The hermit sat lazily on a bolder. From his bolder he could feel the niche in the rock wall behind him reach out to him. He and his predecessors did feed that place with dedicating their ling in travels into the darker emptiness of the rock cavity behind the solid wall. He visited the immortals there many times. The light and warmth radiating from it would be invisible to the passer by. Only the well practiced would have eyes open to it and recognize the holiness of the place. Most likely non practicing people would never pass by a place like this, not even as tourists.
Next to him the thatched hut was held together by a simple structure of fading woods. som snats welked part of it to draw the old rasin from it or corpses of other inscts forgotten by a spider or something. A small fire kept water on steam for the wild leave tea that had to still his occasional hunger pangs. its yangqi rose up in the sky, not un like the yangqi in his back. he hept the stove in his belly warm. normally from a bout 45 this starts cooling down in a man, but he did allright with his 60 years. One life cycle passed. Next cycle would not be the same time, but a repetition none the less of most major events. He hoped he remembered the principles of the events that made him well enough to not be caught by suprise. Suprise casues fear and fear disperses life into neardeathness. More dead then his practice requires is not attractive. Not dead, not alive.
The ling had joined its two heavenly brothers. His diaphragm felt comfortable. The three hun were assisting the heavenly purple lad in his belly merging the heavenly and earthly qi to produce the beginning of reality in the form of original qi of normalness. adding to the brew in his belly, providing a feeling of pregnancy and pounding medicine. His ling helped him making the process visible to him. More than 4o years of practice now. He chuckled on the irony how dao takes place in possibilities but that it is human witnessing that adds relevance to the process by actualizing it to pile potential into actual realities. If not, things did just go in their natural cycle of decay. To understand this is not to complicated. it takes time to make it happenas a valid proces with consequence.
The practice of ling was long and often boring. It is based on a lot of repetitive movement of the mind to grind inside the mind a deeper awareness and to crack the walls of understanding as well as the solidity of our understanding of truth. The reality is that anything we want to believe can be true, will eventually be true if we believe it long enough. Truth can liberate and imprison. It is up to us to mould life into an open awareness and not to get stuck becasue of our beliefs. Belief cracks down personal development in the willingness to take responsibility for oneself within the small and the large. This retreat he realized the truth of it and knew where the many intellectual and aesthetic lifestyle seeking fellow seekers were wrong. The grandfather of humanity had written it at the western gate pass a long time ago: Dao is not so difficult to attain, the truth is simple. But living it is the main problem.  It is what keeps most people away of doing the right thing. A healthy life is not an easy task. In Buddhism they even have a name for it, if you practice this you are a streamwinner, you go against the tide of the current of normalcy to support the realization of human potential.
Two dragonflies tumbled around the branches of a struggling stump of a tree. The risk of falling was not high for the tree since it was firmly rooted in the earth. The risk of dying was there due to frequent lack of nourishment on this steep cliff. The male dragonfly managed to get a hold of the female’s neck and started raping her by connecting his tail into the female. He dragged her through the air to complete his millions of years old mating ceremony. The female put up with it. Her female was elated in her fertility. That was the way of dragon flies. Too many people copy it. The human way is so much more complicated. It is the way of patience, kindness and forgiving.
The sovereigns of the six directions stirred as the sun rose higher. It was time for the hermit to start his body practice. To be sure, he could do the practice just in his mind and forget about the physical practice, allowing his body to rest, but in fact he would then disconnect with reality so he let go of his hubris and got up on his thinned legs to do this directional practice. He bowed ceremoniously to the four main directions, declared himself earth and offered himself as a vessel to heaven. There is no replacement for being a vessel in what needs to be done to attain goodness for all living beings.
He did breath in the six dragons. Being a long time master the dragons of the north did not pose a threat to him anymore. Being a near immortal living half dead was normal to him. For normal initiates it would scare the hell out of them and cause them to wither and die sooner than the allotted life time set out to them. He waited patiently for the tail breaths and collected the jinqi into his inner grottos. The masters inside his inner landscape cooperated well, reporting him their needs and grievances. It is not good to gloat on what you are not, but he was happy of being what he was and not being the king in his heart. Likewise he was happy the king of his heart was of him. It is a good cooperation to be human. Today he would have to start reconstructing a personality before he would go off the mountain. He needed a role to do as would be good. The sun was getting warmer. Winter did end today. The return of yang would aid him in setting out his work. Most likely it would have no huge results but if he could reach out to a few to do the right he would be able to nudge reality enough to alter things in the long run. There should always be people who need to not forget the aim of humanity to not be a punishment to the world but a servant.
His arms and legs moved slowly as not to lose touch with the fragile presence of natural structure of reality. As a constructed being himself he understood very well how he was intertwined with the space around him. In the weaving of his mind and feelings with reality he strengthened his awareness of how reality builds us, maintains us and feeds us in ways not recognized by common practitioners. It helps to do do and find the right actions in the large and the small. It also made realize there is no higher reality then the one we live in. though we can believe in gods and feed their existence with it, they are powerless without us. The gods required to nourish nature have no awareness of our existence and cannot affect us other than through the same reality we share. Accidental. It caused the teacher to say that we should only focus on wellness in our social behavior and not mind about divine matters until we are well prepared. That is, after all members of society are civilized. The irony of that statement was not lost on him.
There was a slight tremor in the mountain. There would be an earth quake coming up a few days after today. It is time to leave. A clear sign that history would cave in on itself, as it always does. Practice serves to know these things and be timely in doing things as they should and not unnecessarily linger in what you have already used up. People usually try to keep their memories alive though pain and happiness but the past is not something permanent because it already happened. It is permanent in it being past and non-existent. It only has relevance if you want to. It is as full of options as is our future. There is no truth in what happened and there is hope for truth in what might happen. Reality is just what is taking place. There is no need to talk complicated and esoteric about that. It is easy to get lost in the weft of reality’s subtle strands in the end it is not in the strands, but in our social behavior. That is also why he was ready here to go off the mountain, complete the transmission of this lineage of hermits. He was happy with the transmissions from the past. Together they are now a strand that can be a teaching based in reality and with a sure effect. It is not good to speak or act before your time. The lineage now is one person.