The conventional world puts a veil over your eyes.

—Sergio Larrain

Meditation: sitting quietly and waking to the bigger picture.

wúcháng   無常   impermanence

pistēs   πίστης   faith
elpis   ἐλπίς   hope
agāpe   ἀγάπη   charity

Meditation: from fullness to emptiness

xin  心  heart-mind

It takes two to know one.

—Gregory Bateson

Śūnyatā   Kenosis   Fanā’
(Emptiness)

There's no point helping others if they
then refuse to help themselves

There's no point listening if you then refuse to hear.

There's no point looking if you then refuse to see.

If you have a dominant ego then you are an idolater.

The big breakthrough comes when you're finally mature enough to admit your faults, own your faults, and do something about your faults.

It took me 25 years of Taiji to get to this point.

We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns.

—Andrei Tarkovsky

Inside each of us there's a little E.T. aching to go home.

Relax into destiny
into who/what/where
you really are

Keeping depression at bay by rushing around like a headless chicken is what therapists call active depression.

I am trying to find a truth beyond the perils of our extinction, faced with the unconditional love and trust in the eyes of my daughters.

—Joep Beving

toxic positivity

A useful concept being bandied around by therapists

Attention is thinking suspended.

—Eric Weiner

LIANG TUNG-TSAI'S TEN GUIDING PRINCIPLES

From my more than thirty years experience of learning and practicing T’ai Chi, I formulated ten guiding principles so I will know how to deal with people and myself:

1. Nobody can be perfect. Take what is good and discard what is bad.
2. If I believe entirely in books, better not read books. If I rely entirely on teachers, better not have teachers.
3. To remove a mountain is easy, but to change a man’s temperament is more difficult.
4. If there is anything wrong with me, I don’t blame others, I only blame myself.
5. If I want to live longer I must learn T’ai Chi and accomplish it both physically and mentally. To accomplish it mentally is much more difficult.
6. I must learn how to yield, to be tactful, not to be aggressive; to lose (small loss, small gain, great loss, great gain), not to take advantage of others; to give (the more one gives the more one will have).
7. Life begins at seventy. Everything is beautiful! Health is a matter of the utmost importance and all the rest is secondary. Now I must find out how to enjoy excellent health in my whole life and discover the way to immortality.
8. Make one thousand friends, but don’t make one enemy.
9. One must practice what he preaches. Otherwise it is empty talk or a bounced check.
10. To conceal the faults of others and praise their good points is the best policy.

As you work, the mood grows on you.

—Francis Bacon

If you find yourself in a fight then your Taiji has failed you.

All my life
all I've ever

really wanted is
to work in

such a way
I get drawn

ever closer
to God.

The best hours for meditation are between 3 & 5am when the world is sound asleep & dreaming. The hours either side are pretty good too.

The first thing the teacher does is introduce a new vocabulary.