FORM PRACTISED FOR ZEN CULTIVATION

FORM PRACTISED FOR ZEN CULTIVATION

“They seek him here, they seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in heaven or is he in hell?

That demmed elusive Pimpernel”

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Tai Chi is about feeling rather than thinking. It is possible to collect a lot of intellectual knowledge about Tai Chi without really penetrating the essence of what it is to do Tai Chi. Tai Chi is an experience, a way of life and words cannot express the truth of it. One can talk about Tai Chi but one cannot say what it is. Chang Sang Feng once wrote:

‘Tai Chi Chuan encompasses a totality of effort. Meditation, the first step, is the soft and tranquil effort of internal cultivation. The movements of Tai Chi Chuan are the active, external part of the cultivation. One must combine external and internal, activeness and passiveness, hardness and softness, in order to achieve the ultimate goal.’

By training in both these inner and outer factors form work can lead to ‘Tai Chi’ or ‘Grand Ultimate’ – a glimpse of cosmic reality in an inspiring moment of spiritual awakening - what Hindus call Moksha or ‘Meeting The Eyes Of God', a state of freedom revealed by constant enquiry into the nature of things. You can achieve an awakening or enlightenment in an instant when the right time comes.

The ‘Grand Ultimate’ goes by many names – Supreme Reality, The Cosmos, Brahman, God, Zen – at the end of the day they are all the same thing.

The form has built into it the capacity for spiritual training and it serves this purpose very well. One avenue of approach for reaching ‘Tai Chi’ is C'han meditation, better known as zen. Zen is not solely Buddhist it can be embraced by any religion, it just means a glimpse of the actualization of cosmic reality.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to psychologically peel away the layers of yourself, whatever it is that you think makes up you.

Start with the arbitrary stuff like your name, gender, age, address, job, relationship status, physical description, IQ.

Then move inward to your personality traits, goals, dreams, beliefs, thoughts, values, fears, friends, home and country.

Ponder on the thought that if you were to lose the ability to speak or think without language or if you completely lost your memories and your senses – where IS your SELF?

Without meaning to sound morbid, if you lost your clothes and then your body, if you had to live on a mechanical heart and lung machine, if you suffered brain damage and lost all your mental functions – where exactly is this thing called SELF that makes you?

At what point do you stop being a self? If you keep peeling away the layers of identity and hierarchies of attributes at some point there is nothing left!

Even on a purely physical level if we were to break your body down to its DNA you're just left with a collection of proteins and acids, which themselves break down into atoms, which are themselves 99•9999% empty space – you are a metaphysical Scarlet Pimpernel...All individuals lack inherent, independent existence. All is one and one is nothingness.

Now if you can get your head and heart around all this and it doesn't make you uncomfortable (which it shouldn't!), when it feels right and your training alone prior to beginning the form just contemplate on all this for a while, try to forget all your cares and worries, forget even yourself, if you can forget your own ego. With this letting go you may feel that you are an integral part of the cosmos...and then begin.

Our life is a mystery and a miracle. It is beyond our ability to fully comprehend it, but if we open ourselves up to it we can have a direct experience of it. When a one pointed mind is attained in the process of practicing a form you may experience a zen awakening or satori often during the final standing meditation. So make sure not to place too much emphasis just upon physical training. True power and wisdom come from within and are reflected without. Introspection and philosophical assimilation must balance strict physical conditioning. It takes a long time to understand that there is something beyond the immediate results of physical training, insight is the product of personal sacrifice and diligent effort, but when it comes it comes fast and often unexpectedly, as Henry Bernard Carpenter wrote in his Liber Amoris:

Oh, there are moments in man's mortal years

When for an instant that which long has lain

Beyond our reach is on a sudden found

In things of smallest compass, and we hold

The unbounded shut in one small minute's space,

And worlds within the hollow of our hand, -

A world of music in one word of love,

A world of love in one quick wordless look,

A world of thought in one translucent phrase,

A world of memory in one mournful chord,

A world of sorrow in one little song.

Such moments are man's holiest, - the divine

And first – sown seeds of love's eternity.

Intangible Blessings

Mathew