instinct & stealth

meditators miss out on spirit by concentrating solely on mind

be deeply suspicious of short-term gain – what's good on the short-term is generally bad on the long-term – very difficult to find something that behaves as both stimulant and tonic

pilgrims beyond the ridgeline

without emotion but brimming with feeling: sensitivity, responsiveness, imagination, intuition, aptitude, care, listening, capability, and an acute body intelligence

too much comfort will stupefy and slacken

energy always prefigures force so if you're sensitive to energy you can avoid force

It's all well and good meditating all day and coming back to stillness, but we also need to investigate what it is that compels us to move. What is it that drives us? What is it that saves our life in the fight? What it is that seizes the moment by acting with a speed far faster than thought?

This is spirit.

we live under a digital feudalism [where] freedom turns into serfdom

the fundamental fact of my being is not my being – the fact that I exist – but my livingness – the fact that I am alive and as such necessarily vibrating with spirit of vitality

spirit tonifies the system making it sensitive to energy

if you want taiji to take you into spirit it is essential that you start to work on single-weightedness and cross-energy

The human body moves itself by alternating left and right. This is as fundamental to our being as eating, breathing, speaking, and we want to feel it as such. A restless itch in the spirit which activates the spinal erectors extending both down into the legs and up into the head, heart and hands.

You can count on practice because it is never different.

Sink into bodymind and observe the thinking mind. You'll need a strong stomach and a good sense of humour.

mind as a site of awareness rather than a site of thinking

softness is the ache for the other

When I would apply my analytical mind to the Taiji and reduce it to something regular, simple and straightforward, my teacher would lose his patience and tell me that I was all head and no heart. The head (rational mind) happily reduces things to their basic workings – their component parts – whereas the heart feels – and thereby contains – the complex of connexions and the compassion those connexions represent and require.

Any abstraction leaves out differences. That is what constitutes its violence.

meditation: waking up to the deep gentle throb of the craniosacral system

beauty is in the eye of the beholder

softness is the feeling that I may be wrong

breathe into the spine – let the breathing harmonise with the craniosacral rhythm

There is no happiness that compares
to seeing the mind awaken from its fall into thinking

The effects and phenomena of Taiji are subtle and gentle, and the student must learn to reel in their coarse mind (which knows only force and control) otherwise it will ruin everything with lack of awareness and opinion.

relax the mind so spirit can take over

a happiness that comes from inner peace rather than from getting our own way

The teacher gives as little information as possible so that the student will get it right naturally, on her own, rather than because she is obeying finnicky instructions. But this takes time – more time than a class provides – so the student must practice outside of class so that this natural learning process can continue. The teacher teaches in the confidence that you the student will find most of it out for yourself at home under your own steam. Then it's yours and no one elses.

The crisis of freedom consists in the fact that we perceive compulsion as freedom.

The thing I need to work on is the thing I cannot work on – the thing so against character that I cannot find a way of facing it. I cannot face it even if it's pointed out to me by the teacher – it is too other. It is never a choice. As my teacher used to say: If the Dao likes you it will make you an offer you can't refuse.

to go beyond the dilettante stage you need discipline

in our game, freedom is spirit, and with it comes a responsibility to act, which is why, despite their protestations, people don't want it

Our problem is that we think ourselves apart, think a transcendent self separate from the world. The fact of our being is separation and disconnexion.

all genuine beauty is foreign

The other gives me access to my own otherness – my own reality. Without them I don't know who I really am. I foolishly think I am my ego.

the essence of faith is love

an autumnal disposition

The rational mind is suited to disection, discrimination, differentiation – splitting things up into smaller managable pieces and looking at each in turn. It is not so good at integration – putting things (back) together and (re)animating (the Frankenstein parable). It is the human heart that makes connexions and infuses things with spirit, not the mind.

Due to its lack of tranquility, our civilization is heading toward a new barbarism. At no time have active people, that is to say, restless people, been prized more. Among the necessary corrections in the character of humanity that we must therefore undertake is a considerable strengthening of its contemplative element. Every individual who is tranquil and steady in heart and head has the right to believe that he possesses not only a good temperament, but a generally useful virtue as well, and that he even fulfills a higher duty by preserving this virtue.

a trusting heart finds support everywhere and doesn't need an ego to fall back on

courage & audacity

evil comes from the ego — satan is the human ego

We wilfully induce tension because we are afraid to trust. This is the tension we must let go because this is the one that causes the mind to incessantly chatter to itself (the noisy mind compensates for lack of trust) and thereby blocks the grace that always accompanies connexion.

most people today think of love as a bubble bath

what becomes apparent during meditation is that as you slowly quieten down inside your centre shifts

meditation: contemplating the nature of self

meditation: embracing death as the final and only real freedom

If you remain true to your vision, your principles and the Dao, then you will always have enough. But just enough.

Silence is eloquent.

In this society of vulgar excess the best way to set yourself apart is with a simple but elegant frugality. Not so much rising above as slipping beneath.

meditation: summoning spirit

I live in a country where force always wins, 'soft' is an insult, and energy and spirit are nowhere in evidence. But I suspect we bourgeoisie all do nowadays.

Someone (not a student) recently asked me what was the most important thing I learnt from my teacher. The word that wanted to pop out was, of course, Spirit, but I managed to keep it in and think a little. Was it Taiji? Certainly not. It was to simply live your own life, be your own man, unswayed by either convention or public opinion (the herd). Now for him this was relatively easy since he taught from home and had the charisma to attract at least 200 regular students a week – he lived in his own milieu where his word was gospel. For us it is more difficult.

Only life that incorporates death is truly alive.

Once upon a time ... Happily ever after.

In between a story of transformation.

meditation: coming home

something inside must know that Taiji is your only chance

Initially in Taiji we empathise relaxation. Relaxing chronic fearful tensions that we don't realise are there because we have lived with them for so long. A teacher is needed to point out the tensions, but the Form can also be an excellent teacher if you really listen to your body as you practice it. Once you have gained a level of relaxation the next stage is instituting the correct tension – a vibrant dynamic tension from a working spirit that will give you speed and courage in the fight. For this stage (which most never get to) a qualified master is absolutely essential.

Depression is a consequence of a pathologically intensified narcissistic relation to the self. Those suffering from depression sink and drown in themselves. They have lost the other.

You will only continue and progress with Taiji if you have a desire, deeper than the marrow, to practice it.

self is a closed loop

do what you love to do
but more importantly
love what you have to do

human beings violate nature with their thinking and their doing and their lack of spirit (reverence)

meditation is a time of going back to nature – our true nature

When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.

if you want a life of abundance learn to live with less

everything is relative

let go of what you know

Think God as pure immanence. Here, there and everywhere, all at once. It is the human subject that is transcendent (outside reality) not God.

I firmly believe that we only have free access to spirit if love of God is at the core of our being. Not the God of religion necessarily, which for most atheists of delicate constitution is too well-defined – too rigorous, but simply God as one of many names for the Real or the Unknowable. We, as human beings, are amazing creatures, capable of so much, yet also unbelievably limited and crude, and the only thing we can be sure of is that what made the world and made us is outside those limits. Despite our desires and our curiosity we have no access to ultimate truth. We are destined to lives of fleeting glimpses. But one thing I have learnt in my time: the more humble life makes you, the more you let it grind the ego down, the more frequent those glimpses.

I've got the spirit, lose the feeling
Let it out somehow

domestication is slavery and nowadays we are nothing if not domesticated

as though for the first time

Students will only persevere with practice if they clearly feel, in the first few weeks, the work waking something deep, vital and essential inside them that they have always known was there but which previously only showed itself on very rare occasions.

Spirit is a drug. When it rises you become a different creature. Usual Taiji concerns such as form, root, balance, connexion take care of themselves and your only desire is for spirit to possess you and enthuse you and drive you into the unknowable.

as unreachable as time’s thick molasses

The three stages to taming the mind: quiet mind, empty mind and no-mind.

Quiet mind is full of its own quietness. Empty mind listens intently but still has a sense of self – of subject and object (something out there that it is listening out for). No-mind has no subject and no object, it embraces and contains everything.

When Dōgen said: Whoever told people that 'Mind' means thoughts, opinions, ideas, and concepts? Mind means trees, fence posts, tiles, and grasses. He was talking about no-mind.

the most important skill to develop is the ability to change your mood

thinking to oneself is a decadent luxury we should not afford ourselves

Spiritual work is all about reducing the ego, and there may be no ostensible mention of spirit by the teacher. It demands commitment, sacrifice and suffering, and is understandably unpopular.

a desire deeper than the marrow

when you empty the mind, spirit will rise and take its place

if it doesn't then the mind isn't really empty

thinking to oneself is a blatant act of dumb insolence

most people have noisy minds because it has never occured to them that there is an alternative

When you hear (of) someone being negative about you, your work, lifestyle, or teaching then the appropriate response is always compassion because that person obviously feels deeply threatened by you. It is always a disguised compliment.

The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday legality.

Stand up like a man. Powerful legs, strong lumbar spine and abdomen, proud chest, gleaming eyes, athletic body. A posture, presence and spirit that challenges the other to be at its very best.

a twinkle in the eye

sympathies with the underdog because out of necessity they will have better spirit

Taiji, as it makes clear in the classics, is all about spirit, and any teacher worth their salt will stress this and teach this. They will wake up your spirit and demand that you work with it, especially when you are in their company.

We must train ourselves in courage and generosity.

if you don't, at a deep level, feel threatened by the teaching then it won't do much for you

taiji is a means to understanding energy

meditation: keeping vigil

when you stop the mind with relaxation then compassion comes natural

Exploring the Lithic Imaginary

the enlightened master is listening all the time

they don't allow the voice in the head to interfere

learn to generate spirit when you need it

mind serves best when it's invisible, even to itself

You know how insulting it feels when you realise that the person you are talking to is not listening to you but to the voice in their own head? Well that's how reality feels when you think to yourself.

It all starts with attitude and spirit.

meditation: stopping the mind so we can be in the world with more presence, immediacy and compassion

only after stilling the mind can we appreciate that everything is moving

delirious with breath, with energy, with life, with lack of mind

Is there life after death? Well of course there is. When I die, life continues elsewhere. My body dies, my mental activity (ego) ceases but life goes on. This is why it is so important to connect with life in its essence – impersonal life – spirit – whilst we're still around. Like the vikings who aimed to die in battle with a raging spirit. They understood a thing or two.

To enter the kingdom of heaven, it is necessary to become little, like children.

if the head or the gaze are unnaturally locked or still then you are working from a mental image rather than a physical one – from mind rather than body

we need to relax sufficiently to stop resisting earth and nature

sounds simple enough but is actually a very tall order

we are so far gone down the path of artifice it's unlikely we'll ever find our way back

imagine two courting pythons rearing up from the forest floor, swaying, dancing, twining around each other

this is the body working well – two independent living legs extending into the spinal erectors, fueled by pure libido

To enter the kingdom of heaven we must let ourselves be astonished.

don't just watch the breathing, become the breathing: let the inbreath extend the spine and the outbreath flex the spine so the head is always in motion

feel the theological nature of energy and reality

feel the rheological nature of matter and reality

the bourgeoisie are hungry for spiritual experiences yet the spiritual life is the furthest thing from their minds

this is why weekend workshops are so popular

Silence is so important! … silence prepares us and silence accompanies us…

it doesn't matter where you are, you are always a host, so act accordingly

relax into your true shape

it doesn't matter where you are, you are always a guest, so act appropriately

find a way to turn everything you do into a devotional act of praise

this is intelligence

Love drove me to rebel.

becoming humble by connecting with something far greater than myself

nowadays everyone has an opinion and no one has a soul

don't let the majority drag you down

The work is never a choice. We work because we are driven. Like breathing – I am driven to breathe by the life force inside me – life tries its utmost to preserve itself. It is the same with the work, but more subtle – you have to feel it and you have to allow it.

The 'like' is the digital amen. By clicking on the like button, we submit ourselves to the context of rule.

the bourgeois mantra: consume & conform and everything will be ok

tame the mind

Every discipline says the same: talent is important but no substitute for hard work. In fact talent is as much a curse as a blessing. If a talented peron say meditates under guidance they will probably go deep, but when they come out the ego will feel so threatened it will do all it can to prevent its host ever going there again.

Ego is a parasite feeding freely on our energy. We are all infected. All slave to ego. Original sin.

The work endeavours to bring the ego under control by asphyxiating it with discipline, at least for the duration of working. Ego is a sly trickster so getting it under control is a long hard haul. Probably the single most difficult task a human being can attempt.

In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.

practice: repeating mind-numbingly simple tasks mindfully

there's no two ways about it: screens are really bad for the spirit

learn to sniff out the truth

then courageously follow your nose

The promises of the teacher will only materialise if you practice. This is why those that fail to practice usually end up becoming resentful and turn against the teaching. And, as it says in the Dao De Jing, if they don't then there was little of truth in the teaching.

Free choice is in fact consumer choice.

There are no guarantees with spirit. It's as liable to wreck things as save the day. It is uncontrollable. But it is exciting and engaging and intense and alive. Without it you may as well be dead.

letting go of everything that's not true

the extended family may be a thing of the past but the extended self is alive and well

instead of smothering innocence with knowledge, which is the normal course of education, we enter a process of unknowing – unlearning – to regain the innocence that drew us to the work in the first place

Human civilization can be understood as the gradual intellectualization of reality.

a life with faith at its core is far preferable to one with self at the centre

this is why i will always respect and admire the faithful

the essential part of us – heart and soul – is precisely the part that is nowadays considered surplus to needs

ego loves to criticise but it hates criticism

The work is all about the long-term – long time, geological time, deep time. My span a mere blip yet my work resonates forever. This is why the work is so unpopular – everything nowadays is short-term – for the self.

Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.

Truth always lurks one level deeper than you are at present. A breakthrough is required to reach it. A breakthrough into heightened awareness – a more intense awakeness. This requires hard work (that goes without saying) but more importantly grace. And such grace always comes from outside – it's like a beauty you never noticed before but now that you're more awake, shimmers everywhere. Like being in love.

growing up in bourgeois society is a process of transformation from a magical creature (a child) into a soulless automaton (a willing slave)

it's not repetition, it's discipline

I remember discussing the lamentable shortage of good students with my teacher. He suggested that my generation (those that grew up in the sixties and their aftermath) was the last to produce good students. Since Thatcherism (the selfish eighties) and then the Internet and smartphones (the Age of Distraction), depth, dedication, discipline and devotion have become the dirty D words. Apparently even the Carthusians now last on average only three years before the lure of the external draws them away from God.

grace pulling against gravity

you may be part of the same world as others but because of your intensity you operate in a very different reality

lambent movement

 

see beauty where others don't

if there's just one thing you could do that will help not only your taiji but also your energy and your personal happiness then let it be this: never lock your knees when standing

or at least investigate how locked knees make you self-centred, cut off from the earth, and oblivious to energy

we may learn tenderness, a fineness of concern

my dictionary defines the bourgeoisie as: the middle-class especially with reference to their materialistic values and conventional attitudes, so it stands to reason that we bourgeoisie are all, at least mildly, depressed

we have learnt to stand and move around mindlessly which has ruined our legs for anything with delicacy and finesse

depressed in the sense of unable to channel libido/spirit/heart into the quotidian

I have a student who is a swimming instructor specialising in kids who are terrified of the water. She told me that all she does is get them through their fear, and give them confidence in the water. Then learning to swim is natural and easy. I told her that's all I'm trying to do with her, only with spirit rather than water.

a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire

we suffer because we feel we are entitled to things we are not

letting go of everything that's not me

turn yourself into the sort of person who finds work (the difficulty, the challenge, the boredom) enjoyable

The work is an acquired taste, and the majority never acquire it. But for those that do, it becomes everything.

Yes, you have to sit long and hard, but someone has to tiptoe up to you at some point and whisper in your ear.

the sangha regulates your practice but is never a substitute

it's never what you think

we suffer because our expectations are too high

it is only possible to love life when you stop fearing death

an ethics or politics of relation, preservation and frugality

Imagine you're surrounded by little butterflies and they're settling on you and then they're fluttering off and settling again. You're sparkling with a really tender, light, delicate, magical energy. And if you can just bring a bit of tone into the dantien and a bit of tone into the hamstrings, then those butterflies will be drawn towards you – you will become attractive. So you're just getting a handle, a little bit of a handle on spirit. Not too much, because otherwise you'll inhibit it. So you're totally relaxed but inducing tension where you need it. For that you need real control, not ego control which is always from fear. If the mind is wandering or thinking to itself, it's never going to happen.

withdraw the front and allow the back to expand and become the container that contains you the contained — this is ward-off

the fatal flaw in humans is arrogance – we think we are gods (we think therefore we are gods) and we worship ourselves

our saving grace is always humility

Feel the two minds: the opinionated mind which we would like to control and withdraw because it's ugly and it ruins everything, and the mind that we want to activate (what I tend to call spirit and Plato called psyche) a playful, delicate mind that comes out when you turn away from it. If I look at it, I inhibit it, I cramp its style. So it's sort of invisible. You only catch glimpses because as soon as you look, it disappears. For me, this is the most important thing. This is what makes us alive and human. It's not the other mind. It's not the cleverness.

The power of the Eye of the Heart, which produces insight, is vastly superior to the power of thought, which produces opinions.

the legs hold the sacrum gently, the same way that they touch the ground

legs springy and rubbery

Mark time with the breathing rather than the train of thought. The single most difficult, revolutionary and transformative of tasks. Success is only possible if you fall out of love with the self, and fall in love with life, the process of life, being as becoming as time.

What sort of mind is mind in dantien? Cool and withdrawn. Detached but not indifferent. Like a wise man that says nothing. Quiet, patient, present.

in reality, all we photographers photograph is ourselves in the other

the weight of the sacrum pulls you plumb erect

reel the mind in

unless you learn to quiet the mind, you'll never go deep into anything

the back of the leg bends and the front of the leg straightens – a playful tussle

In small things, delight is intense.

only by practising the same thing day in day out do you become sensitive to difference

good tension is immediacy of response

no one can do the work for you

choose company wisely – soft creatures, or at least those who appreciate softness

asymptotically approaching it, with genuine humility, from ever new angles

it takes about a year to learn the Form, by which time, if you've got into a daily practice, you will have fallen in love with Tai Chi, or fallen in love with the principles: relaxation, softness, roundness, turning … when we start practising, we're coming back to the work … but we're also coming back to the pleasure of the work, the simple pleasure … and you'll only feel that if you allow the work to quieten the mind … normally people are tense because they have overactive minds, so if you want to relax the body, you have to quieten the mind … my body is moving and my mind is still in the middle, and the mind is just watching, just listening, waiting, attending …

allow the earth to empty the mind

nowadays everyone wants private lessons, as though time with a master will compensate for lack of practice

The teaching demands to be practised. If the student refuses then they have no recourse but to mock it – convincing themselves that it is not worthy of their special attention.

intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scent and the sounds and the sunlight

a mind soft enough to accept the earth's power over it

bend down and touch the ground

never mind what comes to mind

meditation: getting the mind around time

that quality of reminiscence which often accompanies our first acquaintance with something that will deeply concern us

work for redemption – a falling away from the self and a sense of the numinous

meditation: paying attention – waiting for truth rather than going out to look for it

what we know holds us back

instead of being carried along by the stream of consciousness, awaken the ocean of libido and learn to surf its surging heaving rhythms

a rhythm not necessarily human

to truly be – in the sense of endlessly becoming – it is important not to know

a faithful mind abandons itself joyfully to the process of practice

meditation, first and foremost, brings mind back to body

when you leave the screen and come back to the things of your world, feel how you also return to the body – to the thing that you are

perception
   tender as
      primroses

routine stabilizes life
practice deepens life

mind as awareness of energy

in the heat of the event do we flinch, falter, flee or fight?

within movement there is stillness
within stillness there is movement

and so on and so forth

From a certain point onwards, information does not inform – it deforms.

ego a mass of grievance & resentment

study & practise the giving way

i read not to acquire information and form opinions but to be blown away

Teacher sets more homework than we can reasonably managed. Because it's good to have weight hanging over us. Something pending. Unfinished business. Careful rather than care-free. Responsibility.

an inability to accept the standardized cultural denials of the real nature of ex­perience

the life one lives is never a choice

relish the silence

spirit is the spark of actualisation
it is also a responsiveness to actualisation

Back in the seventies a friend asked me to accompany him to hear Haitink conduct Mahler on the South Bank. I declined saying I didn't really care for Mahler. He, being a piano student at the RCM, explained that one didn't go to concerts for the music but for the musician – to be party to the miracle of top class music making. If the music was well performed then it didn't matter whether you like it or not, it would still move you – a matter of heart rather than taste. I didn't understand. And in the same year I turned down opportunities to see both Richter and Michelangeli, fool that I was.

The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result he has to make personal sense out of it.

What could be more miraculous than the greedy grub falling asleep and waking a butterfly?

ego develops when fear enters the heart

meditation subdues the ego and wakens heart and soul

The educated mind – the mind that's full of shit – inhibits the dynamic and kills things. It is like a butterfly collection: full of once beautiful creatures, pinned to a board and fastidiously labelled.

To make things 'perfectly clear' is reactionary and stupefying. The real is not perfectly clear.

age gracefully but don't get old

there is only enough time in a life to do one thing well

the journey into depth is also, not surprisingly, a journey into absolute simplicity

it is my conviction that we all want the same thing: not wealth and happiness but heart and soul

Gentleness, like foolishness, doesn't speak well.

mind in dantien is focus – the ability to pinpoint the attention softly for a time

let the objects of perception touch the heart

then the subject/object divide dissolves and you become one

spirit shrinks from the man-made world

Spiritual work is all about cleansing karma. It requires constant attention, and it requires us to suffer. Not terribly but at least to the point of working at something that challenges the ego. I tell my students that there are two simple things they can pay attention to through the day that will definitely work to improve karma. One is to ensure that when standing the legs are slightly bent, or at least tending to bend rather than straighten. And never lock the knees. This means that the legs are always working and that they are always softening and that energy is always flowing through them. The second 'technique' is to soften the critical mind. When you look at something notice the tendency for the mind to categorise (name), judge and criticise, and instead simply smile at the thing, and let that smile be like a warm accepting embrace. Very simple but very difficult to do. Working on karma simply requires us to replace bad habits with good ones.

Only in the embrace of the other can we find any shelter.

Teaching is a strange business. It won't just happen because the student turns up and pays up. It has to be drawn out (of the teacher and the occasion) with an osmotic pressure created by reverential respect, purity of motive, and a burning desire to practice. The student must be deserving.

ego, bourgeoisie, capitalism – same phenomenon, different scale