this orgy of false being

Beware middle-age spread.

Words from the mouth reach the ear
Words from the heart reach the heart

The student is becoming serious – starting the slow transition from mediocre to good – when they find that they're giving up things in their life to free up more time and energy for better Taiji.

The bourgeois economy can be reduced to one word: profit. To take more than is given, and to barricade oneself behind these takings. Spiritual economy is the reverse of this: to give rather than take. Not because that makes you a nice guy, but to disrupt the wealth and health of ego in the belief that this creates the best conditions for an encounter with spirit – an event of spirit.

My teacher once told me that whenever he feels lost or stuck in his own practice, he always returns to the principles of softness and roundness.

"If every man had exactly what he wanted, he would be no better than he is now."

"It is so important not to be there when the bomb drops." This was a favourite phrase of my teacher's, which he used to illustrate yielding – the knack of sussing out and dealing with situations before they happen by having your spirit out there.

"Pride (hubris) needs putting out even more than a house on fire."

Build a wilderness chapel.

Use words to express wonder rather than surety. Become a poet.

A quest for the sublime.

Does God exist? ask the faithless.
Do I exist? ask the faithful.

Since the Renaissance we have struggled to delineate an ordered and benign world that does not require faith to navigate. A bland spiritless humanism.

"The stuff of spirit is a smoke-like substance of finest particles that gives rise to all other things; its particles are of less mass than any other substance and it is constantly in motion: only movement can know movement."

Faith is natural. It all hinges on this.

Strength of heart comes from soundness of faith.