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June 26, 2011
10 Days with Wang Liping, a student's experience. Arrival
Arrival
The 10 days at Tao Garden was a waiting experience. I got over the 12 hours of jet lag, and found some time to disconnect from the hectic pace of the last few weeks of disposing of 64 years of personal accummulation. Tao Garden had transformed itself from a Taoist Retreat Center to a Thai spa. It was busy and evidently successful in it's new form. It was a complete surprise to realize I had for an unknown reaon simply ignored it as one of my possessions. I was pressed to decide if it was to also be 'dissolved' as I hadevidently been holding onto it as a sort of personal refuge or lifeboat with all other means of support gone. By the end I resolved to also sell this piece of my past and asked the management to find a buyer. On April 14th I left for Bejing.
The flight to Bangkok was uneventful. The flight to Beijing was not. The entire 5 hours was one long lucid dream. The plane landed on a frozen river. I deplaned and explored a remarkable isolated village with strange unhuman but welcoming inhabitants who fed us and hurried us back to the aircraft. The takeoff was frightful, the plane almost too heavy to lift off. We skimmed between the snow covered tree lined banks for what seemed forever, the engines roaring with the effort, rising and falling in pitch as the pilot struggled to achieve flight. I slipped from the lucid dream state to the waking state multiple times, each time upon waking, surprised that the roar of the engines was actually real. This state was over only when the plane ( in the waking state ) started it's final descent to Bejing.
While still in Thailand I had received an email from Kathy Li, the retreat organizer with pictures of two students also attending the retreat who would be on my flight from Bejing to Dalian. She hoped I could connect with them prior to the flight. Of course the likelyhood I would recognize two Chinese men ( myself hopelessly Westen in a sea of Chinese) was less then zero! I took my aisle seat near the back and was ( to say the least ) astounded, when these exact two men took the middle and window seats still vacant to my left. They introduced themselves as if this impossible coincidence was an ordinary experience. The subtle power of the Master must be experienced to be believed. Simple as that.
In a short time we were met in Dalian by a long time Korean student of Master Wang and were resting in his hotel room. I slept briefly, we had a quick meetup and meal with the rest of the students and were on the road to the Hot Springs Hotel. After checking in, we all enjoyed a personal greeting in our room from Master Wang and I fell immediately into a badly needed (and dreamless) sleep.
Posted by james at June 26, 2011 12:46 PM
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