of them fell down to the sand because of their too active actions accompanied by the loud laughter of our company.
Having stood up Eugene shook off the sand from himself and complained in jest, “Have you seen this! All in vain. Neither dry sand, nor empty bucket help to tackle this “conflagration” of thoughts!”
Nikolai Andreevich remarked at this smiling, “Right. As firemen used to say, what is a fire-bucket? It’s just an empty vessel having a shape of a bucket with an inscription “fire-bucket” and used to extinguish a fire.”
“And the main sense is that the fire is extinguished with water, not with an empty bucket,” Sensei specified with a smile.
“Exactly!” Stas backed the joke and turning to Eugene he said, “A bucket is an empty thing. And as it is known you can’t mill the wind!”
“You can’t mill the wind,” Eugene jokingly copied him when the guys laughed again. “Where have you thing the wind here?” He comically knocked at his head. “There boils so much in this pot from the very morning that I’m dizzy from that soup!” Eugene couldn’t stop with his “complaints”. “Well, really, I’m fed up with this thoughts attack! How can I get rid of it?”
“How to get rid of it, you say?” Nikolai Andreevich said smiling and gave an advice at once. “The same way like of sclerosis.”
“Of sclerosis? And how exactly?” Eugene pricked up his ears, obviously suspecting some trick in these words.
“Well, it’s not easy to cure sclerosis, of course, but you can forget about it with its help.”
While we were laughing Eugene nodded merrily agreeing with the doctor.
“I always suspected that I’m lucky like an immortal vampire.”
“You mean you look so terrible?” Stas interrupted him and that made guys laugh even more.
“Fie, you, vulgar persons!” Eugene got indignant in jest. “I wanted to say that I’m lucky to be as healthy and… to have a bad memory like an immortal vampire.”
“Ah,” drawled his friend and breathed out with relief. “Faugh, I got worried about you”
In reply to this Eugene changed his voice with cunning smile and mumbled like an old man, “Be careful, don’t overstrain your worries! Or rather you won’t have health enough for that.”
Our company just burst into laugh either from these jokes of the guys or just having a good mood. Having laughed a lot, the guys moved to the sea. I went to do my morning exercises. And a bit later I joined our swimming group with the other guys who woke up.
When we were getting into the sea, Volodya has already come back from his long distance swimming. He stood in the water together with Sensei, obviously having rest after such a strong physical effort and talking to him quietly about something. Swimming behind them I have occasionally heard Volodya’s words, “I’ve even thought about the reincarnation.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any death lethal injection,” said Sensei in his usual humorous tone.
“Thank you so much, of course,” Volodya answered merrily. “On the way back I considered myself that it has some negative features. First, I will not remember my previous life and everything that was in it. Second, it can happen a change of sex!” He smiled. “And with my normal orientation I don’t need it at all.” The men laughed. “But frankly speaking, it was cool!”
Though I haven’t heard all it was talked about, but I think that Volodya was tortured by the same thoughts like the seniour guys and all of us after yesterday. Just everybody went through it in his own way. The most interesting is that despite the fact that we were all friends and Sensei was with us, everybody fought inside of him alone, defended himself and resisted his own Animal nature. And it was natural. Since as Sensei used to say, everybody goes his own way, alone, from birth till death. And everybody accumulates his own experience which he obtains on this way. The others may only give advices but not go instead of him.
Thinking about Volodya I unnoticeably switched to my thoughts. And I thought that it’s so important to consider everything from positive side. Even if the life brings you a lemon segment, don’t worry about its bitter taste, just take it and change this segment into a delicious and sweet lemonade. It’s pleasant for you and good for health, especially for your spiritual health. Let’s take this visit of Ariman. If to consider it from the spiritual side, it was such a precious lesson for us, such a black-and-white contrast, a good-and-bad measure. To tell the truth, but for these flows of arimanism, nobody knows when I would have courage to rebuff my Animal nature and concentrate so seriously and heartily on the new meditation and, most important, achieve such outstanding results! It’s true that every cloud has a silver lining.
“Look, the dolphins came to visit us!” Stas called everybody having interrupted my thoughts.
The guy pointed to the approaching us familiar couple of dolphins. This time we fearlessly rushed to them. One of the dolphins, our common favourite, headed for Sensei at once. Swimming up to him he uttered some merry sounds and turning on the back showed Sensei its belly, probably for scratching.
“Hey, you, the naughty guy!” grinned Sensei caressing his belly.
It seemed to me that the dolphin even closed his eyes out of pleasure. The second dolphin was just friendly swimming around us.
Some of us came to Sensei, including me. Suddenly Sensei suggested to me, “Do you want to ride… a dolphin?”
“How can it be?” I didn’t grasp.
The guys also looked at Sensei quite amazed.
“It’s very simple! Come here. You take his upper fin, like that… And that’s all! The dolphin will give you a ride with pleasure.”
“With pleasure? The dolphin?” Kostya asked with doubts in his voice.
“But if he drags her far to the sea?” Andrew inquired in jest.
“He won’t,” grinned Sensei. “This dolphin is much smarter than some Homo sapiens.” And already addressing to me he uttered. “Go ahead!”
Our favourite turned around in the water during our conversation as if he really understood what we had been talking about and got ready like a fast horse. Of course, I was a bit scared just imagining this unusual ride. But I was ashamed to show it in front of the guys, especially because it was the initiative of Sensei. Therefore I pretended to play a very self-confident person, swam closer to the dolphin, caressed its back and carefully seized his upper fin so that he would not feel discomfort or pain, in my opinion.
But my mask of the “brave person” didn’t last long. As soon as I seized the fin, Sensei playfully splashed the water and the dolphin got off with a jerk and rushed alongside the coast. Our of fear I held his fin so strongly as if it were my last hope on the sinking ship. However the dolphin was moving with steady speed leaving his fin over the water and making maneuvers with his strong tail. Out of fear I closed my eyes tight and left only narrow chinks for vigilance. We flew like an arrow with such a speed that I was seriously frightened. Though it was a clever dolphin but he was an animal and what could he intend each next moment? How could I “ask” him to go back? If he really heads for the sea I won’t be able to reach the coast! So, all this cocktail of panic feelings of my Animal nature and such an incredible “water flying” could make my hair stand on end if it were not wet.
The
