taichi heartwork

2012-01-29T08:49:00.001+02:00

2012-01-29T08:47:00.000+02:00

Whatever is leveled at the Other (object) also passes into the Self (subject). This is the fundamental law : flow is always bi-directional. Karma. The eternal return.

2012-01-28T21:43:00.002+02:00

The feet should touch the Earth in the same manner that the hands touch the Other.

2012-01-28T15:54:00.002+02:00

we no longer have the energy to believe

2012-01-25T21:53:00.000+02:00

An arrow shot by an archer
or a poem made by a poet
should cut through your heart,
jolting the head.
If it doesn't, it's no arrow,
it's no poem.

2012-01-23T08:22:00.002+02:00

Nothing to prove

2012-01-22T00:41:00.000+02:00

2012-01-21T23:36:00.001+02:00

the 'surreptitious religion' of 'rational discursiveness'

2012-01-21T23:33:00.002+02:00

The illusion of choice is a product of resisting the inevitable

2012-01-20T23:58:00.001+02:00

The reason God is dead is not because he doesn't exist, nor because we have killed him, but because we no longer have the power or passion to be possessed by him. We with our civilized democratic complacency are truly forsaken.

2012-01-20T22:45:00.000+02:00

we must drive to a delirious point of view

2012-01-20T22:38:00.001+02:00

locked together in a twisting spiral of ambivalence

2012-01-20T00:36:00.000+02:00

2012-01-19T17:53:00.002+02:00

finding yourself anew together with somebody else

2012-01-19T00:38:00.002+02:00

work with the industry of a slave and die with the reputation of a mendicant

2012-01-19T00:25:00.003+02:00

I'm moving more and more in a field, the extent of which I do not know.

2012-01-19T00:20:00.001+02:00

The man of the immanent quest
following the line of infinite flight

2012-01-19T00:12:00.002+02:00

Free not to please (myself) but to change (my self).

2012-01-18T11:21:00.000+02:00

2012-01-17T00:02:00.000+02:00

here in the present tense, in the making, the doing, the feeling

2012-01-12T23:20:00.001+02:00

the bearer of an affirmation without reserve

2012-01-11T23:17:00.002+02:00

Ego is me opposed to you. The only way to befriend ego is to become perceived by ego as part of it, because, by definition, ego is always self-serving. And always mean – always taking; and if giving then giving to take. This is why Buddha recommends compassion – it is the one thing the ego cannot truthfully do. But ego will always deceive. Ego can easily pretend compassion in order to receive admiration and approbation – from others and from itself (pride).

2012-01-11T23:16:00.000+02:00

that tense moment before the creation of the universe

2012-01-08T23:10:00.000+02:00

The forces involved in the equilibrium we seek are immense, enough to force fluidity upon any solid. Within such a field I cannot afford to be interested in anything other than that equilibrium.

2012-01-06T23:34:00.000+02:00

2012-01-06T23:12:00.000+02:00

the quest for self-erasure

2012-01-05T23:12:00.000+02:00

not evaluating, but adventuring

2012-01-02T13:17:00.000+02:00

Security is far more deadly, or rather deathly, than insecurity. Deathly in the sense of reducing potential – reducing one's openness to change. Security can only ever mean secure in a future not really mine, because the fundamental fact of life is that the future can never be secure.

2012-01-02T12:10:00.002+02:00

before there is any way to distinguish activity from passivity

2012-01-02T11:20:00.003+02:00

The more an entity unifies its various dimensions around a distinct identity or self, the stronger the presence of Otherness – whatever is alien and inadmissible to that self. If this Otherness is ignored or rejected then it will eventually destroy the entity. Instead I must open to that Other or Otherness, invite it in and let it transform my identity.

2012-01-01T11:22:00.000+02:00

2012-01-01T11:06:00.000+02:00

Posture and spirit demand constant attention.

2012-01-01T01:06:00.000+02:00

In order to have a correct perception, we need to have a direct encounter.

2011-12-31T11:09:00.000+02:00

Veritatem facere : make truth

2011-12-30T19:11:00.002+02:00

discipline conceived as a means of sobering and quieting the mind, freeing the mind from its likes and dislikes, taste and memory, making it subject to the Mind outside it

2011-12-30T02:07:00.002+02:00

Time doesn't just allow change, it demands it.

2011-12-29T20:46:00.000+02:00

submitting to the unintelligible

2011-12-29T11:33:00.001+02:00

Tai Chi Intensive

London

29 December 2011

Five hours of bent legs

2011-12-27T18:27:00.000+02:00

Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both.

2011-12-27T17:00:00.001+02:00

Equilibrium is an event rich in possibility

2011-12-27T16:57:00.001+02:00

Soft, slow-moving, and deeply penetrating

2011-12-27T16:31:00.003+02:00

Things don't necessarily come together through tension, but they certainly stay together that way; their existence gradually becomes a matter of survival rather than celebration, demanding a general state of anxiety – maintaining life rather than creating it. Relaxation in taiji is our way of reversing the process of externalization, relaxing so much that we would, were it not for the natural stickiness of our cells, come apart.

2011-12-27T11:46:00.000+02:00

10000 hours of deliberate practice first

2011-12-27T04:55:00.000+02:00

Taiji is a method for minimizing the External and maximizing the Internal.

2011-12-26T23:33:00.000+02:00

2011-12-26T12:05:00.001+02:00

We don't so much flow into time as allow time to flow through us. Everything I face or do is time past or passing : I can only experience a fading world. What enlivens us is this feeling of expressing time – of living always on the edge where future becomes past – of being in the process. What depresses us – brings us down and flattens us – is drifting into the gloom of the past.

2011-12-25T11:51:00.002+02:00

A turn away from language and into energy. This is the event our humanity is screaming for, and if we fail to make it we're fucked.

2011-12-25T11:31:00.007+02:00

Our body is out of balance, because it’s dynamic and it’s not stable, it’s always changing, it’s transient, it’s uncomfortable, it’s comfortable, it’s relaxed, it’s tense, it’s respondent to the weather, to other people in the room, to its own inner nervous system, the nerves are laced all through the body, so the body is always out of balance and that’s how I think of it.

Steve Benson

2011-12-25T11:27:00.001+02:00

a constitutive finitude

2011-12-25T11:21:00.004+02:00

This terrible solitude ... at the death of the other is what constitutes that relationship to self which we call "me"

2011-12-25T11:20:00.000+02:00

2011-12-25T11:19:00.003+02:00

In taiji we don't think with the mind, we direct with it. Our mind creates the apparatus that houses our being, not the other way around: we are the experiment taking place within Mind. This is most clear with principles and beliefs; they are mental constructs – axioms – that direct and enable the use of ourselves in the world at large. The use of the mind in this way enables a much deeper relaxation and internalization, but it requires an unshakable consistency; once we start directing with the mind we dare not stop otherwise we will literally fall apart at the seams.

2011-12-25T11:16:00.001+02:00

Knowledge is solid; it blocks the way of understanding.

2011-12-24T12:51:00.003+02:00

The only certainty in life is death. Or less melodramatically: the future is uncertain; things change. Most cultures acknowledge this as axiomatic, and when it is thought through it becomes clear that at least two worlds must exist: the knowable world, and the unknowable world. The knowable world consists of everything that can be experienced, thought, imagined: everything we could possibly talk about. The unknowable world contains everything we cannot experience or imagine – the world of feelings we will never feel, possibilities that will never materialize. Deleuze called these two sides of reality the actual and the virtual. My teacher calls them the External and the Internal. Science concerns itself with the process of externalization – with exploring the knowable world – making the unknown known. Spiritual work on the other hand concerns itself with a process of internalization – of becoming internal. We can never know the unknowable, but we can enter it and touch it by switching on the unknowable part of ourselves. This is the true nature of Mind – it is the Internal. Our usual use of mind – specifically thinking – is a gross externalization of Mind, designed to objectify the self and hence the world.

2011-12-23T09:26:00.000+02:00

Nothing so healing as the human touch.

2011-12-21T08:46:00.004+02:00

To relax the mind into its virtual capacity, and free the energy to do what it needs. Most human endeavor instead strives to materialize the mind by thinking, locking up the energy in the process.

2011-12-21T01:52:00.000+02:00

2011-12-20T17:29:00.003+02:00

Mostly we spend a life avoiding what needs to be engaged and engaging what would be best avoided.

2011-12-19T18:29:00.006+02:00

In taiji the connexion supersedes both self and other.

2011-12-19T18:25:00.003+02:00

In the Trinity there is, 1 Ipseity; 2 Alterity; 3 Community.

2011-12-19T18:21:00.001+02:00

real but not actual, ideal but not abstract

2011-12-18T22:39:00.002+02:00

an inconceivable process of dismantling and dispossession

2011-12-18T11:22:00.000+02:00

2011-12-17T21:05:00.007+02:00

Elbows pulled down, knees lifted up; by mind not muscle.

2011-12-17T21:03:00.001+02:00

the infinite finitude of time

2011-12-17T20:58:00.001+02:00

In a state of suspense

2011-12-17T20:34:00.003+02:00

this pre-originary intervention of the other in me

2011-12-17T20:34:00.001+02:00

the capacious heart

2011-12-16T23:37:00.000+02:00

2011-12-16T15:47:00.002+02:00

A radical equilibrium – from root to other – is inherently unstable. This is its trembling beauty – never more than a trace – an echo – yet lasting forever.

2011-12-16T11:13:00.001+02:00

Like a puppet on a string

2011-12-16T11:06:00.002+02:00

The Maker of all things took Union and Division, and Identity and Alterity, and Station and Motion to compleat the soul.

2011-12-15T19:24:00.001+02:00

making prose plotless by the adamancy of my atomizing

2011-12-15T12:52:00.001+02:00

Searching for that which precedes every decision and exceeds all mastery.

2011-12-14T10:57:00.001+02:00

2011-12-13T12:19:00.001+02:00

the endlessness of the end that is never-ending

2011-12-13T11:58:00.004+02:00

Shoulders relax into elbows; hips into knees.

2011-12-13T11:58:00.003+02:00

there cannot be anything without the greeting of the other

2011-12-12T17:50:00.001+02:00

no going outside of oneself, however excellent, is better than staying still

2011-12-11T23:33:00.000+02:00

2011-12-11T19:50:00.001+02:00

the undecidable future always exceeds any plans we make for it

2011-12-10T19:17:00.001+02:00

the movement of disappearance

2011-12-10T19:15:00.000+02:00

"Whatever I do, I do it with my heart, that is the way I am."

2011-12-10T18:11:00.001+02:00

an inward nisus

2011-12-10T18:08:00.001+02:00

2011-12-10T18:05:00.001+02:00

reflecting disappearance itself

2011-12-10T18:04:00.001+02:00

Why not be, rather, fully human?

2011-12-09T11:35:00.007+02:00

The martial context of taiji indicates that it is simply a way of training the body to respond with lightening speed to feeling.

2011-12-09T11:35:00.004+02:00

the provocative otherness of the other

2011-12-09T11:35:00.002+02:00

2011-12-09T11:09:00.001+02:00

Suspended from above

2011-12-09T11:02:00.001+02:00

To be human is to feel, primarily. Sentio ergo sum. Feelings come and go all the time – traces of energy passing through – stimulating us to do whatever it is that we do. How we relate to a feeling depends upon us. We can ignore it – act as though we don't feel – dull and insensitive, we can resist the feeling – harden ourselves against it and attempt to deny its consequences (become a wall), we can hold onto the feeling encouraging it to develop into an emotion (become a knot), or we can simply be aware of the feeling as it happens and allow the body to respond appropriately. This last approach we call yielding.

2011-12-08T14:01:00.006+02:00

The individual is the seat of a constant process of decantation, decantation from the vessel containing the fluid of future time, sluggish, pale and monochrome, to the vessel containing the fluid of past time, agitated and multicoloured by the phenomena of its hours.

Samuel Beckett

2011-12-08T13:59:00.001+02:00

A mind not so much silent as without commentary – unpreoccupied.

2011-12-08T00:36:00.000+02:00

2011-12-07T22:14:00.002+02:00

the accusation that summons

2011-12-07T19:30:00.003+02:00

looking for the invisible within the visible, the untouchable within the touchable

2011-12-06T12:37:00.003+02:00

all language is an act of persuasion, an attempt to shift desires

2011-12-06T00:27:00.000+02:00

like having to pass through a deep valley ... in search of a mouse hole that will lead to freedom

2011-12-06T00:01:00.000+02:00