I was a strange and disillusioned young man. I had always hoped to meet a zen yogi. A spiritual guru. A kung-fu master. A sensei.

One day, while walking to work through a public park, I came accross an elderly Asian man with a long white beard and mustache. He was dressed in brightly colored red and orange robes, and wore a sun medalion around his neck.

Sensing that this was perhaps a golden oppurtunity to find my mystic sage, I approached him.

“I’ve been looking for a teacher.”

He rolled his eyes, but turned his ear to me, we were walking in the same direction and he matched my pace.

“Are you, like, a monk? Can you teach me anything?”.

The man took a few more steps before beginning to speak, “I belong to a great school.”

I grew quite excited, this could be an authentic oppurtunity to follow in the path of a great master. “Could you tell me more?”.

“We practice a martial art that is quite unique. We walk the path of the sun.”

He began speaking as if he was telling a story for the first time.

–At first we train alone, in a small space. Many of our disciples are poor and live in cramped apartments. They are stuck in little boxes trapped within large cities. Outside of their home the city can be vicious, quite damaging to their ki, to their spirit.

–We practice by walking, taking repetitive strides, tracing the short route available in such closed quarters. With each step we become stronger. The ki is channelled and strengthened.

–As the training intensifies, the disciple is empowered to leave this space and walk the path of the sun. We walk far and wide always starting from and returning to our small space at night.

–One day the disciple will become so empowered that he will leave from his former studio, and venture forth, perhaps not to return to that exact place ever again. He may travel day and night, by the conveyance of his own feet, forever outwards. He learns that while perhaps through some circumstance he might arrive again at this old location, but it will never be the same place.

–While traveling, his speed will increase and wane as the path dictates. He may become intoxicated with this speed, and perfect the nature of acceleration.

–When the disciple has traveled long and far and fast enough. Whatever that span, distance, and speed might be. He becomes as the photons of light from the sun. He is relative as they are relative. He is the path of the sun.

–I’ve heard of some who obtain this with the slowest of pace. A great master who walked up a hill with the exact force that gravity pulled him down it. He vibrated in this equilibrium, until his atoms too, became the path of the sun and dispersed into the light.

–When you have reached this stage in the path, you realize that the sun is of you. Many use this knowledge to strike at their former enemies. To blast them with rays of solar energy. Wherever they might be on the planet. Simply focus the sun to the idea of where they are.

–When the persons are so struck with the radiation of the sun, they are filled with small joys. Revenge upon a former enemy is to grant that person the benefit of the sun path. The sun is what it is. A twisted perception of it will not strike down your enemies. The sun may only glow.

–To realize that all walk the sun path, some knowingly, others unaware, is to become of the sun. To meld into that warm shimmer is but all we do.

He had stopped speaking and we were at the front door of the business where I worked. He walked on and I remained at the entrance.

I gazed on down the sidewalk, to the path the monk walked. I looked again to the door of my building. Then my head lowered and my eyes sat upon my feet. The sun shone on the tips of my shoes and I raised my view to the fringe of the sun. Looking just to the point where I was not blinded, I could feel the sun in the sky.