Ars Poetica
Saving our tradition in the 21st century is an elusive and very interesting thing. Elusive, because many of us build a mystic, fabulous world around themselves, in the name of "respect for tradition". While others try to cover their nationalist attitude and hidden extreme views, or, in their loneliness, dream of a world that never can exist. It was important to tell you, because tradition is what Széchenyi (Hungarian Count) said: Only those nations can survive, which save their tradition...
What is tradition? It is a living flowing thing that is always ready to renew, and is about culture, not extremity. The thing that shows the knowledge, purity, dignity of a nation, the thing through which the deepest real sacredness comes to light. And what is this sacredness? The inner aboriginal force. How does this force take shape? Certainly with a horse. You just realize that you have a horse on which you ride with the wind, aim your arrow into the sun, and feel that it all comes from deep inside. You do not have to buy this knowledge for a lot of money, on courses separated from the outside world. We only have to listen to the orders of our soul, to the force of our spirit, and we appear to be real warriors.
True, that we do not train our horses to follow in slow gallop the arrow fired a thousand times, until a circus act is born, and, we do not dream of the sport in which we can be the best in the world, as Hungarians have to contest with someone, that is in our blood. I believe, this thinking should be left behind. You do not have to contest. Only respect each other. The real warrior's horse is a free animal, which sometimes has thoughts of her own, and, while wildly gallopping in the middle of a battle, thinks she would do something different or run towards a different direction. But a rider is a rider and a warrior is a warrior, because he can control over these thoughts.
We do not appoint ourselves to be some historical officer. There are too many khans or leaders nowadays. It is much more important to let the free spirit wake, and let our grandchildren name our activities. I believe and think, that the real warrior's basic virtue is courage. So a real warrior do not prove to himself, nor the ones beside him, not even the audience, he only provide possibility for the next generations to find their sacred warrior.
I have been writing books about spiritualism for 20 years, made several hundreds of lectures, climbed the peak of high mountains with my friends in the wildest blizzard, when life is worth nothing but a straw; here, a single sigh can show or make the hiker feel how tiny we are, but how far we can get. Riding a galloping horse, flying with the wind, tightening the bow, then letting it go, hearing the arrow swishing past is much more than a sport, much more than a game. It enables us to explode, spread at that very moment, and to be part of the perfect whole so as to let our soul fly as a warrior. At that very moment when the arrow starts its everlasting journey, the past 5000 years spring on every bow. Our ancestors dance in our soul, heart and spirit, and our Respect, Dignity, Love, Gratitude towards them shows the tradition that the archer on the horse carries on. This prepossesses our work, which is rather a form of life, from our childhood.
Besides all this, we make documentary films on tradition with archeologists, emigrated scientists, who are experts in this field, and, other people who have deep knowledge in different fields about our past, tradition, and, we visit "tradition savers" ,too, who represent the ancient form of life even today. Our tradition is built on reality, not on some mystic, intangible, idealized visualization.
Csaba Árpád Czanik
