Chapter 22: Gathering Medicine
驢覰井
井覰驢
Lǘ qù jǐng;
Jǐng qù lǘ.
The ass looks at the well,
The well looks at the ass.
Zen saying
I stamped my feet and looked around, although I couldn’t see very far in the dark. It was not yet full autumn, but the night air was chill, and I had been standing for a while, waiting.
This time, at least, I’d outsmarted the old fox.
Several weeks before, the hermit had promised to show me how to pick herbs in the mountains. I was looking forward to a nice day wandering the hills, digging roots, learning how to identify some of the herbs that grew in the hidden areas of the forest.
The fat monk had set this up for me. “You need to learn about gathering medicine,” he said. “The hermit is a specialist in this. I’ve had a talk with him and he has agreed to teach you at least the basics, but it took a lot of convincing. Just do what he says, and try not to irritate him.”
When we had met the hermit in town, he looked me up and down with pursed lips.
“Meet me at the path to the Black Tortoise Cave,” he said. “Tomorrow, first thing in the morning.”
When I arrived at around 7 AM, I saw him standing by the stone archway that marked the path. As I approached, however, he was shaking his head.
“Not good enough.” He picked up his pack, flung it on his back, and walked back toward the town. “Try again, next week, same time. First thing in the morning.”
The next week I struggled out of bed and made my way to the spot as the first rays of dawn were lighting the clouds on the other side of the lake.
To my chagrin, the old man was already there, pacing back and forth. When he saw me he stopped. As I came closer he said, “The fat monk told me you were keen to learn about gathering medicine, but you don’t seem that interested to me.”
“I am! I just didn’t understand. Give me another chance!” I said.
He hesitated, chewing his lip. “Alright. One more. Next week, here, first thing in the morning.”
Spurred by his disappointment, I determined to beat him there. So this time I got to the spot not long after midnight -- first thing in the morning, right?--and saw with satisfaction that the hermit was nowhere to be seen. Not that much could be seen: it was pitch black. And cold. I pulled my puffer jacket in closer around me and settled down to wait. After a while I had to get up and move, it was just too cold. Then I would sit again.
Around three in the morning the old man appeared out of the dark, looking down at his steps as he paced slowly toward the meeting spot. I stood, and he looked up. Seeing me, a slow smile spread across his face.
“Like this, you can be taught,” he said. “Come on, let’s grab some breakfast. I know a little stand where the night porters get a snack after work.”
Churros
Sitting at a small table next to the lean-to that housed the breakfast stand, I cupped the bowl of heated soybean milk in my hands. The hermit was stirring, dissolving the sugar at the bottom of his bowl. A plate of steaming you tiao-- a type of stretched-out doughnut--had just been placed before us, fresh from their sojourn in hot oil.
“The thing is, you gather medicine everywhere,” the hermit said, reaching for one. “Partly, it’s a matter of selection. You have to learn to recognise what is beneficial, and gather that, rather than just taking everything in, willy-nilly.”
Well, duh, I thought.
“Most of us are like savages, completely unaware of what is good and what is bad, and just consume everything, no matter how harmful. And then we wonder why we are sick!” The hermit looked down into his bowl, shaking his head. “We can’t do that. We have to look for and recognise the good, and only select that for our consumption.”
I frowned. Why is he stating the obvious so, well, obviously?
“Medicine is scattered, it is up to us to put it all together. That’s why we call it ‘gathering,’ you know.” He dipped his you tiao into his bowl and took a bite.
I sipped my hot soybean milk while he chewed.
“And it takes a special sense to recognise medicine when it appears,” he said.
“What do you mean, a special sense? Can’t you just tell by looking?” I asked.
“It’s a whole-of-body experience,” he said. “You’ll see. That’s part of what we are doing today. Now, eat up and let’s get going.”
On the right path
In the dark, we picked our way upward through thick-stemmed bamboo forest for what seemed like ages before the dawn light showed the way. The hermit had not spoken much, but one thing he’d said still puzzled me. “And don’t forget,” he’d wheezed as we climbed, “that when collecting medicine your basket, so to speak, must not be filled with holes. Otherwise the medicine goes in the top and just falls right out the bottom. It will never get filled that way.”
He had not said anything more. But again, why state the obvious? And why “so to speak”? We were not carrying any baskets, so I guessed we were heading some place to pick them up.
“Where are we going?” I asked. I had to speak loudly, as the old man had pulled ahead of me on the last slope.
“Green Dragon Cave, on Red Phoenix Peak,” he called back.
“Is it much farther?”
“If you are on the right path, you don’t need to worry about how long it is,” he shouted. “But no, just around the corner.”
This last section of ascent had been amongst weird-shaped boulders, some engraved with characters that had been painted red.
Hidden Spring on Immortal Island
One said Springtime Hidden Subtly in the Valley Stream. Another said Immortal Island of the Daoists.
We turned the bend and found ourselves at a craggy cave entrance, facing out onto a deep pine-filled valley. I looked around.
“Where are the baskets?”
The hermit was setting down his pack; he turned his head and looked at me strangely. From a crevice a bit deeper in the cave he pulled a woven bamboo mat and spread it out, then gestured for me to sit down.
“Baskets?” he said.
“For the herbs,” I said. “The herbs we are going to pick. And don’t we need trowels or something?”
He looked a bit stunned, and sat down heavily on the mat, then turned away from me. I could see his shoulders heaving, like he was sobbing deeply.
I gave him a moment, but the heaving did not stop. Finally I said “Are you alright?”
I went around to be in front of him, and found tears rolling down his cheeks. The heaving shoulders were not from sobbing, though, but from laughter.
“Is that what you thought we were doing today? Coming out to dig up plants?”
“Of course,” I said. “The fat monk told me you were going to teach me how to gather medicine.”
“You really are something, you know?” the hermit gasped, finally gaining control. “It’s almost like you do it on purpose.”
“Ok, so we are not digging up plants,” I said. “So what are we doing?”
“Nothing, at this rate,” said the hermit in his high voice. “There are limits to how much I can dumb something down.”
I went red, but remembered the fat monk telling me not to make the hermit angry. So I swallowed my instinctive urge to defend myself, took a few breaths, and said, “Alright, I got it wrong. But we are here now, and I am open to anything you can teach me. Do you still want to?”
The hermit looked me up and down, and paused. Finally he nodded. “I’m willing to try.”
TEXT BOX: If you are on the right path, you don’t need to worry about how long it is.
But I couldn’t resist saying “So why try to teach me if you think I’m so dumb?”
He was silent for a moment, and then sighed. “It’s because not all of you is dumb, just this little really stubborn part. There are other parts of you that already know. We can see that, we can feel it. So we are just trying to clear away the obstructions that prevent you from seeing and feeling it yourself.”
He pointed to the crevice. “There’s a little bucket in there,” he said. “Why don’t you go get us some water. There is a stream running down the valley just below the cave.”
I picked my way down the slope amongst the pines, the sound of running water growing stronger. A little stream dashed its way down through the boulders, filling a tiny pool here and there, then continuing its descent. I sat by the water for a little while, letting my emotions settle. The scent of pine needles cleared my mind, and I let myself relax all the tensions in my body. A sense of wholeness pervaded my senses, and I seemed to merge with the rocks, the stream, the pines and the air with its gentle breeze.
“That is the medicine we are here to gather.”
It was the hermit. He sat down on a nearby rock. He spoke softly.
“Stay with that feeling. Taste it; remember its qualities. Register it, place it in a special memory place so that you might draw on it later.”
Scattered medicine
I kept my eyes half-closed as I listened to him speak.
“We call it medicine because it cures your sickness. We could also call it food, because it feeds a deep part of yourself that is often starved by everyday life, especially modern life. It is scattered all around us. You can find it in a space, natural or constructed, or perhaps in a group of people who have come together in sudden harmony. You can find it in a book, when something you may have read before reveals new depths. You find it in things you experience, things you hear and things you feel. You gather it by being conscious, aware that it exists, and being alert to its presence. This awareness attracts it, and feeds the ability to sense it even more acutely.”
He was silent for a while, and the sound of rippling water was all I heard. Then he spoke again.
“You recognise it by a freshness, a sense of uplift, of wholeness, a connection with something vast, and a lessening of self-importance,” he said. “You destroy it with hypocrisy and self-esteem.”
I opened my eyes. His voice, though soft, had penetrated some barrier, and I realised that everything he said I already knew in some deep part of myself.
“So why bring me here? Why couldn’t you tell me all this back in the monastery, say, or your place?”
“Because this location is known for fostering this feeling. Words are not enough. Remember how I said it is a whole-of-body experience? You need to experience, to feel, to recognise and register the feeling. Only then can you recognise the medicine when you come face-to-face with it.”
“We Daoists have made a special study of techniques to gather medicine, and in fact our literature describes them in great detail, but we are not going to speak of that today.”
“Why not?”
“Because you need to process what we have done here today in clarity. Next time, when we meet in a few weeks, we will go into more detail on specific techniques and terminology. That need not be done here, we can do that elsewhere. But for now, we will sit quietly for a while up in the cave, and then make our way back. Be silent, and allow the medicine of the area to suffuse you.”
To be continued ...