Each of the postures of Tai Chi constitutes a transformational procedure for dealing with oncoming energy. You transform from a target into a receptacle for the energy, turning it, uprooting it, downrooting it, and finishing it off with a deadly blow. When yielding you have a choice whether to yield with the inside or outside of your left or right arm, inside or outside their left or right attacking arm, by turning to the left or right. This then makes 32 possibilities, and doesn’t even include changes in direction. So, for example, in Ward Off Left posture you yield with the outside of your right arm to the outside of their right arm by turning to the right. In Ward Off Right you yield with the outside of your left arm to the inside of their right arm by turning to the left. In Roll Back you use the outside your left arm on the outside of their left, turning to the left (having first entered with a small right turn - such a small turn of entering should precede each neutralizing turn within the Form). Press is a follow up posture but can also be thought of as an advancing yielding turn to the right with the outside of your right arm to the inside of their left. Push posture involves two yields, the outside of your left to the inside of their right, turning to the left, followed by the outside of your right to the inside of their left, turning to the right. In Lifting Hands you yield with the insides of your arms (palms) to their left arm, using the inside of your left to the inside of their left with a left turn, followed by the inside of your right to the outside of their left with a left turn. And so forth. The possibilities are seemingly endless.
Technical considerations such as these would bore my teacher rigid and would certainly have infuriated Dr Chi who would not tolerate any talk of applications. The real transformation happens before. It is difficult to know who transforms who. But what is for sure is that it happens in and with the heart. I guess the one with the biggest most generous heart is the winner. The students my teacher feels most connected to (and therefore the ones that continue to receive teaching energy from him in absentia) are those with the loving hearts: Pip Pennington, Hugo Vanneck, Tony Visconti, Roberto Fraquelli, David Tremayne, to name the obvious ones. These are special people and anyone with a heart will feel it and will be transformed by their company (just thinking about them does it for me).
I remember a student of John’s going across to Vancouver for a holiday. He of course decided to drop in on Dr Chi to see if he could cadge any instruction. He knocked on the door and Dr Chi opened it. “Hello, my name is Kevin, I’m a student of John Kells. I wonder if you would take a look at my Tai Chi”. Dr Chi said, “Just a moment”, and rushed off. He came back a minute or so later with a small book. He thrust it into Kevin’s hands and said, “Read this, it’s far better than Tai Chi”, and closed the door. Kevin looked down at the book. It was the New Testament. Later that evening Kevin phoned John and told him the story. Kevin was resigned to not being able to do any Tai Chi with the great man, but John said, “Go back and make yourself useful”. So Kevin returned the next day, this time explaining that he was also a tradesman and did Dr Chi have any jobs around the house that needed attending to. Dr Chi was delighted, invited Kevin in and showed him all the broken items that needed fixing. Kevin got to work immediately. Whilst he was working he and Dr Chi chatted, and eventually Dr Chi offered to take a look at his Tai Chi and even eventually pushed hands with him. When Kevin returned to London he came along to Tai Chi classes, took one look at how a posture was being taught, peevishly announced that this was not the way Dr Chi did it and left the building never to be seen again.
There are a few morals to this story.
Technical considerations such as these would bore my teacher rigid and would certainly have infuriated Dr Chi who would not tolerate any talk of applications. The real transformation happens before. It is difficult to know who transforms who. But what is for sure is that it happens in and with the heart. I guess the one with the biggest most generous heart is the winner. The students my teacher feels most connected to (and therefore the ones that continue to receive teaching energy from him in absentia) are those with the loving hearts: Pip Pennington, Hugo Vanneck, Tony Visconti, Roberto Fraquelli, David Tremayne, to name the obvious ones. These are special people and anyone with a heart will feel it and will be transformed by their company (just thinking about them does it for me).
I remember a student of John’s going across to Vancouver for a holiday. He of course decided to drop in on Dr Chi to see if he could cadge any instruction. He knocked on the door and Dr Chi opened it. “Hello, my name is Kevin, I’m a student of John Kells. I wonder if you would take a look at my Tai Chi”. Dr Chi said, “Just a moment”, and rushed off. He came back a minute or so later with a small book. He thrust it into Kevin’s hands and said, “Read this, it’s far better than Tai Chi”, and closed the door. Kevin looked down at the book. It was the New Testament. Later that evening Kevin phoned John and told him the story. Kevin was resigned to not being able to do any Tai Chi with the great man, but John said, “Go back and make yourself useful”. So Kevin returned the next day, this time explaining that he was also a tradesman and did Dr Chi have any jobs around the house that needed attending to. Dr Chi was delighted, invited Kevin in and showed him all the broken items that needed fixing. Kevin got to work immediately. Whilst he was working he and Dr Chi chatted, and eventually Dr Chi offered to take a look at his Tai Chi and even eventually pushed hands with him. When Kevin returned to London he came along to Tai Chi classes, took one look at how a posture was being taught, peevishly announced that this was not the way Dr Chi did it and left the building never to be seen again.
There are a few morals to this story.
6 comments
An interesting anecdote about my namesake (my guess would be that he had already determined to give up Tai Chi before he left for Vancouver, but needed to provide some justification to his ego).This story reminds me of a question I have been pondering lately, which is why some people give up Tai Chi after practising for what would seem to be more than just a superficial period of time (between 5-10 years say). It also makes me think about the motivations people have for starting in the first place, and whether those needs or expectations (and the feeling that they are no longer being met) may be the reasons they give up.
Dear Steve,
A dear friend called me from London yesterday (I'm in Tokyo) to tell me my name was on a list of students that John thinks highly of. I'm touched and honoured. I've been looking through your blog since then, remembering and thinking. These are my thoughts, in no particular order.
I started learning T'ai Chi 27 years ago at the end of some 3 or 4 years of looking for a way to quieten my mind. In that period I read the Bible (Old Testament), the Koran, Buddhism by Christian Humphries and A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. I'd already decided that conflict was a result of holding opinions – you’re wrong and I’m right - and religion and philosophy struck me as being opinion from beginning to end. They all seemed to present a one-sided view of everything that left questions begging. In my mind I summed it up by thinking of Heraclitus and his opinion that all things were made of fire. I wondered how anyone could work that out and figured, for all the good it did me, I might as well decide that everything was made of marshmallow.
I had been moving towards giving up trying to find peace through thinking for some time and wondered if perhaps doing a martial art might not be the way. If my body became fit and balanced, perhaps my mind would follow. I considered the obvious Japanese martial arts but knew there was no way I was going to do a thousand sword cuts or lap after lap of bunny hops around a dojo. So that seemed a non-starter as along with my thoughts about opinions I’d also come to the conclusion that if I didn’t feel like doing something, how could there be any value in doing it? After all, although I hadn’t a clue why I existed, or what it was within which I did so, why have an inner voice if you weren’t going to listen to it. Then I picked up a book that really grabbed my attention - it was the Tao Te Ching.
When I read the Tao Te Ching I was simply amazed. Here was an ancient book expressing my deepest thoughts and feelings. The opening words – ‘In the beginning there was the Tao. The Tao separated into yin and yang and from yin and yang came the 10,000 things.’ Indeed. And later, ‘To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.’
Six months after discovering the Tao Te Ching, and Taoism, I found out that T'ai Chi Chuan was no less than a Taoist martial art, a Taoist form of meditation in movement. Looking in Time Out I saw an ad for The British T'ai Chi Chuan Association and Dr John Kells, or was it Master John Kells? It offered a 'graduated path to enlightenment'. I was very impressed about 2 years later when I asked John if there really was such a thing as enlightenment and he answered, "How the bloody hell should I know!?" It was like being slapped in the mind by a Zen koan.
I remember my first lesson at Wimpole St., wondering when the master was going to arrive and who the wimp with the glasses was. I had no idea but in no time at all I was fascinated. I practised a lot and within 2 years I was assisting in a class and John asked me to teach one of my own. I was doing the form 3 times a day and attended the school 3 evenings a week and often at the weekend, too. Then a strange thing happened. I was returning from my lunchtime practice in Soho Square one day and I could feel the energy of all the people passing me in the street, an overwhelming feeling. I suddenly realized that here I was developing all this energy and sensitivity with no idea what to do with it. It was really very scary. That was when I went to John and told him I couldn’t carry on teaching at the school. He said, “I understand.” I didn’t. I’m sure he did, though, as by that time I knew that in many ways John knew me better than I knew myself. I put that down to him knowing himself.
I continued going to the school but my practice fell right off. Shortly afterwards I went to Japan where I was to spend the next 3 years. Before I left I asked John if he could introduce me to a good teacher in Japan. He said there had been someone in Kyoto but that now, as far as he knew, there weren’t any good teachers there. He told me I should teach and that’s what I did. I also made 3 trips to Taiwan.
In Taiwan I was fortunate to join a class that met every morning in a Taipei park to push hands under the tutelage of Master Jeng Shean Chih.
http://www.pushinghands.com.tw/home.htm (all in Chinese but with some pictures)
I’d gone to the park at around 7.30 AM and seen some martial art forms I’d never seen before and then found a group of people pushing hands. I stood there watching and one of the students invited me to join them. It wasn’t the set pushing I was used to in London, and which I was teaching in Tokyo, but free-style. It was a lot of fun. The main thing that struck me was that this was how the form must have originally developed - Taoist monks spending hours and hours for years and years pushing hands, trying to be soft and not to resist, and little by little the form developing from what worked and what didn’t. Pushing in Taipei I noticed how the form kept showing itself.
It was on my second visit to Taipei that I met Henry Wang
http://www.searchcentertaichi.com/
The year before I met him Henry had won the Asian pushing hands championship in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I think it was, and he was extraordinary. A very warm and kind man who I found impossible to get a purchase on – he just wasn’t there. Try as I might I just couldn’t find him and try as hard as I might to be soft he would keep saying, “Too hard!” and uproot me with the softest touch imaginable. He was like rubber and yet he had the ‘iron bar wrapped in cotton wool’ quality in his arms. He once invited me to grab and hold the skin on his waist but I was unable to hold onto it as he filled it with chi and it just slipped from my grasp, as hard as I tried to grip it. However, it was a chance meeting with Dr Chi and pushing hands with him that affected me most, although it wasn’t until 2 years later, back at Wimpole Street, that I found out the extraordinary man had actually been him.
I was in the park when I noticed Master Jeng talking to a tall, frail looking Chinese man. I was pushing hands with someone but noticed 3 or 4 of Master Jeng’s students going up to the man talking to Master Jeng, briefly pushing hands with him, laughing and then bowing deeply before coming back to the group. There was something that looked very interesting about what was happening and I felt drawn to whatever it was so I went over and asked if he would push hands with me. He seemed very reluctant indeed, dismissive even, so I bowed again, more deeply, and asked again, in English, if he would please push with me. He half shrugged an assent so I took a step forward and held the back of my right hand out towards him. As he laid his hand on mine I immediately had the sensation of loosing my ward-off. I felt as if I had stepped in too close to him so, with his hand still placed ever so gently on the back of mine, I took a half-step back, in order to not feel so crowded. At that moment I realized that while I could move my body, to take the half-step back, my mind was trapped in the back of my hand. He was in complete control and I was stunned. It was as if I was completely lost. I couldn’t smile like the others, it was just too earth-shattering an experience. I bowed deeply again, said ‘Sheh sheh’, thank you in Chinese, and went back to the others.
With John in London I had experienced his rebound energy. I couldn’t do it myself, at least, not with anything like the power John could issue so freely. Once, while doing uprooting practice, I’d asked John whether one should follow the person one had uprooted with one’s hands or should one break hand contact once the person was uprooted. He showed me the difference, “This is if you stick to the person as they are uprooted and you keep your hands with them…” and uprooted me largely but gently. “And this is with the same amount of energy but if you stop your energy short…” and with that he gave me a short push. The energy slammed into my centre, I collapsed almost unable to breathe. Neither of these things was I able to do but somehow I could imagine, or sense, that they were possible. What Dr Chi showed me, however, was something that was a million miles from anything within my experience or imagination. From the experience I know it’s possible but nothing in me to this day has any inkling of how. What I do know is that it comes from long practice over many years with a good heart.
I had always found pushing hands with John to be a very frustrating experience. It was as if I was powerless to push in the direction that I wanted to, and yet he didn’t seem to be diverting my push in any way. It was as if I was trying to push air. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I insisted on pushing straight at his solar plexus but when I next pushed with him it would be out of the question. Fool that I was I always felt that I was wasting my time. It was only years after pushing with Dr Chi (I say ‘pushing’ but really ‘standing there with Dr Chi’s hand stuck to mine’ is more accurate) that I realized that John was yielding (peals of laughter are due here) and that he was sticking to me as Dr Chi had.
In your blog, you mention a student who despaired at his inability to withstand an attack. My experience of using T’ai Chi in ‘real’ situations is thankfully limited but on all 3 memorable occasions I was very surprised at how effective my T’ai Chi was.
The first time was in Oxford Street one evening when I noticed a man walking towards me who seemed intent on shouldering me as he passed. I didn’t react until he was almost abreast of me and was aiming his shoulder at me. As he approached I emptied myself of any intention and as he contacted me at my right breast I yielded and stuck to him, turning into him as I took my next step, just like you do when yielding to someone walking past you in a crowded street. I think I gave him just enough resistance to give him hope that he was about to succeed in knocking me over and this caused him to give it a little more power in the expectation that he would maintain his balance at the expense of mine. I wasn’t there for him to bounce off and he immediately collapsed in a pile where I’d been. It all happened very quickly and without any conscious effort on my part and I doubt he was more surprised than I was.
Another time was when someone lifted a rolled up magazine to hit me on the head with all the force they could muster. I put my hand up instinctively and found myself assuming the White Crane Spreads Wings posture, complete with the toes of my left foot lightly touching the ground. The magazine hit my hand but I seemed to absorb all the force – it felt very light. The person, amazed, had another go and the same thing happened. Surprise all round and they gave up.
The next occasion was potentially life-threatening. It was in New York when 3 guys in a car tried to mug me in Greenwich Village at 4 o’clock in the morning. I was walking along a street with a Japanese friend when a car approached us from behind to our left. The passenger in the car called out, “Hey… which way is the Bowery?” As I turned around to my left to face the car my friend told me, in Japanese, to ignore them, that it was dangerous, but that seemed to me to not fit somehow, it would have been rude, so I told her it was okay and went towards the car. As I stepped off the pavement I glanced down to check where I was putting my foot in the darkness and as I brought my eyes up again I noticed the passenger was trying to conceal a handgun with a jacket – I could see the barrel. At that moment I knew that it was essential to hide my mind from him, not to let him see that I’d seen the gun, and snapped into what I can only describe as the feeling I have when I do the form, a sort of calm state where everything is connected and slow.
As I was stepping off the pavement I was saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not from here but I think it’s over there…” and waved vaguely in the direction we and the car had been moving, with “… over there…” coming just as I got to the passenger window. In fact, I had no idea at all where the Bowery was. I said this apologetically with a sort of shrug and a friendly half-grin. And then I turned to rejoin my friend. As I was lifting my foot onto the kerb the voice behind me said, “No man, you don’t understand!” At this, and as I stepped onto the pavement I half turned and said, “Yes, I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but I think it’s over that way.” And waved vaguely ahead again. I then took the woman’s hand and said, just loud enough for the men to hear, “This is your street, isn’t it?” as I took her hand. She said, in Japanese, “No, it isn’t!” but I made it plain with my hand that she was to go that way with me.
As we turned into the street the car gunned its engine and turned right to follow us. Bingo! They’d taken the bait. Just as the passenger window was level with us – I knew they were going to stop just ahead of us so that as they stopped our next step would bring us level with the passenger window - I pulled her gently with my hand and said, “Oh! It’s not this street, it’s the next one!” and I calmly, but with spirit, walked to the back of the car – 2 or 3 steps – and round the back of it to get back into the street we’d originally been walking along. Once round the corner and out of sight of the car I whispered, “Run!” and we sprinted down the street to disappear down some basement steps behind some dustbins where we waited for 5 minutes before peeping out to make sure they’d gone.
Pure T’ai Chi, all the way. Hiding my mind, being soft so that their attacking mind prevented them from understanding where my centre was. Sticking to them. Offering a right arm ward-off with just enough ‘meat’ to deceive them into thinking they’d got me and to get them to go the way I wanted them to and then emptying that side and stepping behind them. And all without any planning at all, it just happened ‘of itself’. My part was to relax. And smile.
Spirit – John’s Rimpoche came to give a talk at Wimpole St. once. I can’t remember his name but he was a small Tibetan man who pronounced ‘form’ as ‘porm’. John told me later that while he seemed small and not particularly strong he could seem 10 feet tall (my words) when he showed his spirit.
My own appreciation of spirit was formed one night as I was walking along a street in Tokyo and a car in the road alongside me blared its horn at another car that had slowed down in front of it. I shouted, “God, you’re noisy!” at it. Yeah, I know… pretty stupid. The car screeched to a halt and guys started getting out of all 4 doors. At that moment, I knew it was no time to be timid so I rounded my arms in the ‘T’ai Chi welcome’, smiled good-naturedly and said “Oh good!” and started walking enthusiastically towards them. They hesitated a moment before all piling back into the car and driving off. At least, I think it was spirit.
Would I be able to defend myself against one or more committed attackers, experienced street fighters? Probably (undoubtedly?) not but I don’t think that’s the point. More important to me is being willing to die at any time. If I am, then I have nothing to fear and can enjoy maximum freedom to move and will stand the best chance possible.
After I’d been doing T’ai Chi for about 18 months I became very aware that I would die one day… that it would all end. I was thinking about it a lot and asked John if it was a good thing to do. He answered that if I could be aware of death all the time I was a very lucky person. He said most people only think about it when it was imminent and were wholly unprepared for it. I think he said that if you were aware of death then you could then appreciate the wonder of life and live it fully.
I started doing T’ai Chi as a means to some sort of enlightenment, in order to find some sort of inner peace. I stopped doing it for those reasons quite soon and started doing it for the pure fun of it. In Taiwan, pushing with someone who was like a shirt on a coat hanger, just not there, in spite of my very best efforts to find their centre, has on occasions reduced me to tears of laughter. I once pushed with a 70-year old man who was determined that this foreigner was NOT going to push him over. He split my lip with his fist when I pushed his elbow, although not on purpose – that too reduced me to laughter. He was a very nice man and was truly concerned. It was just that, when pushing, there was something he could not let go. I can’t blame him for that. At Wimpole St. I was always finding things that made me laugh. When doing the Dance, particularly. I miss the Dance a lot.
What are we trying to achieve when pushing hands? Amongst other things, letting go of the fear of losing, learning not to flinch and freeze up. When you’re surprised and flinch your mind rises up and stops and you lose your part in the eternal ebb and flow between ying and yang. (To be fair to Heraclitus, he also said, “Everything flows, nothing stands still” which is pure Taoism.) You become top heavy. This is my understanding. That’s why at Wimpole St. we practiced sinking as we stumbled away after having out root disturbed, rather than rising up as we stumbled. Sinking, yielding and turning the waist, all a little more than you think is possible. Learning to be in the moment instead of planning ahead and in that way being in the best possible position to exploit the inherent weakness of an attacker. Taking to heart the admonition to use just 4 ounces of force and realising that while your 5 ounces might succeed in unbalancing your opponent you are over-extending yourself. You are cheating… not your opponent but yourself. You are missing the point.
Another thing that has occurred to me is that in pushing hands you are practicing the very Christian admonition to judge not, lest thou be judged. You are emptying your mind of all such ideas of right and wrong. Instead you are finding out how your pre-judgment makes you open to defeat and discovering the benefit of approaching a problem with a discerning yet open mind. You are also discovering the benefit of loving your enemy. Cloud your senses with your feelings of dislike towards the person pushing you and you are that much less able to read their intentions and yield to them. You are learning to turn the other cheek, too.
John once told me that he would always be my teacher. He was right. Everyone I’ve ever pushed with has been a teacher but running through all their lessons is John – what he has taught me, and continues to teach me, is like a spiritual thread that joins them all together. Early on John explained that we were learning a martial art, the highest application of which was healing. He described himself as a Taoist-Christian and reckoned that Jesus was the foremost proponent of the use of T’ai Chi energy. Ever.
I am very lazy about practicing the form. It’s madness as I have a 20-year-old injury to my right wrist from falling off a horse. I badly smashed my right ankle in a motorcycle accident 8 years ago – it took 7 and a half hours to rebuild it with bone taken from my hip and it was 2 years before I could walk without a stick. Last October I came off my bike in practice for a race and dislocated my left thumb (every tried doing up your shirt buttons with your teeth?) and wrenched my left shoulder so now it’s painful to put my left hand to the small of my back. I hate to think what it would be like to do Aikido or get arrested. Every time I do the form, or what parts of it I can remember, or push hands in the park near where I live here in Tokyo, I notice that the energy makes my past injuries easier. There’s no doubt that T’ai Chi is good for me but I can’t get down to regular daily practice. I find refuge in John’s advice not to overdo it. Excuses, excuses.
I have been doing more this past year. I meet every Sunday to push hands with a group of T’ai Chi people in the park near where I live. See:
http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/SundayTaiChi/
Having practiced for far longer than anyone else I am the most advanced student there and often end up in a teaching role. I do think about teaching form but feel I need to be doing my own practice regularly in order not to be a charlatan. I can remember all the parts of the form, actually, but not their order. In pushing hands I can unbalance everyone there and they can only unbalance me occasionally. I try to remain soft and not cheat with my longer experience of techniques learnt in London and Taiwan. I try to be honest and tell them when I’ve cheated.
This July I went back to Taiwan for the first time in 24 years, for a weekend, and was delighted to find Master Jeng still in the park with his students. He remembered me after an hour or so. He’s now 85 and yet I still can’t do anything against his push. I pushed hands with several people there and every one of them could uproot me. It was a very humbling experience and thus a very valuable one. One guy, a student of now deceased Grand Master Huang Sheng Shyan,
http://tjq2.tripod.com/ (there are some links to clips of him in action at the bottom of the page) was very kind and patient in trying to explain to me, and show me, why he seemed to melt away when I pushed him and I couldn’t. Both he and Master Jeng told me that it was all to do with looseness in the shoulders and they showed me Grand Master Huang’s exercise for loosening them up.
I wish I knew the characters for Dr Chi’s name as I’d like to tell Master Jeng that he knows my teacher’s teacher. I’m going there again in November and will take a photo of Dr Chi with me. I’ll take a photo of John with me, too, in case Master Jeng has ever met him.
Am I going anywhere with my life? Has T’ai Chi improved me in any way? I have no idea. It seems to me that my life has been spent discovering who I am and I also see that I‘ve never changed at all. I’m still the same person as I was when I was 3 years old, the earliest age I can remember. T’ai Chi has certainly brought a lot of pleasure to me and continues to do so. Through T’ai Chi I have learnt that desiring to improve paradoxically impedes progress. You have to be very careful what you wish for. T’ai Chi is something that comes to those who allow it into their hearts through submission to their powerlessness to make anything happen. It requires a lot of work, for sure, but in humility and in letting go. From this you might surmise that I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about. You might be right.
Long ago it occurred to me that rather than trying to understand what everything is I would do better to accept that I knew nothing at all and to learn to be at peace with that not-knowing. It seemed to me that the search for meaning was really a search for a crutch, a desire to believe that you were safe because you ‘understood’. How much harder it is to give yourself up to uncertainty. There are no books you can point to and say, ‘You see? It says here that this is this and that is that.’ All you have is your heart. And love. We all do our best. My heart tells me that the greatest thing I can do is to help relieve someone’s suffering. Because we are all one the suffering of others is my own.
There is more I could write but I think I’ve said more than enough already. I’m mindful of the warning in the Tao Te Ching that, ‘The more we think and talk about it, the further we wander from the truth.’
Please give my love to John.
Warmest regards,
Hugo
I think for Heraclitus fire=spirit. He was the most interesting of the pre-Socratics and so similar to Taoism is his thought that certain scholars believe there may have been communication between Greece & China in those times. Like Lao Tzu he represents the end of an era. He came just at a time when the world was changing, drastically, and the rational mind was beginning to assert its supremacy over energy.
Whether he did or not is not known. It certainly isn’t stated in any of the fragments of his opus extant and what there is suggests otherwise. I think it's wise to remember that Heraclitus was speculating, as is anyone who has ever attempted an explanation of the universe or anything in it. People often present their impressions as being the absolute, end-of-any-discussion truth. We can be sure of nothing but many believe and confuse their belief with knowing. Eminent minds used to be certain the Sun went round the Earth. In other areas Heraclitus was decidedly dodgy – he believed, for example, that war and strife were inevitable and good and he also regarded the common people (that would be you and me, folks) as having little intelligence or worth.
John said it nicely once when he pointed out that many people have a lot invested in their view of the world and are reluctant to question the framework within which they have spent their lives working and formulating their views. I think it was in the context of teachers in general and finding a teacher of T’ai Chi in particular. One should steer clear of one who didn’t do pushing hands. Or who did but enjoyed displaying their superior prowess over their pupils. T’ai Chi is nothing without the moment of contact in pushing hands.
I also think that all paths lead to what truth there is, inevitably – this is the only meaning I can find in anything. Heraclitus viewed the world holistically, as did Lao Tzu, as did many before him, and as many have always continued to do, of course, and then, as you point out, the emphasis shifted to empiricism, Aristotle led to dialectics and modern science but that science is coming round to a Taoist view. In scientific experiments it has been discovered that the act of examining things actually changes them, that awareness alters reality. In the end all is one.
In my earlier comments I spoke of mind and body and perhaps left the impression that I see my being in those terms. I did at the time I was referring to but now I see them as part of the same thing. T’ai Chi expresses the unity of mind and body. In the T’ai Chi form you both visualise and ‘sensualise’ (if that’s a word) an opponent - you have a sensation that as you brush your knee you are making contact with the fist or leg of someone attacking you and then you shift your awareness to the palm of your other hand as you push the opponent in the chest. This results in a tingling or warmth in the part of your body contacting this imaginary opponent. What I believe you are doing is learning to direct your mind into the cells of whichever part of your body you are using. With practice you do it automatically and instantaneously, all the time. I’ve read that ultimately your mind is everywhere, all the time. You unify your mind and body. It seems.
I mentioned earlier that I had read the Old Testament and viewed it as opinion. In it God is said to command, in a big, booming voice, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ The question it begged for me was, ‘Why not?’ Theoretically, of course. I went to my local church to ask the vicar there. Perhaps I was unlucky, or perhaps he was typical, but he told me that it was God’s will and when I asked him how it was possible to know that, his answer was that it said so in the Bible. Pressed further he said we weren’t to question the truth of the Bible… punch line… because it said we mustn't in the Bible.
It wasn’t until years later, after I had started doing T’ai Chi, that I realized that in my heart I didn’t want to kill, that it wasn’t in my intrinsic nature to wish to harm anyone. Through that realisation it occurred to me that the Bible was a book written in large part by people who, after much introspection, discovered like me that in their hearts there was an injunction against killing. The difference between them and me is that they were working and meditating within a religious framework and therefore they regarded their inner voices as being God talking to them, or perhaps they just expressed it in those terms in order to give their revelation more weight in the eyes of those they preached to. Now, having found it in mine I could easily decide that everyone must have that injunction in their heart and that would be the moment I moved from knowing my own heart to speculating about the hearts of others. I happen to think that probably everybody does have that injunction if they could but stop the chatter in their heads and see within themselves, but I have no way of knowing.
Warmest regards,
Hugo
I still think you're misreading Herakleitos (or rather not getting the most out of him). For me it's poetry and as such its value is in its ability to take my breath away with its beauty and audacity rather than its veracity. Like poetry it pushes me into states of heightened awareness where I know because I'm better connected. This is the same for John's writings. He always says to me that he's not writing about things but instead offering the reader the means, through reading aloud, to evoke and create the energy required to know for themselves. The way he says what he says is what he says. The form is the content.
Wow, reading these articles shows me how much I miss that special place at 7 Upper Wimpole Street.
Post a Comment