The Novice

Even a novice of almost perfect ignorance knows that was not how it was supposed to go, flipping Rina, Era, Sugi and more briefly Ni and Neet throughout the entirety almost. 35min+ cross-legged staring at the crack in the lining board on the opposite wall, with some few passages of closed-eye more or less empty mind. Regular straightening of the spine was needed, shifts in the draping of arms. In the brief online investigation the arms hung down over the knees, loose fingers outstretched almost reaching floor level. But that was in the lotus position, the full lotus. Even the half lotus was well nigh impossible for these bones (there was credible mention of straining ligaments and knees forcing stiff limbs). The settled empty mind that was presumably the chief object was going to be a task and one half. Empty and still mind; not racing and certainly not erotically charged. The serene expression of the Buddha stood as a strong reminder; you could understand that startling visage brought with it even temper and calm. If you could achieve a cross between that and Da Vinci’s smiling young beauty you were getting somewhere. Slumping of the spine was a problem, but what was strange was the restlessness of the arms and hands. It was exceedingly difficult keeping the arms and hands in one place for very long, anything more than two minutes at a time. On the knees, hanging over the knees like in the online, placed one over the other or clasped in front making a shell of the hands. The arms were as large a problem as feet, legs, spine and neck. There was no alternative to the crossed legs with feet beneath thighs. A couple of the finger gestures recalled from the statuary were trialled, thumb on small and middle or ring fingers, palm upturned. Like for the exercises, the hope was after two or three months there would come some ease with it. On the return to Singapore Ranie could be enlisted for help; she had encouraged and offered her expertise often enough. Very likely some kind of breathing pattern was integral. For all the arduousness, the rising numbness and jitteriness in the thigh muscles, it was still rather remarkable to be able to regularly maintain the posture for thirty-five and on a couple of occasions even forty minutes. In Vivekananda’s book on Ramakrishna it may have been the old masters sat for days at a time. (Could that have been a stretch like the accounts of astral travel?) Breathing had to be key, the crucial element; intake and release at certain intervals that eventually became habitual. Whereby that state of calm, lightness, serenity you could call it; settled acceptance perhaps covered it best. In these beginning weeks of baby steps the beatific gold-leafed Buddha of the statuary that the Florentine could never have seen himself, but would have immediately prized, and his own hint back in that direction with Mona, suggested the prospect. You needed that even holding up a place at the café tables. With inattention the default graveyard visage descended when really there was no reason, when you were far enough advanced along the path; few tremors and never completely unmanned, not even after those sprinkled carbonised remains in the creek on the weekend. The older painter with the young Thai wife in Malacca often returned to mind with his easy, untroubled features. Of course it came more naturally to him as part of the tradition; but equally the man had seen more than enough in the Buddha itself. (The Davinci Christs were nothing like.)