Meeting Fellow Travellers Along The Road

"If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him" Ancient Zen Saying.

Masauke needed to go to Morelia come here to close some old circles, to leave behind some old paterns and habits that was still with him for the time he had lives here many years ago. Morelia is in the state of Michiocan, which at one point was the name for all of Mexico. The time in Morelia was a time of many lessons. It was the first place that I found a real kung fu dojo. I also met with the local indigenous women, the Purhepeche women, in the nearby city of Patzcuero. I will recount this in a later entry.

Morelia is a very old city with narrow streets and old stone buildings. There is a large old cathedral in the middle of the square. It is surrounded by palacial mansions, most of which have been converted into hotels or cafes. The governor mansion is also in the square. It is from this mansion the the grito del la independencia, the shout of independence, goes out once a year, following the tradition at the beginning of the revolution. The governor mansion is right in front of the Cathedral. I guess the thinking was that the closer that you live to the house of God, the more blessed you are viewed to be.

The people of Morelia are very Spanish looking, more juera or very light skinned, than in many of the other smaller towns I have visited. Sitting in the plaza in the evening I could have been sitting in Anytown in Europs or Anylargetown in Canada or the US. It is a university town, so at night there is a lot of activity. Unlike other towns, where many of the people selling in the streets have darker skin and most often are indigenous people, in the streets of Morelia there are more apparently 'upwardly mobile' students performing tricks or selling wares than there are people people selling their wares because there have no other means of earning a living.

This juxtaposition of the light skin students selling their talents and the darker skinned indigenous people selling their art and their talents, made me reflect on the power of discrimination, and on what the Western world has come to value. The art that the indigenous people were selling took much time and years of experience to do well, yet their work is not values, less so now that machines can do in minutes what they take hours to do and years to learn. The students are selling their talents to buy an education which will guarentee them a stable and secure place in society. Yet the native people have centuries of knowledge that is being lost and devalued leaving many of them with few alternative than to sell their art for a few dollars or to leave their traditions behind and join the so called civilized world. How much knowledge are we as a global society losing as the people change their ways of life to adapt to the so called modern world!

During the trip to Morelia, Masauke met with several people from the spiritual group that he was a part of while he lived here. One of the people we met was Miguel, a Spaniard living in Mexico who continues to study the medicine way with Masauke's brother who stil maintains a spiritual group in the city. Miguel was 15 days away from leaving the stable job he had for many years and heading off to Spain for 5 months before going to Canada with his wife and family, with no job and no prospects, only a few contacts. Miguel was about to do what I had done 2 months earlier.

Sitting at breakfast he told me that his safe stable job provided him with 2 houses but no joy.. He could support his wife and children but he was slowly dying inside. As he spoke to me and as I recounted my journey that had brought me here Masauke reminded me that he was indeed a mirror for me, that he was reading one of the letters that I had been given by the Great Spirit at the last ceremony he had performed for me.

Miguel and I met each other at exactly the ideal moment, when my faith was being tested and when he was doubting his decision. Miguel later told Masauke that what I had told him was exactly what he needed to hear at that time. It was truly a beautiful meeting of spirits on a similar path.

Lessons learned: 1) Kill the Buddha means that we need to learn to be a light unto ourselves, to learn to be our own light, our own Buddha's, our own authority, 2) The Buddha is neither outside or inside ourselves, we must kill all illusions of finding the buddha, we already are the Buddha, 3) Take the middle road -- learning to achieve freedom takes practice, practice in balancing freedom from with freedom to.

On that note, stay tuned. Stay well and Travel with Spirit, Spirit Traveller.