TESTIMONY STUDENT 2

We just came back after a few days of wandering in the nearby area with Li Shifu and a few students.

Even if it was a very short period of time I feel deep inside the value and also the quantity of the informations I learnt about myself, life and about our place in this word, our relation with others, our relation with nature and the mystery.

The experience itself was very simple: just a few days of walking.

Just by simply doing this we have been brought to see and to face who we are, how our life depend on the great love to exist: the love of nature that generously took us to share with the mountains, with the sun, the wind, the rain, the lake, the rivers, the trees and animals, that provided us delicious food and pure water. And in people: we had been seeing people in their own homes, in their life, their families and relations, people working to build a new home, working in the fields or with animals, people sitting in the shade chatting, kids playing, people sitting silently, people running up and down and it was very deep to observe all of this while passing by,some people have been so generous and loving with us, some gave us rice, some welcomed us in their home to use their kitchen to cook our food, some indicated us the way.

Also we could observe us as a small group of people, we helped each other and learnt from each other, we walked together. As Shifu once said it takes many years for the master to observe the students and for the students to observe the master.

Some simple moments made me understand the preciousness of  our friendships, simply being together,  knowing that there is somebody that will always be ready to help you when you are in need, somebody who can understand you and share the same path.

Since I was a kid I always dreamt about living in nature and in simplicity, I always felt a mysterious attraction to the woods, the mountains and the rivers and this was an occasion to experiment and test myself. Even if this time it was only for a few days and it was not so strict I could already see my lacks, observe the problems of my thought in a different situation, how I behaved or felt in a wrong way towards others in an uncomfortable situation, how lazinesses, desire for more tasty food affected me, how I have been egoist or weak. I had one occasion more to see my limits and what I need to work on.

What really happened in this trip is really difficult to describe, just like what you gain from observing and living nature. As Shifu says the forces of nature have an energy that carries high wisdom, each one of them speaking differently but similarly, generously sharing their wisdom to anyone who is willing to listen, you can learn about life, about time, about the universe but in the end this will just be your reelaboration or translation of some knowledge that is before knowledge, before words and concepts.

These days gave me the occasion to understand more about the value of the present moment. Shifu never wanted to tell us what we where going to the day after or to plan anything and this allowed me to ponder that everyday I am running behind something I will be never able to grasp because as he often reminds us the future is not here yet and the past is already gone, in the end we already have everything as we have now. What  is time? Some say that humans where once able to live hundreds of years and now we die before truly exiting childhood. What would be the perception of time of that kind of man? Time exists as a characteristic of our dimension, a characteristic of our illusion, what is the perception of time of my higher self from outside of our time? Maybe all our running up and down is just manifesting on a line what from an other point of view is happening on one point or that is always happening at the same time. What is the perception of  time of the mountains? Maybe we, just like the forces of nature, earth, the oceans and the mountains, the rocks and the rivers who are born, destroyed and transform, are just an other particular expression of the one in this form of space and time. Maybe searching, as a specific form of  sentient being, so the creator can once again know itself.

In the end what we brought home can just be goofily translated in words and will stay with us with the powerful feeling of the mountains and the valleys we passed, of the moments meditating together under the trees and in the deep melody of the incense mantra that Shifu thought us and that we sang together along the way.