Today's blog is, simply, a download of my thoughts from the day, which I spent a portion of simply recovering from a 7-8 hour mountain bike ride from last night ;) I had my first class of an advanced medic course today...and then went into office to knock some work out. After work I went on an feel-good trail run before showering, ate dinner, and went off to search and rescue (SAR)...and I definitely look forward to getting some quality sleep tonight!!!
The run was incredible - the sky was the deepest blue...the clouds pure white...the forest air a pungent "pine wine"...shafts of sunlight tasted like vitamins...even the rocks along the trail seemed to have heartbeats of their own. Reminded me of the advice I think I once read from a Zen monk, "breath in the world...breath out the self." Along the trail time expanded out like taffy, pulling memory along.
Have you ever heard of the lung-gom-pas?
I recently read an account of the lung-gom-pa runners of old Tibet in Magic and Mystery of Tibet. Many explorers to Tibet encountered these running monks, who appeared to bound across the high steppes in a trance, traveling nonstop for hours on end, covering a vast number of miles. Personally - never seen them. The famed French explorer, Alexandra David-Nell wrote of her eyewitness meeting with a lung-gom-pa in the said book:
"Towards the end of the afternoon, Yongden, our servants and I were riding leisurely across a wide tableland, when I noticed, far away in front of us, a moving black spot which my field-glasses showed to be a man. I felt astonished. Meetings are not frequent in that region, for the last ten days we had not seen a human being. Moreover, men on foot and alone do not, as a rule, wander in these immense solitudes. Who could the strange traveler be?"
The author continues writing...
"The man continued to advance towards us and his curious speed became more and more evident. What was to be done if he really was a lung-gom-pa? I wanted to observe him at close quarters, I also wished to have a talk with him, to put him some questions, to photograph him...I wanted many things..."
"...By that time he had nearly reached us; I could clearly see his perfectly calm impassive face and wide-open eyes with their gaze fixed on some invisible far-distant object situated somewhere high up in space. The man did not run. He seemed to lift himself from the ground, proceeding by leaps. It looked as if he had been endowed with the elasticity of a ball and rebounded each time his feet touched the ground. His steps had the regularity of a pendulum. He wore the usual monastic robe and toga, both rather ragged. His left hand gripped a fold of the toga and was half hidden under the cloth. The right held a phurba (magic dagger). His right arm moved slightly at each step as if leaning on a stick, just as though the phurba, whose pointed extremity was far above the ground, had touched it and were actually a support. My servants dismounted and bowed their heads to the ground as the lama passed before us, but he went his way apparently unaware of our presence."
Dunno...what do you think?
HONK if you're about to run me over,
-steve
