Sshh! Do you hear that? Something stirs the undergrowth. A guttural purr. A glint of amber. Watching. Hungry. Dispassionate. Predatory. The hairs raise across your neck. Panic rises to your throat. Flee! Flee! A blur of motion. You turn. Eyes widen. Three hundred kilos of murderous intent launch at your belly.
You exhale. Ward off. Grasp. Roll back.
Humiliated, confused, the tiger slinks away. Back into the shadows.
Where did my prey go? As soon as I pounced, it disappeared. A ghost! It emptied itself into the very earth. Into the mountain. It became the mountain.
The tiger is your fear. It lurks in the darkness at the back of your mind. Stalking you. Padding silently behind, awaiting its chance. Ever present. Always hunting. Always hungry. Death in the unknown. Fixated. Feral. Unremitting. Voracious. Waiting for you to manifest from nothing. To cut yourself off. Make yourself distinct. Reveal yourself as a singular carcass of timid flesh. An isolated being; something that can become nothing. A flame to be snuffed out.
There! Again! Do you feel that? The breath catching in your chest. The sweat seeping from your brow. The blood surging and plunging through your veins. The fleeting, feline shadows that dart behind you. Never revealing themselves. Always just beyond your vision. Shifting out of focus. Feeding on your anxiety. Tormenting you. The demons of thought. Your whirling minds. Incessantly you turn, this way, this way, this way – never quite grasping them, never still. Breathe in. Breathe in. Again. Breathe in.
The tiger is your fear. Your doubt. Your worry. Your pride. Your anger. Your obsession. Your self-pity. Your guilt. Your shame. Your boredom. Your excitement. Your hostility. Your disregard. Your contempt. Your loneliness. Your futility. Your stories. Your despair. Your hope.
The tiger is your own self. Your small self. Your vulnerable self. Your separated self. Your unreal self. The tiger is the thought that partitions you from the rest of existence. The idea that stakes out its territory and marks its border. That builds walls around you. Through you. Within you. It divides you up and devours you piece by piece.
As the jaws open, as the claws reach, you release it all. Exhale. You return to the emptiness from which you arose. There is life in the unknown. There is only life. No birth. No death. Just… this.
Embrace the tiger. Embrace it all. Accept, accept, and let it all go. Bring it into focus. Know your fear. Know yourself. Know your delusion. See it clearly. Stop turning. Stop fighting. Stop running. Allow it. Know it. And let it go.
Sink, sink, fall away. Return to emptiness. Return to the mountain. To tranquillity. To equanimity. At peace in the very isness of everything. Merged with it. At one.
Lost to the prowling tiger. But not lost to the silent mountain. In silence, in stillness, you disappear…
Within the mountain, everything is yours.
… Or, for a more practical outlook, here’s a great video by Liang Dehua on differentiating between Brush Knee & Push and Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain: https://youtu.be/cFVaLgo7RWY
The Azure Dragon 