Mar 17, 2012
Yin and yang spring from the Void. Taiji from wuji. Two from Nothing. One is nowhere to be found, except in our heads. Any attempt to conceive God as One and Eternal is simply creating an image of our own Ego.
When you touch something, you are that thing,and you are not that thing. That is the whole tragedy of the loving caress.
Mar 13, 2012
truths are woven from extreme consequences
a mode of communication that exceeds language
A heart so large the chest barely contains it.
This is an absolute law: obligation and reciprocity are insurmountable.
Arms issue from the heart, and return to the heart.
Cast away illusions, prepare for struggle.
Mar 5, 2012
Each individual life unfolds on two levels, in two dimensions – history and destiny – which coincide only exceptionally.
When the mind repeats something it will struggle to better conform, whereas when the body repeats something it will, if empassioned with a little spirit, find a new way of doing it.
Presence is not enough. I must be present for the Other. Which means I must first forget self, because self is always false – THE big lie – and always splits me off from that which it is not – from Otherness.
When the student of taiji gets serious and settles into a daily practice regime, life takes on a new dimension. Taiji, when done seriously (regularly, selflessly, with life-long commitment), opens up a relationship with the Tao, and the student enters a new world of energy, spirit and destiny. All other relationships draw one into the world with all its things, thoughts, feelings, events, successes, failures. The Tao has nothing to do with this; it is pure mystery, and anything that exists, whilst on one level being an expression of the Tao, is far more an expression of separation from or resistance to the Tao – its very existence means that it is no longer party to the mystery. The problem for the serious student is to somehow live a life constantly juggling the world and the Tao. We cannot live without the world – we must nourish and be nourished – but equally we cannot live a true life without the Tao. There will always be conflict, not least because, in our wisdom, we have built the world largely to deny the Tao.
The mind struggles to perceive itself as a unity in order to make sense of the world. The ego is one.
In taiji we wrest ourselves out of the mind and back into the body. When I am in and of my physical body I reside in my dantien – belly and lower back – and every action I make starts there. When in my mind I live in my head, and this will always inhibit and upset the working of the body – like putting a stopper or cork in a bottle – whatever's inside can only circulate within and so nothing comes out, except in dribs and drabs.
Mar 4, 2012
Giving must be sacrificial – for the sake of giving – for the inevitable return to be singularly above and beyond any possible imagining.
Destiny comes to us from the other. Each is the destiny of the other. There is no individual destiny.