Getting Knocked on Your Ass -- The T'ai Chi Manifesto, Plank #1

The T'ai Chi Manifesto is my own list of principles regarding the study and practice of T'ai Chi.  Of course, T'ai Chi is a metaphor for daily life -- so these are principles about how I see the practice of being a Human Being.  The Manifesto is loosely based on the traditional T'ai Chi Classics and their teachings -- but the way I've written it is meant to be particularly modern, in-your-face, and with full acknowledgment that these are my own opinions.  ;-)

Plank #1:  We're all in this together, and if you don't believe me you're gonna get knocked on your ass."

Here's a riddle:  how many T'ai Chi people does it take to change a lightbulb?  Answer:  ten.  One to stand on a ladder and change the bulb, and nine to stand around watching, and say, "Well, you could do it that way, but in our school we always..."

T'ai Chi people are notoriously iconoclastic.  Everybody's attached to their "lineage" -- the line of their teachers that goes back as far as they can trace.  And of course, only their teacher's lineage teaches the real T'ai Chi.  Whenever I start evangelizing about raising the quality of T'ai Chi in America, I'm amazed at how many people agree with me.  "Yes," people say, "I understand just what you mean.  But of course in our school we always practice the real T'ai Chi."

In other words, it's somehow always that other guy, that other school, who's at fault -- who's messing things up with their lousy T'ai Chi.  I have an answer to that:  Bullshit.  Even the best schools in America are oly on part with an average T'ai Chi student in China.  We all suck (and as I've said before, I include myself in this group).  But that's not the real point of this plank of the Manifesto.  So what if all that bad T'ai Chi really is the other guy's fault? Do we just smirk while we watch another person do T'ai Chi poorly, glad that we have a better lineage, and a better teacher?  Or do we roll up our sleeves and do something about it?

I read a lot of T'ai Chi blogs on the web, and listen to all the T'ai Chi podcasts.  My opinion:  they're a joke.  Everybody seems intent on defending what they "think" is the right way to do T'ai Chi.  It's ridiculous -- we are all in this world together, and we if we are not part of the solution, then we are part of the problem.  Instead of protecting the reputation of their lineage, every T'ai Chi school, teacher and student should be focused on fixing the problem!

There is a tradition in T'ai Chi that should be teaching us this lesson.  It's an aspect of T'ai Chi called "Pushing Hands," the T'ai Chi game for two.  Each person is standing toe to toe with an opponent.  Each person is trying to employ all their T'ai Chi skill while they are pushing, nudging, leaning and leveraging in order to push the opponent off balance.  Of course, they are simultaneously defending themselves as the opponent is trying to do the same to them.  Now you could play this game forever -- trying to "win."  Most American students of Pushing Hands wind up using what amounts to wrestling skills -- forcing, muscling or manipulating the other person.  Chinese T'ai Chi masters just shake their heads at our impatience.  "Winning" is not the real goal of Pushing Hands.  The real goal is to learn to tap into the reservoir of qi (life energy) deep in the individual.

The goal of Pushing Hands mastery is philosophically different from how most people think of martial arts.  The goal is not to "kick ass," nor to "win at all costs."  It is beyond defending oneself against an enemy.  The goal of Pushing Hands mastery is to develop the ability to know your opponent just by touching him.  This skill is called "Dong Jing," which means "the Understanding Energy."  It's a skill not of the mind or body, but of the Spirit.

In the traditional philosophy of T'ai Chi, the Superior Man is not concerned with winning.  Any idiot can win through trickery, manipulation and wrestling -- which is pretty much what most T'ai Chi in this country winds up being.  The Superior Man, however, is focused on creating, maintaining or restoring harmony.  In the mastery of Dong Jing, the advanced T'ai Chi person finds he has to give up the idea of winning (i.e. of being "better" than the other guy). In fact, he has to merge with his opponent.  He goes into a place where he finds less separation, not more; he finds less duality, not more.

And what is the lesson here for life?  As long as we stand around pointing fingers at the other guy, patting ourselves on the back that our T'ai Chi is better, that we have a better teacher or a better lineage, we are ignoring the lesson of the Superior Man.  It's no different than looking down our noses at people who are less fortunate because we live in a better neighborhood, or a more prosperous country.  In merging, there is harmony.  In separation, there is only the certainty that at some point you're gonna get knocked on your ass.

The T'ai Chi Manifesto -- or, Why I am a Liberal

This is part one of a three-part series. Just to let you know…

In this most historic election since the birth of this country, I find myself getting into some pretty interesting conversations with my in-laws, whom I would call Reagan Republicans. Pretty conservative. Voting for McCain. It drives them to distraction that we’re supporting Obama. I’ve chosen not to try to defend why I am a liberal to them. Instead, I simply (or complicatedly) redefine what being a liberal means… to me.

I grew up during the 60’s, in a very liberal household. Both of my parents were teachers – “effete intellectual snobs,’ as Spiro Agnew called them. My father – a New York jew – had gone to Montgomery to ride with Dr. King’s people. My mother—daughter of a Kansas rancher – used to wheel me in my stroller to the Ban the Bomb rallies. The liberal issues that I grew up believing in were freedom of speech, racial and sexual equality, a woman’s right to choose, religious tolerance, gay rights, strong labor unions, environmental protection, and above all peace not war.

But in truth, these were values that I learned from my parents. I grew up with them the same way that some of the other kids in school grew up with prejudice, homophobia, fundamentalism, economic conservatism and nationalism. None of us kids really knew what these issues were all about. We just parroted what our parents said. Probably our parents were carrying on beliefs that their parents passed on. We weren’t liberals or conservatives. We were conformists, each to our own family traditions.

I am now past 50 – closer finally to 100 years of age than to zero. And I find that I have become a liberal. The liberal issues that I am now passionate about are freedom of speech, racial and sexual equality, a woman’s right to choose, religious tolerance, gay rights, strong labor unions, environmental protection, and above all peace not war.

I’m pretty sure that my in-laws think my effete liberal snobbery came from my liberal parents. But actually I came to all my liberal values myself, because of my study of T’ai Chi.

I started this blog specifically to write about T’ai Chi, because I’m (what’s the right word here? Saddened? Bothered? Pissed?) that the quality of T’ai Chi in America is so mediocre. There is a web of reasons why American T’ai Chi is so bad – I’ll be writing about them as the weeks go by, and you can hear my insights and opinions on my podcasts, “The T’ai Chi Diaries.”

But here’s the whole body of my philosophy in a nutshell: we can do better. And if we can do better, then we should do better. Because if we can do better and we choose not to, then we are choosing to live a mediocre, inauthentic existence. I believe this about T’ai Chi… and I believe this about America.

I get to travel quite a lot in my work, see different parts of the country, and meet lots of people. This country is so beautiful, and so are the people. I ask myself, what about this country would make it OK to be mediocre? Where is it OK to let big business leak arsenic into the ground water that eventually our children will drink? Where is it OK to clear cut a forest while leaving enough of a line of trees that people driving on the public roads don’t see it, and then ignore that clear cut land as it starts to erode when the rains come and the wildlife leaves and never returns? To which little boy or girl is it OK to say, you don’t get an equal education because you live in an inner city – or, your mind won’t get an equal chance to grow because you don’t get a decent breakfast before school every day? Which bridge or highway shall we ignore until it gets so weak that it collapses under a school bus?

Pick out for me the mothers that we get to tell, your son won’t be coming home – not because he traded his life to defend us from a real threat of terrorism or totalitarianism, but because our leaders thought a war would be good politics.

It’s 2008. It is the 21st century. We can do better. And if we can do better, we should do better. I learned this from T’ai Chi.

In the next two blog posts, I’ll be laying out what I call my T’ai Chi Manifesto, a modern perspective on the living philosophy T’ai Chi Ch’uan. It is the root and source of my liberalism. Please check back, won’t you?

What's so great about "Great?"

Shakespeare said, "Be not afraid of greatness:  some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."  In other words, greatness is always an option.  Therefore, NOT being great is a choice.

Here are just a few of the consequences of choosing not to be great:

1.) We develop a limiting belief system (I can't; I should/shouldn't; I'm not able, etc.)

2.) We inhibit the progress of others

3.) We stop the process of evolution

4.) We suffer from the angst, dissatisfaction and perpetual dissonance that comes from not following our destiny

5.) We teach ourselves to be lazy, and worst of all...

6.) We teach the next generation the same behavior.

But why do we shy away from the hard work of pursuing greatness? Why do we accept less than our potential?  Is it truly the case that, as Marianne Williamson said, that we wonder who we are to be great?  Let me remind you of her answer:

"Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Now in the case of T'ai Chi, the price of not being great is that there is a layer of benefit that you can't even get to, can't even experience, can't even imagine until after years of great practice.  I practiced T'ai Chi for 25 years before I found my current teacher, and in all that time I never even got close to the great practice that I am experiencing now.  And I was good before that!  That's my point -- I was one of the best in the country.

It's embarrassing to bring up Donald Rumsfeld, but his rambling blather about "things you don't know that you don't know" is actually an ancient mystical teaching  If you consider all your life experiences, and what you have learned in life, and compare all of that to the totality of the universe... it becomes apparent that most of the world is made up of stuff that you don't even KNOW that you don't know!

This is the case with T'ai Chi.  Good practice, average practice, or mediocre practice doesn't get you to the experiences, wisdom and abilities that great practice will.  In the tradition of T'ai chi Ch'uan, the promise is that you will achieve prolonged youth, great creativity, wisdom that surpasses the ordinary, and freedom from ever being dominated by other people or by circumstance.

This is the traditional meaning of the phrase, "kung-fu," by the way.  I wrote about this in my book Exercising the Soul, but recently I saw the movie "The Forbidden Kingdom" with Jet Li and Jackie Chan (a terrific movie, by the way), and I found their description to be elegant:

"Kung-fu -- hard work over time to accomplish a skill.  A painter can have kung-fu, or the butcher who cuts meat every day with such skill his knife never touches bone.  The musician can have kung-fu, or the poet who paints pictures with words, and makes Emperors weep.  This, too, is kung-fu."

Below I am posting a video of the T'ai Chi demonstration that was part of the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.  Below that I'm posting a video of typical American  T'ai Chi practice.  Watch both -- and ask yourself who has the better kung-fu. It's not bad.  It's even good. But when our "goodness" gets in the way of our "greatness," I just think we can do better.  

What do YOU think?

ta i ji @ Yahoo! Video