Sensei's Notes

Becoming a Shugenji -- a practitioner of the Art of Shugendo -- means following a LIVING PATH. It is a way of life that sustains you, guides you, and leads you to innumerable rich experiences. It is a spiritual path of joy and insight, freedom and profundity.

There is no free pass to awareness, no get out of jail free card, no savior's blood to give you a free ride to heaven... What you receive you have to work for every step of the way. I am using the Yamabushi (one who sleeps in the mountains) as a metaphor. Before you can sleep in the mountains you have to get there. That means you have to free yourself from the prison of illusion and figure some way to get across the raging river. Doesn't anyone understand this? No one is ready to sleep in the mountains yet. They are only ready to dream.

You are locked away in your prison cell dreaming of freedom. You are by no stretch of the imagination free, let alone able to cross the river. You give yourself important titles and put on airs, and stroke your ego with visions of enlightenment. Fine, if that's all it takes to satisfy you then enjoy it. The Universe has seen countless life forms come and go, life goes on without them. The mysterious Tao goes merrily on it's way creating new worlds and watching others atrophy and die out. Life is for the living: the fanatic who can experience true joy in the thing itself. Enthusiasm and faith count for more than all the best laid plans and careful logic. The power of believing and creative visualization are MAGICAL... you want miracles -- they start in your imagination, are sustained by faith and brought into being by fanaticism. You can't cross the "astral bridge" unless you pay the toll.

Light and Darkness

Good and evil are not things that can be overcome. They cannot be destroyed, and, one will not triumph over the other in the end. What we are seeking is to restore and maintain a balance, A harmony... Not to join one side or the other in a crusade to establish an artificial order in the universe. Harmony is the order that we seek. It is all the order that is needed... 

"The world is full of half-enlightened masters. Overly clever, too "sensitive" to live in the real world, they surround themselves with selfish pleasures and bestow their grandiose teachings upon the unwary. Prematurely publicizing themselves, intent upon reaching some spiritual climax, they constantly sacrifice the truth and deviate from the Tao. What they really offer the world is their own confusion.

The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end, but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn't scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her.

Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. She shares her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao. "
- The Hua Hu Ching

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