The work never ends, it just, over time, becomes total – all you do because all there is.

There is nothing quite so cleansing as work.

Apparently, when Kyabje Trjang Rinpoche, who at the time was tutor to the Dalai Lama, was asked by a rather green Westerner if the work stops upon attaining Enlightenment, just laughed and laughed and laughed. It was obviously the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

spring back to that magnetic ore body of silence

Prayers of adoration are far better than those of petition. Adoration is pure activity – activity in stillness. Petition is asking, expecting, which always implies a lack of faith, for whatever reason.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

We discipline the mind – put it in its place – by exercising the heart.

If we are not happy then it is because we are expecting someone or something else to make us happy. Such expectations go all the way back to early childhood, which is another way of saying that they take a long time to fix. In the meantime this mantra of my teacher's helps: Low expectations, high self-worth.

Stand on your own two feet. But one at a time.

The efficacy of meditation (in fact, of all work) depends upon the mind’s ability to stay on the job. This is our discipline, not just doing what needs to be done (the work) but doing it well, as well as can be.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all. 

Learn this lesson, and work – its prospect, doing and completion – will make you happy. Fail to learn it, and work, when you have to, for whatever reason, will make you resentful. 

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all.

We live enamoured of self and estranged from spirit.

When a student insists they are trying their best then I immediately know they are not. Our best is an unknown quantity, and when encountered leaves us speechless and humbled. Like the artist standing back to behold his newly painted canvas, sure that it wasn't he that painted it. For us, each practice session should take us somewhere unimaginable yet essential, somewhere we couldn't have reached by any other means.

Work is what needs to be done to decode a teaching – to transform information into wisdom.

The power of commitment, discipline and integrity.

the imperative to tell the truth about oneself

Destiny is a spirit in flight – a shooting star. Bright but short. Rare, now we've traded our souls for safety, comfort and longevity.

Spirit is a sense of freedom.

Every athlete knows that for each great training session there is a backlash, usually a day or two of deep physical soreness and mental fatigue, which sets in a day or two after the session. The spirit has overstretched body and mind, damaging both, necessitating a few days recovery, after which both will be all the stronger for it. This is the rationale behind any serious practice, and all good students learn to recognise the difference between genuine training fatigue and the inevitable reluctance to train. And it is exactly the same with spiritual work: fall deeply into meditation or prayer and you'll emerge feeling transported and transformed, but expect to pay a price when that feeling wears off.

We get more done by not doing what someone else is doing.

Reduce the footprint, ecological and otherwise. Step lightly, touch lightly, live lightly.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Work coaxes spirit to reveal secrets.

A church is a building designed to relax the mind, lift the spirit and cleanse the soul by encouraging confession. During meditation, the body behaves as your very own private church.

Genuine originality requires integrity: the congruence of one’s actions with one’s principles, deliberately followed.

begin to erase yourself

Self/ego is a buffer, a filter or lens through which the world is experienced. By the time I perceive it, the world has already been coloured and tainted by my mood and my conditioning. Without the lens of self, everything, even the slightest thing, would be too much, and I would be overwhelmed and blasted to kingdom come. It is a long and arduous task, acquiring the strength, the deep sanity, to cope with reality as it is.

Life, at its fullest and richest, is wonderfully ordinary. This is what's so difficult to accept. Meditation is coming to this conclusion by oneself and for oneself – despite oneself. We invariably mess things up by introducing self.

Bliss is peace and quiet, and the care and attention that quiet engenders.

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

a manifestation of some vital force coming out of the dark

Work is the opening, clarifying and resolving of resentments. A person who has done their work we call good. Most of us give the impression of goodness by living a life within which our resentments remain suppressed beneath a veneer of comfort, respectability, busy-ness or sheer exhaustion. This is not good because as we get old and our energy wanes, they resurface with a vengeance, and make our final years hell.

The work is not in getting it done but in enjoying it.

The principle of single-weightedness, once you're past thinking it's about weight in one leg, reveals itself to be surprisingly rich and rewarding. For me, at this present stage in my development, it is about two things. The first is navigating the gulf between sacrum and leg, a feat which requires a sense of humour. The second is releasing the coccyx down the leg and into the Earth, a feat which requires a sense of mischief.

when I get up in the morning my attention is fixed on the work I have to do

A single-weighted stance has an inevitable wobble which I must learn to relish.

As a rule of thumb, if a student hasn't started daily practice within six months of starting Taiji then they never will.

For the beginner the most important principle is sink and relax. For the intermediate student it is turn the waist, and for the advanced student, single-weightedness (lightness).

the awkwardness I feel when faced with the infinite multitude of coexisting objects in any single object

Meditation is the experience of time.

I work, guided by an inner reptile.

Worry and anxiety bring the world down. An ugly contribution, a pollution that serves only to reduce life.

If you wish to sparkle then live on raw food.

Time heals, time grows. Time corrupts, time decays. The difference is life force – élan vital.

The secret is to fall in love with the work.

There is a haunting phrase of Ramana Maharshi: Scorch the ego by ignoring it. A radical prospect indeed. So how to ignore oneself? I must find something else, something other than myself, far more interesting. And this is what we call work. Not spirit, not energy, not God nor scripture, but good old honest work – a supremely active doing and making – a creative and creating attitude to the birthing present moment.

Discipline produces freedom.

Imagine an artist making the first marks on the canvas. A veritable miracle. Something from nothing. Pure creation. This is what we call work – a supremely active and creative engagement with the present moment.

Rather than reality being something that happens to me and which I register through feelings and thoughts, reality is what I create each moment when I forget to think or feel.

transform the feeling of knowing into reverent astonishment

Work is love and love is work.

Keep secrets.

Anyone who has struggled to change knows from experience that the strongest gravitational force is not that of the Earth but that exerted by the old self. The old you will always make it as difficult as possible for any change, so you'll need to be patient, forever optimistic, and prepared for setbacks.

Never a dull moment because never an idle moment.

Meditation is time to dance with spirit rather than think to oneself.

Work is, for us, neither toil nor labour. Work is, once you accept it and rejoice in it, a specific engagement with time: a working engagement, a play with energy, a dance of spirit. It is our radical alternative to self-obsession.

the practicality of the impossible

Quietening the mind reveals a space profuse with spirit.

The internal dialogue wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a litany of self-obsessed moaning.

work, hard work, and no end to it

Willingness to work is the measure of hope.

Taijiquan is a soft martial art developed in China a few hundred years ago. Taiji, on the other hand, is what my teacher called a practical philosophy – a distillation of the principles of taijiquan into a tool with which to live a warrior life. A warrior life differs from any other in that it starts with spirit and, by living with intensity and discipline, aims to free that spirit and make it gleam.

Be with the movement, the change, the breath. Where the now burns into the future. Otherwise one slips into the past.

Taking responsibility, for actions, circumstance and happiness.

one thing at a time

A humility that comes from keeping the company of gods. Awestruck.

Look for testing situations that require you to operate at your very best – a best which surprises you. Without this, there is no progress, no movement.

That’s the flaw with words. They always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we always end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment.

Most of what passes for perception and awareness in our lives is guesswork, assumption and wishful thinking.

Intelligence is the ability to enjoy doing the things you don't want to do – the ability to change your mind.

Heart, in our sense, has absolutely nothing in common with that blousy show-off sentimentality that passes for heart in New Age circles.

Do you have the heart to do the work?

I remember once bemoaning to my teacher the difficulty of his work, his way. I explained that at school and university I was always the best because I was clever and that with work everything became clear but with Taiji the more I worked the muddier it became. He looked at me and said, "Well aren't you lucky to finally find something you're bad at." Then, taking pity on my helplessness, he added, "You must stop using this," tapping me on the head, "And start using this," prodding me firmly in the chest. And it is really that simple: a switch from head to heart.

The teacher adjusts the inevitable yaw of practice.

Our rational consciousness is just the tip of our iceberg. We long for the remainder of ourselves.

Nothing is real, but everything matters.

If you're going to baulk at the slightest sign of discomfort then you'll get nowhere. Use that discomfort to fire the spirit.

Humility is about learning to accept that I am a tiny fish in a vast ocean and not a big fish in a small pond. Spirit is released by such humility, ego is reduced.

Meditation: the most efficient means, next to prayer, for systematically touching the divine.

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

The essence of Taiji is not in the Form but in the partner work, what we call Pushing Hands – our willingness to engage the world, as represented by another human being, physically and energetically rather than mentally, conversationally. This then informs and regulates personal practice, otherwise we risk becoming irrelevant.

The good student cannot forget. The poor student cannot remember. The mediocre student needs and begs to be constantly reminded.

unique and therefore ineffable

Free from judgment and desire, the heart finds peace.

The only thing holding me back is myself. Laziness and fear. The cornerstones of ego. And remember, the worst form of laziness is working very hard at something that appears similar but inside is the opposite.

settle your dust

First thought best thought, maybe, but second wind best wind, definitely!

Those practice sessions that start, for whatever reason, unpromisingly, often turn out, by the end, into something unimaginably marvellous. And just think, if you hadn't persisted, you'd never have got there.

Meditation is homage paid to a meaning we’ll never fathom.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

I want to be a tuneswept fiddle string that feels the master melody, and snaps.

There is nothing more onerous than a teacher telling you the truth. This is why it's best to seek their company infrequently. I would say, assuming you are working like a Trojan, it takes six months to internalize a lesson, so biannually seems about right.

Happiness is an angel with a serious face.

When I meet someone who tells me they're looking for a teacher, I think to myself: No you're not. You're looking for someone to tell you what you want to hear: that you're wonderful, that you're nearly there, that you just need to become a little more self-satisfied and you'll be perfect, and then I smile and say, "Very good, I hope you find one."

With one eye you are looking at the outside world, while with the other you are looking within yourself.

Now is the time the work becomes total. No let up, no respite.

Generations of resentment to slough before we begin.

Having once done a tap of work in the distant past doesn't excuse present laziness.

Forget self by remembering the principles of Taiji.

Your power lies in how well you can let go of yesterday and embrace today.

One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.

Leave your thoughts and sit (or stand) in adoration. You know it's working when the heart lifts of its own.

Dutybound.

What matters is to be present and to extend that presence through time by listening. It matters little what you hear.

The only intelligence worth having is the one that slowly, or quickly, comes to the conclusion that ego is not me, not even close, that it is, in fact, an unwelcome guest, and that it's high time I did something about it.

We must see the beauty of quietness.

When the master smiles, pats you on the back and says, Well done! that's when you should worry because it means they can't do anything for you – you're beyond the pale.

The work starts when you wake up to the fact that it is a lifelong commitment and not just a passing fancy. Until then every effort you make is simply getting ready to begin.

The problem with modern bourgeois life is not that it is difficult but that it is far too easy, and so things get done carelessly and without full attention, without awareness. We never get to practice spirit.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

When I gaze at an object intently then I create a line of sight and my eyes touch the object. If I am well practised and embody Central Equilibrium then that movement out from the eyes to the object is always accompanied by an equivalent movement inward from my eyes to my burning centre, my Self, my source of spirit. This is how we find ourselves in Taiji, not by looking in but by looking out with such ferocity that we are forced back to our source of power.

The work is sexual energy sublimated, rechanneled.

The body moves forward because I push back; turns left because I twist right. This is Central Equilibrium – the still point that enables the dance – the Taoist foundation of Taiji.

First relax, then tense.

The good student has a passion, a drive, for study, and they are more than willing to suffer for that passion. In fact, what the average student would call suffering the good student calls fulfilment.

Why do we work? Why do this shit? To learn to let our energy out. To share of heart and soul. To love. To make life mean something.

A good stretch – k’nak a few vertebrae – and you're ready to go – ready to flow.

If it's not working then try investing a little more spirit, more feeling, more meaning, more enthusiasm, and, most importantly, allow yourself to fill with delight. It must come from inside, from you, not from without.

It's the freedom in the lower spine, especially sacrum and coccyx, that allows the heart to lift of its own. This is a secret because not obvious.

Thinking is far too demeaning and vulgar an activity for the noble mind which should rightly simply reach to God.