Beyond exercise
Surely, there's nothing permanent about you except what you think is
permanent;
but your thinking is also transient, is it not?
And has truth a fixed place, without any movement?.
(Krishnamurti)
The way
Tai chi is not just an exercise routine. It is a system that combines
health, meditation and self defence.
Yet it goes further than this...
The
art offers the individual the opportunity to find
harmony with existence itself, to find your
place in the world.
A variety of oriental disciplines have this same purpose in mind:
calligraphy, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, zen
gardening,
Japanese archery and swordsmanship.
Most Western students never go below the
surface of
tai chi and consequently never know the
richness of the art.
Eating the flowers
The tai chi
form, qigong and pushing hands
practice represent aspects of tai chi but do not represent the entire system.
Beginners often become overly-concerned with the
peripheral, and spend little time focussed
upon the
core.
Lao Tzu warns us to eat the fruit, not the flowers.
We must not become enmeshed in the more
superficial components of
tai chi.
Eating the fruit
A good
tai chi syllabus is drawn straight from the pages of
Tao Te Ching and
Chuang Tzu.
It presents
taoist insights in the
context of the
tai chi classics.
Students are encouraged to explore their relationship with their bodies and
other people.
They are given the opportunity to re-evaluate received
knowledge in the
face of ancient Chinese
wisdom.
Ideally, you will come to see the truth for yourself.
The
insight
becomes apparent and you realise why things are done a certain way or why
the choices you once
saw were only
a limited part of the available whole.
Page created 18 January 2007