Mind judges, heart accepts.

A moment's courage or a lifetime's regret. It's always been the choice.

The Taiji master is externally soft because inside he's as tough as nails. Only by being hard on himself is he able to be soft with others. Without this understanding the work won't to able to burrow into the realm of spirit.

Mind discerns, heart forgives.

Eventually the teacher's insistence becomes discouraging, disheartening, demoralising – the opposite of what's intended. Then it's time for a break and some good old honest soul-searching.

Mind interprets, heart engages.

An ever-present curiosity became my strongest-felt emotion, sometimes the mode I lived in.

For the scientist, anecdotal evidence constitutes a mere point of gossip, and has little value except as exception that proves the rule. However, for a teacher, anecdotes (stories) are invaluable since they contain both energy and spirit – they entertain, enhearten and inspire.

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

Make heartway rather than headway. We do this by repeating the same thing over and over. Off by heart.

When D T Suzuki, the Zen scholar who introduced Zen to the West, was asked why he did not teach zazen, he replied that Westerners are not yet ready for meditation. For him it was counter-productive teaching meditation to the stubbornly egoistic. They invariably turn it into another ego-trip, which is exactly what has happened with, for example, the modern mindfulness and New Age movements.

the intensity of a pig hunting truffles

Heart rather than mind. This is what it means to be religious. But easier said than done. Ask a Christian saint how to begin and they would first send you out into the world to care for the needy. Only much later would they point you toward scripture, prayer and contemplation.

at once down to earth and reaching toward heaven

When people express a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois life and ask my advice I always say the same thing: "Become religious." What I mean by this is very simple – establish and maintain an open channel with God. In other words, start to pray. And meditation is only prayer if the heart and mind are directed outward and upward to God. Eventually the mind can look within but only after it has learnt to talk to God instead of self. Otherwise meditation is just another self-centred, self-serving, self-satisfied pursuit.

The human mind is a remarkable and mysterious instrument but only when unshackled from ego. Otherwise it's tragically limited and abused.

And after about 300,000 years of anatomically modern H. sap, here we are again: monkeys, albeit monkeys with wifi.

Forget self, become one with the Dao, then announce it on Istagram.

Mind makes it general, heart keeps it particular.

just like a flickering light

The Daoist appears balanced and reasonable but that is not because she walks a blinkered middle-way but because she houses and equilibrates both extremes. The peasant's low earthiness and the aristocrat's high refinement. Never middle-class.

Ego leads us down the garden path.

Make of yourself a light. Rely upon it. Do not depend on anyone else.

Sense is not inherent, it is something we make and invest. The Other is an event of no sense – nonsense. It takes us by surprise and compels us to rely on spirit rather than experience.

When spirit is up, you're ready to die. Present day longevity says more for the death of spirit than the efficacy of modern medicine or good genetics.

There comes a point where we have so much invested in Empire, in accumulation, that it is well-nigh impossible to shed the load and start afresh, anew.

Those with great spirit are a law unto themselves.

It's not a matter of whether something is interesting but whether I have it in me to be interested. This is what we mean by compassion.

The mark of inexperience is saying too much.

My taiji life started with a mysterious imperative: Forget self and become one with the Dao. We start each day, each session reminding ourselves of this. The first instruction in that fateful first class was equally mysterious though maybe a little easier to approach: Mind in dantien. It is not the teacher's place to explain but to repeat, to insist. Interpretation is your business, to discover through practice and research.

When I first came to Israel and attended the taiji classes of Nitsan Michaeli, one of his oft-repeated phrases was bli koah – without force, without strength. I now work regularly with the elderly and a phrase I hear often from them is ein li koah – I have no strength. And this I take to be the main reason they do what they do so well – they don't have the strength to get it wrong.

How many times in the course of this week will I conclude that self-consciousness is brain damage?

The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.

My teacher, once uncharacteristically disheartened by the obvious impossibility of learning how to yield, asked his teacher: How do I learn? Is all Dr Chi would/could say was: Somehow. Ultimately it's down to destiny and karma rather than work and talent, though without the latter very little can happen.

In the heart of the moment. Because every moment, when fully engaged, has a heart.

A real teacher doesn't give you knowledge, he teaches you how to learn.

Is it possible that nothing contradicts faith like the idea of it?

If you don't have a practice then your company is bound to be burdensome to those that do.

A body of work, a corpus operis. Like an artist, only our body of work rests in our actual body, in our energy. Like a saint who starts off a simple sinner and through a life devoted to humility and helping others builds a reputation that is not only admired and remembered but which works miracles, which heals.

Anxiety and depression are the natural response to a freedom one is neither strong enough to endure nor wise enough to navigate.

In my day we went inside to discover ourselves, a process we intuitively knew would be both arduous and painful. Nowadays kids make external choices to invent themselves – a process summed up by fashion and in particular the tattoo.

A bell is a bodhisattva, it helps us to wake up.

the natural state of your life before any thoughts or ideas arise

It's not a matter of being mindful of the present moment – that's still one step removed – but of BEING the present moment – the centre of a creative universe.

A root is a natural antidepressant because it taps the rising energy of the Earth which pools in the heart and provides the courage to go on.

In the heat of the moment. Because every moment, when fully involved, is hot.

So relax your frontal lobe, calm your mind, and practice dwelling peacefully in the dharma that is working deep in your own life.

There is no perfect method, perfect form. Each contains failure as much as it contains success, even with the best will in the world. Form gets the ball rolling after which it is abandoned otherwise it inhibits the roll. Each practice session, at some point, takes you by surprise in the sense that the creative process – your own beautiful spirit's creation of time – becomes revealed.

see through the clouded pane the cloudless sky

Back to the grindstone. In that sense, at least, nothing changes.

Home is the present moment. Yet what is the present moment but the compassion, the activity, the ENERGY I bring to it? This is why WORK and LOVE, when done right, are the same thing.

Don't oversleep, don't overeat and don't overprepare.

"Isn’t Buddhism about healing pain and suffering?"

"Of course it is."

"Well, how does it happen? How does a Buddhist heal the pain of suffering?"

"He takes it."

Create ripples of kindness.

Without a master you're just beating about the bush.

One has to teach to find out what one knows. And in order to teach, really teach, one must find good students – students aching to work.

A measure of authenticity.

On a recent trip to China the people who impressed the most were not the masters, and certainly not the privileged Western students, but the cooks and cleaners in the hotel – the simple workers who served us everyday with a smile.

So whatever you find you are drawn to in following God’s will, do it and let your heart be at peace.

Pride: the self-consciousness that undermines simplicity.

When I was at university we had a ten week lecture course on Queuing Theory. At the beginning of the first lecture the teacher introduced himself, and then gave it to us straight: "During this course I'll be giving you ten hours of my time. To stand any chance of passing the end-of-year exam, you will have to give me at least a hundred of yours." Seemed reasonable to me.

safeguard the way of stillness

The grip of earth on outspread feet

The things we learn early on and take for granted – breathing, eating, shitting, sitting, standing, walking, running, talking, etc – we tend to get quite wrong and then spend a life repeating mistakes, not realising that our mind – our mental attitude to the world – has been shaped by those mistakes and not by our soul at all.

And the work is play for mortal stakes

A life of glimmers and glimpses.

remember the day of your death

All our parts stem from and lead to dantien. Head, arms, fingers via the spine; legs and toes via the pelvis; testes, ovaries, eyes, heart, nipples, breath…

If you use drugs then use them wisely – as part of the work.

No structure of virtue can possibly be raised in our soul unless, first, the foundations of true humility are laid in our heart.

Don't look to those you love to help you change. They do their utmost to keep you as you are. It's the relative stranger, the one who has little knowledge or expectation of you, that gives you permission to be different, to transform.

What takes so long in this game is learning to bring the fight inside – internalize it – so that it's the ego we're fighting and not the world.

Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. Only one is necessary.

At the end of a class at the British Tai Chi Chuan Association, green tea was available – to encourage the students to linger and chat – and my teacher would usually come in and mingle. I remember one occasion when a relatively fresh beginner was telling my teacher about all the wonderful workshops he'd attended and all the amazing teachers he'd studied with. Master Kells listened as graciously as he could and then said: "None of that really concerns me. All that concerns me is Can you turn your waist? And let me tell you, you can't."

Blessed is the one who has arrived at infinite ignorance.

The present population explosion proves the law of diminishing returns.

At the root of ego is a fear of death. A fear that separates us from our own divinity, our destiny.

The further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend.

Ego prevents us hearing the Truth, from within as well as without. To reduce the ego we must humbly heed and yield to Great Teaching, and then work like crazy. Such work is liable to break us as well as our ego, kill us in fact. Only if we're very lucky will we be left with a few moments to really listen – plug in – to a level of reality that escapes ego. Ego allows us to survive the onslaught of the real, and mere survival satisfies most, but not us.

Taijiquan celebrates man's greatest achievement: standing up straight.

Prayer is the laying aside of thoughts.

The early Church and Desert Fathers were such deep, intelligent thinkers that there is no way they could have taken scripture literally. For them everything was allegory, including nature, events, life – stories and teachings about energy, spirit and the way to God.

My teacher once gave me a word of advice: "Never bother with students who have studied elsewhere. In all likelihood they won't be able to let go of their previous teaching sufficient to listen to you."

Faith  Hope  Love
Faith  Sincerity  Courage
Faith  Respect  Patience  Perseverance  Humility


Faith comes first. Always.

in colors ranging from earthy to vivid

For the Taoist, lightness comes from heaviness, softness from hardness, and relaxation from tension. We know all this. But also openness comes from closedness. Unless we first close around (enclose and possess) a core practice – focus in to the exclusion of all distraction – then openness simply leads to dispersal and dissipation.

it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear

Students often ask why it's so easy to practice with others yet so difficult to practice on their own. It's because otherness rouses spirit, and when the spirit is up then everything and anything seems easy. So the secret to practice – to becoming a good student – is to learn the knack of generating otherness on your own. This is what I call imagination.

Be aware that many of the energies – the effects/affects – of practice, we remain unaware of. This is why the Form is so important. We grind them out, one by one, faithful that something is happening – working – even if only God knows what.

Practice requires a ritual formality – a structure – about which, within which, the Internal can manifest.

After complaining to my teacher about some injury I'd picked up through practice, he looked at me witheringly and snarled: "The only thing in life you can rely on is pain, so get used to it!"

art for me is the science of freedom

The good student works not out of choice but out of necessity.

If you were suddenly faced with a life or death situation then you'd meet a stranger – your spirited being.

Everyone is an artist. 
—Joseph Beuys 

This doesn't mean that everyone can create good art it just means that it is the responsibility of each and everyone of us to locate something of beauty within ourselves and then share it with the world.

Most so-called spiritual disciplines (sic) I have encountered, especially the wishy-washy New Age varieties, have lacked one vital ingredient, namely spirit.

My refusing to eat meat occasioned inconveniency, and I have been frequently chided for my singularity. But my light repast allows for greater progress, for greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension.

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.

This was also my teacher's conviction. He was a strict vegan since the early eighties.

I was recently asked if I'm a Christian.
"Absolutely not!" I replied, "I hate Christ!"
And then I added,
"But I'm totally in love with Jesus!"
That fucked them.

And why am I in love with Jesus? Because every time I call that name he comes. Without fail. Ever since I first heard it. And he places his hand ever so gently on my back and whispers in my ear: "I love you!" And hearing that from him is amazing. It's like he's saying: "It's OK! It's OK to be YOU!"

Free not to do what we want but to do what needs to be done. A freedom structured by a deep sense of service rather than selfishness.

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.

Socrates was regarded, in his time, as the wisest man in Athens, yet he would always declare: "I know nothing and I have never been anyone's teacher." In other words, wisdom has nothing to do with what you know and everything to do with the process of unknowing – always questioning both knowledge and the values upon which such knowledge is based.

Meditation reveals that we are entitled to absolutely nothing. Even the next breath must be worked for.

We have all been set a Herculean task: become ourselves.

What is the nature of the reality that reveals itself when my ego withdraws? This is the question at the root of all spiritual endeavour.