31 October 2019
28 October 2019
27 October 2019
Practice repeats the same to generate difference. True difference can never be manufactured or planned or designed – that would be artificial, fake (as well as a contradiction) – it must be the product of an ongoing natural process. It is the probable result of deeper context always being incomprehensible and incommensurable.
26 October 2019
25 October 2019
24 October 2019
I have been very fortunate in the quality and extent of my education, Taiji and otherwise. If anything I have been overloaded. Hence my lack of enthusiasm for other disciplines, especially qigong and mindfulness, both of which are presently ultra-popular. I think what distinguishes the Taiji I was taught, and what makes it, in my book (in my life), so much better than the aforementioned disciplines, is that it is all about relating to others, what my teacher called yielding, putting the Other first and thereby cutting through the self. It is not easy, and no one promised it would be.
23 October 2019
22 October 2019
21 October 2019
20 October 2019
19 October 2019
18 October 2019
More than the other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. It sets at a distance, maintains the distance. In our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an impoverishment of bodily relations. The moment the look dominates, the body loses its materiality.
The Laozi defines three categories of student: good, mediocre and poor. But really there are just the two – good and poor – and we all contain both in varying measure. The good student loves and works – gives – unconditionally; the poor student mocks and sneers – takes – always knows best. Heart and self. It is the teacher's job to force the student into situations where this dichotomy becomes obvious. It is then up to the student to regularly inhabit such situations and start to see the self – the poor student we all harbour – as the unwelcome foreign entity it really is.
15 October 2019
13 October 2019
12 October 2019
11 October 2019
Imagine a condemned man in his cell the evening before his execution. A priest enters and asks: Shall we pray together? The prisoner, ripped open by circumstance, never having prayed before, instantly breaks, falls to his knees, and they recite the Lord's Prayer together. Imagine the gift each is giving the other. This is how I feel when I work with a student. And I'm never quite sure whether I'm the priest or the prisoner.
Brings to mind the first time I took my son to London Zoo over 20 years ago. We arrived at the window to the gorilla enclosure and I was thinking, So where's the fucking gorilla? Then suddenly I saw him, a magnificent silver-back, sitting so close to the window – so PRESENT – that I had failed to notice him. The shock was so overwhelming I instantly burst into tears, much to my son's chagrin.
10 October 2019
The bourgeoisie: big appetites, small minds.
(The Bourgeoisie is my lazy blanket term for the self writ large. Simplistically the Bourgeoisie are those who have enough but would like more. We all have it in us – the selfish impulse – but what I call Practice, or The Work, cuts through that, opens a wound, and bleeds, generously, selflessly. What irritates me about the Bourgeoisie is that despite their expensive and extensive educations they find it impossible to think or feel outside their box – they refuse to empathise. And if Taiji is about anything it's about empathy – being willing and able to put oneself in the Other's shoes and feel what they feel, from their point of view, otherwise how on earth can one yield?)
07 October 2019
06 October 2019
The heart, for most of us, is like a safe we do not have the combination to. We think we know what we feel, who we love, but we don't really. Meditation is time spent sitting next to that safe, waiting for sufficient silence to start picking the lock. If you wish to start this work then just make sure you're prepared to face whatever you discover inside.
05 October 2019
In our Taiji the Beloved Student is a student who gives to the practice in excess to what they receive from the teacher/teaching. (It was coined by Dr Chi to describe our own beloved teacher.) It is a far cry from the obsession nowadays with special offers and bargains. Nothing seems to delight the average person more than knowing they have received more than they have given. So what makes a student 'beloved' rather than simply 'good'? The fact that they work out of love.
04 October 2019
03 October 2019
02 October 2019
01 October 2019
I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.
Or, as a college tutor would yell whenever he'd see me agonizing over a problem: Don't think! Write!
And this is one rationale behind practice – it ALWAYS reveals something you'd never have discovered if you'd avoided it. Work is always a journey into the unknown, even when it follows exactly the same path as previous excursions.
Or, as a college tutor would yell whenever he'd see me agonizing over a problem: Don't think! Write!
And this is one rationale behind practice – it ALWAYS reveals something you'd never have discovered if you'd avoided it. Work is always a journey into the unknown, even when it follows exactly the same path as previous excursions.