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

the peace we seek is behind the pain
the love we seek is behind the resentment

The thinking mind freezes out natural activity so that it can produce a barrage of word after word after word, signifying nothing but anxiety. Meditation teaches us to relax and melt – thaw – this mind. Then if words do come, they issue from the silence rather than from themselves and are far more likely to mean something.

Why speak of the use
of poetry? Poetry
is what uses us.

whatever can be stated is already old hat

meditation: investigating the nature of silence

without obedience there can be no progress

Free countries have the highest taxes. Tons of ground work. A cost to everything.

a battle emerges in the soul between good aspirations and bad habits

be not wholly given over to a secular life of distraction

natural and therefore lawful

the good teacher takes you places you don't want to go, and the good student is all too willing to follow

We talk to ourselves to comfort the ego. This is why the voice in our heads must be stopped. Spiritual work starts when the mind stops. And until we have reached the stage of inner silence then the work we do is mere preparation for the real work.

Silence is a world in itself.

all things being equal, superior spirit wins the day

meditation: adrift on a sea of silence

wrestle with yourself rather than talk to yourself

The teacher's job is to say Yes when you get it right and No when you get it wrong. No is bound to outnumber Yes so get used to it.

Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.

yield contains
attack escapes

meditation: spinning a thread of golden time

body returns to the earth
mind returns to dantien

When I was a kid one of the worst things a parent could do was 'spoil' their children (teach them to be selfish). Nowadays, unless you're spoiling your children you're not a good parent.

Happiness isn’t a town on a map, or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work ongoing.

you don't get mind into the dantien by looking down into it but by looking outward with real interest & intensity

body springs from the earth
mind springs from dantien

Practice is a way of life, a way of living, a way of navigating a path through the deluge of information and noise.

the scientist enters the unknown to make it known

the mystic enters the unknown to reach the unknowable

Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence.

dantien is both the top of the lower body – a palace on a hill – and the bottom of the upper body – a valley lake or reservoir

staying pure
staying true

practice must invite change

You only come to the internal when you realise that there is no external. And vice versa. Reality is not divided. There are simply different ways of looking at it.

to know, love, and serve the universe with a passion
to love the “invisible”
to love the “not-yet”

dantien centres the body and gathers the ground so that you have a base within to work from

practice is the most radical act

dantien is a centre about which the body will gather itself if you let it

When I was a kid one of the worst things a parent could do was 'spoil' their children (teach them to be selfish). Nowadays, unless you're spoiling your children you're not a 'good' parent.

Alternatives are of no use if they can be immediately folded back into the system they are attempting to escape from.

the body should be a conditioned sprung sensitive machine raring to respond to the slightest stimulus

the best exercise is the one you do regularly

taiji is a machine for conditioning the body, emptying the mind and sharpening the spirit

Before you can successfully yield you must be able to properly attack. By 'properly attack' I mean project your energy from the ground via the dantien rather than from your ego.

Sunlight of the spirit—
Courage is not the absence of fear

the internal is the world of energy particularly spirit
the external is the world of matter particularly things

if in doubt use your nous or what some would call your nose – sniff it out

the soul must be disciplined but that discipline must come from within otherwise it is worthless

At every stage, in every aspect, Taiji is simply leaving the head and entering the body, so that we can be simply present in the natural physical world, with no ideas, no self, getting in the way.

the temple bell stops but
the sound keeps coming out
of the flowers

when the teacher insists that you allow his ego to prevail over yours then it's time to say goodbye

dao does not admit ego

prayer begs forgiveness

Given that the highest stage of Taiji is 'nothing' (proof for me that, in the right hands, it is a spiritual discipline) then clinging to the conviction that you're 'something' will obviously hold you back.

Memory is a poet, not a historian.

chose the unconditional conjunction 'and' over the conditional 'if' 'but' 'or'

prayer is doing your little bit

meditation maintains buoyancy

Beauty, like happiness, is not something we consume at our leisure & pleasure, but something we produce by being supremely attentive & alive. Beauty is in the heart rather than the eye of the beholder.

Our only guide is our homesickness.

sticking the bum out is a reluctance to bend the legs

sun breaks
through

the constant
rain

flooding my
face

a strident
myrna

screeches
approval

ever thankful for
small mercies

blessings
graces

Critical analysis is an attempt to place the creative event within a framework of sense and meaning, precisely the opposite of creativity itself which struggles to break free of constraints of meaning.

I mean that there must come a time when, after a man has mastered the essentials of the craft, he must then crack and break and snarl his own smoothness, so that he can let his own voice come through his poems.

reducing the self
increasing the world

there was
a time

when we
stood among

stones sacred
as they

and held
our own

sun appears
after rain

and every
thing lightens

We live lives saturated in language. If we're not speaking or being spoken to then we're chatting to ourselves in our own heads. Meditation attempts to break this stranglehold by concentrating on a much longer rhythm – the breathing.

The fiercest hearts are in love with a wild perfection.

the struggle for the student is to find their rhythm

once found simply spend a life beating / repeating it

shall we gather
by the river?

prayer opens a channel

I have friends and acquaintances here who regularly take megadoses of psychotropic substances: mushrooms, ayahuasca, LSD, ketamin, MDMA, to induce 'spiritual' experiences. And they do indeed have 'amazing' experiences (which in their minds makes them 'special') but, being spiritually immature, they fail to realise that it's not the intensity or even the quality of their experiences that matter, but what in Taiji we call 'mind continuous'. Can you keep a thread of internal quiet going through your day?

If you would have the kernel, you must break the shell.

taiji runs rings around the other
and remember, when you're practising on your own, you are the other

dailyness keeps the work alive

the imagination gives reality a helping hand

HAWAIJ 'حوايج חוויג 

Yemeni sweet spice mix for tea / coffee

equal amounts of ground cardamom, cinnamon and ginger 

smaller amounts of ground cloves, chilli or black pepper, nutmeg, mace 

mix together well and put in dark airtight container 

add half a teaspoon or less per cup to coffee or tea before the boiling water 

especially good in the colder months

humanity will survive only if it manages to overcome the age of consumption

stop the mind and you will start to catch fleeting glimpses of the other side

language protects us from reality

the Anthrobscene

Mindfulness: encountering mind in its fullness. And the large portion of mind is not perception or cogitation but memory, especially as you get older. Mindfulness is remembering.

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

things in themselves are not real
things enter reality when they relate with other things
reality is connectedness

meditation: becoming part of the furniture

meditation: using the breathing to slow down the mind to better fit the flow of time

The Earth, at its core, contains a magnet that tugs matter towards it. The spirit and soul, having no material aspect, are not subject to this pull. Instead the infinity of the cosmos, the mind-boggling vastness, which we personify as God, draws the spiritual into it. When we lose sight of God then the spirit gets down, eventually leading to depression which we struggle to combat with material distraction and excess. This is why meditation – doing nothing – is always the most direct path to the spiritual.

Rest does not come from sleeping but from waking.

each of us a haunted house
meditation is becoming quiet so the ghosts can speak to us
only when we listen will they (and we) come to peace
this is the nature of karma

the persistence of the past

I repeat, therefore I am.

The teacher we endeavour to remain ever open to, even (especially) in (their) death, because we have learnt, from (often bitter) experience, that whatever enters us from, or via, them, although difficult and painful, is beneficial, in the long run, to our lifelong and heroic struggle to combat the ego and thereby get closer to God.

At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

swaddled in soft sheets of turning

gospel : good spell

excavation is the hardest work

If you want to get to the bottom of things, the underlying (root) causes, the implicate order, then you'll need to delve.

For me, philosophy is a discourse that concerns the inner life of the human being.

taiji is pretty much all ground work: a machine for delving

contentement de soi : self approval

spirit re-enchants the world

We possess an adequate endoskeleton yet we prefer to operate from an exoskeleton of tension and hardness.

A pure thought from a pure heart is better than a mantra.

nothing quite so unattractive as self-consciously beautiful

what goes around comes around

stop the mind then head & heart will gradually merge into one wondrous organ

Rushing headlong as the future rushes into the past. And all whilst sitting peacefully still.

be in the difficulty of what it is to be

feel the gentle current of time flowing by

karma: poetic justice