Now
as they rode thus through the forest together, Merlin said to
the King: "Lord, which wouldst thou rather have, Excalibur,
or the sheath that holds him?" To which King Arthur
replied, "Ten thousand times would I rather have Excalibur
than his sheath." "In that thou art wrong, my
Lord," said Merlin, "for let me tell thee, that though
Excalibur is of so great a temper that he may cut in twain
either a feather or a bar of iron, yet is his sheath of such a
sort that he who wears it can suffer no wound in battle, neither
may he lose a single drop of blood."
* * *
Isn't it pathetic the way Western students and teachers of Tai Chi have given up on the essence of the art? Now they're all structure geeks and posture Nazis. They're firm believers in bone, muscles, tendon, ligaments... such material boys!
But that's not Nature's Way. That's not the real Tai Chi. Oh sure there are a few physical foundational points for beginners. The Five Principles are listed here. But to fuss obsessively with all that anatomical and postural structural crap is to take the finger for the moon. It's like if you went for pilot flight training and they spent the whole 6-month course showing you how to fasten your seatbelt in just the absolutely aesthetically optimal way, or sit just so in the pilot's chair so your butt looks cute from behind... Fuck that, let's get it on doing what we came for.
Which is energetics. You might say then why not just go with Qi Gong. Sure, except the Qi Gong whatever system isn't as good an energy gusher as Tai Chi - properly done. Tai Chi includes all of Qi Gong but the reverse doesn't hold.
I was working with a new private student the other day. He learned Tai Chi form and push hands from a senior person under the lineage of a famous master in Singapore. Of course this guy's body was full of unconscious tension, as always the case. I asked him, since you learned the whole form, how often do you practice it? ... Well... I kind of stopped for a while... been busy... BUZZ.! Wrong answer in tthat whenever I hear that I know they've been practicing wrong, in fact that they were never taught correctly in the first place. [Though why anyone would want to study under an obnoxious scumbag like Tabby is a question that would drive Freud himself to madness. - Tabby Cat owner comment]
When you learn it right and practice it right, NOTHING wlll keep you from practicing it. You'll be like a well-conditioned rat pressing the sugar button over and over. It feels so good it's like you wouldn't give up eating. Or a heroin addict wouldn't give that up, granted a free infinite supply with no narks breathing on his neck, would he? Well that's what Tai Chi is. Uncut China White.
I've often said the Feds would make Tai Chi illegal if they knew how ecstatic the pure energy feels - when ya do it right. But since most people do it wrong, the Feds don't know and Tai Chi is not yet a Schedule One entry.
I'm sure you know the Gita quote:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one...
Yeah. Well. That's what it is. The Tai Chi energy when it permeates you. So when I hear that old line "I've kinda slacked off lately..." then I don't even need to touch the person's body to know they haven't got a damn thing.
Not surprising. Everybody nowadays wants to look good, show off their muscles, have a ramrod goose-steppy robotically correct posture. That though is not Nature's Great Way. You don't get it by grabbing more stuff, adding more to yourself. You get it by shedding and subtracting. But we CANNOT COMPUTE this idea, so all the former Tai Chi people are feverishly training up other things, anything, like Zhan Zhuang or clubbells or Swiss balls or any other thing as long as it isn't boring old Tai Chi. But I can't blame them. Since they were never correctly taught, it's natural they would turn away.
As the bard put it so well:
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted.- Troilus and Cressida, Act_ iii. _Sc_. 3.
As for me though just as Tesshu Yamaoka said about his Zen practice, I'll stick with it even when it's come down to me as the last person on Earth doing the real shit.
And the point of it all? Besides just feel-good? It is only this, alas still far distant:
刀槍不入
(If unsure of the meaning, see top of this post)
