This was the blog for Great River T'ai Chi and The T'ai Chi Centre from 2006-2023. This is now archive-only. You can find the schools at www.thetaichicentre.co.uk and www.greatrivertaichi.com
18 July 2008
Words of thanks
July has been externally normal and in all other respects extraordinary. I wanted to give my thanks to my teacher, my colleagues, students and all the great T'ai Chi folks I have shared time with over the past few weeks.
A friend of one of the new students came to visit our class last week and hopes to join the class next week. After a great session, where we investigated the principles, particularly central equilibrium, and all did good work together, she told her friend on the way home that it seemed like my life had been saved by T'ai Chi... I think she was right. My life would probably still be ruled by fears and thoughts (these were mainly the same thing) and keeping what I disliked at bay via ingenious means, had I not encountered good T'ai Chi teaching.
Inner conflicts, as real as any outer ones, can be addressed whenever we push hands, or even stand in a class room full of such diverse people as I did tonight. It usually only feels blissful and calm when we are avoiding everything of importance. I have found that a quiet mind and a relaxed body (very useful) are not found by vagueing out, or conversely by trying to 'get it' with the thinking mind, both of which I have indulged in enough to be able to speak from experience. I haven't blogged much about how I have been feeling about T'ai Chi this year, as I feel too much can be said, and it can sometimes seem prescriptive rather than instructive; after all, people's authentic experience varies so widely.
However, I found tonight's class moving and surprising on many levels and for several reasons. I feel engaged in the middle of a real challenge that seems like it has a lot to do with having worked wholeheartedly on central equilibrium this year. When the fraff (South Londonese for stuff & gubbins) settles down, and there is at least some sense of 'central earth', it seems the really primal, vital stuff (fears, inner battles, you name it) can surface and actually be faced. This is not usually pleasant; it's still 'drain cleaning', as Mark so brilliantly puts it. It's also unsettling at first, which can make some students run for the hills, or at least to the nearest peddler of certainties. However, you can always share things with a good T'ai Chi colleague, or your teacher, and be reminded that despite the bad smell, it's all still part of the natural process. What the good teachers I have met have had in common, despite any other differences, is that what they are teaching and practising is about transformation. (This is even an 'orthodox' view in terms of the T'ai Chi Classics: see 'transforming energy'). If what we are cultivating is about staying the same then I would venture that it is not a good use of our limited and precious human lives.
There is also no contradiction between studying such martial arts (or for instance, calligraphy, poetry, music, art, science or any other endeavour) and not gaining any insight into the human predicament. One only needs to look at the personal lives of many luminaries in their fields to see that mental and physical attainments often do not help integrate and temper a fractured or controlling individual. T'ai Chi itself will not make you a better person, (whatever a 'better person' would be). However, in approaching the totality of one's life, which includes our T'ai Chi practice, with openness, humour (yes!), curiosity and unflinching honesty, then transformation cannot fail to take place. The exact nature of that transformation relates directly to one's effort, conditioning and intent. We could choose not to transform, and stay, for instance, self-pitying and full of justifications for perceived shortcomings. The choice is ours. Choosing to ally oneself with change is a leap in the dark. We should not expect praise or thanks. Lots of people and institutions have a vested interest in us staying just as we are, predictable, habitual, slightly anxious of any loss of comfort and therefore perfect consumers, dazzled by illusory choices.
My personal view is, however, that while I feel that I have a choice at all, I am neither free nor really alive. This intuition has nothing whatever to do with any faith or belief system, any feeling of guilt or inadequacy, or any pseudo-spiritual interpretations layered on top of my T'ai Chi or other studies. Rather, it has been hard won (via years of over-thinking, controlling, dabbling and making excuses) by living all the effects of my schemes, cost-counting and damage limitation exercises. My grandmaster once wrote to me and said I was fortunate in the sense that I knew I didn't have a choice. He was totally right. I know what it's like to be at the mercy of my busy mind, calculating advantage and risk and desperately avoiding getting lost: in his words 'a lost soul'.
Yet somehow, by a process of allowing, letting go, something changed radically. I have no plan as to where this will lead and no map. I speak only for myself and reiterate that everyone's one life is their own event. I have waited weeks before posting this, and I am still ambivalent, as folks can project all kinds of stuff onto words on a blog. However, I've met great folks recently who wanted to engage with me on these areas, as they shared my concerns and priorities. So here we are: full circle back to the remark of the student at the top of this post. I guess my life was saved by T'ai Chi, in that I no longer deny that I am lost, along with all the other creatures, in a very strange process we refer to as life, on a 'small blue and rather insignificant' planet. T'ai Chi, or more accurately, the sunk, authentic whole organism awareness it cultivates, has been my gate. Yet I feel very clearly that after over 12 years of practice, I am only recently even taking my first steps through it.
1 comment:
A friend of one of the new students came to visit our class last week and hopes to join the class next week. After a great session, where we investigated the principles, particularly central equilibrium, and all did good work together, she told her friend on the way home that it seemed like my life had been saved by T'ai Chi... I think she was right. My life would probably still be ruled by fears and thoughts (these were mainly the same thing) and keeping what I disliked at bay via ingenious means, had I not encountered good T'ai Chi teaching.
Inner conflicts, as real as any outer ones, can be addressed whenever we push hands, or even stand in a class room full of such diverse people as I did tonight. It usually only feels blissful and calm when we are avoiding everything of importance. I have found that a quiet mind and a relaxed body (very useful) are not found by vagueing out, or conversely by trying to 'get it' with the thinking mind, both of which I have indulged in enough to be able to speak from experience. I haven't blogged much about how I have been feeling about T'ai Chi this year, as I feel too much can be said, and it can sometimes seem prescriptive rather than instructive; after all, people's authentic experience varies so widely.
However, I found tonight's class moving and surprising on many levels and for several reasons. I feel engaged in the middle of a real challenge that seems like it has a lot to do with having worked wholeheartedly on central equilibrium this year. When the fraff (South Londonese for stuff & gubbins) settles down, and there is at least some sense of 'central earth', it seems the really primal, vital stuff (fears, inner battles, you name it) can surface and actually be faced. This is not usually pleasant; it's still 'drain cleaning', as Mark so brilliantly puts it. It's also unsettling at first, which can make some students run for the hills, or at least to the nearest peddler of certainties. However, you can always share things with a good T'ai Chi colleague, or your teacher, and be reminded that despite the bad smell, it's all still part of the natural process. What the good teachers I have met have had in common, despite any other differences, is that what they are teaching and practising is about transformation. (This is even an 'orthodox' view in terms of the T'ai Chi Classics: see 'transforming energy'). If what we are cultivating is about staying the same then I would venture that it is not a good use of our limited and precious human lives.
24/07/08
Training in two-person hand practice, including stepping, drills, etc, as well as learning and practising the martial applications of postures within our art is the way to avoid it becoming an 'armchair art' as the Yang Family 40 chapters so brilliantly put it. They also state that practising the fighting art, with no understanding of the underlying principles cultivates only 'physical ferocity' and leads inevitably to bad ends. It is not so important how superb a martial artist you finally become, especially now duals are, outside gang culture, thankfully passé. We all have different bodies, minds and abilities, though not half as set as many would have us believe. Good training tempers the student, positively affecting us on so many levels. Consequently, there is no contradiction between wholeheartedly practising a martial art such as archery, Bagua, T'ai chi, Aikido, etc and one's intention to investigate being human (which some people might do via some kind of spiritual practice, religion, philosophical investigation, etc). People who wish to live peacefully with their fellow creatures will not suddenly become warlike by studying martial arts; in fact they may well see how attempts to avoid conflict at all costs leads to a total lack of freedom and myriad ways of subtly controlling things and people around them.
There is also no contradiction between studying such martial arts (or for instance, calligraphy, poetry, music, art, science or any other endeavour) and not gaining any insight into the human predicament. One only needs to look at the personal lives of many luminaries in their fields to see that mental and physical attainments often do not help integrate and temper a fractured or controlling individual. T'ai Chi itself will not make you a better person, (whatever a 'better person' would be). However, in approaching the totality of one's life, which includes our T'ai Chi practice, with openness, humour (yes!), curiosity and unflinching honesty, then transformation cannot fail to take place. The exact nature of that transformation relates directly to one's effort, conditioning and intent. We could choose not to transform, and stay, for instance, self-pitying and full of justifications for perceived shortcomings. The choice is ours. Choosing to ally oneself with change is a leap in the dark. We should not expect praise or thanks. Lots of people and institutions have a vested interest in us staying just as we are, predictable, habitual, slightly anxious of any loss of comfort and therefore perfect consumers, dazzled by illusory choices.
My personal view is, however, that while I feel that I have a choice at all, I am neither free nor really alive. This intuition has nothing whatever to do with any faith or belief system, any feeling of guilt or inadequacy, or any pseudo-spiritual interpretations layered on top of my T'ai Chi or other studies. Rather, it has been hard won (via years of over-thinking, controlling, dabbling and making excuses) by living all the effects of my schemes, cost-counting and damage limitation exercises. My grandmaster once wrote to me and said I was fortunate in the sense that I knew I didn't have a choice. He was totally right. I know what it's like to be at the mercy of my busy mind, calculating advantage and risk and desperately avoiding getting lost: in his words 'a lost soul'.
Yet somehow, by a process of allowing, letting go, something changed radically. I have no plan as to where this will lead and no map. I speak only for myself and reiterate that everyone's one life is their own event. I have waited weeks before posting this, and I am still ambivalent, as folks can project all kinds of stuff onto words on a blog. However, I've met great folks recently who wanted to engage with me on these areas, as they shared my concerns and priorities. So here we are: full circle back to the remark of the student at the top of this post. I guess my life was saved by T'ai Chi, in that I no longer deny that I am lost, along with all the other creatures, in a very strange process we refer to as life, on a 'small blue and rather insignificant' planet. T'ai Chi, or more accurately, the sunk, authentic whole organism awareness it cultivates, has been my gate. Yet I feel very clearly that after over 12 years of practice, I am only recently even taking my first steps through it.
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