Chapter 2 - The Illusion of Separation
After a restful night sleep the old sage and the young boy enjoyed breakfast of rice as they hung their feet in the winter chill of the stream. The moment they put their feet in the water an icy spike shot up both their bodies. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling because they both felt truly alive. As their feet become acclimatized to the chill of the water, the sun had risen higher enough in the sky to warm their bodies. It was early winter but the element of Fire from the sun was very much alive and giving its gift to them both. A whisp of air caressed them as they filled their bellies with the rice flavored with miso.
The young boy was not aware of it but the old sage was having him experience the elements through his five senses. It was to be the beginning of another teaching, which on some level was being guided by the young boy's higher self; a teaching that the old sage had the ability to tap into. After so many years of training it was just as easy for him to tap into the higher self of another as it was to tap into his own higher self. There was never any thought of judgement or manipulation when he tapped into the mind of another. His days had taught him that we are all connected and to do something to someone else was really only doing to yourself.
After breakfast he took Huo over to a plum tree and told him that today they were going to practice mindful meditation. When the young man gave him a weird look, he just smiled, "Don't worry my boy, it as easy as holding this plum in your hand." With that he gave Huo a plum and asked him to sit under the plum tree. "I want you to close your eyes and focus all your attention on the plum. Think of nothing else; the key to this exercise is to learn all you can about the plum."
Huo closed his eyes and started to put his attention into the plum. 'This is ridiculous,' he thought to himself as mind began to wander. He could hear the wind whistling through the trees, the river babbling in the background, the warm of the sun on his skin. In fact the only thing that he could not focus on was the plum in his hand. He opened his eyes only a little bit to see firstly if the old man was watching him and secondly to see if the plum was still in his hand.
The old sage grinned back at the young boy and mouthed the word 'focus.'
Huo closed his eyes again and tried to focus on the plum. It was still not working, so this time he held the plum in his left hand, while he explored it with his right. He knew what the plum tasted like but being a child he had never held a plum long enough to understand what it felt like. At first it felt shiny, no that was how he expected it to feel. He explored it again, this time pushing out any of his expectations. The skin was tight, but underneath he could feel the liquid, the softness. He began to explore with his feelings rather than his fingers, for he realized that his fingers were showing him what he expected to see. The first feeling which came back was the word refreshing; he went deeper into that feeling and saw a picture of himself in the future as a young man enjoying the juice of the plum as it ran into his mouth. Then his feelings changed and so did the picture in his mind. The feelings had now taken him to the orchard where the plums were grown and he could, see, no it was more than that he could feel the orchard existing in this one plum. Then his feelings went deeper into the plum and he experienced all the elements that went into making the plum; their was the Fire of the Sun, the Water of the stream, the warmth and coldness at the right time of the Air and this all took place in the minerals of the Earth.
His consciousness was expanding too quickly, he had become open to everything, but his mind was not ready to cope with what he was experiencing and he shut down and fell into a deep sleep under the plum tree, with the plum still held in his left hand.
The old man moved over to him and placed his pack under his head. The boy had gone far deeper than he had expected, but he would soon recover and he knew the young boy would never look at a plum in the same way again. Although the young boy may not yet realize it he had learnt that we are not so much we think but are more what we feel. He had begun to experience that the Godforce/Tao was in all things and just as it had been in all things, it was in him and he was just another aspect of the Tao; of course it had all been too much for his young mind; a mind that was not ready to accept that there is only One.
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