Originally I had been put in contact with the Buddhist Monk because he was a master calligrapher -- and I was looking for someone to create a piece of calligraphy for a gift.
Our first initial contact was over the phone. After a few minutes of discussion, he invited me to his office to discuss the matter further. When I arrived. I sat down and was served tea.
He looked at me quietly, took a breath and then preceded to tell me that many many people come to him and ask him to create gifts for people, but that they don't understand. He paused. Fiddled with a few things in office, then continued...
"I try and explain to them. To give a gift is ego. Ego of building yourself up and drawing attention to yourself. It has to do with vertical space. In Japanese, the vertical space is stacking one thing on top of another. Eventually it will topple. That’s why in Japanese gardens you never see vertical fountains going up and down. It's not natural. It upsets the rhythm. That's why Japanese gardens focus on horizontal space, where everything is in a line. The water is more of a stream a trickle."
In an earlier post, I mentioned challenges with Ego. From my conversation with him, I understood ego to mean building yourself up, making yourself seem higher, drawing attention to yourself -- vertical space. But vertical space upsets the rhythm. It's not natural ... and it will eventually topple.
We all struggle with ego at one time or another, expecially in the martial arts -- either our own ego or someone else's. The challenge is to not create vertical space. Horizontal space creates harmony.
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