I’ve revisited the idea of slowness recently and touched again on Wu-Wei when I thought about accepting our limitations. I saw this article in the New York Times a week or two ago and remembered it as tying in with the things I was talking about quite nicely. The article makes the case very well that Yoga is not as safe as we’d all like to believe. My opinion is that this is true of anything; which is why, in my SitQuietly instructions, I give a warning to consult your medical practitioner before taking up a meditation practise. But this article makes specific mention of people who seem to be treating Yoga as if it were a performance sport, specifically one man who threw himself into a spine twist and had three ribs give way.

The article says a lot of things that ring true for me, that echo my own gym and Tai Chi experiences. I realised a long time ago that it was up to me to make things easy on myself, that I had to do this by realising and respecting my limits. Apply Wu-Wei, don’t do things at an inappropriate speed, don’t force yourself into exercises that are inappropriate for your body type or mental state. When growth in our abilities occurs it should be unforced and as a result of the “70 percent rule”, which I’ve talked about before. This says that you work to 70 percent of your potential, with the other 30 percent held back for growth and improvement. Eventually, your 70 percent is equal to what used to be your 100 percent, and you’re still only giving 70 percent!

My other observation is that practises like Yoga, meditation and Tai Chi are not performance sports. The wisdom of Wu-Wei and the Slow Movement comes back again to the fore, these things are healing arts without a doubt; but only when used appropriately and at the right pace! They can heal your body and mind, but will do so in their own time, to try to hurry things seems to me to be a mistake. One that can only end badly as well. We in the West seem to be bringing our own neurotic hurried flavour to these things, but in doing so I worry that we lose a lot of their essence and bring ourselves further pain.

I’d like to write briefly about something that has been on mind mind for quite some time. It’s not an original observation that our modern world is moving at an ever faster pace. Nor is it an original observation that this pace is responsible for quite a bit of human pain and suffering along the way; we are not machines.

It was a couple of years ago with a feeling of pleasant surprise, that I discovered the Slow Movement and decided to look a little deeper. This movement was inspired by the book “In Praise of Slow” by Carl Honore, and this movement has at it’s core the idea that faster is not always better and we should do things at the right speed rather than the fastest. In fact, that constant increase in speed does us more harm than good.

It goes without saying that I think they’re right on the mark with this. We have enough aphorisms and sayings that echo these sentiments “the more haste, the less speed”, “haste makes waste”, “look before you leap”. In the east we find the Taoist principle of “Wu Wei” one part of which is observing the worlds pace and doing things at the correct speed, neither too fast or two slow. Anyone who’s done Tai Chi or Qigong, as I have, will understand what I mean.  After all, you can’t make a tree grow by pulling on the branches; and as an IT example you can’t make a file transfer or disk check run any faster than the hardware or connection will allow, you must simply wait!

To rush things often leads to substandard results and problems further down the line that take up more time to sort out. So any time you may have “saved”, is now spent there instead and you’ve had the extra headache that comes with this as well! Still think it’s a good idea to rush? Better to take the time to get it right, “measure twice, cut once” as the old saying goes.

I will finish with a specifically British example “you can’t hurry a good cuppa”, and this is very true. Tea needs time to brew properly and a hurried cup of tea is certainly not a good one.  When asked how I seem to always make a good cup of tea in the past, guess what I say?

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” – Lao Tzu

After Tai Chi tonight I was driving home mulling on things.  Once again that feeling of sort of “forgetting the self” had come very very briefly and it seemed to work.  Last time I trained I must’ve been having a bad week as nothing went right for me, but this week it seemed to work.

I was considering the habit of Procrastination in light of my Tai Chi practise.  You don’t think about the things in Tai Chi, you just let them happen, so why doesn’t this happen outside the class so much?  I am wondering if the trick is to realise that the Tai Chi form never in fact stops, when we’re walking down the street or washing our hands, we’re still doing Tai Chi!

I’m thinking of how it feels to do the form and the best analogy I can think of is that it’s like a railway journey.  At first, each position in the form is like a station, the train stops at each one and changes onto a new section of track.  Later on, as you practise more, the position changes become more like signal boxes.  What I mean by this is, they’re still there but you don’t stop for them, the train shifts fluidly onto its new track.

So what I’m driving at, is the idea of bringing that feeling from Tai Chi into everyday use.  We procrastinate when we stop at the station, maybe it would be better to realise that they’re only signal boxes.  We don’t in fact stop, we just flow from place to place, from event to event, from task to task.  Perhaps, I wonder, when we come to forget the self would it be true that the separation of tasks and events is only in our minds?

Am I making sense?

Some nights it’s good to take a night out to break up your schedule, I do it deliberately and randomly to shake up my routine.  I tend to be busy on evenings after work and tonight should have been Tai Chi night, but I took a rest night.

So, I was planning to hack on a little Python code.  I’m dusting down my SitQuietly Linux desktop meditation timer and eyeing Canonical’s Launchpad system.  It’ll be good, I have plans and I’m going to peck away at them till they’re done.  But earlier today, I discovered Tumblr and signed up from my phone.

So, my programming time vanished in a haze of unexpected social networking, hmm, not so good.  Or was it?  I realised that I could fight it, or I could use my Tai Chi, but mentally.  I turned mentally and merged my energies, my momentum, with the flow of events, and rolled with it.

So, I’ve done blog comments, set up Tumblr to feed from this site (hello if you’re reading this on Tumblr) and realised I could type the whole shebang up and make a short blog post out of it.

Cheeky, but it seems to have worked out.  Gotta love that Wu Wei….

I heard this remark tonight from my instructor regarding the practise of mindfulness, the class was talking about it in relation to Taijiquan.

“We’re Human Beings, not Human Doings”

This is actually a very good quote, and I’d like to say a little more about this subject.  I’ve said before and I will always maintain, that it’s very difficult to penetrate Taoist philosophy deeply without at least some Tai Chi practise.  The (often) not so simple act of playing with the principles physically enables an intuitive view, not an intellectual one, that is a great help.  This also helps a lot with Buddhism.

As we attempted to move each other around, it became more apparent that the act of attempting to do something blocks mindfulness.  In fact in attempting to influence, force, or otherwise get at a result from our actions, we can lose our grasp on the thread of things and we fail.  Even the intent seemed to cause me to lose the thread of what I was doing, all very strange and quite unnerving.

It became clear to me tonight that a large part of mindfulness involves getting your mind out of the way.  So, mindlessness?  No…

The trick seemed to be to be present, but unattached to an outcome in a relaxed way, don’t try to force it.  It reminded me of some of my best meditation sittings, I didn’t focus, I just got out of my own way and let it happen.

There, I can’t explain it very well.  But hey I’ll let it be, and who knows, maybe this can be used as a start?

It’s been a bit of a bad day.  This morning I suffered what I can only describe as an anxiety attack, I’ve been doing too much.  So I returned to Tai Chi after a long hiatus, the class wasn’t on but a few other rogue students were there and we conversed and ran through the form.  I can recommend the practise of Taijiquan, especially if you’re studying Taoist writings.

Earlier today I was mulling things over on my lunch break.  With a little help from a friend, I decided part of the problem was not just that I was trying to do too much.  It’s that I was straight jacketed by my structures and methods.

My mind wandered into a few of the lessons I learned from Taoism and Tai Chi and I realised that the the lesson was there.  I was in the garden of a cafe and looking at a flower I remembered the Taoist teaching that things are self organising.

So, I thought, what does that mean for me?  Well, I think that the wise course is to organise to a point, but not be stifled by it.  Guidelines not rules, light sketches not heavy ink.  You get the picture.

But most of all, lots of room to manoeuvre to change and to flow.  Most of this will arise from the situation the moment, and like the flower in the cafe garden it will take a structure all its own.

If I use the Taijiquan principle of 4 ounces of force, and also simply yield to the moment, it will organise without needing organising.

I like that.  Maybe not such a bad day after all?

I’d like to continue from a previous post,  about The Cult of Knowledge.  I’d like to do a little musing.

I was musing on the Taoist idea of emptiness recently, emptiness in Taoism doesn’t mean the same thing as we Westerners are used to.  It’s more the idea of a space filled with potential.  In fact it’s emptiness that gives things their value.

Don’t believe me?  Consider a cup.  There’s a handle, and possibly a nice pattern, but what makes it a cup is the space for the drink, the emptiness where the contents must go.  In fact the handle wouldn’t be much use without a hold in the middle would it?  It’s the same with more or less anything you look at, the emptiness it what gives a thing value, the thing that really brings it to life.

Okay, let’s start working back to the subject of my previous post.  I suggested last time that knowledge wasn’t the be all and end all, that the fixation with the accumulation of knowledge could be a bad thing.  Which is, as far as I am concerned, true.  There’s nothing worse than a know it all, and the know it all misses a lot because his or her head is full.  But I will allow a short Zen story to illustrate my point:

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”

In the martial art of Taijiquan, we are not taught lists of counters and blocks.  Rather, we are led to a way of moving and being.  Not rigid and full, but flexible and empty.  It is this emptiness that frees us to react.

How does this relate back to my point on knowledge?  Consider that knowledge provides a space, it can frame an area, in the same way as our cup.  Within this framework, we deploy our skills and abilities, we adapt and change.  These qualities are the things that make this knowledge actually useful.

When we hoard too much knowledge, it  will fill the space, thus putting us in a position of inflexibility.   We may be unable to innovate and unable to move, we suffer “Paradigm Paralysis”, becoming so fixated with current models and knowledge that we cannot see beyond them and it.
Creative Commons Acknowledgement.

The yellow cup image is by Eric Brian Ouano and is under by-nc-nd.

I was doing push hands in my Tai Chi class tonight, I’m starting to understand what they mean when they say you can get in your own way. Slavish adherence to the form and the idea of a set of rules tends to get you pushed over.

It reminds me of a couple of quotes, first it Bruce Lee “The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”, the other is an old Zen quote “If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him”. It’s gotten me thinking, can slavish adherence to the Buddhist scriptures in fact get in the way or progress?

We all know the old line about the flexible reed bending in the wind but the tree breaking, I think this is something we need to be reminded of from time to time in our practice. We need to move beyond orthodoxy in order to really fulfill ourselves as spiritual seekers, I know there are many paths that claim to have all the answers, I don’t think that that claim can be made and the claimant expect to keep any real credibility.

I personally think that the best attitude is the one my Tai Chi teacher takes, that he too, for all his very considerable prowess, is still a student.

I wrote some time ago about my views of striving and grasping for things.

Those views were helped along by a few things, I’d been encouraged to push harder in the gym only to be met with pain and injury. I’d witnessed workplace politics handled in a way I completely disagreed with, this has happened more than once across a number of companies. I also found myself questioning with our national work ethic, is this the right way?

I asked myself a question, “Am I mad, or is there a better way?” In the gym I reminded myself of the 70% rule of moderation. It’s a great little rule I learned from Tai Chi, you only work at 70% of your max; energy and attention are kept back for working on a gradual improvement in your performance, also to make sure you don’t burn out on the way, it’s a long term game plan, but it offers greater potential than flogging yourself to death. I’m working at less than my max now, focusing on technique, I don’t doubt I’ll get back to the weights and performance I had, but when I do it’ll be with much better technique, I’ll be able to handle it much better than I did.

As far as the whole work thing goes, I find myself with less invested in the long hours culture we have here in the UK, as a result I don’t do overtime anymore unless it’s an emergency. Again, this comes back to moderation; whatever some might like to think, we don’t live to work.

I’ve seen the results of office politics and crackdowns on more than once occasion and in more than one company, striving for more results, more controls, a greater bottom line. I’ve seen it reach a point that employee goodwill was lost, people refused to work overtime, wouldn’t go out of their way for their employer; the workplace spirit was lost.

This is a way echoes comments in my previous post, crackdowns and tightening up have their place, but if you take it too far it hurts far more than it helps, you can wind up flogging the horse to death if you’re not careful.

This comes back to moderation, the middle way. Yes, you can keep driving people harder towards business goals, “Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes”, but in the end the human cost will be huge.  We already see this, lots of stress and work-life imbalances and not just in the UK, sooner or later we must settle into a steady state, not the greed driven relentless drive for better growth; for the sake of our own collective health and sanity.

I think that this excerpt from chapter 23 of the Tao Te Ching sums up my thoughts on this:

Sparse speech is natural
Thus strong wind does not last all morning
Sudden rain does not last all day
What makes this so? Heaven and Earth
Even Heaven and Earth cannot make it last
How can humans?

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be invited on my Tai Chi clubs’ annual retreat to a place called Unstone Grange. The itinerary varies from year to year, but includes plenty of Tajiquan, some meditation and some drinking. A recipe for a good weekend!

Unstone Grange is a country house set in the beautiful Derbyshire countryside. It’s owned by a charity who maintain it and run it for organisations and clubs to hold retreats, though there have been weddings here as well. Below, you can see the view from the drive, followed by the view from the side of the house. You can see the attic dorm I was in, in the first photo, it’s the one on the left hand side.

As I hinted earlier, we slept in single sex dormitories, which are located on and above the first floor, I was located up in the attic.

The break was just what I needed, just when I needed it, Unstone Grange is an amazingly peaceful place. It’s an amazing experience for townie like myself to do outdoor Tai Chi practise surrounded by rolling countryside instead of houses. Doing some early morning Chi Kung in the clear country air was a fantastic way to start the day!

Unstone Grange has it’s own gardens where they grow their own organic herbs and vegetables, they also run courses on organic gardening. The Deer Tribe have their own area as well, you can see the TeePees in the lower photo below.

In addition, it was good to get the chance to talk about eastern philosophy and Zen Buddhism, the Zen guys in the group gave themselves away as soon as the guided meditation started!

Finally, I got the chance to experience a Reiki healing courtesy of a friend in Kaiming. I was privately a little sceptical, but it did the trick, and I was able to feel the flow of Qi into some of the worst hit areas of my head and neck. For someone who has always kept a sceptical view of such things, it was an eye opener.

Needless to say, I’ll be going back next year!