Inside our heads, the decibel levels are off the charts. That’s the thing about lives of quiet desperation. They’re only quiet on the outside.

—Eric Weiner

When I told a new student that the most important word in Taiji is  LISTENING  he pointed out that it's also the most important word in life.

When Cheng Man-ch'ing (Zheng Manqing 郑曼青) was asked why none of his students approached his level, he famously replied: Because they don't believe.

They hadn't yet come to the conviction that it's all a matter of relaxation and heart, not strength or speed or technique or intelligence or sensitivity or skill…

The meaning of life is simply to share the gift God gave you.

This is what we mean by 'letting your energy out.'

Progress at Taiji is a long slow process of reinterpretting the principles in the light of new-gained relaxation.

My making process is a daily repetition in a calm and quiet place.

—JaeJun Lee

It’s the balance between intention and surprise that keeps the work alive for me.

—JaeJun Lee

"On second thoughts..."

(Reasonably wise but spiritually disastrous)

first thought best thought

Caregiver or caretaker?
Giving care but taking the duty of care

After eight years of Taiji my teacher recommended weight training. An elderly student at the BTCCA, who had done weights all his adult life, recommended I buy a barbell, two dumbells, and 50 kilos of weight. I asked if that would be enough as I was already squatting 50kg. "You can always make it more difficult," he muttered.

Tense shoulders indicate
an overactive mind &
an underactive heart

The only way you'll change is if you have an overwhelming desire to stop being the way you are.

Grace shines naturally from a heart full of gratitude

I feel my “I” is much too small for me.

—Vladimir Mayakovsky

Meditation: at home with silence & openness

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

—Matthew 18:3

(The Change: a simple switch from head to heart)

The kingdom of heaven opens up (within & without) when you quieten the mind and truly listen.

I AM A TREE

Rooting down to Earth
Sucking energy up

Reaching up to Heaven
Drawing energy down

The teacher teaches so the student can practise,
knowing full well that they won't.
Hoping against hope.

(So the teacher is really teaching herself.)

I’m always asking myself:
Am I doing what I came here to do?

—Gillian Allnutt

Is it possible for the social and the sacral to converge?

Straight locked legs indicate an arrogant/fearful rejection of Nature.

mind
Not what I thought you were. I thought
You were myself, a step away. But no,
You are that crazy flower in Christ’s hand.

—Donald Revell

Meditation: attending the Internal Life

the sheer joy of hard work

We are not among those who have ideas only between books, stimulated by books. Our habit is to think outdoors – walking, jumping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or by the sea where even the paths become thoughtful.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 366

We are figments in the intending mind of God.

dojo is where we kill the ego


Dojo is two Japanese characters:
do 道 (Chinese dao) way or path
jo 場 place
So dojo means 'Place of the Dao'

The courage to do without authority.

(Requires real self-discipline.)

A maturity that values softness, delicacy, subtlety…

Weilian attention (l'attention pure) is the price of admission to the world of energy.

We can count on so few people to go the hard way with us.

—Adrienne Rich

the subversive function of the imagination

Is all we're trying to do is be in the world the way God intended.

Pull yourself together
Let yourself go

(It's all breathing)

Practise like your life depends upon it

When John Coltrane first began performing “My Favorite Things” a jazz critic somewhere transcribed a solo from a Carnegie Hall performance, then showed the transcription to Coltrane at the beginning of an interview. Coltrane looked at it long and hard, squinting as though listening to black smudges of ink that covered several pages. Then he looked up. “Can’t play it,” he said.

—Sam Hamill

Real thought is always creative & always surprises.

A sense that it's come from the muse, not from me.

Patience is the art of caring slowly.

—John Ciardi

Meditation develops spiritual resilience. 

Eventually nothing gets you down. 

Not for long anyway.

ALL HEART
belly lower heart
head upper heart

play with it  :  never force it

Yielding, at its most subtle & refined, suckers the world into giving you the energy you need to do what you want to do. We call this borrowing energy.

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
   by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it

—A R Ammons

Poetry uses language to reach beyond language.

There’s a name for attention at its most intense and generous: love. Attention is love. Love is attention. They are one and the same.

—Eric Weiner

Despite history and progress, which is really only technological progress (Picasso announced after visiting Altamira that art has not really gone anywhere in 30,000 years and Alfred North Whitehead said all Western philosophy is just footnotes to Plato). So despite history – so-called human progress – there's always been a counter current, an underground, secret subculture trying to move away from the civilised, the social, the cultural, move backwards towards inner silence, spiritual insight and a naked simplicity.

The Hebrew for attention is tsumet lev (תשומת לב) which literally translates as placing the heart.

Alchemists say patience is the Ladder

and humility the Key to their Garden

Nowadays most are not just closed off, they're immured – walled in behind endless commentary, their own and their culture's.

Somewhere in the forest is a clearing.
Somewhere in the clearing is a man.
Somewhere in the man is a spark.
The spark creates worlds, and
leaves them in ruin.

—Gyrðir Elíasson

The teacher never tires of repeating themselves in the somewhat vain hope that one day the student will wake up and exclaim: Why have you never told me that before?!

A heart so big it swallows everything up