Dear teachers, dear students,
We can give in to gloomy moods, paranoia, claustrophobia, or worse, denial. Fear does not protect from anything. And it should not affect our prudence. Recklessness is always a display of inner weakness. Protect yourself, do not neglect any action that can ward off the risk of contamination for you and others. Make it a determined choice as you would decide to give a technical response to a violent situation, avoiding reacting to keep control of the relationship. This virus attacks our lungs, but let’s not transmit this evil to the deepest part of ourselves. This is what fear produces. It takes away our access to reality. It endangers us because, under its influence, we are fighting against a counterfeit adversary who hides the one who is really attacking us. So, let’s act calmly and efficiently, like budoka who do not neglect any effective action and do nothing useless. In the face of fear, washing your hands may seem old-fashioned, and yet, is this not a gesture you know is effective when you go to the temizuya? You shouldn’t let this virus pollute your body, but don’t let it pollute your mind either.
This morning, friends wrote to me to ask how I was and give me their news. When I answered them, I thought it might have been each one of you. Finally, I decided to send you the answer I gave them, to give you my news and ask you for yours. I just changed the tense for the first sentence.
« I would be happy to hear from you and to know you are together.
The happiness of being two does not need much, as long as open arms are received with open arms and words intertwine.
The four of us are at home, happy to be together again.
Everyone was slightly imprisoned outside, constraines by their obligations.
We are now free inside, closer than we could have hoped.
We respect the instructions. All journeys are canceled except for one, writing. For the past four days, I have been stuck on the description of the depths of consciousness. How to describe a conscious unit whose complexity is equivalent to that of the world?
This morning I woke up and the answer assailed me. Blessed be the conscience which is lodged in the alveoli of our tissues, in our flesh, in the last breath of our lost ancestors, in the words of animals and plants, in the complaint of rivers and winds.
This confinement gives me time to hear the whispers from beyond-me as it shows us how close those who really matter are, so close, to our hearts.
The only thing missing is seeing you again and that is the reason why, I look towards the horizon that is bound to open up, to widen.
We have never been so close to the end of this confinement and so « close » to the essential: the subject is the universal law. I am already preparing the bottles that contain our exhilaration, the one that we will soon share when his lordship « the virus » has given up on conquering what cannot be, when he will have known his “Bérézina” before the patient forces of « I feed to love ” when it will have accompanied in its extinction the Attila of consciences, fear. »
I wish you all to find in you the strength necessary to live through this stormy crossing with serenity, lucidity and to seize this opportunity to get even closer to those who matter to you.
Remain what you are, budoka and remember your kihon: any useful movement must be assumed until the end, any unnecessary movement is fatal.
Cognard Hanshi
