Musashi's Gnostic Passion (2)

After capturing Musashi, Master Takuan tied the young straggler to the trunk of a thousand-year-old cedar tree at a place quite high up from the ground.

Left high up on the tree, Musashi continued screaming like a beast, demanding the Master to kill him.

The punishment was so cruel that O-tsu, the fiancée of Musashi's close friend also demanded Takuan to release him. And a few days later, Musashi's screams changed into cries for help. Takuan recognises the emergence of human soul in Musashi, but refused to free him. Then O-tsu secretly released him and ran together.

Musashi tied up on a mighty tree reminded me of graffiti from the first century Rome: a crucifixion of donkey. (See the picture above.) The donkey represents the animal self of a man in a Pagan ritual of re-birth. He dies of lower animal (hylic or physical) self and reborn into higher psychic consciousness.

Sounds familiar, huh? Yes, it is indeed related to Jesus' Passion. Actually, the early Gnostic Christianity was an importation of Pagan myth of rebirth into the Hellenised Jewish context...

So Musashi died of his hylic self on the tree. However, he needed to live in the hell before he was really freed.

After escaping to the city of Himeji, Musashi was once more captured by Takuan. Then the monk suggested the Lord of Himeji to imprison the young straggler in a haunted room at the top of a castle. Musashi now had to go down to the Hades. Takuan arranged to have massive number of both Chinese and Japanese classics carried into the dark haunted room. Then Musashi spent years of imprisonment in a very intensive study.

So when he was finally released from the room after three years of imprisonment, he was no longer a wild beastly samurai but had changed into a young man with sophisticated spirit. It was the completion of his death to the animal self. He was reborn as a man with human consciousness.

But it is just the first tenth of the epic story. He had just been initiated into the search of his spiritual (pneumatic) self...

So when we are baptised or when we become aware of being saved, we have just been initiated into the search of our true Self. It is just the beginning... It seems we still have quite a long way to go.