Tai Chi Chuan

Friday, 19 May 2006 19:09

An art, a song and life

This article was not only written in order to give you information about T'ai Chi, but also to waft you something from the sense that the training emits in the particular practice. I wish it will attain this and that your journey through the text may be luminous.

"From the one of silence I emerge, I am separated, divided.
A wave of will to create sets the wheel in motion as the two give birth to the three and the three give rise to the ten thousand things."

T'ai Chi Ch'uan, an art that begins with body silence, body peacefulness and unity, as the first thing we are asked is to stand, to relax and “listen” to the body. The primal position is a stand of attention. Every limb attached to the body. Nothing is separated, we recognize the One, not as an idea, but as a sense throughout our body. We recognize the mother of T'ai Chi, the Wu Chi, the situation before separation, before the creation of two, which in the Chinese calligraphy is symbolized by a simple circle.

And there appears the intention, the “I” as it is said in the language of T'ai Chi, the idea of movement. The leg moves to the side and there we are standing in a double root. We come to two, to T'ai Chi, in the Yin and the Yang, the two complementary energies the one coming to wholeness in the presence of the other. Sky and earth, man and woman, day and night, spring and autumn, winter and summer...

The two, however, do not remain static and separated, as the curve between them implies, but they develop a dynamic relation, they are mutually connecting in each others interspaces. Therefore, this relation is the three, the child, the seed, the Chi, the vital energy, the Prana. The thousands expressions of Chi give birth to everything. So, the aim of T'ai Chi is to recognize the Chi, the Yin and the Yang with the body as a vehicle and driver the movement itself, to balance them and to reach where everything is completed, in the no name situation, the Wu Chi.

"Like a volcano, dormant for thousands of years, seething within the entrails of the earth, I erupt and launched to the dome of the sky.
Then, fall sweetly like a bird’s feather, which of its own will freed itself, rejecting flight.
On the earth I step again.
Leaving behind past and crushed space,
Only forward, only forward, this only interests me.
To reach afar, the ends of the world
And slowly, gradually return, feel my centre"

In the movement, each time, the awareness of our humanity (that is to say our human quality) is present. The human beiing, this unique creature that worked hard enough so as to render its basic morphological characteristic the vertical position of its vertebral column (which is also the basic carrier of its energy) with the purpose to link the Sky and the Earth, the Yang and the Yin, the Spirit and the Body, the Spiritual and the Material, as well as to constitute their best possible expression. How important it is, to remember our real mission, our nature. In the T'ai Chi we hearten ourselves to maintain and cultivate our conscience through our attention’s focus on the vertebral column, that is to say our central axis. As we discharge the tension little by little, we realize that we are given from nature a precious and ultra sensitive organ there, which can really connect us, by experience, with the infinity above our head and under our legs. Thus, as long as our sensitivity is increasing, we acquire awareness of our position in this world, which is infinitesimal compared to its size but so much important for its balance as well. We acquire a point of reference, a centre. In the T'ai Chi we name it Dan Tien. The residence place of energy, the Chi and when we are connected with it, we are smoothed and activated, as it happens when every one of us return to his motherland, into his mother’s arms, in the Path, in the Tao.

"Oh sweet, peaceful acceptance of the earth.
From within it shoots a sprout, 
pressing as a newborn its mother’s womb to be born in summer’s fire.
Changes its mind, hesitates,
Turns, fools with the gentleness of a sweet sea breeze, bends as the reed and then
Like a new wellspring pushes and penetrates everything like water,
flooding plains, creating pools of joy on ancient mountaintops.
Lightening and thunder tears the morning sky asunder.
In this midst therefore I plant my root,
Absorbing through it sweet juices
to nourish my being, to bloom and share myself like the sweet scent of jasmine, cinnamon and musk rose.
I look and see clouds kissing the ground, perpetually rolling without end, without beginning
I am lost in the fog.
I have never learned, nor will never learn
I have never lived, nor ever will I live
Only now do I live, here, moment by moment,
like the sweet smell of jasmine, cinnamon and musk rose.

Dan Tien. The return in the centre, quietness, contact with the earth, the rooting. The growth and cultivation of Chi progressively leads to its activation (The fire lighting “Chi Houo”) and finally to the comprehension of our energy nature. In that stage our unbreakable contact with nature becomes obvious and is strengthened. The sky, the earth, the fire, the wind, the water, the lakes, the mountains, the thunders and whatever constitutes our environment, become companions and guides in our practice, as we experience the unity with nature in our body. We realize that we are not separate creatures living apart from their world, but we are links of a long chain, the chain of life. It comes with its turn and strengthens the initial sense of Unity and no-separation in our body itself (that we reported in the beginning). It creates a circle of positive self-strengthening that travels our sensitivity in the present that is perpetually happening. I only live now, here, time after time like the sweet smell of jasmine, cinnamon and musk rose. There is no beginning or end in the circle. There is no beginning or end in the present when you are in it. Only the moment and its plenitude for what is it. There is no separation. The extremities are linked. The Yin and the Yang complement each other. Spontaneity and naturalness characterize our response in the moment as it happens. This is meant by the phrase treading the Tao, the Path.

Like the golden phoenix I welter in the deepest darkness finding therein the strength to be reborn,
discovering anew the love of life.
I hold it and like an eagle landing once again on earth, I grasp and offer it to the four corners of the Universe.
And upon completing this task, upon finding the needle in the ocean, like the archer may I aim at the target of perfection.

I, the bow.
I too, the arrow.
When the moment of liberation arrives,
Faster than the eye
May I travel for a moment to the space of the infinite.
Yet may I hold earths’ mauve spirals firmly
So that I may yet again hear the mother’s sweet speech,
And return.

For this is freedom
There and here.
Free.

T'ai Chi is a practice that finally helps us enter in the Path, the Tao. The course is not easy and paved with rose-leafs. Maybe it is a rough process where before we are released from the obstacles to our course; we have to know them first and to deal with them properly, “to give our battle with our shadow”. Before we are able to get free, we owe to look what hinders us. Throughout this process we discover the life and our world from the beginning through a lucid vision, without the disturbances from the patterns of tension and potential violence that secondarily we develop, in the course of our life. Kindness and love, compassion and support to all beings, the protection of nature is not one more attractive ideology to support, but a conscious choice that has its root in the direct experience we have acquired from our practice, an experience that we have lived in our skin. Then, we can really share ourselves, our life and world, peacefully, with everything on this planet making balanced relations and above all, ones of creation. Then we can really travel in the vastness of our world and experience immortality in the finite nature of our existence.

In circle all I complete
I wipe my eyes from tears,
To see the world anew in shape and color
In one breathe
Three becomes two,
And the two, one again.
I am in awe without stir.
I bow to the miracle of life
And once again lose myself in silence.