tribal myths and legends. Their children listen, memorize, chant and recite ancestor songs.

An historian’s job is trying to understand what happened through time.

An anthropologist’s job is to understand how people told their creation stories.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religions, said, “Myths tell only of that which really happened.”

Myths suggest that behind the explanation there is a reality that cannot be seen and examined.

A myth is a story of unknown origins.

Myths are sacred stories of religion based on belief, containing archetypical universal truths.

They are in every place and no particular place. The world is sacred.

Myths, legends, stories.

Magic words grow here.

Intensity propels ten claws across twenty-six keys. Reed-like digits reflect use and neglect.

Psychology handles the branches. Mindfulness swims with roots.

Evolution flashes flickering beams of incandescent auras and pulsating electro-magnetic fields evolving character, attitude, values, behaviors and intention.

Intention is karma.

Perpetual transformation.

Weaving A Life (Volume 4) - Kindle Edition

 

Burma

Diamond Sutra

“So you should view this fleeting world –

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

– Diamond Sutra

Nepal

The Language Company

The Language Company By Timothy M. Leonard A Gonzo work encompassing journalism, creative nonfiction and active imagination. TLC evolved from living and teaching English in China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Unpleasant facts like landmines, educational dystopias, and social conditioning are illuminated. Humor and Satire meet Curiosity and Courage. $2.99 **Free On Kindle Unlimited!** The Language Company

Courage

On his final day in Ankara he shared a Chinese calligraphy poem with adult students.

It was a Qing dynasty gift from primary students in a rural Sichuan school. This visual simplicity symbolized impermanence.

Bright beautiful elementary children in a radiant universe wearing Young Chinese Communist Pioneer red scarves around well-scrubbed necks sitting upright at colorful plastic desks raised hands when he asked questions yelling, “Let me try, let me try!”

Young brave students had the courage to say this.

Older students at a Chinese middle school, Chinese university and at TLC were aged, silenced and dumbed down through tyranny, fear and oppressive parental and educational brainwashed ideological structural systems.

Shame married Guilt, producing twins. The more the merrier.

Adults had lost their instinctual curiosity, humor and enthusiasm. Only primary kids had the courage to say, “Let me try, let me try.”

Their beautiful pictographic black ink calligraphy read, “One day a man climbed into the mountains and reached a hut. He met some children.”

“Where is the teacher?” he said.

“They pointed up the mountain covered by clouds. ‘He is not here, he’s gone into the mountains to look for herbs.’”

He folded the poem creasing Chinese ideograms where latitudes and longitudes met horizons.

His linguistic healing efforts departed Ankara with Bamboo.

The Language Company

China