This
       sperm work
      intangible
     theory
    undertaken
         with great restraint
         of means, makes
       for
       making

Three in the morning, four in the afternoon

This is a story in the Chuang Tzu. The man who keeps monkeys tells them that he is going to give them four chestnuts in the morning and three in the afternoon. They get angry and complain because they want more. The trainer concedes that he should be more generous, and agrees to three in the morning and four in the afternoon. At this the monkeys are satisfied and happy. The power of yielding - to give the appearance of backing down but without compromising at all.

BEDROCK



Snowmelt pond        warm granite
we make camp,
no thought of finding more.
and nap
and leave our minds to the wind.

on the bedrock, gently tilting,
sky and stone,

teach me to be tender.

the touch that nearly misses—
brush of glances—
tiny steps—
that finally cover worlds
       of hard terrain.
cloud wisps and mists
gathered into slate blue
bolts of summer rain.

tea together in the purple starry eve;
new moon soon to set,
why does it take so
long to learn to
love,
     we laugh
             and grieve.

Gary Snyder

Yielding

“The more you bleed in practice the less you bleed in a fight.”

Imagine being in a fight for your life. The furthest thing from your mind would be relaxation. That's why it is imperative to “cultivate a relaxed habit” as Dr Chi put it. You must be relaxed all the time, or at least most of it, rather than just for the last half of each practice session. The same with yielding. If yielding is something you need to turn on once you are under attack then it is always going to be too late. The Classics recommend developing a yielding mind – a constant and continual yielding – yielding all the time. Life with all its richness and intensity is a constant barrage, and so continual yielding, for the Tai Chi student, delicate flower that he is, is a necessity. Not only does it allow him to survive, it encourages him to become a part of a process of opening and joining – opening to life and joining with its thrust – the natural process. Continual yielding also encourages the relationship between student and life – encourages life to present you with continually improving and refining energy to work with. The same law at work that causes the teacher to present you with the next facet of the teaching by the simple fact of his presence, naturally and without too much effort. Yielding encourages attack. As Liang used to say, to catch the robber you must first tempt him in by leaving a window open.

Yielding isn't withdrawal. It has little to do with turning the waist, sinking or relaxing. Yielding is the spark of connexion – the leap of compassion that engulfs the attack. Yielding comes from the heart. It is the very beginning of the creative act – a gentle but intense pulse of spirit. If you practice it enough then eventually life becomes a constant stream of such pulses and you begin to vibrate with life and a passion for life. This is Dr Chi all over. The glow you see in his face in those wonderful photographs is the glow of pure yielding.

Tao

Tao gives Life to all things. Teh gives to each one its Form. Tao gives the inward urge towards perfectness. Teh is the Expression or Name of Tao. By yielding to the influence of Tao men will be transformed from within themselves. Its effect is to be observed not only in the physical but in the moral kingdom. Through Tao is maintained the Unity of Prince and people. It unites Heaven and Earth harmoniously to produce the sweet dew. It gathers the people in the bonds of time and individuality. He who knows how to rest in it will never pass away.

Tao is remote and inexpressible, yet ever expressing itself. Tao is empty; yet, in the using of It, It is found to be inexhaustible. Tao is invisible; yet It shines through all things visible. In Tao is stillness; yet It is the source of unceasing activity. Tao is the well-spring of health and of never-ending life. Teh is the manifestation of life, which is forever seeking its highest expression in Tao. It returns into Tao, and is ever anew sent forth. In this way is formed the Rhythm of Life, with its unceasing throb and rest, eternally, progressively expressing itself.

from Tao Teh King, a tentative translation from the Chinese by Dr Isabella Mears, 1922.

      underneath:
               excerpt
             drawing
            increase and
               then, culmination
               with accelerated
           tempo
              growing
    is not thinkable

Remembering

Each time your teacher teaches you he/she presents something new. This may be a new posture, a new principle, a new way of working, etc. More important though is the invisible aspect of the new – a new facet of energy and the internal that their very presence conjures, often unconsciously, just for you (ever had the feeling in a large class that the teaching was directed just to you?). It seems to be a natural law of the teaching experience – the coming together of master and student – that a facet of energy is always evoked that is new to the student (and sometimes even new to the teacher). Maybe it's just the natural awkwardness of the teacher – his distaste at the student's nauseating tensions staring him in the face and his refusal to even get involved in them – that naturally draws something from him to unsettle the student and drive them onto the back foot where they belong, at least when they're in his company. Or maybe it is simply that the teacher's rich energetic and internal presence – far richer than the students – gradually unfolds – the next new facet being the most apparent with each meeting. Whatever the reason it definitely happens and it is the true teaching – the postures being just a way of getting you all working together – catching your attention. This new facet of energy may excite or fascinate you but it is far more likely to upset and make you uneasy – make you feel that you are under attack – not a physical attack but an attack to the assumptions you have unconsciously based your view of reality upon – an attack to your very foundations. The fear and loathing, the terror and trepidation you feel when this happens, maybe not during – you're probably too involved or overwhelmed to know what you're feeling during the lesson – but after the event, can be severe, and must be weathered courageously. Such feelings are a positive sign – a sign that you have been open during the lesson and that the teaching is beginning to get to you. What is crucial though, obviously, is not to cut off from this aspect of the teaching, but to instead use your practice to sink into the energy of the teaching – the very thing that is making you want to resist or pull away. The meditative side of Tai Chi is not just using the Form to relax and quieten the mind, but relaxing into the energy of the teaching/teacher and through that relaxation evoking and conjuring that energy each time you work until it is so familiar that you have internalized it – you have made it part of you. Yielding – turning an enemy into a friend. If you work this way then your practice is a constant review of what you have been taught – remembering past energy experiences in the light of wisdom and depth you have acquired in the meantime can be very rewarding – you project yourself now to that past experience and live it again and realise it was far more than you thought or felt at the time. This is something my teacher does all the time. In a way it happens naturally when you teach, but if you can bring it to every solo practice session then you will slip into the world of energy and the internal with ease. This doesn't mean that your teacher's presence will be any easier to take but it does mean that your presence will be far easier for him to take – he may even begin to enjoy it (stranger things have happened) – and it does mean that time with the teacher will be far more productive for both of you.

Softness

Someone emailed me yesterday to complain about me being negative (yet again) about Chinese symbolism. For me images and symbols should be used the way poets use them – to evoke unusual feelings and moods – rather than to intellectually clarify a situation. A good image doesn't bring the comfort of certainty or clarification, it opens and then touches parts inaccessible without such opening – it sensitizes, connects, amazes and inspires. The problem with symbols and theories, from yin/yang to the Holy Trinity to Newton's Laws of Motion, is that they become a way of looking at the world, or worse still they replace the real world with one in which they are paramount – in a vain attempt to clarify what is there they distort to such a degree that one loses all touch with both the natural and the internal. And having, or requiring, a mind full of simplistic certainties the student will not develop softness, or not the delightful vibrating sensuous softness that seduces and transforms as it touches. Such softness comes from developing the sobriety, humility and openness to admit or even hold, in one's heart rather than mind, the whole of creation – every possibility is already within you – yielding heart. I remember hearing an interview with James Lovelock – the Gaia man – in which he explained that a system that supports life contains many active and volatile components that would usually combust or combine into relatively inert substances, but somehow the livingness of the environment stops this, allowing life to flourish. The tremble of life is the dance of life – the seething interplay between these components – and it is this that softness connects to and evokes. It is so supremely active that it can connect to anything – it already contains everything so connexion is simply admitting an aspect of its own experience.

           paths to
           itself
              as
          theory
             it
              will be a
            close
              room 
    it must make itself

Mellow

Relaxed enough for things to settle into their component parts. The thing itself is then the dynamic interaction of those parts rather than their physical agglomeration. Things begin to lose their thingness and instead become energetic processes, constantly ready and willing to combine and transform, if only for a moment. This is what the Tai Chi student struggles to become. Each of the main centres of the physical structure - belly, heart and head - has multiple aspects (my teacher calls them dimensions) as well as two halves, and opening these centres involves re-establishing and developing this multiplicity. The waist is always ready to turn both ways, as well as sink or rise, and never locks in stillness or in one direction. The heart is always giving, receiving, embracing, gathering, often all at once. The head (brain) is always ready to see all sides and never locks into an established train of thought: thinking should be gently and tentatively picking a path through undergrowth rather than pacing a well-worn path or a tarmaced road. If you can learn to admit all aspects then you will become the energy bouncing between. This is the healthy way to become an energetic being. It is the key to softness. It has nothing to do with yin and yang. Yin and yang, and the associated symbol, are an intellectual construct, and if you decide to think of the world in their terms then you are overlaying an unnatural structure, and the world will shrink from you. If you learn to naturally vibrate with energy rather than force it then you will become so seductive the world wont be able to resist - it will swallow you up as and into its natural processes.

Emanations

'I am a walking fire, I am all leaves'.

'I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss,
fruit, grains, esculent roots.
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds & birds all over'.

I find I advance with
sidereal motions
. . .my eyes containing substance

of the sun,
my ears built of beaks & feathers. . .

I ascend with saps

& flower in season

& eddy with tides.

With every moon,
I come from the darkness into incandescence.

My tongue assumes the apple's flesh
& my skin, the infinite spheres of the thistle's prickle. And as I
breathe

the wind has its billow. . .& all the grasses. . .

in a combing, mazy movement.

Ronald Johnson

The man who doesn't belong in a community is probably the man to pay attention to. The old idea of the stranger is still very strong. That's definitely a Greek idea - we may not honour him anymore - we don't - because we didn't inherit that part of the culture, unfortunately. But we certainly know who he is, and the stranger's fearsome. He's the man to talk to. He's the man who knows where he's come from.

Ed Dorn

Teaching

My teacher once told me that, as a teacher, you must ensure that you give your students everything in their first lesson since it may be the only time you see them. Of course you cannot present the whole body of work in all its corporeal glory - it's far too massive - so you must present the essence of the teaching. This is only really possible, and is unavoidable, if you embody that essence - if you have become a limb of the teaching - if you bleed with it. This requires you to have received sufficient transmission from your teacher and then for you to have worked solely with those transmissions long enough to internalize them. Is all you can be sure of is that this process takes time - lots of it.

A poem is anything that doesn’t quite make sense but haunts you the rest of your life.

Gillian Conoley

Between-energy

Talking about natural leaders with JK yesterday. A natural leader requires two basic qualities: the charisma and power to inspire belief in those he leads, and a good nose (instinct): instinctively knowing which avenues are most worth exploring and the ability to safely and successfully navigate uncharted territory. The knowledge handed down to you by your teacher, if it is in the form of postures or Forms, is always finite and limited. A good teacher will impart methods and energy rather than structures: they will pass on to you the means to constantly generate your own material. What would you rather have, nine or ten stock Forms under your belt or the ability to invent your own – to devise ways of directly tackling areas of weakness within yourself, your students, and the work? The method shown to me is that of allowing the between energy to become the teacher. The between energy is not just what happens between you and another person, it is what happens when that between takes on a life of its own. We Tai Chi students have all experienced this. It's what happens when the work you do together really cooks. It requires you both to be in good shape, for your spirits to rise, for your sobriety to sink, and for you both to be humble enough – pure for the occasion – to allow the interaction to take you both into the unknown. Such experiences are heightened in the extreme and your past life is lit up by them – in fact the worth of your life is defined by them. They stand high as moments of perfection flanked by the dross of ordinary living. The good student worships these experiences – they are the only things that give meaning and hope – and he knows that they both nourish his own work and energy, and also hone his worthiness – make him a vessel better able to carry the teaching and those he is connected to. What is difficult is carrying on when they are over – in the cold light of day – cleaning up the next morning after the party is over – piecing together what actually happened, technically, so that the miracle becomes burnt into your fabric rather than just a memory to bask in. If you practice what transpired, to the best of your powers of recollection, rather than (or as well as) stock Forms then the between energy becomes the dominant force in your work and its soul will always be present even if there isn't enough energy or good-will to rouse its spirit. When between energy graces you you are effectively better than you are – you receive a glimmer of how you and things and relationships should be. This is foreknowledge and real instruction. To be in the almost constant presence of such grace requires real humility – the humility to look things in the face and expect and require nothing.

Relax the heart

Conditioning is tension. Energy becomes locked up in the cage of conditioning which initially prevents you properly expressing yourself, and in the long term leads to all sorts of problems, illness such as cancers, strokes, heart disease being the most extreme - eventually the dam will burst - eventually whatever is chasing will catch and do its worst.

Natural is what happens when relaxation replaces conditioning, especially relaxation of the heart. When the heart relaxes it feels like a weight lifts from it - it fills with lightness and joy, no matter your general mood, almost to the point of bursting, and always to the point of suffusing not only your whole body but your environment as well, including all those you are connected to - those you hold in your heart. When your heart relaxes/releases, you are at your very best and in a sense anything is possible, particularly abandonment, but also teaching, learning and healing.

When your heart is full you brim with love.
When your head is full you brim with ideas.
Which sounds more healthy to you?

A passionate life is one in which the heart leads.

John Kells

            Thus
            deny
     structural
       bolstering
         of its ego
           law
    a naïve joy
             relaxes
             knowing

Principle

Text message received today from a student:

Just figured the best way to protect knees & ankles is to have a constant leg ward-off feeling which also wakes up inner legs and inner ferocity.

Energy tends to travel up the inside leg and down the outside. Ward-off is a posture that attracts and gathers energy into your core: arms into heart/throat, legs into groin/belly, and eyes into brain. What it actually does is send energy down the outside of the limbs from the back-brain, back-heart, sacrum, and then gather it up into the front of each centre. Embrace. Attack is usually what happens when this flow of energy is reversed. Inner ferocity is what you experience and develop when you naturally alternate yield (ward-off) and attack, i.e. when one naturally morphs into the other, or when your body contains both simultaneously, e.g. lower body ward-off whilst upper body attacks. The faster this alternation, or vibration, the more ferocious. What is difficult, and what requires maturity and humility, i.e. a refusal to be seduced by power - a refusal to adhere to anything other than good principle - is to allow this dual nature to develop as a consequence of that impeccability - relaxedly. Only then does it become natural to you - invade every aspect of your being, ready to invade in turn everything it touches - but also programmed in so that its expression, or rather its ability to connect and transform, is not at all a matter of energy. Nothings needs to be done. It is present and so it has already done its work. Work without energy. Dr Chi having successfully yielded before either he or his opponent have gotten up in the morning. This is what I find totally interesting and totally inspiring. How the way a person lives their life expresses in every aspect of that life. When I read poetry to JK his response is unusual. He has no interest in the work as such, only in the principles at the core of the life that produced such work. If these are firstly worth communicating and secondly well communicated then the poem is a success. There is always present the problem of communication. Is it ever possible to communicate successfully to those who don't, on some level, already know? If the principles at the core of the life and the work are 'true' (natural) are they any easier to get across? How muddy indeed are the stirrings and interferences that occur when one set of principles (the teacher's) meet another (the student's). In a way I suspect communication is always a matter of seduction and resonance. The supreme effort must come from the student - to make themselves a fit instrument first for tuning and then for use. The (im)possibility of teaching/learning.

              earth's attraction
          for brief
           critical moments
          cuts through
                atmosphere
                 with
                soft
                articulation
   leads us to take
                short
               steps
               that
             occur
              in the fluid-gaseous realm
       a pool of water
            (symbol:
         the stairway)
   You have to take care