Internal
evolution is the main result of practise under the direction of a genuine
teacher. Effort and sacrifice is the cost. In my early twenties, with 10 years
training in Western martial arts, some knowledge of yoga and meditation, and
about to complete my university studies, I made the decision to concentrate my
life on the search for inner meaning and development. Boxing and wrestling had
no depth, Yoga had depth but was too passive, while meditation lacked balance
without some complimentary training. I tried some of the Japanese systems but
their culturally based severity turned me towards the Chinese arts, where I
began Taiji. Taiji, at least the teaching of Master Huang Xiangxian, has
fulfilled all my expectations in terms of supporting balanced internal
development.
Only
the mind and beyond interest me. Teaching how to bring the body under the
control of the mind is my chosen area in which to help people. Personally, as
the mind goes deeper towards its source, my interest is gathered in by that
process. Health and self defence are very minor interests.
Not
really - I began Taiji not having seen it, only knowing it was one of the
internal Chinese Martial Arts which were based on Daoist principles and that
their purpose was internal development. After meeting one of Master Huang's
instructors who clearly demonstrated knowledge and ability beyond anything seen
in my previous 10 years of research, and then meeting Master Huang himself, I
knew I had found what I was looking for.
It
is important to encourage students to make an effort, both to extend their outer
limits and to go deeper inside themselves. It is important to ensure students
understand why they are practising certain exercises and where those practices
will lead them. Seeing the way ahead and the purpose in going there, gradually
allows them to be less dependent on myself. This understanding also protects
them from being misled by unscrupulous teachers in the future. It is also
important to recognise the responsibility in becoming a teacher. Practise is for
your own development, while teaching is to help others. If you practise in order
to become a teacher, or you teach to gain prestige or money, it will neither
help your own internal development nor others.
From
the large numbers who first came to my workshops, I chose and now concentrate on
one hundred students who were most prepared to train what was being taught. My
aim is to guide them until they can stand independently. If those hundred can
really understand the methods well, find it in their own bodies and then pass it
to their students, we will be free to concentrate on the deeper aspects. My
experience and that of my teacher, is that it requires about fourteen or fifteen
years consistent training before a student is capable of teaching independently.
I trained under Master Huang for twenty years until his death in 1992, and that
is the basis for the help I offer. When I first came to Europe the training
experience of many people who were teaching was a little weak as a result of
them jumping around from one teacher to another, then adding their own bright
ideas into the mix. Another common problem is students who learn for 5 or 6
years then overestimate their own abilities. When their dubious idea of
themselves is challenged, they get angry, decide I suddenly know nothing, and go
off to teach independently. This is messy for themselves and dangerous for their
students, towards whom I feel some responsability. My teacher, Master Huang,
also had to deal with a long string of these people.
The
deeper aspects are of the mind and beyond. There are three clear levels in Taiji,
the body, the mind and beyond the mind (Spirit). I try to teach people the body
level thoroughly, lead them further into areas of the mind, while steadily
introducing the spiritual aspects.
The
aim is to unite the levels, not to work exclusively on any one of them. People
should first learn how to move smoothly in their body, then how to release and
align, then to find the forces in the body - combining all these with the mind.
All this is for the mind-body co-ordination. Just body training barely has any
place in Taiji. Then there is training for mind-energy co-ordination and later
for the deepest part of the mind. Simultaneously the Deep Mind connection with
the Spirit can be allowed to grow.
P.K.:
It is possible to say something but real understanding comes from training.
There is awareness and intention on many levels from superficial to very deep.
Awareness and intention combine and interact to produce response. Commonly
people train some sort of awareness in Taiji but they seldom train the intention.
Action with awareness implies body active, mind passive, while action with
intention implies mind active, body passive. The special training of the mind
intention (Yi) was quite deliberately kept secret by the old masters. Master
Huang and Master Ma, for example, kept it just for their inner school pupils,
only passing it on to a few of their thousands of students. Because of this the
method of developing intention is not usually found in the training either in
China or the West, yet strangely, in the Classics it is stated as the most
important thing. Even when it is taught, students must practise for a long time
before they begin to find it for themselves and take it deeper.
It
is much better to train the fixed pattern pushing hands and teach your body and
mind, the correct responses, under controlled conditions. If you practice the
free pushing you just use your existing abilities while attempting to become
faster and stronger. Consequently it fixes these inefficient habitual responses
more solidly in yourself. When a persons responses have changed to conform to
the principles of Taiji, then gentle controlled free pushing can be used to
enhance the naturalness of these responses.
The
horizontal circle contains the external movements of the body which involve
repositioning the centre. In the vertical circle the internal changes take place
within the mind and within the body, producing subtle changes in the height and
vertical forces of the body, while the body makes its external movements. The
internal changes in their simplest form are contraction which produces movement
followed by release which allows the body to 'swing' or move on under the
influence of momentum and gravity. Because the body works against the ground to
move, contraction produces both a horizontal force and a vertical one. Faster
movements require a greater horizontal force, which necessitates a stronger
vertical force, which will produce a slight lifting in the body. While moving
slowly in the Taiji Form gravity overcomes this lifting so people may not become
sensitive to it. When people need to move quickly the vertical force overcomes
gravity and will lift the body slightly, followed by a settling down of the body
once the wave of contraction passes. Many people find this for themselves and
Zheng Manjing mentioned it in one of this books, but this second phase of
releasing or swing has 3 hidden phases that people seldom understand.
The
muscles cycle through contract, release, stretch and un-stretch, while the mind
has its corresponding cycle of concentrate, relax, sink and empty, plus a
neutral state for both giving 5 phases. Practical understanding of this only
comes from long study. This cycle of mind and body is the basis of all Master
Huang taught me in my 20 years learning under his direction. If you don't
understand the five states then it's difficult to find the relaxed elastic force
of Taiji. It's commonly taught that there are just the two muscle states of
contraction and relax. If you only know these two you will be stuck on the pairs
of opposites, the Yin and the Yang. If you only consider, or attempt to combine
these two as in first contract and then relax, or partly relaxed, partly
contracted, then the search for the relaxed elastic force of Taiji is doomed to
failure. Stretching and un-stretching are seldom talked about or understood. The
corresponding changes in the state of the mind are even more obscure.
No,
I can't really explain that. They need to be trained with a person who
understands them. I can say, people first have to listen very closely to their
body. Its not the normal listening which is from the superficial mind. Look for
genuine body sensations such as warmth, pressure and non-visual body positioning..
This is the first step and it is considerably different from the feeling type of
awareness that the average Taiji person trains. Merely increasing concentration
on the level of normal daily awareness is a false method which just makes it
more difficult to go deeper later on. Unfortunately, many modern systems of
meditation teach people to value and strengthen just this superficial awareness.
The ego observes the superficial perceptions, vision, hearing etc. and feels it
sees reality 'just as it is'. It is not a true path. Each of my teachers spoke
of this error, and my experience confirms what they said. On every level of
Taiji there is the paradox of letting go and keeping control.
Central
to Taiji is the paradox of how to combine the yin and the yang, e.g. Contract/release
or control/naturalness. What we are looking for is not more yin or yang, or a
mixture, but something new. You could call it yin-yang, as one thing. It seems
like a mixture of the two, but it is something different, a third thing that is
produced. Its never a matter of one is right and the other is wrong, but the
simultaneous combination of the two produces something more subtle. When
producing Taiji force (jin) there is drawing in and sending out at the same
time. The state of stretching is actually a new state that's produced within the
muscle. The stretching allows the yielding and at the same time produces a
force, it's not a simple combination of contracting and relaxing either in time
or space. The same with letting go and keeping control. The letting go that
interferes with keeping control, is not the letting go that you need. The
keeping control that interferes with letting go is not the control that you need.
You must find that which simultaneously allows an increasing control and an
increasing letting go.
It's
important to align, at the time of forces passing through the body. It's not
necessary to align when you are just relaxing. Aligning creates a line of
connection from the ground to the point of application which allows the forces
to pass through the body without producing contraction, resistance or pain. A
straight and vertical spine for example, allows the strongest vertical forces to
rise from the ground. Usually as people get older their spine becomes less
flexible and the curves increase causing problems with the disks. Releasing and
aligning within the Form and auxiliary exercises can reverse this process.
Internal
forces of Taiji work up and down from the ground. Without a good base people
can't find these forces and will never escape using upper-body strength and
weight, signalled by leaning and excessive movement when issuing force. Only
when the body is stable can you really loosen the upper-body and find the
vertical circle. Only when the body is extremely stable can you concentrate the
mind deeply while in the midst of action.
When
babies are born they are already loose, but they don't know how to move. The
first thing they learn in order to survive, is a reasonable ability to move the
body, which involves contraction. Everybody learns that but they may never learn
how to release. Consequently, residual contraction remains and accumulates in
the body so that when they become older their whole body becomes tight and
locked. As an antidote, people first need to learn how to release these residual,
habitual contractions. Then, once they make a contraction, how to release it
fully, immediately afterwards. Residual contractions block the blood flow and
energy flow, as well as interfering with subsequent movements. Certainly when
the forces flow from the ground through the body, it is necessary to be able to
release previous contractions completely to allow the semi-automatic stretching
and un-stretching to take place.
The
main reason is to train the mind/body control on the initial level. This is
achieved by accurate positioning of the body according to a clear intention of
the mind, either the stored memory of the position, or a fresh intention at that
moment. With beginners, the mind intends one thing and the body does something
different. Accuracy is the first step in practising mind/body control, as well
as the first step in finding the types of position that allow a greater
transmission of forces to and from the ground.
When
beginning on the path, it became obvious that I needed to find a teacher who
really knew what they were about in a spiritual sense. I began Master Huang's
Taiji and shortly after began training with a Sufi teacher. He was a sheikh in
the Nasqabandi tradition from Afghanistan, drawing also partly on the Gurdjieff
tradition. I continued to train with these two people until their deaths (Master
Huang in 1992; the Sufi in 1987). Other teachers who have had some influence are
an old yogi who lives in the desert in India, whom I visit from time to time,
and an old Daoist sage who is hidden in China and unknown in the West. Master Ma
Yueliang, who stayed in NZ for 6 months and whom I later visited in China,
helped me also and I have kept close contact for the past 15 years with Master
Ni Hua Ching who knew Yang Shou Hou and Yang Cheng Fu and was a good friend of
Zheng Manjing. These teachers all pushed me to teach. Without their mandate I
wouldn't be so bold as to direct other people in their lives.
Pushing
hands is for sensitivity, the Form is to train internal strength. This is their
original purpose but poorly trained students reverse this, training the Form
lightly with awareness but no intention looking for sensitivity, then using
strength combined with elementary mechanics in the pushing hands in an attempt
to find internal strength. Pushing hands teaches you to expand and extend your
awareness to include others. It allows you to practise awareness of, and a
correct response to the partners intention whereas in the Form it is your
intention that produces the movement in response to the stored body memory of
the sequence. Over time and with the correct method you become sensitive to the
intention to move in the partner's body, energy field and mind. Pushing hands is
also a teaching method where the students can interact with the teacher and
learn from that contact.
I
have never competed in a pushing hands contest, but in the Chinese world when
you push hands it tends to be very competitive, remembering that most students
and teachers in Asia have, at best, learnt in the 'outer schools' of the good
masters. In Asia we would often go to the parks on the weekend where there would
be Taiji people from many different schools meeting. Though our intention was to
learn, this situation was extremely competitive. In China when I visited various
teachers, it was often taken mistakenly as a challenge, and serious pushing
hands would be difficult to escape. I have watched competitions and they appear
to produce and stimulate the worst aspects of Taiji. What people are doing, the
competitiveness and desperate trying to win, is against the basic principles. I
don't believe people learn much of worth from it. Some people feel they learn to
handle an aggressive energy or an aggressive situation but I observe people just
become more competitive themselves. The aggressive situation stimulates
aggressiveness so it achieves the exact opposite of what people imagine. Pushy
people feel justified in their behaviour and rise through the ranks of the
organisations that convene the contests, perpetuating these patterns of
behaviour.
The
superficial mind, or normal daily awareness is basically brain consciousness.
The real mind, in all its parts, exists in the energy field, not in the brain.
When you die the superficial mind is gone with the brain, but the deeper aspects
of the mind still exist and operate on three different levels. There is the mind
connected with the body, the mind connected with the energy field and then there
is the intelligence of the mind. The Deep Mind Intelligence functions through
these three aspects. It connects into the brain and body through these 3 aspects,
but is quite different from the brain. The Deep Mind, which includes the deeper
parts of the energy field, is your real individual self. It's born in a body to
develop its energy field and its associated intelligence's. That is the purpose
of life. Not remembering this, you waste your lifetime.
The
classics say the main purpose in training Taiji is to achieve longevity, which
in the Daoist teaching means immortality or the ability to survive after death
in your diamond body. The Buddhists talk of enlightenment which means to create
a body of light for the same purpose. After death you live on in your energy
body one way or another. If your energy body is strengthened and refined through
correct effort during your lifetime then the deeper aspects of yourself become
independent from the body, immune from death in your crystallised energy body.
If you haven't achieved that, then you either gradually fade from all individual
existence or return in a body to try again to escape the rounds of life and
deaths. This is the truth of life. It is well understood by all real teachers.
Other purposes for Taiji are minor ones, created by people in normal life,
usually to nurse the body and make it more comfortable, or to attain fighting
power and the dubious respect that confers. Unfortunately concentrating on
health or self-defence may just make the mind more attached to the body,
strengthen the ego and block internal development.
I
don't advertise widely, but there is enough information around, such as this
interview, my books and my students who teach. If a person is really interested,
if they make some effort to look and if there is some inner resonance with the
teaching, then the opportunity to make contact will no doubt be arranged by
their own Deep Mind...