heart: connexion compassion love care concern

The secret of life? Do everything with enthusiasm. And remember that enthusiasm literally means possessed by a god, a spirit.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

belly: composure patience contentment sangfroid detachment tolerance equanimity

if you must think then first step out the box

thinking to oneself comes at a terrible cost : it blinkers the mind and weighs on the heart

meditation attempts to relieve this burden

The student must struggle through years of external work before they can even contemplate commencing internal work. Think of Milarepa, repeatedly building then dismantling the stone temple for 12 years before he was ready to meditate.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

imagine a bunch of energy filaments exiting the mingmen
grab them and draw them around to your dantien
this is one version of our first warm-up exercise

plumb the depths

tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth allows the jaw to relax without drooling

Knowledge and opinion amount to the same thing: tension that prevents us from releasing into who we really are.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that everything in Chan (Zen) revolves around the patriarchal lineage.

spirit is a spark that wakes us from the slumber of self-absorption

feel your weight as a fullness that rises from the ground

the patience of a nature lover

It is not the teacher's job to please the student but to wake them up – draw them out of their complacent slumber. So the last thing the teacher wants are smiles and nods of agreement, but looks of shock and discomfort if not outright terror.

Nature is first a pageant to us, and then a process; until at last we perceive it to be, in Goethe’s words, the “garment of God” — and withal, the enveloping mantle of man.

the measure of softness is in the touch
the ease and grace with which we slip through the air

responding to touch

quiet & quick

Head is overactive because heart is underactive. (Worry is never an expression of love.) Heart, more than anything, trusts. Head hedges (its bets). Heart is the site of unconditionality. Head qualifies everything.

I am everything because I am only the stream of life, free of accident. I am immortal because all deaths converge in me, from that of the fish to that of Zeus; gathered in me they once again become life, not individual and particular but belonging to nature and thus free.

all the teacher wants is students keen enough to study (practice)

the ravenous ego

compassion roundens
aggression straightens

At school, back in the early seventies, we got a new science teacher. In his first lesson he gave us a little introduction, to himself and to the subject. I remember him stressing that scientists think they are investigating reality whereas in actual fact they are merely investigating models of reality, and never touch reality itself.

Hubris against the essential divine order of nature would be followed by its appropriate nemesis.

like a sun: held together by gravity (integrity, discipline, concentration) yet endlessly beaming life-giving energy

before images form
before words arise

without forgiveness we never let go

The fundamental tension we are trying to release is the self. A thick cloying shell enclosing a kernal of true enlightened self, maintained and reinforced by the constant chatter in the head.

Our method of release is to simultaneously relax & concentrate. Focus the conscious mind onto a point (lower dantien) and release outwards from that point. Centripetal / centrifugal.

The catastrophic event that gave rise to modernity is the loss of the soul of the world.

meditation: stripped to simple heartbeat, counted breath; overwhelmed by being

unstill as a flame

if it's not difficult to the point of impossible then it's probably not worth doing

INERTIA (Latin iners idle or sluggish): a natural resistance to change.
This is the world of matter, the world of things, the static stagnation that spirit exists to overcome.

removing a stone
to alter the melody
of a mountain burn
I listen
then place
it back again

meditation: still as a stone in situ yet full of resonance

suffer for your art

thinking to yourself amounts to thinking about yourself

Prayer addresses something outside the self. That is its power. It very simply opens a channel between the heart and the beyond.

Whereof one cannot speak
Thereof one must be silent

a listening bristling with spirit

burdened by ego

a good life is one spent in the service of spirit

I remember hearing an interview with Richard Hadlee on his retirement from cricket. The interviewer asked him why he was retiring and he replied: I'm tired of waking up each morning in pain. The accumulation of little niggling injuries, but more the pain and exhaustion associated with daily physical training, something all athletes have to get used to. And it's the same with internal work. If I'm working softly, quietening the mind, really feeling each movement or each breath, then afterwards, after the serene glow has dispersed, I know that I'll feel strung out, fragile, emotionally tender and possibly bad-tempered. We take this as a positive indication that effective work has been done.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

we grow up when we slough off selfhood

willing to leave it all behind

What is soul but a feeling for softness?

Yielding isn't merely a specialised response to aggression, it's a way of life – a viable means to happiness. When you learn to yield, everything suits you.

God is always working through you. The important thing is to become conscious and co-operate.

attend the particulars
it's amazing how many details most people miss

get wired

root is an unfurling coccyx reaching into earth

With long dedicated practice the mind quietens, awareness opens & deepens, and the here & now extends spatially & temporally to include everything.

We have language. That is how we have become superficial. We have lost our depth because we have language. There is no language for the silent expression.

awareness   consciousness   love
these are interchange

most hearts are crushed by heavy minds

peace & contentment come when you relocate to dantien

With mind-in-dantien, you see the world as it is, uncoloured by you. It's our way of distancing from the head.

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

cancer is any uncontrollable growth

swirl & sway

the function of internal work is not to become more skilled but more empty

Energy is a label we give anything nuanced that tends to be masked by the noisy mind.

Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.

our bourgeois comforts are precisely protection against God

meditation establishes the ground from which we spring

most I teach are far too squeamish for the truth

Students must realise that it's not the money they pay the teacher that makes the teaching flow, but the practice they put in before each lesson. Without practice the teacher will not be inspired to teach.

all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine

relax recede withdraw into the wings of awareness

find your weakness then work on it

as soon as you look at something you're distracted

Mind-in-dantien does not mean think-about-dantien. It means experience the world as though from the dantien. Put things in perspective.

The true teacher reveals the light whereas the false one stands in its way.

wherever there is touch there is magic

thoughtless awareness

truth is not veracity or actuality but whatever sinks one deeper

When I was a young teenager my mother had a friend from work who would often spend time with us. She was very nice, though a bit posh, clearly a class above, but I liked her. On one occasion we were all out together in the local shopping precinct when she spotted a black person (this was the early 70s). 'Oh I hate the blacks!' she blurted,'They should all go back to where they come from!' She never mentioned blacks again but from that moment on I found it very difficult to like her.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

knowledge & information tend to pedantry – no energy

dantien is a hole in the ground
you must die to get there

a resentful rationalism

We think ourselves so nice & reasonable & respectable, yet it is our lifestyle that is destroying the planet, and as soon as that lifestyle feels threatened we become ugly murderous monsters.

Silence questions certitudes and dissolves apparent binary opposites. It reconfigures absence as presence, emptiness as fullness, quietness as expressivity, stillness as intensity of life.

nothing more beautiful than an empty room

if you feel this then you may possibly commence the work of emptying the mind

indigenous peoples are more in tune with nature – external & internal

hood the eyes: withdraw the line of vision into dantien

Dantien is a dungeon for self. When we finally get down there and throw away the key, the world opens up and we see it for the first time. Then the dragon can fly.

we’re all bozos on the bus

dynamic equilibrium: everything is moving yet the system is balanced
or as my teacher put it:
all is energy and everything is in its rightful place

nowadays people don't want magic they want fun

LIFE'S BREAKTHROUGHS 

1. leave home 

2. find a teacher 

3. commit for life 

4. turn the attention back on the self

The name of our game is balance or equilibrium or harmony. So my sympathies are always going to be with indigenous people rather than with the colonisers who attempt to replace them. Indigenous people naturally live in harmony with their environment.

we are always the problem we are trying to solve in the world

taiji handles the other without getting into a fight

heart & soul

People ask how I find the time to meditate five hours daily. I point out that the average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day. And I don't have a TV.

Living necessitates injustice. My life requires other things – animal, vegetable, mineral – to die. My bourgeois satisfactions require others to live without. My over-consumption steals from planet and from future generations. The ethical life is simply one that strives to minimise injustice.

The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.

energy   spirit   softness
if you are not in love with these
then I would prefer not to know you

loving is becoming

Prayer is the lifting of heart to God, or, put another way, prayer is the loving of God.

When I was a teenager I loved browsing through the National Geographic magazine in the public library. I remember one occasion looking at a pull-out photograph of the Amazon rainforest in which two European explorers gazed proudly at the camera. As I studied the picture I suddenly became aware of numerous smaller tribes people standing amongst the trees. I hadn't noticed them before, not because they were camoflaged, but because they looked part of the scene; they didn't stand out as something alien or other; they belonged there. And whereas the Europeans seemed to come out of the photo towards me, the natives literally receded into the trees. In fact they looked exactly like the trees – as though they had extruded up from the Earth beneath their feet. At the time I was struck by how insignificant and primitive the natives looked compared to the civilized Europeans who seemed much more like me. But now, my work, which is my day, everyday, aspires to become as those natives. As naked and as natural as they.

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

nothing quite as painful as the truth
and if it doesn't hurt then it's trivial

the spiritual life is a life of occasional glimmers

spiritual work has absolutely nothing to do with concentrating the mind to get what you want and everything to do with humbly offering the heart to God

Spiritual work is negative, reductive, subtractive. Peeling away layer after layer after layer until one arrives at pure naked essence. As close to God as we are likely to get.

I must leave Ireland and create in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race!

if the work is about getting your own way then it has no spiritual content

listen not to hear but to connect

always turning the spotlight back on the self
exposing its insidious presence at every level

We all carry trauma. If we didn't then we would be enlightened. The average modern life aims to keep trauma brushed under the carpet: everything is organised so that it never shows its ugly face. This leads to a life of depression, mild or extreme, the price most are prepared to pay for ease, comfort and seeming peace. It takes a special sort of person to willingly open the can of worms, peel off the scab and let the wound weep. And why do they do it? Because some need truth, they cannot live a lie. They much prefer the agony of facing truth to the comfort of hiding from truth. They have what I call soul.

Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined.

if God really loves you he will deny you want you want
with the object of desire comes unforeseen consequences

depression is not a sickness
it is a sin

the work is infinite—endless
never done

The traditional antidote to depression is prayer. Not the occasional prayer but a prayerful life.

I think some of the bees may have escaped from my bonnet.

inspiration   suspension   expiration

pity : piety

quieten the mind and you will hear god whispering just two words: have mercy

After 17 years of grafting away on my own (wandering in the wilderness) I feel that I may now be ready to begin. C'est la vie.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

prayer: quietening the mind
and listening to the heart

in the dwam before sleep

head-mind is dominated by words – lexical thinking
heart-mind is dominated by feelings – pre-lexical thinking

meditation: recalling the blissful reverie you shared with your mother as she nursed you

I just try to remain a good soldier—I mean a soldier of cinema.

meditation: dreaming whilst awake

stalwart & redoubtable

Imagination dead? Imagine!

Since we lost Nature, the senses, especially the eyes, serve to maintain the numbness of our depressive position. Learn to unfocus the eyes, gaze inwards, and FEEL.

La résponse est le malheur de la question.

veil the vulgar glare of self and attend to what shares the space

stop leakage:

leaky gut
leaky heart
leaky head

leaking energy

a capacity to tolerate zero

Taking first watch. A sense that my intense vigilance surrounds and contains an intimate quiet space. This our service.

I don’t know the answers to these questions—I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I think it is important to find out for yourself.

traverse beyond depression and into transcendence
this is not achieved with knowing but by unknowing

faith & discipline – the minimum requirements for any successful course of study

bleed but don't leak

In the beginning Taiji is all about relaxation, but eventually it's about tension. Living like a bent bow about to fire.

I walk along like blood seeking its wound

dantien is the centre about which I cohere
heart is the centre from which I issue forth

see past the infantile ego

endlessnessnessness

The whole gamut of experience, from sensing to feeling, from thinking to doing, distract us from the fundamental fact of being which is being itself. I exist. This is the realisation, the centre, that meditation sinks into then peers out from.

Be just before you are generous.

the first fact of my being is being itself – I exist, I am
the second fact is spirit – I am alive, I am animated

true listening is always ready to agree

embodied & emboldened

We need an ego simply to survive other egos. This is why the bulk of our work must be solitary.

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.

spirit is the leaven
lifting heart to heaven

not obsessed but possessed

the primary function of language is to sing god’s praises

The teacher gives just enough to stimulate, inspire, encourage practise. Any more and the student will think (they've already done the work).

The living plasm vibrates unspeakably, it inhales the future, it exhales the past, it is the quick of both, and yet it is neither.

a quivering momentaneity

words unspoken

I can't really teach you anything. All I can do is point out what you already know.

The good teacher gives you not information or knowledge, not even wisdom, but things to practise. What I call points of practice.

I fall, more and more,
Into my own silences.
In the cold air,
The spirit
Hardens.

a mind & body

tempered & honed

by unremitting

discipline

embodied & embedded

discipline without force
now there's a tall order

All the oriental martial arts are founded on Riding Horse, something my teacher assured me I would have to seriously practise at some point otherwise there would always be a hole in my foundation, limiting progress. I realise now that the real value of Riding Horse is not so much the strength it builds in the legs but the way it slowly strips the mind of self-pity. Without the grim discipline of Riding Horse, the mind will never naturally sink & settle in the dantien. Riding Horse is the spiritual heart of our art.

for in the tension of opposites all things have their being

from cowardice to courage
from distraction to concentration

to find the true home you must first leave your false home: tribe  family  self

there may be no unteachable children but there are plenty of unteachable adults

A student asked recently why my Zoom classes are all Riding Horse and variations thereof. Well in Taiji the first thing is sink & relax: releasing to gravity to drain out of the upper body and into the legs, and then through the legs and into the earth. Without this there is no Taiji.

The sanctuary of the heart is dark. Nothing can be seen or known there, nothing sought.

we relax chronic tensions and install a dynamic tension we call concentration

intimate & impersonal

attempts to clarify & simplify will inevitably lose detail & nuance

A good teacher is never afraid to say: I don't know. Then she can either keep mum or waffle on regardless.

A human being is God’s being temporarily clothed in human attributes. God’s being is a human being divested of its qualities.

self-awareness requires awareness of the other's awareness of me

infinity is everywhere if only we wake up

reality renders us speechless
this is astonishment

cogito ergo (hic) non sum : I think therefore I am not (here)

there was something subterranean about him, as if he had an underworld refuge

pray for peace
(start with inner peace)

dantien as seat of soul

passion & faith must run soul-deep

Think 'infinite' not as 'enormously large' but as 'endless' or, as we would say in Taiji, 'open ended.' In this sense everything bar human creations are infinite.

the emptiness of being everything at once

a willingness to live metaphorically

tender & petalling

a weather eye : a weather ear

Prayer is a re-minder. It brings you back to mind as site of awareness & devotion, before you have sullied it with thinking. Prayer is also a remembering; a rejoining with the cosmos; a reaching out & in to the infinite.

I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.

When a true artist steps back from their creation they always say the same thing: That wasn't me.

follow your nose

take up the slack

The teacher offers intimations of what you would experience if only your mind was more focused and your energy a little stronger. You still have to do the work to bring about that inner probity. No one can do it for you.

The Imagination is not a State: it is Human Existence itself.

keep an ear to the ground

tighten your belt

the good student has won the battle over their own incorrigiblity

In the same way that countries that have only known war are terrified of peace, so people who have only known noise & distraction are terrified of silence. The real enemy is always fear.

I have with me all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

if you wish to experience reality in all its visceral intensity then be present at a birth

the birth of each & every moment

like an eager schoolchild on the edge of their seat with interest

practice: putting in the hours

avant-garde 

at the vanguard 

at the fore 

the forefront 

the be-fore 

at the presencing of the moment 

this is what we mean by 'raw' 

it's what all enlightened masters have in common

I have the impression that many of us are afraid of silence.

it takes humility to engage an easy mundane activity like breathing as though it's the most important & interesting thing in the world (which of course it is)

meditation: holding nothing back

meditation: giving up your whole self to the moment

The word 'awareness' dates from 1828. Before that it was 'awaredom'.

Most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

as though for the first time everytime

slip past the defenses of the ego

when I cling to the past I invite the past to repeat itself

Spiritual teachers often hold their students back by giving too much information. Our approach in Taiji is to teach techniques and exercises which, if practised, will improve your energy sufficiently to break into and sustain awareness, understanding and realisation for yourself.

The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.

only through practice will you ever internalise the teaching and thereby break free of the teacher

ego clings to life as though that's all there is

put spirit back into spiritual

Back in the eighties I taught a short introductory Taijiquan course at a posh health/sports centre in the Barbican in London. During my interview for the job I asked them why they needed Taiji when they already offered judo, karate and taikwondo. They replied: We'd like you to put the art back into martial art.

Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.

whatever issues from a true source will be different

a generous disposition

heart: courage or enthusiasm especially when maintained during a difficult situation : never lose heart

I really believe now that our core practice should be meditation. As inner quiet improves, the mind is better able to concentrate and finely feel the body and its energy. Taiji practice then becomes an endless review and reinterpretation of its basic principles.

Most artists work all the time, they do actually, especially good artists, they work all the time, what else is there to do?

mind can only wander if the shoulders rise

meditation masters mood

attack is centrifugal
yield is centripetal

Eschew all gnosis, all notion that knowledge gives an (undeserved) advantage. It is not knowledge we work for but emptiness.

never pass up an opportunity to do some work

the only thing worth desiring is to be free of desire

meditation: contemplative lingering

love of god and love for god are the same

My daughter is studying Utilitarianism in her philosophy class at school: the quantification of 'happiness' so that attempts can be made to maximise it. We talked about it and decided that since living requires injustice on some level, a more ethical life would be one that minimises injustice.

Nature is not on the surface, it is deep down.

it's been obvious now for a long time that we can't go on like this: consuming & disposing

something has to change