Strange how most yoga practitioners never get beyond the body beautiful. Almost as though they're afraid to go too deep.

Start from scratch.

A good action is one that pays a karmic debt. A bad action is one that creates a karmic debt. And, in the eye of this law at least, ignorance is no excuse. We always know the difference.

hanging on by a prayer

a completely open-ended, negative, undetermined structure — the heart…

Spiritual work without spirit is a bit of a contradiction, don't you think?

Poetry is an attempt to erode the fundamental masculinity of language – its assurance and confidence in meaning and sense. Poetry is an absurd attempt to express, rather than state, truth, with, of all things, the written word. Poetry succeeds when that string of words called the poem has sufficient ambiguity to offer me the opportunity to create an event in their declamation. The event – the magical coming together of me, the poem and the moment – makes the meaning, not the words.

There is no solution; only a lull in hostilities.

"Faith is faith when it is impossible to believe."

with an open heart turned toward the event

My six year old daughter has got into the bad habit of promising "Later" whenever I ask her to do something she doesn't feel like doing. It's a procrastination that, of course, never ends because that "Later" never arrives. It's a habit we all get into, and we all indulge, often without realising: every time we turn aside from something difficult or painful or distasteful, every time we opt for the easy way out, we are effectively saying "Later" because at some point that something will have to be dealt with – it's the simple law of karma. Spiritual work, in a sense, is all about getting to Heaven – a future free of karmic debt. In other words, it's all about dealing with things now, as they crop up, and if nothing crops up then dig around until something does. Hell is simply the mire of unresolved issues we find ourselves in, a mire that will only thicken with avoidance.

How can we do anything other than pray?

Tense shoulders hide and protect a frightened heart, a heart with little faith or courage, a heart with no heart.

Yielding is a technique for softening a situation, a relationship, an object, so that it becomes susceptible to energy. This again is all heart.

The teacher wants two things: your undivided attention whilst you're with her, and a significant portion of your time spent practising when you are not with her. Without these progress will be excruciatingly slow.

Each time I practice I remember two promises that were made thirty years ago. The promise taiji made to me, through my teacher, and the promise I made to taiji. Both promises are pure heart – not of the mind at all. Taiji said: "Devote yourself to me and I'll give you something you'll get no other way." My promise was simply one word: "Yes." Hence, the practice I do, this renewal of faith, is my humble version of the Eternal Return: a return to the innocence and purity of that sacramental event – my first meeting with taiji – my first lesson.

"In solitude you felt a quiet sense of well-being without knowing why: some far-away person thought well of you, spoke well of you."