Deqian invited me to become a novice, although foreigners were hardly accepted at that time. I spent a week preparing for the dedication
This is a special ritual, very ancient. At night, senior students and teachers gather in the altar room. First there are chants, recitatives that set the rhythm. And at some point you feel a special state: as if a huge pillar enters the spine, and you open up to the sky and straighten up. There is a feeling that the head is glowing, that you see everything happening from behind and you observe yourself from above. This is called opening the third eye.
Get rid of the bondage of ignorance
During this ritual, energy centers are opened, and the person is shown, as it were, in advance how he should feel. Have shown, and now strive for it! Because then it all closes. The general theory of Ch'an in Zen Buddhism says that Buddha was no different from an ordinary person - this is fundamentally important! He had the same arms, legs, the same physiology. But Buddha was more focused on his enlightenment and achieved it. Therefore, the only thing that makes us different from him is that our consciousness is not cleared up to the starting point. It is necessary to clean off these impurities layer by layer, to get rid of the fetters of ignorance.
How can this be achieved? The first method in Chinese is called repentance - but the monks put a different meaning in it. There is a concept of mystical evil that we bring to this world. And we can die, and the mystical evil remains after us, capturing, like circles on water, more and more people.
If I realize this evil and repent of it, then mystically I stop its spread. But repentance will be sincere only if I really never repeat evil.
We don't need a long life
Secondly, this is meditation, before which you need to eat right, do breathing exercises so that physiology does not distract from the concentration of thoughts.
My first meditation sessions were short-lived - only an hour. But how did I manage to suffer: my leg seems to be uncomfortable, and the floor is cold … When I learned to concentrate for five to ten minutes for an hour, it was a great achievement! And now I have three-hour, six-hour meditations, there are meditation days and weeks.
I have a clear schedule. It takes into account both meditation and food, which is always regulated by the weather and the season, in accordance with the principles of yin-yang. For example, you can't eat ice cream in summer, but in winter - please! In summer we drink green tea, and in winter - only black … I have never drunk alcohol in my life - not a drop … Some Chinese said to me: it means that the sky was preparing you for the fate of Buddha.
There are not many centenarians among monks. Strange, you say. But why live long? Physical longevity has never been sought in China. After all, our soul remains in the world even after death …
Death of the abbot
Once I came to a monastery, and I was invited to see how the abbot is about to die. He said yesterday that he would die the next day, and asked everyone to get together. "Is he seriously ill?" I ask. "Yes, he is healthier than you and me!" - they answer me.
And now I see a strong old man. He blesses those present, then appoints a successor. And in the center of the hall there is a throne made of straw, twigs, brushwood. The abbot sits on it, reads the last prayer. He says he fulfilled his mission. He folds his arms and dies!
I knew a Chinese man who claimed to be one hundred and sixty years old. Ow showed photographs, still on plates, where he, a young man, was photographed with some district official. And the year is marked - 1880. There are rumors that a man lives in the mountains, who is two hundred and fifty years old. But here's what is important: not a single old monk has insanity. Everyone retains a bright mind and a healthy body, although they live in terrible, in our opinion, conditions. After all, many monasteries are not heated in winter, and minus ten in the cell is the norm. But the monks do not practice water procedures. Only occasionally do they take hot baths with various herbs.
Captured by spirits
I graduated from the Shaolin Academy in two areas - wushu and medicine … I will tell you one very instructive story. One of my friends had a pain in his right arm. In the morning he could not lift it, could not move it, and generally felt disgusting. Arriving at the Shaolin monastery, he asked one of the senior monks to give him acupuncture. The monk began to talk to him. And there, after all, the diagnosis goes like this: the patient is not touched, they just look at him. There are many signs of the disease: eye color, skin color …
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As a result, the monk says: no need for acupuncture, I will give you a set of exercises. You will do them for six months, and it will be much better. But you understand what a Russian person will choose: to suffer for six months or to solve everything in five minutes. My friend was stubborn: no, put the needles! Everything happened in a small cell, I translated. And now they put one needle to my friend, another, and a third. Suddenly he says: "Something's spinning!" Before I could translate it, he falls headlong on the table - and suddenly jumps up! And I see that this sweet kind person is in another dimension, and his eyes are wild, and he starts waving his arms. We are trying to grab him - and then, like in American action films, with one movement of his hand he threw two healthy monks into different ends of the cell - with monstrous force!
And then the senior monk, who was placing the needles, knocked him out with one imperceptible movement, pressing his sharpener between his thumb and forefinger. Then there were burns from pressure. My
friend collapsed to the floor. In a few minutes he came to his senses! Says: “I suddenly felt that a door opened in the room, from where it smelled of cold, some people in black robes appeared and demanded that I go with them. And I waved my arms, fought back - until they suddenly set me on fire with a torch. He was shown a video recording of what actually happened. He was shocked.
And the senior monk and I went down to the archive. He took some seventeenth century medical treatise, leafed through it and showed it to me. I am reading. The vision of my friend is described one to one - right down to the black robes! This is called ghosting. When a person is spiritually polluted, acupuncture stimulates the appearance of harmful spirits from within. And a person can die.
Since then, I have never practiced acupuncture in my life. It has such subtleties that are not available to us …
And when will you treat?
Monks can heal a person from a distance. I remember one incident. A Chinese woman brings her boy to a monk I studied with. The boy is nine years old, but he is monstrously fat - weighs eighty kilograms. And, of course, he gets sick.
When his mother brought him, he had not slept for several days, had not eaten, there were terrible pains in his chest and stomach. The mentor put him on a couch three meters away. I talked about some little things. Then he closed his eyes and sat there for five minutes. The woman stands at the door, the boy fidgets, understands nothing. Finally, my mentor opens his eyes, and he and the child talked about something else. And the mother asks: "When will you treat?" Monk: "Everything is already done!"
The next day, a happy mother comes running: the boy has no pain, he slept at night! After three days he was completely healthy. Later, after a few years, I learned how to do it. There are techniques - not mystical, but very effective.
Bow down, sit next to …
What is a Shaolin Monastery? This is museum. Anyone can come there and learn. All the time, tempting offers are poured on the masters: let us invite you to our place, or let us appoint you as our honorary president, give you money … But for people who literally live in stone sacks-cells, any trip abroad is a special dream … Although, on the other hand, they perfectly understand that they are not intended for this at all. And this is where this breakdown begins. The Chinese understand that foreigners do not want to buy knowledge, but the illusion of this knowledge. Well, who wants to travel to China for ten years, spend money, learn the language, eat bad food in a bad place, freeze. The Chinese have learned to sell the illusion of knowledge. And you need to get to the bottom of real knowledge.
And the channel of tradition is drying up. For example, earlier in every village there was a wushu master who was an informal spiritual leader. Today, in most villages, there are no such. And many Chinese in search of the great master travel around the whole country - just to approach him, bow, sit next to him.
The worse the better
What can make me mad? To be honest, practically nothing. There are things that dishearten me - for example, stupidity. On the other hand, Confucius said very clearly: a noble husband is not obliged to communicate with everyone, when he is not interested, he just leaves. And this has a deep meaning.
Therefore, the moment when I lost my temper is very difficult to remember. You just need to respond appropriately. When an arrow flies at you, you lose your temper just enough to grab it. And so, to get nervous and shout something - I don't remember raising my voice.
Besides, I understand that everything in the world develops naturally. And stupidity, meanness, rudeness are absolutely necessary things.
Deqian once said: the world was created to interfere with your life. And this is great because it provides an incentive for improvement. So in this sense - the worse, the better … The
conversation with Alexei Maslov, a 32nd generation monk of the Shaolin Monastery living in Moscow, was written down by Mikhail BOLOTOVSKY
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Video. Shaolin monks performances.