Drunken Monkey and Sun

He would watch the Yellow Sun in awe of the beauty of form and function. He would feel dizzy inside and yet perfectly clear. The full awareness of the Yellow Suns shape and structure, once again, filled him to spilling over. He could feel all of her functions, her moveable parts, hidden wheels under hinged bonnets, like the inside of his own body. He saw in his minds eye her smallest of forms each fitting into the next. He knew the Yellow Sun was broken; he felt the Yellow Sun to be perfectly beyond form.

If you were to pronounce his entire name using the correct phonetics, then it is pronounced; "drung-kn-mung-ke" but his name; had slipped into Drunken Monkey, it was taken for granted that was what he was called, instead of his name Drunkn Munky.

The Stable Temple was much smaller than the great Eastern Ridge Temples that were built higher up on the eastern range of the mountain range. In fact the building itself was first built as Stables for the pack animals that had pulled and carried the monks and their tools high into the eastern ridge of the Holy Range. Once the newer Temple buildings began to take shape most of the tools and equipment were moved to higher ground, leaving the old stables more or less empty and waiting to fall apart in the winds of storms of winter.

A few of the novices that had wanted to join monasteries would sleep there when the cold got so bitter that they could no longer endure to wait patiently. The custom of the Eastern Ridge Temples is a novice comes to a certain point along the path that leads to the Eastern Ridge Temples and then and there waits; there is to be “no time” before he continues, for it is not until the novice can make this “no time” that they are ready to begin the next part of their journey, the journey into the Eastern Ridge High Temples and then and there start their training in all things concerning, Mind, Body and Soul.

It had worked like this for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Once a novice left the “making of no time” to find shelter and minimal warmth lower down in the old stables, it wasn’t long before they returned back to their villages and started a live the life of a small farmer, living on meager crops. If they were lucky they could support one or two of the five or six children that got birthed, half of the children would die before they reached two to three years old. Enough did live to produce a population that was more or less in equilibrium with the amount of food that could be produced at this altitude. The Eastern Ridge Temples were able to produce much more food, due to the fact they had much more manpower and could use their knowledge and the extra labor to build irrigation systems that caught the mountain water high up on the range and then lead that water it into a system of fields around the temple. Water is not easy to keep at high altitude as is always strives downwards leaving the soil dry and infertile.

There is a legend that one bitterly cold night a novice was making little progress with “no time” was sat in his spot by the path, along with a few more souls scattered around in different yoga positions, most wrapped and huddled in the only blanket they had ever owned. This novice saw in his minds eye a golden vision coming from the ruined stables below him on the ridge. He stood up and began to walk and stumble into the harsh winds and snow blusters. His body was weak with fatigue and the lack of food during his waiting. He stumbled over his blanket as he took each uneasy step after the other toward to stables. Several times he fell over, but each time managed to pick himself up and continue to stumble onwards to the stables, this is the way the legend started that one had to be drunk to leave the Path to go to stables. Drunk on desire.

The legend said that “the novice” who had the vision, saw that one day this stable would be a Temple. The only small problem was he was alone in the stables without a Monk or Master to guide him. This was impossible The Temple made no acknowledgment of this act. A Novice needs a Monk, as a Monk needs a Master, a Master has no needs, but has chosen to teach the Monk as the Monk chooses to help the Novice learn, just like sugar beat needs water as much as it needs sun shine. Such is the way of training; there is no other structure that can convey that depth of knowledge and wisdom. In the legend that novice was told to stop to wait but to start to study until such time would come to the stables and begin the instruction. Until then he was going to have to go it on his own. The novices name was Nine Dots.

Nine Dots began to make the old stables into a building that had some basic form and structure. When the first monks had arrived on the Eastern Ridge and started to build the Temples they had constructed one of their irrigation tables, a small one, just next to the stables. So there was a field that could be worked, planted and harvested with crops for animals and the workers. During the first time, the stables had been full of activity; many animals with materials and workmen came up from the Valley to build. They stayed there many months at a time so it was important to have food close at hand.

Over the years the fields had grown quite wild but every year a sugar beat crop grew, beans and peas amongst weeds and other herbs that had found refuge in this artificial paradise on the lower slopes of the Eastern Ridge. These “crops” had been eaten mostly but by the birds and rats, and few hungry homebound novices. Few edible things were to be found in the stables, but he did find a largish old clay jar of rice, tucked carefully away, from tiny teeth, it must have been left years before. There had been some dead bugs in it, but the rice would keep him alive until the first spring harvest. The Eastern Ridge irrigation fields gave three main harvests a year, spring summer and the late harvest. This was because of the delayed planting patterns developed by the monks to keep as much fresh food as possible growing at all times in high altitude. Temple novices, Monks and Masters never ate meat; so the crops were beans, peas, sugar beat, rice and herbs and special medicinal weeds that grew up here.

What he did find of use in the old stables ruins, was a quite a few old tools, they were rather worn down, well used, but still tools are not easy to make but are essential if you want to make anything. Nine Dots spent his days and months fixing things. The roof of the stables had collapsed in entirely on one side, which was the most important thing to get mended to keep some warmth inside and snow outside. He had to burn a mixture of dried animal dung and straw as fuel; there were no trees to be found growing here on the mountain, so you there was no wood to burn, no animals were ever killed up here, so the fat from them couldn’t be used as candles. The dung came from the pack animals that were the only transport system between this “upper” world of the Temple and the Valley world below.

With the influx of tourists wanting to see the Great Eastern Ridge Temples, local guides would bring up the some tourists with as many as “thirty beasts” during one day. Nine Dots offered to give the pack animals shelter in the stables and looked after them, for a small price, while the guides then lead the tourists into the Garden part of the Temple Garden complex that they were allowed to visit. This gave Nine Dots a small amount to cash to buy things, he could keep fixing up the stables but most importantly, he collected the dung and dried it to burn so he had fire and warmth. The Temple didn’t use dung, as it made the Temple smell of shit; they used special oils that they pressed from one of their crops. The oil the Monks made and used gave them fire, light, warmth and sense of bliss due its divine fragrance, a bit like lavender, rosemary, thyme and a “greenness” that was hard describe as a smell but rather like a color. Green like life.

Over time other novices that had left the path of waiting without finding “no time”, but they could not find it within their hearts to return straight away home to their own village. They would come to Nine Dots and asked if they may stay a while with him in the stables. The other novices, Monks and Masters saw a new drunkard staggering down the hill into the endless wheel of Karma. only a drunkard would choose such a path to ruination.

Nine Dots needed the all help he could get and never said no to anyone as long as they did some work, here was “time”, time to do something. Mostly the novices would only stay a few days to collect themselves after the exhausting waiting on the Path, so they did little but stare at things and mumble, but if they could hold on to the other end of a bit of wood as Nine Dots banged in the joints. He could now buy wood from the valley below with the money he made from the stables; the guides would bring the supplies and wood with them along with the tourists.

To try to find “no time” is hard without the training, so the novices were often forced to push themselves to their very own limitations. Which was the point of the entire exercise in the first place. If you really wanted to develop and live the life of Monk and then maybe if you have it in you a Master, there can be no other desire. That must be the only thing for which you live and die. It is only then that you can devote yourself to Mind, Body and Soul. Some of the novices stayed with Nine Dots in the stables and slowly they began to form a small group of seven young men all somewhere around the ages of 230 moons to 280 moons, (they didn’t count Sun years they counted in Moons, and then had they would use “Venus rotation cycle” as part of the calculations which made for some rather complex mathematics’). It was hard to get any idea how old these people were, but “young men” will suffice as description enough.

The central theme in the training of a Monk is the structure and form of all things. For once you understand them you can transcend that which you know by heart. You can never go beyond your own limitations until there are no longer limited. The best way to achieve this goal of transcending the structure is to repeat the structure and form over and over again so carefully and so perfectly until you transcend all form and structure leaving it as an empty shell. The training is based on the three principalities of life, Mind, Body and Soul. It is in these three areas that all focus and training are to be directed. Each separate and each joined in pairs and all joined in a triad. A perfect equal red triangle in a white cycle is the symbol of the Eastern Ridge Masters.

The Monks and Masters of the Eastern Ridge Temple trained in special techniques of kung fu, an ancient and sacred form of the Art of Kung fu, which emphasizes form and structure. Each movement a perfect continuation of the previous and then the next, with the speed and instinct of the animal that gave the techniques its name, ex. “The Fire Eagle”. Over the years the developments of this Art has been so astounding as to not only become a perfect (unarmed) weapon of defense or attack, but movements that open the Mind, Body and Soul to wondrous glory of the Universal. These techniques are never seen outside the most restricted areas of the temple. The displays of kung fu that Monks and novices would put on in the Temple Gardens, for the tourists to watch, are the price one pays to live in a world where certain commodities are only paid for with cash. The local communist political regime had a taste for more than “a pray being said over their immortal souls”. They could make problems if not properly greased.

Nine Dots had no such training in any sacred Art. He did not dare even to go to the Temple Gardens and pay to watch the displays of excellence (that were but party tricks for the Monks). He felt a great shame that he had no training, no Art. He had a small group of lost souls that feed donkeys and mules took care of the field by the stables, and made sure the tourists “rubbish” was removed from every part of the mountain. It was like some semi-official agreement that they “the Drunkards” could be in the stables if the kept things clean after the tourists. Off course no one from the Temple ever spoke to Nine Dots or the other Drunkards. In those days it was only very dedicated tourists that made the trip to the Temples, it took five hours to rise up from the valley to Temple Gardens on the back of donkey. Most of the tourists were often experts in some field of scientific or religious study, there was the odd searcher after truth with strange clothes and very long hair like yogis, but still western and childlike. They would always talk to Nine Dots, these childlike yogis, but he didn’t know any thing of their words so it sounded like a duck talking to him, that was why he would smile the pink gum grin, long haired talking ducks.

Time moves slowly on the Eastern Ridge Mountain Temples but in the Valley below the time flows like anywhere else and started picking up all the debris of change. The first time some of this modern debris washed up on the mountainside stables was in the summer of 1968. The Drunkards had heard a rumor, from the tourist guides with the pack animals, who had seen workers making new constructions along the bottom of the mountain path. They seemed to be making the path wider and flatter. The path was perfect to use for the animals but there was something new that needed wider flatter paths.

Drunkn Munky had joined Nine Dots some thirty moons backs. He had come from one of the poorest of regions along the edge of the salt desert. There was nothing for Drunkn Munky anywhere, there was no place and no time, just the empty salt deserts that laid waste to the land. He had heard of the temples on the Eastern Ridge Mountains where you could live a life. A hard and disciplined life but still you had a life. He knew it was here he would find his life. At his 197th moon, Drunkn Munky, took his blanket, that his mother had made and given him and the wooden bowl with the small knife that had been his brothers, who had died the month before. He wrapped the bowl and the knife carefully into the blanket, that he then tied around him so he could walk and be shaded from the boiling sun. He then walked to the Eastern Ridge Temples and finally stopped at the bottom of the path leading up into the Temple complex some 16 moons later. There he sat, he made no announcement or declaration of his presence, and he found an empty spot and sat down. The Monks would put small pieced of food and water in their bowls of the waiting novices, so they could sustain life but had little energy to move about. He would not have to wait long, because he felt he was in “no time” and in “no place” like usual. After 65 moons he stood up and stumbled down the hill like a drunken man and fell into the Stables and collapsed. He stayed in fever for an entire moon; he was in “no time” yet there was no peace just pure pain and terror. The Drunkards tried to use some herbs that they knew about, but their knowledge was so limited, they were the simplest of men. Nine Dots had picked up a few things, but still the true knowledge of medication was to be found inside the Temple with the Masters. The moon died and rose again after three days, Drunkn Munky woke form his dark dream. He became a simple brother of the Stables, cleaning mountains, collecting and drying dung from the pack animals while giving them food from the garden plateau to eat and mixing it with the dung to make good burning bricks. He became the main dung brick makers and he was good it, they burnt perfectly. He was content he had a life on the side of the mountain. He was a Drunkard, but he knew his name was Drunkn Munky and not Drunken Monkey.

In his 306th moon Drunkn Munky saw the Yellow Sun for the first time. The Path to the stables had been worked on by workingmen during the many moons; he hadn’t counted them, but knew Venus had turned twice so more than 16 moons. The workingmen had made the path wide and flat with purpose. They meant it to be like this, wide and flat, all the way up, like a snake that ran through the mountainside and into the sea of snakes they had made in the valleys. Nine Dots had spoken with the guides and then with the workingmen. They spoke much and had words to fill sacks of dried dung for a whole winter’s length. But when all was done Nine Dots told the brothers that now new pack animals would come but their dung was burnt in a different way. It seemed not smell of dung in the same way; there was smell involved, not like the Temple oil, but not dung. Drunkn Munky asked if he should leave the Stables now there was no dung, but nine Dots said he would learn to make this new dung burn as well as he made the dung bricks burn. Drunkn Munky’s heart was light again he believed Nine dots to be wise.

The first of these new pack animals he saw was Yellow Sun, he knew love like no other love, he knew like no other thing, like no other time, this was the now. He began to flip, twitch, move with no control. No instinct, no form or structure, like a true drunkard but with purpose and then instantly into the opposite motion. It was unbearable to witness, yet impossible not to be pulled into these terrible yet irregular motions that Drunkn Munky did the first time he saw Yellow Sun. Along the flat snake path rolled, or rather floated, on black rubber wheels the “Yellow Beetle Volkswagen Car” a Sun Bug. It had just driven along the worst possible road every built but man or beast, and as it turned into the Stable driveway the front axel of the front right hand wheel just snapped in two pieces, it just broke then and there. The Yellow Sun tilted forward, stopped dead, and lay making the loud brumming noise that seemed fill all the air around it. It then became quite and silent, a man open part of it and stepped out. He walked round and looked at the wheel that lay on the path and then at the Yellow Sun. He made workingmen lift the up the front and then pull the Yellow Sun into the Stables. There he made them put wooden blocks under where the wheel should be so the Yellow Sun would stand straight. Drunkn Munky woke up in daze he was in the stable lying next to Yellow Sun. It was night and stable brothers slept. Only the night beasts were awake and they are mainly silent. Drunkn Munky stretched out his hand and touched Yellow Sun. His hand had never felt sheet metal with high gloss paint he had no idea what to expect. As he touched he began to move again in the strangest of fashions, it was so misleading, so deceptive, and so disorientating that it was so beautiful and so horrible at the same time. There was no form no structure, there was just indescribable force of motion.

The tourists began to change when the larger machines, buses, began to drive up the flat snake path. It now took an hour and half, which was no time at all, to drive from the Valley below to the Stables, so suddenly it was all types of people who just came to look at something. Drunkn Munky stayed in the Stables with the Yellow Sun. They got the special burners from the workmen to burn the dark liquid dung of the Cars and Busses; these animals lived on the dung liquid. It required little skill to make it burn and the other brothers fixed the burning machines to make warmth in the entire Stables with no problems. And the smell of burnt dung had almost gone, the new liquid dung burning smell was blown by pipes outside the Stables.

The Yellow Sun was left were it stood in the stables, nobody every came to take it back down the road. Drunkn Munky would twist and turn around the Yellow Sun, regularity of machine with the irregularity of the Drunkard. Drunkn Munky and Nine Dots washed and kept the Yellow Sun clean; it had come to them broken, many moons ago.

Some say the “drunkn” kung-fu style is not a true system, for the techniques are not unique to it, but rather the manner in which it is applied, there are no forms.

The End.