The primary objective of a school, be it a childrens' school, a Tai Chi school, or whatever, is to draw the unsuspecting student into an artificial world. This world is generally a tidy and consistent gross reduction and distortion of the world at large. In fact, we could call it a systematic misrepresentation of that world. It misrepresents not so much by deceiving (although that as well), but by advocating and encouraging a studious mode of engagement that is slavish and undiscerning – essentially passive. This is why the one thing schools do not produce is independent spirits.

The three connexions:

Centering – myself;
Rooting – Earth;
Yielding – other.

Each is very different, although there is overlap.

Collapse and rupture are the only enemies.

By and large

Everything a test of passion.

Whatever cannot obey itself, is commanded.

Friedrich Nietzsche

For most of us communication amounts to voicing what is on our minds – sharing the contents of the mind. But what if the mind is quiet? Is there then no communication? On the contrary, then there is real communication – a sharing of pure mind – because then and only then is there real togetherness (the contents of the mind constitute a barrier to such). This is a great gift because it teaches and heals – such quiet purity is infectious.

Inside pours out; outside flows in. We call this living.

On the whole

Inside and outside are inseparable.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Touch the ungraspable

true philosophy . . . is no more historical than it is eternal: it must be untimely, always untimely.

Gilles Deleuze

Stretching and compressing time's elastic fabric.

It is burden that makes us world-bound, heavy, mundane; and it is an unlightening burden that eventually kills us – breaks our back, crushes the heart, denatures the fabric. The bodhisattva/saint is essentially a free man who has chosen to burden himself with impossible task. He does this to stick around, as example, as teacher, as healer. His skill lies not in what or how he teaches, but in the facility with which he balances and regulates his innate lightness with the anchoring task of universal liberation.

Heart is the unconditional realm

To elevate thinking, release the neck.