What is a monk?

What is a monk?

Historically and in our contemporary cultures, monks are warriors of spirit.

Most impressive and most fearful is the warrior monk. Capable of amazing stunts - flying through the air, summoning elemental forces, using the raw power of his body to channel energies that are not understood by the layperson.

What is qi? All cultures have their own words for it, and in each culture the meaning is slightly different, depending on cultural background, geological and sociological backgrounds and technological development.

What is immortality? What is spirit? What is emptiness?

The empty hand.

The ability of flight.

Levitation. Clairvoyance. Divination.

And through it all, in a common, everyday situation, the monk is a simple man with no worldly or secular ties. No burdens. Just a body in a robe. Perhaps he prostrates before statues, sits quietly with eyes closed for long periods of time. Burns incense and murmurs some incantations, chantings, or mantras in a strange tongue.

Samurai. Ninja. Paladin. All are monks who have taken up arms.

Yet, the greatest battle for such a warrior is not against an external enemy. This battle is against himself. Against something inside. What is it? What demon deep inside, what seed of darkness and evil? The greatest accomplishment along this path, along this way, is the purification of the spirit. This is the purification of the self. The result is to emerge into the ultimate divine palace of enlightenment.

This path is the way of peace, of understanding, of harmony. The monk treads a path of balance and harmony. It is the way of the Dao (Tao) and De (Te). The way of Yin and Yang. A way of opposition, but of an opposition that is forever changing, forever evolving, forever arising and diminishing, forever unified into a final and ultimate source of life and death.

To understand these forces, and then to utilize them to master the physical and spiritual forms and to gain full and complete insight into life as it is in this plane, in this realm of existence, in this dimension. This is a path of wisdom, a path of compassion, and a path of love. It is a path of ultimate truth.

May we walk it in peace and freedom.