31 March 2006

Longevity

I suspect what keeps you young is what my teacher's father calls questing. Being so consumed with interest in what is happening now that you forget all about what happened before. A constant process of rebirth. Giving up what you know – investing in loss – realising that what is important is learning, not the knowledge you accumulate, and that true learning requires a tabula rasa – a blank page – the open face of the good student, full only with wonder and the grace to be present and ready. This is precisely what poor old Cheng Man-ching in the video below lacks. To me he looks bored and I feel sadness when I watch him. I suppose settling into being better than everyone around is a seductive trap to fall into, but like my teacher says, it's actually easy for anyone to find things they're useless at, as long as they're honest with themselves and they don't have a habit of avoidance – of brushing things they'd rather not face under the carpet. Cheng Man-ching was famous for two things: being a peerless boxer, and being a bad teacher. Every discipline on earth abounds with bad teachers – those that either don't know their stuff – haven't received correct teaching or haven't done it justice with their own work and intelligence – or are afraid to teach all they know in case the student overtakes and usurps them. The teacher must find students of good (impeccable) character with whom he can feel relaxed, open and stimulated, but above all free, otherwise the teaching process will not be taking him into unknown territory – into areas where all are learning, especially the teacher. True teaching happens when the intense togetherness of teacher and student thrusts both into realms where even the teacher feels vulnerable and vigilant – under attack, if you like, by a living aspect of the teaching that is struggling to wrench both into heightened awareness – into the new. Merely to survive such a situation the student must cling on to the energy of the teacher, and not worry about understanding or remembering. It is not the teacher who is teaching, it is the teaching that is teaching, and the teaching teaches both, or all, the difference being that the teacher can probably make immediate use of what has transpired whereas the student may have to wait decades before he truly comes to terms with it. This is, if you like, the natural process, and is what my teacher means when he says the natural way is the study of life by life's awareness. This is the process that keeps you young, at heart at least, and is the one that, if you become completely consumed by it, will continue after death. Over that death has no dominion.

6 comments

Anonymous said...

Great post - except the last ten words. Why should anyone concern themselves with what happens after death?

taiji heartwork said...

When you get older you'll understand.

It's not a matter of concerning yourself with what happens after death, it's a matter of fully entering a process of becoming for which death is an irrelevance.

Anonymous said...

“When you get older you’ll understand” - We’ll see (but thanks for the reassurance, anyway, Dad.. er, I mean Stephen :-)

"It's not a matter of concerning yourself with what happens after death, it's a matter of fully entering a process of becoming for which death is an irrelevance."


Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant by the rest of the post: being in the moment or “the now” is what’s important. It just seemed like you were alluding to some form of afterlife at the end.

Karen Puerta and Tim Walker said...

Maybe it's like these rock stars who reform after 30 years, to try and earn a further crust before they die - living on past glories but in reality being a shadow of how they used to be. I get the impressions that a lot of these masters came to the west for a (final) pay day. Many (or most) must have experienced real hard times and you cannot blame them for wanting to live out the rest of their lives without worrying about money. And with students from a different culture who were discovering something completely new they withheld stuff (whatever they said) because they (the students) didnt' seem capable or motivated in the right way.

taiji heartwork said...

Absolutely!

J. FĂ©lix said...

I´m so sure that you had meet Profesor Cheng Man Ching in person and not only in a video tape. It´s too easy for a good and open heart write down statements or judgment like some in the post.
And of course if i read some like this:
"It is not the teacher who is teaching, it is the teaching that is teaching, and the teaching teaches both, or all, the difference being that the teacher can probably make immediate use of what has transpired whereas the student may have to wait decades before he truly comes to terms with it"
after make a jugdment about to be a good or bad teacher for me you are saying that the teaching of the Greatness Of the Chi and the Greatness of The Tao and the Principles of taichi are all bad and wrong.

Thanks to be so "enlighten".
Felix. A student in the Profesor Cheng Man Ching lineage or so