3. Awakening

 

The old man breathed on the forehead of the man under him. He warmed the space between his eyes so that that eye does not leave and continue to calmly see death in front of him and its space in movement. He must recognize his terrors like the wave of his own spirit. It was essential to make him come back sane among the men, because without this smile, he will die again and again and again…

 

He had placed his belly on the belly of the man. He had looked for the spot of the navel. Just a slight vibration ! It was time. Death was going to leave with him because he had already entered the first movement of the death of men. So, he has put his navel on the one of the man and he has blown his life which he has stored there for more than fifty years, since he Sees and knows how to stabilize himself in the movement of View.

 

He remained extraordinarily attentive to each vibration of the space, because one of them could carry away the one who was under him and whom he had to make live again because he was already dead.

He knew this death and was not afraid of it. But, it was the first time that he brought back a little one of the man. This one, underneath him, had death in his forehead and he knew that he had better Knowledge than him. He knew that of him because he was under his belly and his breath and the other one said to him in return what he is.

And what he IS made him quiver because this one, if he survived, was going to overturn the World.

Then, he continued to blow his warmth of Man to The One who was not completely a Man anymore. That, now, he knows it that it will be his work before his own death and that he does not have much time anymore.

 

Then clarity came gently between the summits. The night was chased from his ears by the cry of barn owls. He knew the day imminent then and he allowed himself to raise his eyelids on his cheeks. For hours he had prohibited his eyes to lose their energy; he needed it so much for this body warming under him.

He felt death slipping slowly towards the hands and feet of this body and he forced it out with his own breath, his mouth half-opened between the eyes of the other.

 

He, underneath him, he could't push death out of his body. The old man did it for him and his life pushed death. It slowly moved back, frustrated. It had believed its food ready and it left the hole by which it had entered, the back curved and hair bristling, fangs still salient. But this old man was a Master and it knew also that the combat will be for him. But it did not accept this decline of its power. The beak of the eagle had already the taste of its prey and its claws did not like to leave empty, because that life, it is food for its existence, and this puny old man came and provoked it. He did not give him time of a false breathing and he told it to him when the old man wanted to look towards the night. Immediately he pulled the life out of the body. The old man tightened the teeth and knocked them together, then tightening his sex and his anus, he sent  all his strength into his back and when he felt it in his nape of the neck, he pushed it in his cranium and let it flow down his throat in long breathings. Then he blew his strength to the body under him.

 

He fought the death and pulled out the life by the hands of the one underneath him. These hands were frozen. He attracted the warmth of the Universe in the fingers and made the bones of the hand inflates. Then he moved on to the wrist bones and he started to know his success when he felt the bones of the forearm inflating.

Then he smiled but did not raise more the eyelids over the night. He held the death out of  hand. He watched over the body.

 

It is when the wind ceased that he perceived the strength of the man's heart under him. He had wanted to shout of contentment because he had won !

But this shout would be still a loss of energy and he could not do it. Thus he moved, rubbing himself against the one underneath and slipped his hands under the heavy jacket. The heart was beating well, gently, slowly. Death had left. The tear that slipped of the eyelid froze on the cheek and he felt it as it was crashed on the skin which was warming under him.

 

It was now time to make him breathe through the two poles of Heaven and Earth. He massaged the heart with his fingers stiffened by the cold in the direction of the walk of the sun on the Earth and entered his spirit into this heart. It had to be relieved, to tell him that he did not need to make all this effort to involve the movement of the life, that there were other means and that those ones, him, the Master, he knew them.

He put his mouth on the throat of the man who smelt strongly, very acid and warmed it, speaking to him with his own heart so that the other's heart would stop beating painfully. He tells him to calm down the effort, to let him, make the passage between death and life, this passage in the opposite direction that very little are lucky to know and that it was his chance, him who smelt so strongly and so acid, to know this movement; but that he has to let go, because he felt him tense, as if life did not want life. He spoke to him with his mouth on his throat, exhaling his breath burning of passion of the one who knows that this state of transition is worth the pain that one curves under the effort.

He guided the energy that was warming under him in the belly of the man, making him recognize the existence of his human presence, so that he knows that he was still him and that his tank was still there, this tank that he tells him that he will fill with him; but that he has to let him do, to allow him to hold his small reappearing strength between his old fingers and to pull out that strength to the two doors of Earth and Heaven so that he can also breathe through there and this breathing will tell the heart that there is also another way of existing.

The old man knows that it is this information that he must print quickly in the body under him which smells so bad. This night, he has perceived his suffering because in the death that was there he had heard the sobs of the one who was dying and these noises, he had recognized them for having heard them elsewhere. He had heard them in the nights which made him bend the back and hit the mat with his forehead to tell himself that he was alive but that he also could not stand it any longer.

He lets the breath guide the life. He can do nothing else but he has confidence because without this faith nothing is possible. Then he tells him to go towards the doors of Earth and Heaven. He shows him the way to him while bringing his own force on these points, to do again the path of the channels of life so that he remembers and does not be afraid.

The fear must not win him over.

 

The night was leaving the mountain tops of the pines and the wind accompanied it in its escape. The blue hour had passed and the vibration of the small yang was spreading out on the Earth. The old man felt the movement of it under its rock. The body under him sighed; so he could to slip on the frozen snow. The crust cracked under his weight and he smiles because he liked this life which hid under it and which was only waiting for the first rays to spout out again. Like the one he left under the rock in the tepidness of his skin pelisse that his monks offered to him for his seventieth years.

He knows that he can leave him there. He will continue to sigh in his unconsciousness, but he is safe because he is under the protection of the Heaven. The old man now knows it from lying on him and breathing his strong and acid odor. The force of the Kamis of the Heaven is in him and protects him. They were the ones who called him in the monastery and guided him here.

 

He knows the reason of this strong and acid odor. This one comes from remote areas beyond the mountains and the seas, where the skin is white and without fineness. His odor is terrible !!!! He guessed it this night.

When he has slipped out of the flat stone that protects, the day passed between them and he saw the man's face : long and thin, deep eyes in the salient orbits. The abundant undergrowths of the eyebrows join together ! What an ugly man! He suspected it but he has made a face and he blamed himself for that. Why hadn't he washed that out of him yet ?

 

But he knew that what he had seen right now will not be easy to live. What he saw there, on the face of this young man, maybe not even a man, just a teenager, the beginning of man, will be his pain because it is to this small man that he will have to give all his knowledge and his marrow. He knows that and it will be his last suffering that he will have to change into compassion, like the others, like all the others now since lives after lives to be now there, in these frozen mountains, with this body slipped there under the flat rock.

 

The Earth welcomed him here in the turmoil of the Earth but especially that of a heart that could not stand it any longer. It could nothing else but to give him its warmth in protection, a flat rock and pines above, cutting the blade of the frozen wind. And then the Kamis of the Heaven went to seek for the old man in his monastery. The old man knows it and the salted drops slip into the corners of his tight lips. He did not realize that these drops were coming out of his eyes while he was looking at that face, squatted, the forehead leaning against the cold of the flat rock. 

That face will be the hatred of the men and he knows already that he will have to hide him a long time then to teach him how to live before that face can smile again and also carry the burden of the world by changing the hatred into compassion. He feels old suddenly. He had not seen the years go by like this. He had taken them as gentleness of heaven and of earth to progress his new entry into them. He had seen his death approaching with a smile. He had thought he had filled the contract that Life had required of him by bringing him into the world of Men. He had believed that destiny did not want any more a successor to his Knowledge, to his Knowledge of the Forces which lead the Men, to the one which says the manner of transforming them into gentleness.

 

He had believed. Often he had thought of this absence of successor in the meditations of the night in his mountain hermitage. He had told to himself that the reign of the men was maybe finished; that in the relentless law of changes, those men were going to be done with their specie which did not fulfill the hopes of Knowledge.

The Man is in his night. He is glad to be there and in this mass grave there is no hope of true action. The first step of that one is born when the mass grave is seen. Then, the labor of day and of night is at each step, each movement of the body because this life is matter and it is useless to want to hide it.

He had believed that it was finished. And now, there is this face under the flat rock, his heavy pelisse welcoming him, because now, it is him, the old man, who must welcome him and all of a sudden he feels old. That will be his work in the years that he still remains in this World.

But with this face, he knows that the combat will be hard, very hard. How deep are his eyes !!!!… Opened they must probe the deepest of the heart of the men and laugh in their face !!!!

 

The old man rises on his cracking legs and he dusts the snow which has fallen from the pines on his monk's dress. He adjusts the wool hat on his shaved cranium and lifts the face at the day between the summits of the pines. It is a sunny day that is there. It is good.

Now, he must find a sledge to put the body in it and to carry it to the monastery.

He will have to go through the passes off the ways.

Nobody should see that face !

 

He climbed the slope on all fours, towards the path which traced its way hardly visible between the pine trunks. The frozen crust broke under his weight and he had to go on all fours for the last meters, hiding his hands under the snow to clutch himself to the roots.

As he went up thus, exhaling his breath which went out of his throat like a cloud of warm fog, he guessed his effort when he will have to carry up the unconscious body. This pain made him a leap in the heart because it was the consolidation of the bond between him and the other one. Finding him was the first step.. To bring him back to the monastery will be the second step as difficult, but different as the first one. This one will have to be the one of the body. The snow entered his mouth. He did not spit it out.

 

On the path he was able to stand upright, making pop off the traces of snow on his dress with great abrupt gestures. He was surprised to laugh and he noted that he was hungry. The light drew its features between the pines. The day will be the needed one for what he had to do. All is well so.

 

The descent became gentle. He took advantage of that to seek the places where the sledge will have to pass. He will surely have to drag the body far enough towards the valley. He will not be able to pass higher, between the pines which tighten while tackling the crests. Yesterday, he had turned the eyes towards them, seeking a passage. He knew he could find it only uphill from the village, by walking around it to the north, through the frozen grasslands. He will have to follow the brook, then to seek the ford which goes towards the sides of the mountain. He will have to ascend hard between the saw logs which awaited the thaw to be put down. On the top, there is the fault in the crest which will make him pass on the plateau. Behind, it will be the other valley and in that one, security will be better.

 

But this other valley will be for tomorrow in the morning. There is now a day to pass with the men of this one. This one which is too much connected to the lower big city. The soldiers come quickly and the men who like money will be the ones to call them.

They must not find a reproach to the old man who will spend the day with them. Such is the law of the Men and to ignore it would be the worst stupidity. Also, when the path of the valley was visible between the last trees of the forest, he lacerated the bottom of his monk's dress, tore off the cord of the waist. He removed his signs of power around his neck. He must not leave them there. They would see them if they opened the collar of his monk’s habit. He made of it a package in a piece of his dress which he tore off against his calf and hides it at the foot of the hollow trunk along the path. On his knees, he dug the ground under the roots. He pushed the chain and the gold medals in the frozen ground which he scratched with the nails. When his right hand bled, when he felt his nails breaking under the effort, he put the left hand and continued his undermining. The smile was on his lips, that one which stretches the lips towards the cheeks, without letting appear the teeth and he was happy because this smile, he hadn't had it for a long time. Since he had thought that the destiny did not want him to have a successor.

He knew the method for putting his vital force in his hands so that his hands were claws with the formidable nails. He knew how to drain the vital force so that his bones were like a steel bar. He knew how to make his skin like an iron shirt. He was the Master. But now, here, he must not be the Master. And he smiles while bringing back all his weakness of man in his hands and his nails so that his hands hurt and his nails break. He smiled because that, he knows that he will have to teach it to the one who remains unconscious under the flat rock, in the warmth under his heavy pelisse which he took care to wedge well with stones of each side. Even more than the heat of the skin, it is the one of his heart which he left in his body that will keep him warm. It is it which will drive the blood. It is it which will make of heart a light instrument because he set in motion the mechanism of the two other pumps, the one of the heaven and the one of the earth. He spent the night for this hard work, but when he left him, he knew that he did not risk anything, neither the cold, neither the animals, nor the men. He is now under his protection. No one will approach this place. He has made the three circles around the rock and the nine others on the path, where the passage is for going to the man with the frightening face. This one does not risk anything. He is under the protection of the Master of the SHIN family.

 

He laughs as examining his work on his bleeding hands. A formation in reverse ! He will have to teach that quickly to him.

 

He rubs the hands on his face and leave darkish traces there. Then, he withdrew dark earth from under the roots, heated it between his palms and dirtied the cheeks and the neck with it. He dirtied the collar of his tunic. He made a face when he had to mix this earth and this blood with the white hairs of his goatee. He took care of it so much ! With full hands, he seized the left side of it and pulled abruptly. The tears did not come to the eyes under the pain. He was the Master now since such a long time ! He examined the handle of long grey hair which mixed with the earth, then he laughed by throwing them in the wind which rose once again.

He was the Master but nobody here should know it.

The first day with the one who will become his son, step by step in the confidence and the love must not be the one of the Tiger. The Tiger will come later.

Here, now, it is the day of the water and he laughs on his closed teeth because he guesses that this teaching, he will have a hard time to make it enter in the nut of the one who came back to life under him this night. By all the Kamis, what a frightening face ! And what an odor !

 

The old man got up. He spread out pine needles over the snow, erased his tracks. From the path, one could not see anything of his passage. Then, he reached the other side, a little lower and threw himself in the snow, the back round. He rolled and extended the arms so that the tracks were generous, showing a man who this night had struggled against the turmoil. Men like appearances so much !

When he felt the snow well trodden, he straightened up and on all fours went up the slope, taking care to leave clear marks. Against the big pine, he rubbed his cheek and the skin opened because he forbids his vital force to go to this place. He pulled the flesh up on the sharp bark and left his red trace. He looked for an asperity in the skin of the tree and encrusted the right corner of his lips there. Then he drew. He forbids his body to bring back blood to him and to close the wound. He forbids to his body all the mechanisms it knew. Today, he was not to be the Master. A poor old man who had let himself surprise by the night in the forest. A poor insane which had not even seen, nor felt the night to come. A poor wretch without money. One of those which will join those who beg. One of those who do not have a flame in the eyes.

 

He stayed lying down in the snow for a long time, feeling the earth under the layer. This earth was hot and it is it which must be his partner today; not the Heaven.

Then he sat down on a stump, placed his hands one on the other, against his belly, between his folded thighs. He placed his breath under his navel and opened the passage to the door of the life. His eye was dull. All was well like this.

Now he can go there, to the village.

 

 

 

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