31 December 2016
29 December 2016
27 December 2016
26 December 2016
25 December 2016
24 December 2016
23 December 2016
Softness is not just lack of hardness, it is a way of life. In a sense it is protection, not for me so much but for the world from me; an envelopment of energy I create with my spirit, like swathing things in fine gossamer or cotton wool; putting the Other first with real, sincere interest. A mark of respect; a point of honour… Those words again.
22 December 2016
21 December 2016
20 December 2016
19 December 2016
18 December 2016
17 December 2016
Originally I tried to truck it as a scientist, in the tender belief that scientists searched for truth. But, after attending a few scientific conferences, delivering 'learned' papers, and observing the 'truth seekers' in action – in the flesh – I realised that the only thing they really searched for was a pension.
When the physical body is centred at sacrum and the energetic body in dantien, as they should be, naturally, then the head moves, sways, always, in the breeze, so to speak, and the calculating mind, prime ally, prince, of ego, cannot adequately function. So mind, ever contrary, ever controlling, shifts physical centre up to mid-spine so that perceptions, thereby tensely stabilised, can mould a tidy scientific world that can, most profitably, be engaged rationally. But this is not reality, not even close, and to believe so makes you, to me, far more narrow minded and faint hearted than any religious person I've ever met.
16 December 2016
15 December 2016
14 December 2016
"Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you."
If you want to develop and investigate spirit then first you need to wake it up by attempting something that is so difficult it requires spirit to succeed. This, for me, is the value of weight training. Each time you put extra weight on the bar and attempt a lift you've never managed before then spirit naturally enters the fray.
13 December 2016
Gregory Bateson pointed out that the ego is so dominant nowadays – we have become such control freaks – that each of us is infected with a degree of anxiety and tension unbecoming to the natural state, and a stiff scotch actually relaxes the mind and brings it much closer to what God intended. That's my excuse anyway…
12 December 2016
When the middle-class start getting all liberal and magnanimous then you know it's only because they feel so safely entrenched that they can afford to be. The same with the ego (which for me is symbolized by the bourgeoisie). When it starts expressing intimations to truth and enlightenment (which would require its demise) then you know its only because it feels safe and cozy inside an empire well protected by personal, domestic and social forces. Such people aren't ready to be serious students.
11 December 2016
10 December 2016
08 December 2016
In Taiji we practice an external Form in order to nourish and nurture an Internal life. This won't necessarily happen by itself; I know many Taiji masters whose art has remained largely external and whose practice has had little effect upon their character. The bridge between external and internal is made of those terribly unfashionable words: faith, respect, honour, sacrifice, discipline, dignity, devotion, honesty, sincerity, courage, love, which, even if just voiced meaningfully (from the heart) at the start of each practice session – a little prayer – will direct energy inward and upward.
07 December 2016
06 December 2016
05 December 2016
We live lives built on and of repression, hence the noisy mind – instrument of repression – vulgar veil. Quietening the mind in meditation doesn't bring peace, or not for long. It rather provides a space for those repressed feelings, desires, demons, to surface into and reveal themselves. This is called nurturing the Internal.
04 December 2016
03 December 2016
02 December 2016
01 December 2016
A relaxed system requires more energy to sustain than a tense one. This is why students yawn during class – as they relax they get tired because they don't have the energy to sustain the relaxation. And this is why tense nervous energy – coffee energy – is not what we would call energy; it is more a restriction of freedom in order to force action, or what we would simply call force. Energy, for us, is more like an internal motility – a range of possibility and potential – degrees upon degrees of freedom. Energy is basically freedom.
29 November 2016
Left behind the BBC – the bourgeoisie – for the deep blue sea. Until you choose exile it's impossible to appreciate the grip the establishment has you under. This is what immigrants could teach us if only we drop our fearful blind arrogance and listen to the superiority of their spirit. It is only the Other – the radically Other – that knocks you off your pedestal and puts you in your place – your true place rather than your proper place.
28 November 2016
Happiness is a relaxed body and a soaring spirit. During meditation we concentrate on the body sinking and relaxing on the out-breath, and spirit lifting and escaping on the in-breath. In time it becomes increasingly clear that body and spirit are incommensurable – of different worlds – and that concentrating on the breath is a technique simplified for the linear mind's convenience.
27 November 2016
25 November 2016
24 November 2016
23 November 2016
22 November 2016
21 November 2016
19 November 2016
18 November 2016
Eventually spirit breaks through to regions the body or mind cannot sustain. Then we have total failure to countenance, failure not just of structure but of the very fabric. It will seem, to those without the heart to understand, that such ventures are foolhardy in the extreme, but really, by the time you get there, you'll have very little say in the matter.
17 November 2016
Consider the samurai sword – its provenance. First the geologist locates a lode. Then the miner mines. The mineral processor, using magnets and surfactants, separates oxide from gangue. Metallurgist smelts. Smithy anneals. And finally the swordsmith beats and folds, beats and folds, fashioning a blade the warrior can use. Spirit has as many, if not more, stages, from first arousal to final liberation.
16 November 2016
Absolutely fundamental to Taiji is the concept of relaxation. It means letting go of false images so that truer ones can manifest to take their place. It is only possible when I have sufficient faith, faith that if I let go of what I am holding onto then something more apt will take its place. This is the nature of spiritual progress – never by design, always through faith.
15 November 2016
14 November 2016
The knowledge that interests us is the kind you only find out for yourself through the work – a knowledge uncovered when mind and spirit are sufficiently cleansed and awakened to receive and house it. Such knowledge, when it first begins to dawn, must be treated tentatively and respectfully, not grabbed at and mauled, otherwise it will change into mere information, dressed in words and images that anyone can share. And this is the loneliness of our path – what we discover through our labours cannot be shared – we can only pass on seeds to potentially receptive students who still need decades of practice to fully understand.
13 November 2016
The good student leads with their spirit. Then willingly weathers the havoc that inevitably wreaks on mind and body. In fact that havoc is taken as confirmation that good effective work has been carried out. This is the reason our value system largely reverses that of the middle-class. Theirs is a system founded on fear – fear of pain and discomfort, of extremes, of spirit.
11 November 2016
Free time. Sit and watch its gentle passage. The heart, the metronomic heart, insists, like a clock, and don't you find it beautifully apt that a second of time is basically a heartbeat? What more natural measure? But it's the breath that rides time, relishes and plays as it ebbs and swells. It's in the breath we find true ecstasy.
10 November 2016
Practice is the first line of respect. A bargain struck between teacher and student: I'll teach if you promise to practise. If you do, even just a little, then at each lesson you'll give something. If you don't, if you fail to uphold your end of the bargain, then you can only take because you have nothing to give. The teacher will always know, even if they don't mention it or acknowledge it to themselves, because the energy the student develops by facing the pain of practice is felt most distinctly by the teacher as a jolt which shocks them into full teaching mode. Without this stimulant all the teacher can do is go through the motions, use the lesson for their own benefit, and take your money. What they should do is tell the lazy student what they think of them and maybe suggest another discipline, because by agreeing to teach, even seemingly, under such circumstances, they become lazy themselves.
09 November 2016
Collapse indicates too much reliance on the external. An obvious example would be sitting down to relieve a tired body: the body literally collapses into the external support of the chair. But any reliance on the external will encourage collapse, which is why we must constantly test and question all we take (for granted) and all we know (for sure).
08 November 2016
Taiji is the art of concealing hardness with softness.
Outside soft like a beautiful woman, inside a tiger ready to pounce.
External and internal are poles apart – our two extremes – yin and yang. The reason a Taiji master looks soft and gentle, slump shouldered and pot bellied, is because inside they are the opposite. Outside weak, inside strong.
Outside soft like a beautiful woman, inside a tiger ready to pounce.
External and internal are poles apart – our two extremes – yin and yang. The reason a Taiji master looks soft and gentle, slump shouldered and pot bellied, is because inside they are the opposite. Outside weak, inside strong.
07 November 2016
"What was your teacher's secret?" a smug student of a colleague asked me the other day.
"Spirit."
Blank stare.
Spirit is in fact the only secret. In a culture and civilization that founds itself on knowledge and wealth – on building structures – cathedrals and shopping malls – spirit, which cuts through such lumbering edifices like a hot knife through butter, is the great enemy, the Devil himself. When it flares up a different world becomes possible – one we call reality – a world brimming with energy and mischief, running a contrary economy to our usual one of equivalence and exchange.
"Spirit."
Blank stare.
Spirit is in fact the only secret. In a culture and civilization that founds itself on knowledge and wealth – on building structures – cathedrals and shopping malls – spirit, which cuts through such lumbering edifices like a hot knife through butter, is the great enemy, the Devil himself. When it flares up a different world becomes possible – one we call reality – a world brimming with energy and mischief, running a contrary economy to our usual one of equivalence and exchange.
06 November 2016
05 November 2016
04 November 2016
The Daoist embodies contradiction – marries Heaven and Hell. Occupies a middle ground never actually touched because being is an oscillation from one extreme to another, a bipolar hum. Such becomes pathological – unbalanced – only when poles lose sight of one another, when I lose the bigger picture. Wisdom is the ability to embrace, embody then disembody. To disentangle spirit from mood so that this present moment can extend into all.
03 November 2016
02 November 2016
01 November 2016
31 October 2016
How to keep the spirit fresh and light, unburdened by the weight of habit and expectation? This is an art unto itself, and if you have it then it matters little what you do for all you do will be charged with energy and delight. The secret is a childlike imagination that sees magic everywhere, and never gets down for long.
Resentment is an ivory tower – a cozy prison of our own making – where we lock ourselves away from true compassion – from God's love – and burrow into fantasy – the worst aspect of the imagination. This is why there is so much suffering in the world. Hope is to look honestly at ourselves during quality quiet time (meditation) and realize that the only way forward, the only way to help the world, is to leave that ivory tower and brave reality. Grievance dissolves away when we refuse to sustain it with the energy of holding on.