The Bent Tree and the Sleeping Tiger

Introduction

I self-discovered Taoism while on a three day retreat in New York state in 1991. I was wandering around the side of a small mountain while camped in a tiny six by eight foot hut.

I was working on a large novel full of angst and the human conflict of ideologies. I needed to write but I also needed to let go of the analytical parts of my brain. I needed to laugh at my own thinking. Hence Chapter one...Din-din. I even remember laughing at it in that tiny hut. It reminded me of an old man farting loudly at a very important political or social function.

I needed to learn to be absurd, to be ridiculous again, to play, and thus to love more fully. To let go. To think.. one moment.. Then forget.. Then love, the next moment. Then let go. I did not know then that Taoism was to think, forget, let go, feel, think again just for a moment, forget again...

The rest of the stories came in time. Learning to live them has taken much longer.

But at least...most times... I never forgot to forget...

One should not struggle to

straighten the bent limb;

for who but the tree knows

the best Way into the Light;

rather one should pursue

perfection through the flawed;

calling perfection: flourish

Index

Chapter Title Page

1 Din-din 7

2 Name this Hair 11

3 Tea-llusions 18

4 Soul Searching 32

5 Martialling the Art 86

6 A Lost One 149

7 The Twelve Monkeys 171

8 At Last 206

Din-Din

An old monk has travelled far to the edges of the near desert. Hot and tired, he spies a great solitary tree; a tree thick and strong yet semi-barren with limbs and trunk turned and twisted, fixed in a wrestle with the mighty arms of Wind. Only one great branch held a multitude of needles in its grasp.

This began in the great thickness of the lower trunk, carried itself straight out then sharply curved downward turning outward. Its thick wrist splaying into a web of many fingers, the shade of their green burdens holding a dense foliage five or six feet above the ground. This gave an abundance of shade, of cool shadow in the sun of the long grass.

This is the way of prophets and trees, the hand carries what the back can never enjoy...peace.

Towards this peace, the monk turns off the centuries old path trodden through the swaying grass, for the tree is upon a small hill that appears as a wave of dirt held eternally at its crest.

As the monk walks up to the Tree he notices the grass is shorter here..and in that grass he spies a large creature sleeping beneath the tree. A tiger.

Being flesh, the monk knows fear and thinks to hasten away. Being old, the monk knows weariness and that sleep and death creep nightly closer to each other like cousins in the same house. Being human, he has the capacity to resign into the inertia of the moment rather than take Caution’s impelling new directions; being monk, he knows that Death is not in the tiger’s paw but rather is found in the Wind. Though one should not spit into it, it can be best to just turn your back to it.

So the old monk laid down in the shade, turned his back to the sleeping tiger and fell asleep.

A little time passed and a caravan approached with many people, making that noise which makes travellers believe that chaos mixed with bravado will keep danger far away... far into the long grasses beside their trail.

They spied the bent tree and sent a few men with axes to chop it down for its flesh may likely bring a few market coins. The men with their axes strolled brave enough indeed through the grass towards the tree and up onto the hill. One sight of the old man and worse, the tiger and those brave fellows turned as one and fled like mice back to the caravan.

Is he dead? Was he moving? Were both breathing? Did the tiger awaken? What shall we do?

These were the questions which spilled upon the men’s panting explanations.

It was decided to extend help towards the old man via a distant compassion. That is to shout at him to make him aware of the necessity ,indeed the haste, necessary for his own salvation.

With that, a dozen shouts travelled across the long grass but a man standing upon a man perched on a cart espied no awakening. Of either man or tiger.

The old man is alive, though. I saw his hand move across his head as if brushing flies from his ears.

Further discourse amongst the travellers blossomed further action. The caravan gathered up all its pots and pans. Thus a great din of tinnish uproar spilled over the long grass, under the beat tree and into the ear of the old monk.

He awoke, rose and glared out from the shadow What do you want will all this din? he angrily spoke to the crowd. They of course answered in a chaos of whispers and gestures;in a mimicry of tigers and sleeping men. A dance of both warning and encouragement done by awkward mimes.

He answered them " When the tiger sleeps there is no hunger. When the

man sleeps there is no fear. When both sleep, there is peace; only when the world drums on its own emptiness does both fear and hunger awaken. Go away and let sleeping men and tigers be."

With that, the old man laid back down and turned his back towards a caravan of astonishment.

Name This Hair

On another day a vast army passed within sight of the bent tree . Out of the army came a lone warrior, a very large man under a very large hat, both atop a very large horse.

It was the commander of the army coming towards the Bent Tree to contemplate his next stage of movements. As he rode up to the Tree, the monk raised his head from a prolonged study of his navel. The monk saw now a dark broad face with a very long mustache. He saw, too, within that face, dark eyes tunnelled into a very long history.

The General dismounted with a thud as both feet declared the earth as conquered. The look, the shoulders broad and uncompromising; the way cliffs turn back even the sea.

The soldier-king said nothing; simply removed a sword from its scabbard, its point declaring to the monk ‘Yield and live.’

The monk smiled and spoke It is the place of the priest to offer shade unto the world while he, himself, drinks of the dust of the sun. Yet one must not be too hasty and give a place of worthiness onto what is worthless or will not worthiness wither in forgotten corners? Who are you to replace a priest at the roots of a world’s rest?

To this the General was amused for he knew the mystic ways that riddled a monk’s tongue. He replied in a voice travelling as thunder At my name a city of a million knees bends into the earth.

The monk shrugged Then what need of thee for the carriage of war or the steel of its tooth to flail away the frail tongue of a priest? Break up that sword in three and send your horse in the fourth direction. I am naked; you see no weapon and the fingers of your mighty hand are but an arm’s length from call.

The General accepted the challenge, broke his sword and sent his horse away with a slap to its rump. This done, the General strode closer to the monk preparing to bodily cast him out.

The monk held up a hand of thin fingers and smiled "A little more of this name, my Command.

I have erred. I have forgotten a weapon which lies close by. It is as much your weapon as mine." he pointed into the deeper shadow directly below the heavy branch.

In the ripple of still grass, the blend of animal stripes could just be seen. Even with a general’s keen vision for danger it took a moment to assemble the full likeness of a sleeping tiger.

The monk spoke again "Fate and sleeping tigers is a funny thing. Your name, this powerful name, is indeed, as you say, your weapon, your worthiness. Before it I am told to yield.

Let’s think on this, however. At your name’s shout, the tiger may erupt in four directions or no direction. It may awaken and devour you. It may awaken and devour me. It may awaken and devour both of us. It may even awaken and simply go away, devouring neither of us.

And yes, I spoke of a fifth direction. Or rather no direction.

At the shout of your name, the sleeping tiger does not awaken.

That may be your worst fate. I, on the other hand, or with a hand for that matter, can reach out, with fingers as frail as dried sticks and pluck from fate, or rather the sleeping tiger, a single hair.

There is a strong possibility that the sleeping tiger will awaken.

It may indeed devour you. How then has it become that a single hair is greater than your name; the shout of your name?

If we have need of greater proof let us take that hair to the city of million.

What will happen when I tell them the story of single hairs, names and a sleeping tiger awakening to devour a name?

If thou art a feared man, which I suspect, will not a million pairs of joy lift hair and I onto the shoulders of rejoicing?

To be paraded for days, taken to the finest exalted place of honour?

Tell me then, oh General, if Fate so easily counts first the hair on a head, then the name, how am I to know worthiness to give way beside the sleeping tiger?"

The General-king pondered this gauntlet of words knowing that a physical force used here would only serve to lessen his own stature.

Instead he replied "A hair before a multitude turns no eye. Even a sleeping tiger is a rock turning no stream from the sea. But Fate climbs on a vastness of limbs, through the throat of a name and perches valiant on the single swaying hair.

That the sleeping tiger devours is of no awakening. What the sleeping tiger devours, if the name is immortal, gives the hair immortality.

The multitude sees a god of a single strand by its stature raised upon my Name.

Hairs, old fingers, tigers and flesh are but circles of fate, such fates known in the path of wind hawks, in the flee of a river minnow.

It is upon the giants of Name that fate is seen as Something.

That my Name is defeated by hair and hand and tiger does not lessen its greatness. Only that hair and hand and tiger have become greater.

The man who does not know he can be devoured by such fates is a man who does not know life is the hot breath of the tiger.

He does not understand that to be the greatest rabbit is still to be a rabbit.

To you, Monk, I state my name again. Still worthy for it is not the name which is devoured which is heard too weakly, but the name which bows before any hunt of the teeth.

Pluck, priest, pluck. If my name is devoured,Fate breeds an enormous jaw; if thy name is devoured , then let us just say, the tiger was not so empty of belly. With the hair of thy death, I can turn no multitude. At best it will now serve to cleanse my teeth of a sinewy feast."

The monk gazed at the General-king for a long moment then spoke A fool gauges a mountain by it’s height, the wise by it’s climb. The hair in an eagle’s nest may be the spine of a worm but the man who holds one is not the man who holds the other. You are right. It is the mountain which grants worthiness. A man on a mountain holding a hair is all of the same mountain, the mountain is no less worthy. Worthiness is not something to be yielded only summed. Even the conqueror cannot conquer life, only rise with it. In life’s death, no mountain sets, only our vision of it. Worthiness is not lost, simply given back into the mountain.

Thus spoken, the priest shifted over and gestured for the general to sit beside him. Then the priest closed his eye, folded his limbs and in a long exhale transformed into a round stone about an arm’s height.

The general-king came to the spot and for a moment made as if to sit upon the stone.

He declined, smiled and sat beside it, gazing now upon the sleeping tiger.

Around the tree, the grass stirred with changing winds.

Tea-llusions

A middle aged man travelled upon the grass carrying a large burden so heavy that his head bowed in the manner of a broken branch.

The burden was the sorrow in his heart. So lost within his own shadow that he did not see the bent Tree till he came upon its larger cast of shadow; did not see the old monk till he had sat within the distance of a whispered voice.

The old monk opened his eye from a place of meditation having sensed the turmoil drifting into the shade.

He spoke to the traveller What the young have not yet found and the old have forgotten the middle eye sees with the clarity of a full sun; with the journey of the long turtle’s neck. What do you carry, middle man, that cannot be lifted from your shoulders by even the six palms of the Wind?

The man lifted his face and in the way of society took from it’s features those expressions of despair and despondency; replacing such with a demeanor of less ragged commerce.

" The business of the world and the love in a family do not always give a man an easy inheritance. I have a younger brother who has always dwelled at my home since the death of our parents. He is , what others would call, a fool; that is he is of a mind both unexpressive and simple. A man’s body carrying the thoughts and eyes of a child’s soul. Gentle and loving; as loyal to me and my family as any pet raised by a good master.

What tasks he can do, he does well and quick. Too quick. For I run out of tasks to busy his hands. He will play with the children for endless hours, delighting always in their laughter and attention but they grow older now and have other companions, and school studies, which my brother cannot be a part of.

It is this idle time which has brought such grieve upon my heart. For my brother does nothing but sit or kneel in the dust before the home and draw endless circles and lines there.

It does not seem to matter that the night wind or the eve’s rain removes all traces, he simply begins again the next day. What does matter very much is that he will tolerate no one save the family to tread on or near his scratchings. He threatens and even chases them away with his stick; and he is not a small man.

As our home dwells above my business, my store, our very livelihood is in decline.

I