Spirit

It's a sign of how dilapidated my body is that only an hour after doing 11 minutes of a workout I'm already aching. I'm trying not to be frustrated, really I am. Baby steps. I'm learning to walk again, respiratorially speaking. I have to remember to give myself credit. Where it's due, I must give myself credit.

Well, while I'm redesigning my body I might as well rebuild myself emotionally, right?

I've been learning about Nichiren Buddhism from a really, really good friend from university. He used to have his own issues with food and things and used to have a lot of anger. He's now got this incredible approach to his mental health. It's not so much emotional control as emotional release. He feels his feelings, acknowledges them, respects them, then lets them go, having used them in some way. A big part of that is chanting in front of a shrine. The words he says basically translate as "I worship the Lotus Sutra" which is a Buddhist document. He also chants in his head when he's feeling a string negative emotion, like counting to ten in your head before biting back in an argument. I chanted with him and actually found it really cleansing but, for me, as a non-Buddhist, the words meant nothing to me and felt insincere. While the action was really cathartic and a good way to empty my brain it didn't feel right. I felt inhibited by them. So I had to find my own words.

My friend said that the reason he likes the words is because, while they have meaning, because they're a foreign language, they're just sounds. It means he doesn't have to concentrate on what he's saying. So I tried really carefully to find words that meant something in a language far enough removed from my own that it could be a meaningful set of sounds, pleasing to say, that would help me clean my mind. So I picked Latin, a language I understand but isn't my own, and the words are:

"Quae me quaeso, lupa ero."

It translates as "I pray that I become a she-wolf."

Also, in Nichiren Buddhism, there's a document called the "gohonzon" which you're supposed to look at while you chant. Again, for me, there's an insincerity about that, but the concept behind it (finding your own part of it to divine meaning from) works. So I created my own "chanting board" make up of squares of blues, whites and greys in waves of colour. The blue represents the cleansing of water, the white of a clean, fresh page and the grey of the grey wolf in residence in my spirit.

So, as of tonight, I will chant before I sleep and when I wake up. To remind myself at the beginning and end of every single day what I am doing to my body: making it the best it can be in every way so it can be a worthy home for my spirit. Because, man oh man, my spirit really is something.