Ecology

A sense of humour allows us to handle the contradictions and paradoxes of life. When students complain to my teacher that all his instructors do their Tai Chi very differently from each other he replies that a sense of humour is required to learn Tai Chi, as it is to teach it. Seeing many different interpretations allows the intelligent student to better locate the unchanging principles at the foundation of the original art. However, the principles only have power when put into use. When practised the principles make you change and grow (this is their function), and your relationship with the principles (as well as everything else) naturally changes; effectively the principles change. This is progress. So, for example, in the first lesson of Tai Chi we are told that the most important principle is that the turning of the waist directs all our movements. A teacher demonstrates this by allowing her own left, right, left, right turnings throw her relaxed arm into a rotating circle so that the students can grasp that the waist is indeed the motor that drives the loosely articulated limbs, and that by so doing the upper body (at least) can stay relaxed. This gives the student a simple place to start from. If he practices he will become more relaxed and develop more supportive legs. The teacher will then introduce the concept of turning the waist in both directions at once to generate power. Then the idea of a figure of eight in the waist to soften the mind and keep the turnings continuous. Then the wobbling waist to bring back a more lively approach to friction and power. Then the fractured or discontinuous waist to show how spirit lightly inserts into things. Then the frenzied waist to remove everything but spirit. And so forth. Being part of this learning process the student begins to realise that it is her relationship with the principle that is important, and like any relationship, it breathes, develops and grows. The principles are not absolute immutables but entities we have relationships with - "intimate unto the inanimate / tossed world". The concept of the unmoving mover is only useful at the beginning stage of anything - just to get you started. There is no such thing as a closed system anymore. Everything informs everything else. Everything touches, as my teacher beautifully puts it. "What does not change / is the will to change". Things are constantly slipping in and out of focus. The ecology of Tai Chi. In such a world the thinking mind is an impediment.