ignorance – lack of awareness – is a form of resistance

the mind is like a wild horse and must be captured, broken and tethered to dantian so the spirit can shake free and come into its own

Western artists stand as humans looking at nature. Asian artists try to be in nature – they become one with nature rather than painting a portrait of it. That's a big shift.

the difficulty with taiji practice is allowing your present image of taiji to dissolve so that a more relaxed one can form

this is why it is important to contain a teaching in your heart – a feeling for perfection – what you felt all those years ago when your teacher showed you his taiji

psychotherapy tends to forget that the patient voices their fears and fantasies not to give them credence but to let them fall away

yielding: melting into the situation to transform it rather than fighting it

If your mind starts wandering it is because your bum has stuck out. If the bum is truly in then the mind will be quiet. The bum tends to stick out when we look down to compose ourselves. Composure (posture) must be vertical – an internal sense for directly up.

Faith is the root of Dao, respect is the stem of inherent potency.

to really progress at taiji it is essential to take it into daily life; for example, mind in dantian can and should become a permanent point of concentration

the mind will never quieten without an anchor – a place it is trained to return to

base like a mountain, legs crossed or folded
back straight but light, stomach empty
head drawn upward, eyes holding a relaxed gaze
tongue touching the roof of the mouth to connect the qi channels
hands resting comfortable in lap
breath flowing gently and in complete silence

temperance & moderation

hear the inaudible    perceive the subtle

wisdom and realization are the result of what you achieve in your own practice

dedicated daily practice seems to be the exclusive province of musicians and dancers – performers who have to get it right on the night

tame the mind

be observant – notice everything

For most of the twenty three years that I studied with my teacher I lived on the Lower Clapton Road in Hackney – a veritable hovel in a veritable hell (since gentrified of course). If ever I complained to my teacher about it he would quote the Dao De Jing: In dwelling, think it a good place to be, which, if you think about it, is a good retort to all complaint, as is one of his own phrases: All is energy and everything is in its rightful place.

take nothing for granted, never be over-positive, never obstinate, and never egoistic

meditation: slipping out of chronological time and into aionic time – into eternity

become an airhead

jìngzuò   靜坐   quiet sitting

the mind should supervise (observe from above) rather than superintend (become bossy)

overseeing garners insight

all pain and suffering arise from the ego and not from God

getting the bum in (verticalizing the sacrum) and quietening the mind amount to the same thing – attending to both ends of the spine at once

guānkōng   觀空   observation of emptiness

dāntián   丹田   elixir field

The problem with the mind is that it tends to set around its images/ideas making them far more important and permanent than they deserve to be. The mind, with its ideas from past experience, inhibits the unfolding of the true future, and thereby works against destiny. This is especially true of relaxation – one's experience of relaxation becomes a template or model forcing future experience to conform rather than develop.

Enjoy experiences whilst they happen, but don't set them in stone. Remember them fondly but don't try to reproduce them. Let them dissolve into the past so that new ones can eventualize. This is what is meant by confidence (faith) in practice.

the fall from childhood innocence to adult self-consciousness

develop confidence in practice

zìrán   自然   natural process

xīnzhāi   心齋   mind fasting

my whole life has been devoted to achieving peace of mind or, as someone said, peace from mind

The Dao is impersonal and simultaneously immanent and transcendent.

in a gift economy connexions are made
in a money-based economy connexions are avoided

zuòwàng   坐忘   sitting in oblivion

ego gets bored

spirit never gets bored because in its very nature it transforms whatever it encounters into something fascinating

The technological turn was a switch from spirit to ego as the controlling force in life. Since then we have become gradually more stupid, in the sense of less aware and less observant of the real, and less sensitive to energy.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

when spirit is centre then life has a life of its own, always confounding and surprising the ego, and exotic holidays (manufactured novel events) are unnecessary because everything is exciting all the time

the function of argument is not to win a battle – setting one opinion against another – but to change minds and hearts – metanoia

the bourgeois life style denies spirit and installs ego as instigator and controller of life

do not concern yourself with things of no importance

and the least important part of you is the contents of the mind

life isn't as serious as the mind makes it out to be

the internal is the stillness in movement, the silence behind words, the spirit in the body, the heart in the work – something mysterious and secret within the aura of things

without an internal there is no possibility of life

only when the mind is disciplined enough to remain silent at will are you ready to work on the upper (head) dantien

we teach what we need to learn

the main problem with seated meditation is stagnation

this is why taiji, in its spirited form, is a perfect companion

I have always marveled at how people appear to choose professions that offer them the optimal setting and opportunity to not only be of service to others but also to heal themselves personally.

how to relax through the leg at the same time that the leg tenses to support

an opinion is an expression of self-importance

the work celebrates spirit

when i started to teach taiji (far too early i may add) my teacher gave me his blessing but also a warning: if you teach taiji but don't practice at least three hours a day then you are a charlatan

expand the emotional experience to as much of the body as possible

the work is repetitive yet each repetition is different – that's its beauty

the last thing the world needs is another opinion

the best thing about Nietzsche is his rejection of the academy and its inevitable corruption

plus of course the fact that he went all the way

A living teaching is like a timid wild animal that you must befriend. Your practice is food, tempting it out of the shadows. This can take a long time, depending largely upon how trustworthy you are – how loyal and sincere is your practice. Eventually the animal comes and feeds on your work. Now you must be careful that you don't tame and domesticate it – turn it into an image of your pathetic self – but allow it to take you back into the wild where it can teach you about spirit.

After years of work the animal will no longer need coaxing; it will come knocking when you forget to practice.

Rather than trying to be reasonable, the experimental metaphysician must try to be faithful.

let beauty be your teacher

and remember beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

deep chronic tension will only release when your character improves

old age strips you bare and shows the world what you're really made of – what you've been hiding

deep-rooted tension proves that what you are presenting the world is not authentic but a fabrication of your own making – a self-image

relaxation can only occur if you are prepared to let that image go – stop lying

If you are out of balance, take inspiration from manifestations of your true nature.

rooting is not only connecting with the earth but purifying the heart so the teaching can take root there

staying true to truth

ego is the ultimate petty tyrant

meditation: breaking out of the prison of self and joining with the open

this is also prayer

bear in mind that what people really need to be saved from is their ignorance and forgetfulness of the Being that is their source and destination

the heart aches to love – to open out into the infinite

spirit is the stuff of miracles

the bourgeoisie are nothing if not snobbish – perverted values

A selfish mind puts itself first. Taiji recommends the opposite – an unselfish mind that puts the Other first. But to survive the Other's selfishness we must be able to yield – redirect selfishness back into itself. And this means yielding not only to other selfishness but to our own as well. Ultimately we yield to our own ego.

the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet

daoist work aims to cleanse and distil pure spirit

it is alchemical

live a life that puts spirit first

the question my teacher famously asked yeung shou-chung: how should i practice spirit?

this is the big conundrum

Relax the body, quieten the mind and let spirit appear. It rises and possesses like a foreign entity and we become a creature we don't recognise. But this is only because we are unfamiliar with spirit. Really ego is the foreign entity. To see it so we must change our prejudiced mind.

stop lying: never go against your love

Taiji teaches a gentle, passive, yielding relaxation. Forget self and put the Other first. This is the beginning of every practice session: achieving a foundation of total relaxation. But this is only the first stage. Then the spirit must rise – supremely active – and take control of the self and the situation with consummate ease and aplomb.

a low centre of gravity, like a rolypoly doll

an unknowing silence

the always unquiet mind becomes our anchor

we only achieve peace and quiet when we find an alternative as strong and trustworthy as it

a physical root with the earth is only part of the story, we also need something infinite (ephemeral) to love and worship

live an infinitely simple life

most of the things we worry about don't really matter
we learn this time and time again and yet still we worry

worry is the consequence of a lack of faith

suddenly appear
suddenly disappear

when the mind is noisy and distracted we become ugly

there is a sense with energies that they never really stop flowing, they disappear – recede into the background

i am always sinking, always rising, always turning both left and right, and when these are in equilibrium i am still

if i wish to physically sink or rise or turn left or right i simply foreground the appropriate energies

individuals are individuated by the events that befall them

short term solutions create long term problems
long term solutions create short term problems

active, gerundive, and processual

what is more real, how you appear to others or how you feel yourself?

if you desire to go deep into/with the work then you cannot afford to live a normal life

the world and the work are incommensurable

Nameless desire, new epic longing for home,
Hurts my heart to think it, embers every bone.

the world is in the head
the work is in the belly

practice transforms forceful effort into energetic effortlessness – force into energy

practice produces softness

we foolishly assume that worry proves meaningful concern

I sin when I despise the resistance of other objects and when I refuse my availability to other objects.

the teacher corrupts our morals – forces us to question both values and conditioning

meditation: negativity falls away to reveal, yet again, love of god

spirit only appears if it has to

bourgeois comforts are designed to prevent spirit

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

does anything precede the event?
an ominous and oblivious peace

spirit is of the event
reason is after the event

in taijiquan no mention is made of quietening the mind, instead the instruction is mind in dantien

A great teacher will do two things for you: give you a living teaching, and awaken your spirit. A living teaching, when practised obsessively, seems to take on a life of its own, leading a merry dance along a seemingly tortuous path, which, when viewed in retrospect, is seen to be relatively direct. Awakening your spirit is very much a collaborative effort – the teacher piques your fascination to such a degree that your attention can go nowhere else and you begin to realise that the work is all there is. You are totally immersed in a reality entirely outside the bourgeois bubble. You have broken free into a world of danger and intensity and you need all the help you can get. Spirit to the rescue.

I hate judgments that only crush and don’t transform

for mind in dantien to be natural the belly must always (with)draw into itself

dantien is toned and strengthened by turning the waist

don't resist – go with the flow – yield

a master of the dao has subdued their ego sufficient for the dao to operate through them

We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

students demonstrate love for the internal in the reverent respect they show teacher and teaching

front brain a computer
back brain an ocean

thrive on difficulty

most of what passes for knowledge is in fact opinion – selected (biased) information

It could be, after all, that God is not dead but hiding from us out of fear.

when spirit is up we are different creatures: more together, more capable, more connected, more interested and far more interesting

interested rather than opinionated

in our game nothing less than absolute respect will do

anything less will damage the connexion

if you find it distasteful to put the other first then put the connexion first instead

a yearning that generates a call

here the word 'bourgeoisie' means the comfortable class – the class that doesn't believe in spirit

up the ante

spirit to the rescue

the big breakthrough comes when the student wakes up to spirit after which nothing else will suffice

drain the swamp of self-satisfaction

discipline is the only reliable way to work with/on spirit

abandon the world of opinion

always mindful of the medium, the milieu, the contiguous space around things

a comfortable environment is one in which i can be mindless to anything other than self without danger to my being

we must dig and delve unceasingly

devotion to daily practice shows the teacher, the dao and yourself that it's not all about you

continuity & contiguity

let it possess you; let it heal you

my kingdom for a more embodied body brings home the extent and magnitude of the sacrifice that must be made to achieve a more embodied body – kingdom, empire, anything of any permanence that i have worked to produce and save

a faith that is not a belief but a work undertaken in the dimension of grace

the infinite smoothness of the continuum

we are all refugees

BEING = TIME = SUFFERING

We all intuit this, which is why we invest so much time and effort into substituting suffering with pleasure in the above equation. But then we ignore the value of suffering: it makes us grow up, or rather, become humble and grow down. If nothing is suffered then we become insufferable.

meditation: contemplating infinity, joining infinity, becoming infinity

Our path toward truth coincides with the truth itself.

anything you fear (to lose) is a burden that holds you back

it is important to take this on advice otherwise by the time you realise it for yourself it will be too late

exclude all haste

in practice, keep going until you get somewhere you've never been before

a good practice session wrenches you into an openness – a higher dimension – from where you see the self like never before

afterwards the ego will really fight back and fill the mind with resentment and anxiety

this is why we appraise a practise session not by how good we feel afterwards but how wretched

truth shows itself in the guise of error

compassion is an expansion of awareness, orthogonal to the trend, into higher dimensions, collecting lost souls

we only relax deeply when we intuit and feel the infinite aspect of mind

the mind clings to language because it is terrified of the void of silence

the enlightened master lives at death's door – at the charged interface between life and death

they manage to stretch out that moment for the rest of their days

the triple-wound of a humble heart, kind compassion, and an all-consuming longing for God

"good reasons without ultimate ground"

it's not the power of your argument (intelligence) that matters but the ground beneath your principles (root)

overwhelmed by the infinite richness all around, we think our world into a manageable finitude – how paltry

transition from chance to destiny

we have to be forced to face the truth

given a choice we will always chicken out – either turn away or interpose self as mediator (reduce truth to understanding)

a work of truth … is the spark produced by the localized friction between different infinities

when we remember self we forget everything else – we become mindless

self is not of the natural world, it is not part of the great web of connectedness that constitutes reality

self is a separateness, a disconnexion, and it insinuates itself between things, breaking or qualifying connexions – subverting all truth

the only time we really notice our own body is when it breaks down

eventually the self-pity kills you

ego doesn't belong anywhere

it is not of this world

Those who have nothing have only their discipline.

the health of the biosphere depends upon humans getting out of egology and into ecology

ego is the ruination of everything

the deep relief that attends inner silence cannot be achieved any other way

don't be so high & mighty

smile yourself down to earth

not-being-in-the-no

what on earth
have we done?

the dire present