The mistake is to confuse what is inner with what is outer.

 

the best wine comes from the most inhospitable soil

Suspicion as regulating principle. When it's going well I suspect I'm coasting, and when not I suspect I'm making heavy weather of it.

as steady as a great tree 

branching into delicate life

Spring into action.

If you find yourself presented with a choice then you haven't chosen soon enough. You haven't decided.

 

The religious person is an exception in every religion.

The reality we choose is far less real than the one thrust upon us. And as such is an inauthentic distraction.

as light as the spoor of an animal in snow

Awak(en)ing to a gerundial reality: sinking, dwelling, being, becoming. Admitting time at every level. Mind(ing) continuous.

Paradoxically, this essential emptiness, with its sense of non-being, provides the space which contains one’s sense of being.

What makes the work advanced is not technique but the quality of the mind we bring to it.

I've yet to come across a music that improves on silence.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Instruction in Taiji is provisional. Not so much made to be broken as made to be interpreted and reinterpreted.

Indigenous people bear the deepest insights into human nature and have the best actual way to live as well.

Each movement, each step forward, lends a new vantage from which everything appears wonderfully strange, if only you inhibit the projecting mind.

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.

Cherish surprise.

Suffer a sea change. This is sinking. Allowing gravity to endlessly stream through the standing body, washing it clean of self obsession. A lifetime experiment in transformation.

When I read these words I see not truth but pride.

Traditionally a Taiji class provides correction of what's already been learned, a little new material, and an opportunity to work together with comrades: side by side and hands-on.

Hovering at that tender threshold where what comes in passes what goes out.

It's all about creation and surprise.

First we must leave home, the false home (family, conditioning, education). Then and only then we start the search for the true home. It's impossible to make authentic strides forward whilst clinging to the past.

the glue of habit

like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting

The teacher's job is to introduce you to the real thing. Your job is to fall in love with it, become obsessed with it so that you can no longer forget it, not even for a second.

it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self

Be patient and let the weight of your stillness pressure the moment to erupt into energy.

weaned from the things of this world

 

Mediocrity fears, and so belittles, excellence. This is envy – the herd instinct.

Read what's written between the lines.

disguised as fiction the truth occasionally slipped through

It's not really a matter of thinking for yourself but of completely rethinking what it means to think – re-imagining what constitutes thought.

it is not a technique but a surrendering

 

looking with curiosity, intuition, discipline, and patience

The real anchors the imaginary. The inanimate anchors the animate. What matters is the quality of the imagination, the richness of the energetic life.

look at the same things again and again until they themselves begin to speak

There is always a higher level, where all the rules change.

La réponse est le malheur de la question.

the monstrous aporia of temporality

Spirit is magnificent but soul is beautiful.

an unconscious consciousness

Picking and choosing is so much part of our culture and so much part of our nature that we don't even realise we're doing it. My teacher's teacher used to say that because of this Taiji in the West is only 2% of what they had in China in his youth (1930's). I suspect the same is true of Yoga and Zen and other Eastern arts.

The only true thought is one that has never found an individual to ‘contain’ it.

 

A yielding mind is always turning: side to side, in on itself, out of itself. Turn is change.

willing to suffer the truth

a relentless, hounding quest for truth

Intimating the ineffable. This is real communication.

a benevolent scepticism

 

seek knowledge in order to serve – that is love

Fear breeds fear; love breeds love. That's all the instruction we need. The rest is up to us. Put it into practice.

The good student spends a lifetime rooting out their stupidity. They don't look for beauty – how be so impartial? – they look for faults and endeavour to correct them.

thoughts without a thinker

Practice is the exercise and cultivation of faith and discipline. Without such virtues it is impossible to effectively surrender to work, Dao or even self.

 

we inescapably need others to establish contact with our inner self or, better yet, to allow our inner self to become us

The three dantiens: belly, heart, head – are effectively muscles, and as such they must be exercised. First we learn to relax them, let go, the same way we would a muscle that was proving intractable: embrace it and enter it with a warm soft mind – smile into it – maybe place a reassuring hand upon it or, better still, get someone else to place a reassuring hand upon it. Let it expand out of constriction – out of misery – and into fullness – into joy. Then we just wait and watch with an attentive but non-interfering mind for natural activity to reveal itself within each centre. This is difficult and may take a long long time. It all depends upon both the quietness and acceptance of the mind, and of course, patience, but a vigilant patience, one that spins an unbroken thread of concentrated time rather than one that takes the opportunity to break off and have a sip of water or check the phone.

prelexical : before words

pretemporal : before time

Most of Western culture is testament and paean to the noisy mind – the unbridled self.

in the crucible of self-acknowledged suffering

 

Do everything religiously: with care, with attention and above all with love.

A real teaching is strong stuff. It threatens at every level. The only way to survive it is to either believe or mock.

I cannot repeat it. The time is past. We have to catch it later – downstream – in its transformation.

Understanding is a process, a journey. A mist repeatedly rising and descending, each time revealing a different picture. Eventually, as it becomes clear that the picture is your own shifting reflection filtered through a limited understanding and imagination, you accept the reality of the mist.

imprisoned in understanding

 

Every man carries a badge: some symbol of his allegiance.

Quieten the mind and concentrate, and spirit will appear, changing (charging) everything.

The root of evil is envy.

Use spirit to hunt for spirit. It can be found anywhere. It just requires a willingness to look. And believe. This is awareness.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

 

The road to hell is easy to travel.

Solo practice is where we wrestle with the teaching – worry it to reveal its secrets. This will not happen in a class situation. The class provides material which then demands practice.

The eyes express what's inside as well as see what's outside, and it's this expression that connects with the world.

Without practice the student has nothing to give.

The end of a dissolute life is a desperate death.

 

Attentiveness is the heart's stillness, unbroken by any thought.

The teaching's confirmation is not the approbation of the good student but the mockery of the poor student.

Practice improves your energy which then allows understanding to deepen, adjusting your vocabulary. This is why we mistrust words – their meaning is always changing. They don't just mean different things to different folks, but they also mean different things from day to day.

Thinking for the biosphere means thinking against humanity.

We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender.

 

breakdowns & breakthroughs

The poor student smiles and nods at all the teacher utters, belying the fact that they're not listening. If they were listening then they'd be quaking in their boots.

Learning to do without.

The good student, on one level, resists the teaching. This is because, like all students, they have an ego, and they dread the work the teaching demands. But on another level they know that they have no choice, so, sooner or later, they cut the crap and get to it.

compel the fire to leave its refuge

 

the difference between the carefree manner of people living on land and the precision of anyone living at sea

Quieten the mind otherwise the plaintive cry of the heart will never be heard above its clamour.

If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.

Sinking is humiliation. Earth (gravity) ever bringing us down, bringing us low, reminding us where we'll end up. It is something we must be brave enough to allow and endure, not because we're devils for punishment but because we've been taught that it is the only way to access the subtle rising energy we call spirit. This is a refined form of fighting spirit, which makes our whole being tremble with rawness and tenderness, with real life and deep emotion. It is what enlightened masters embody and become.

sursum corda

I have no answers. I have only methods. There is no point telling a student something. Much better give them the means to find out for themselves.

There are changes detectable only by those willing to make the effort.

The spiritual journey is often likened to climbing a high mountain. Firstly you have to encounter the mountain – in tales, photographs, or just in the imagination. Then you have to decide that you want to scale it. Next you train hard in order to acquire the necessary skills. Then off you go. The journey starts easy as you meander through foothills to base camp. From there things start to get serious. The journey becomes difficult and treacherous. Soon you are vehemently cursing the day you decided on this foolhardy expedition that can only end in failure. Next comes the zombie stage. You are delirious with exhaustion and deprivation yet you go on as though in a trance because what else is there to do? Reaching the summit is no longer a target. You are now content with just getting one foot in front of the other. Eventually you get there and you realise it is just one summit in a vast range of summits. Is it the highest? Does it matter? Slowly you come down and rejoin your world, the same person externally but completely transformed internally.

Knowledge fills the empty space; the space that needs to fill with energy and spirit instead.

This modern knack for completely missing the point.

 

When you see an authentic spiritual teacher with a beatific demeanour, try to look beneath and feel the decades of battling, torturous, soul-searching work that has gone into that manifestation. You don't reach Enlightenment without suffering.

'Spirited' and 'spiritual' are active and passive manifestations of the energy-principle we call spirit. The yang and the yin. The taut dantien and the open heart. Can't have one without the other, not for any duration anyway.

A spiral of silence.

Practice is the time to face your demons. This is why the teacher sets difficult tasks – to ensure they make an appearance.

without memory, desire, understanding, expectation

 

If you practice daily then that practice will take you where you need to go. If you don't practice daily then the little you do will always be hit and miss.

Something to go on, that's all you need.

There's a phrase in English: to strike a balance. It expresses what every martial artist worth their salt knows: that balance is not measured or calculated but struck, and as such is a matter of spirit and not of mind.

Choose the choiceless life.

What's important is getting the balance right. Daoism in a nutshell.

 

not troubled by not knowing

Practice is only difficult when you allow yourself the indulgence of choice.

one must cast a beam of intense darkness so that something which has hitherto been obscured by the glare of illumination can glitter all the more in the darkness