DEDICATING YOUR MIND TO A SINGLE THOUGHT

Priest master Shi Yan Hui was teaching me In the garden.

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“You must purify your thoughts. When you think of rain, you must only see rain. Not the trees it lands on or the clouds it comes from,” he instructed.

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I was sitting in lotus position, I nodded. “I bet you have never had a pure thought in your life, have you!” he began to rant. “How can you expect to master Wudan, if you can not give your whole mind to anything?”

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He stood up and pulled a thin flexible branch from underneath his robe. “I will show you, how to dedicate your mind to a single thought!” he said.

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I heard it whistle through the air, as it struck the top of my head. With the crack of a whip blood being to pour down my face - as the branch had broken the skin in a perfectly straight line, as if a knife had been run along the top of my skull.

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The pain was unbearable, I couldn’t retain focus. I grabbed my head and began to scream in agony. “Ha! Your first pure thought, pain!” he mused. “You are a Zen Master!”

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You dedicate your entire mind to the pain in your life. To the negative.

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Can you do the same with anything else?

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Such is the way of Wudan.

-TATESHINKAI