Taijiquan and Death

Today is Yom Kippur.

It is traditional to greet people with the saying, "May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a Good Year."

Chinese and Jewish traditions both use the same metaphor to think about human conduct. Once a year our actions are recorded in a book and that book contains both a tali of our meritorious acts and records our fate for the up coming year. Our actions throughout our life have a cumulative effect.

In the Chinese tradition when we die our actions during our lives continue to effect the living after we have died. Ideally, we simply become a supportive ancestor for our descendants. But it is also possible that we pass on bad habits, strange quirks, or even vendettas.

The residue of our inappropriate conduct during our lives is called unresolved qi. It becomes the responsibility of our descendants to resolve this qi for us if we leave it floating around after we have died. One way this is done is by offering incense and sacrifice to ancestors. This is mandatory for Chinese people.

The resolution of unresolved qi can also be achieved through appropriate conduct. For example if we brake a bad habit like quiting smoking, or start a good one like keeping the kitchen really clean.

Taijiquan clearly falls into this category. It is a positive social practice, it keeps people in good health, and it improves the efficiency of our movement so that we aren't wasting qi. Central to the practice of taijiquan is the exploration of wuwei: variously translated--not doing, non-aggression, or "like water it does nothing, yet leaves nothing unnourished."

Taijiquan is the practice of easily bringing things to completion, it is practice for dying a complete death. A death in which the only legacy we leave behind is unconditional support for the living.

Strategy

Sun Tzu, the Art of War, is a pretty well known book. But what does it say?

You can not control the future, that is the first rule of warfare. When circumstances change, and they always do, your strategies must adapt and change too. Strategies must have built-in flexibility and a failing strategy must be dropped immediately.

Defense

If you know what type of attack is coming, and you have the time and money, you can build an effective defense. The history of warfare is simple-- a successful attack will inspire an effective defense against that sort of attack. Then comes a new type of attack, which inspires a new type of defense. Periods of good defense cover much longer periods in history than periods of new attacks. (Perhaps modern weaponry will change this, I don't know. There are now defenses for nuclear weapons, they suck, but shelters can be designed to survive an attack, and nuclear missiles can be exploded above your own cities to destroy incoming missiles.)

Not-defending

This explains why matched fighting uses so much defensive technique and real fighting doesn't. In a real fight you have no idea what type of attack is coming. This is one of the priciples that push-hands and roushou are suposed to teach. But of course if you always think and practice defensively, your push-hands will just be a waste of time.

Strategy involves intimate knowledge of everything from terrain, to psychology, to logistics. If you are more familiar with the details of warfare than your opponent, you can devise a winning strategy based on you opponent's weaknesses. Even if you are fewer in numbers or weaker in some other way, you can still win.

Losing Well

It is possible to lose well. All of these lessons are important to martial artists, but this last one is the hardest to learn. I'm reminded of the story of a group of reporters in the Congo whose jeep was stopped by a rebel road-block. The rebels, armed to the teeth with machine guns, took everyone out one by one and shot them. One guy burst into tears. The rebels laughed at him, he seemed utterly pathetic, and then they put him back in the jeep told him to drive off.

Now I'm not saying that reporter actually had a strategy, but if he did, there is no reason to believe it would work a second time. That's the nature of warfare, of fighting, and knowing how to lose well.

Although Sun Tzu doesn't say it, he fundamentally rejects the notion of honor.

Kuo Lien-ying's Diagram

The T'ai Chi Boxing Chronicle, Compiled and Explained by Kuo Lien-Ying, translated by Guttmann, (1994, North Atlantic Books), contains this diagram.

The top third and the bottom two thirds are two different diagrams. I find the bottom two thirds the more interesting of the two. Stand yourself at the top where it says "Centrifucal force." The 'wiggle' below the word Peng is, I think, meant to represent "An jin" or hidden power, just below that is the bridge to your opponent.

There are lot's of things here for all you push-hands players out there to think about. For instance, notice that Pivoting and Grabbing are almost out side of the picture, far beyond the opponent's center.

I believe he intended us to see Ji, Lu, and An (I can't bare to translate them) as contained in the words: Open, Close, Give, Empty Receive, Adhere, Evade, Connect, and Stick.

Talisman (Fu)

Formosa Neijia posted the last two paragraphs of this article by the Author of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, Brian Kennedy.

The Dark side of Talismans
It was March of 2006. A pregnant woman and her unborn baby had been murdered. The Taiwanese police had narrowed their suspects down to one person, the boyfriend. A police raid is conducted on his house and the police find a most eerie thing when they burst through the doors.

The murderer has plastered hundreds of Taoist talismans over every square inch of his apartment. His purpose was obvious, at least to Taiwanese observers, and that was to protect himself from the ghost of his murdered girlfriend and their unborn murdered child.

Although Taoist priest and pundits were quick to try and distance "legitimate" Taiwanese Taoism from the dark evilness of the murderer, nonetheless folk belief in Taiwan is that such talismans are, for better or worse, "morally neutral," meaning they will work regardless of the motive or personal morality of the users. It is noticeable to any observer of Taiwanese Taoism or any observer of Taiwan's criminal element that the two things often go hand in glove. For example Taiwanese gangsters often wrap their illegal firearms or knives in Taoist talismans.

First of all let me recommend a really great Horror Movie on the subject, Double Vision (Taiwan, 2002) [review].

Kennedy is right that Talisman (as a whole category) are "morally neutral," but so are Emergency Rooms, Technology, and the Law. An emergency room will take anyone who bleeds.

Confucius listed four categories that he would not discuss. One of them was random/domestic violence. His reason was that it is so common, it happens everywhere to all types of people. The horrible scene above is all too common, a young man, probably in a possessive rage, kills his pregnant girlfriend. If the story is like so many others, he was instantly filled with unbearable guilt.

Kennedy says the Talisman are Daoist. It would be more accurate to say "Red-Hat Daoist," sometimes referred to as Wu, and in this blog what I have been calling Trans-mediums. However, there is no central authority in Daoism, so if someone puts on a black hat and calls themselves at black-hat-orthodox-Daoist, they may be able to get away with it, especially where people are uprooted from their traditional communities.

The Chinese term for Talisman is fu. Fu means contract. A fu, in this case, is a contract between the living and the unseen world. Those talisman he put up around the murder said something. Probably not "I'm sorry" and also probably not, "burn in hell," they were likely an attempt to protect the man from his own intense feelings of guilt. He was afraid, as anyone in that situation would be, that he was going to carry feelings of guilt for every minute of the rest of his life. The newly dead, had in a very real and even physical way, implanted themselves in his body.

These fu were likely a request that the dead be resolved as quickly as possible. When people die, especially young people, and especially people who die violently, they often leave intense unresolved problems, and feelings behind.

Does ritually creating and hanging a contract asking for resolution actually bring about resolution? I don't know, but I'll bet he is going to do some time behind bars.

footnote: The ad photo for Double Vision at the top, has a slogan for the English speaking audience about belief. It ain't in the movie.

Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu)

The third century B.C.E. text known as the Zhuangzi, is a fun read. It is considered one to the three founding texts of Daoism, along with the Laozi and the Leizi.

While it is central enough to be put on a Daoist altar, the aspects of it which are important to religious Daoism were later included in the Huainanzi, so as a text it does not actually play an important role in ritual.

It has however played a very important role in Chinese culture. I like to think of it as a retirement gift to people who have spent their lives caring for others and serving the state. It's central message, if it has one, is trust. Trust the way things are going, ride the wave and be at play with life's ups and downs, curves and straights.

The Zhuangzi is a collection of very readable prose. It is a funny book, funnier by far than any other book of comparable age. Historically the Zhuangzi itself has been part of a game in which people memorize the book, internalize it's voice(s) and then add their own chapter on the end. Because this game has been going on for more than 2000 years, scholars have separated it into the Inner Chapters (the oldest part said to be authored by a man named Zhuangzi) and the Outer Chapters (later inspirations).

In my opinion the best translation of the Inner Chapters was done by David Hinton. He boldly translates peoples names into English, like Gaptooth and Master Timid Magpie, and so brings out more of the book's natural humor.

The best book of commentary on the Zhuangzi is Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, edited by Roger T. Ames. All the essays in here are worth reading. My two favorites are "Just Say No to 'No Self' in the Zhuangzi," by Chris Jochim, and "Knowing in the Zhuangzi: 'From Here, on the Bridge, Over the River Hao.'"

In "Just Say No..." Jochim joyfully jostles with the concepts of Self and No Self and whether or not they are in the original text at all.

In "From Here..." Ames uses as a jumping off point, an argument between Zhuangzi and his best friend Hui Shi about whether or not a group of fish are happy.

The Shaolin Grandmasters' Text

When I saw a book titled, The Shaolin Grandmasters' Text, History, Philosophy, and Gung Fu of Shaolin Ch'an, I ordered it immediately. I've been totally unimpressed with the histories of Shaolin Temple that I've seen, so I was hopeful with this one.

It's not as scholarly as I'd like. What is fascinating about it is that the authors  claim to be part of an unbroken oral tradition and on this account it comes across as pretty convincing.

The authors claim that all the Abbots of Shaolin Temple fled China by 1910 and many of them rendezvoused in New York (yes, a knife a fork a bottle and cork.) They abandoned their robes, grew their hair out, and started teaching 'indoor' students. Wow.

The main part of their teaching was a unique lineage of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. But they also taught martial arts (yeah.)

They dis' a little on all the Shaolin circus clowns coming out of the Chinese "Temple" these days, which makes for good reading. I'm hugely pro-circus, so I think it's funny, but they seriously wish that "their" name was not used irresponsibly.

Anyway, the book goes into depth on the martial and religious code of Shaolin Ch'an. It dives into a full accounting of what was actually taught and when (remember "Oral" history here, not documented, but still fascinating.)

The short section on Philosophy was a bit of a yawn, and the authors sometimes sound preachy. However, I think their basic premise, that Shaolin is a religious tradition with martial arts as an historical side-car is correct.

If you do any kind of Shaolin Quan, you should own this book.

What is a Jing? (Part 2)

Most people, including me, first learned internal martial arts and qigong with out a Daoist inspired view.

This missing view is "a way of seeing the world, or a way of affirming experience." If we are not presented with a view we tend to bring what ever view we are already familiar with to the new topic. [Like, dude, is this going to make me into the like ultimate greatest fighter?]

For example, because the Western historical view of creation is deeply embedded in the English language, even at the level of grammar and metaphor, people tend to see 'a divine agent' in the following translation which is not in the original classic text (jing). This translation from a Daoist Shangjing classic(jing), is itself explaining the nature of a jing:

Now the jing "in the beginning coexisted with the Original Breath and were produced at the same time as the Original Commencement." They are formed by the coagulation and the condensation of this first Breath or from one of the three primordial Breaths. Spontaneously born from the Void, they appeared as rays of light that came before the genesis of the world. In these grandiose divine prologues that refer to the time when yin and yang divided and "the five colors started to shoot forth,"....

"Purple books written in characters of red cinnabar" fasten themselves onto the Ch'ien tree growing on the moon. These Books shine "like moonlight" and are the nourishment for immortality. In the Pi-lo heaven within the trees of K'ung-ch'ing grove, the True Writings are formed in purple characters. In this sacred grove, the sound of blowing wind becomes music. And if a bird eats the leaves off the trees in this grove, then written texts appear on its body and whoever is able to obtain its feathers is able to fly. Thus the Tree of Life is Writing and Writing is a Tree of Life.
(Isabelle Robinet, Taoist Meditation, p21,23.)

This amazing definition goes on without a break for seven pages. This little reference may give readers a taste of what they can expect from any traditional Chinese subject.

Roger Ames makes some salient points about the nature of Chinese thinking:

We are always a participant in the unraveling of traditional Chinese subjects, never an 'objective observer.' From the Chinese perspective, agents cannot be decontextualized and superordinated in any final sense; to identify and isolate an agent [re: divine creator] is an abstraction which removes it from the concrete reality of flux, exaggerating its continuity at the expense of its change. Since change is interior to all situations, human beings do not act upon a world that is independent of them. Rather, they are interdependent in the world in which they reside, simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it. Order is always reflexive, subject and object, are not contraries, but interchangeable aspects of a single category in which any distinction between the agent and the action, between subject and object, between what does and what is done, is simply a matter of perspective.(Roger T. Ames, Yuan Dao, p.20-21)

Roger Ames again:

In fact, categories used to define a Chinese world are fluid, and must be seen as often crossing the borders of time, space, and matter in an unfamiliar way. Dao so understood offends against the most basic of Western cultural distinctions, mixing together subject and object, as well as things, actions attributes, and modalities. Dao is at once"what is" (things and their attributes) and "how things are" (actions and their modalities), it is "who knows" as well as "what is known."(Ames, p. 27-28)

In the above paragraph the term Dao could easily be replaced with the words jing or qi.

In order to understand Internal Martial Arts or qigong and bring the practices to fruition, it may be necessary to relax some of the most basic ways we think about the world. What is the appropriate attitude with which to approach a traditional Chinese subject? How do we go about the process of unfolding the subject keeping in mind its traditional context?

While we are free to dive into these scholarly debates, there is a traditional answer which also points in the right direction and wishes a person good luck at the same time: Long-life!

What is a Jing?

A TRADITIONAL CHINESE ORIENTATION TOWARD KNOWLEDGE.

Sometimes when a Chinese teacher is trying to explain a term they will instead explain a term which is a homonym. Because there are so many words in Chinese which sound alike, simular sounding words can, over hundereds of years, take on parallel or related meanings and so in this chapter, instead of explaining jing, the solid, more structural or dense aspect of Qi, I will instead explain jing, a classic.

The term jing (ching) is usually translated: Classic. "...(It) is the underlying structure, both in the human body, such as the meridians of acupuncture, and in the body of knowledge of a civilization. This is the general name given to all the "master texts," such as the Tao-te ching, ... [or the I Ching (Yijing)]. It can be used to describe books that are not philosophical (e.g. Nei Ching, "The internal Classic," the master text of Chinese medicine) or even Chinese (e.g. Shen Ching, "The Holy Classic," the Bible). The literal meaning of this character is "warpage" (the threads stretched out lengthwise in a loom that give structure to the fabric that is woven),...." (Cyrille Javary, Understanding the I Ching, p. xii.)

What is the appropriate attitude with which to approach a traditional Chinese subject? How do we go about the process of unfolding the subject of the Internal Arts keeping in mind their traditional context?

The classical version of traditional literature uses very dense concentrated metaphorical and symbolic language to describe a topic. Often it is a consolidation of many earlier texts which have made mention of the topic at hand. These concentrated classics are committed to memory. Understanding is expected to come over an extended period of time, with experience. In some ways this is a good summary of what a Taijiquan form or a qigng movement series is in itself.

Out of this literary tradition grew a tradition of commentary and explanation, probably the consolidation of many generation of practitioners notes from the margins of their copies of the original classic. A popular way to begin a study of a classic, or jing, is for the teacher to take only the first character of the text and from just that character, reconstruct the essence, or "view" of the entire text. Commentaries which really pull apart or expand the meanings of a classic text tend to read like overwhelming layers of wafting clouds passing through the reader; too much to actually grasp, likely to invoke sleep, an inventory of embedded meanings meant to have an influence over time.

Studying Internal arts is something like memorizing a classic (jing). A classic, like a an Internal arts routine, embodies conservation, efficiency and the unfolding of the totality of previous experience in a concentrated form. In both cases the relationship of student to practice and student to teacher is the processes of unfolding and revealing the text or form and then re-embodying it in its concentrated efficiency.

I'm calling it concentrated efficiency because that is what it seems like from the outside looking in, but to actually embody either a classic text or a internal arts form feels plain, bland and simple. A traditional Chinese scholar can seamlessly weave a classic, they have memorized, in and out of their speech in such a way that someone who is unfamiliar with the classic won't notice. In fact, scholars who have memorized and embodied many classic texts can play games together where they seamlessly string together classic quotes and yet speak to each other from the heart about things which are important to them. In fact, China has a tradition of scholars with huge appetites for study who can actually quote continuously with genuineness and sincerity. To truly embody an internal practice is the same. On the outside one appears to be doing regular everyday movement, but inside the form (or we could say qigong) is happening all the time, it becomes second nature.

The practice of Push-hand is analogous to the senario where two scholars are spontaneously exchanging quotes from classic texts while discussing a third topic.

Use Chinese Methods to Convert Barbarians

When two different cultures meet, dance is the first art across the border. Music is very close behind. Interaction with another culture has great potential to create change; most societies fear change. This is why societies so often ban or at least try to control dance.

Dance often invokes trance of various sorts, heroic, competitive, sexual, or ecstatic. All of these types of trances have the potential to disrupt traditional designations of authority and hereditary power.

The brilliance of Chinese (Han) culture is that it has spread Martial Arts (gongfu) instead of dance to all of it's neighbors and all of the societies it comes in contact with. Gongfu is merit based, and on the surface it shuns trance. It seduces the naturally aggressive, and trains the wild-at-heart.

The expression "Yong yu bian yi", use Chinese methods to convert barbarians really captures the idea. I got the expression from a book I recommend about the relations between China's dominant Han majority and the numerous smaller peoples who inhabit the broad periphery of China's territory: Cultural Encounters on Chinas Ethnic Frountiers, Edited by Stevan Harrell.
I think it's interesting that in China right now the most common activities in a public park are, gongfu/qigong, ballroom dance, Weiqi (Go), Chinese Chess and basketball.

What does "Song" Mean?

The term song (the "o" is pronounced like the "o" in soot) is most often translated sink or relax. It is for sure the most common thing that Taijiquan teachers say to their students.
Louis Swaim has this to say about it:

Etymologically the term song is base on the character for "long hair that hangs down"--that is, hair that is loosened and expanded, not "drawn up." Therefore, "loosened" and "loosen" are more accurate renderings for song and fang song. The phonetic element that gives the character song its pronunciation means, by itself, "a pine tree," which carries an associated imagery of "longevity," much as evergreens are associated with ongoing vitality in the West. This may provide a clue to the Taijiquan usage of this term, which must not be confused with total relaxation, but it closer to an optimal state of the condition referred to as tonus in English anatomical parlance; that is, the partial contraction of the musculature, which allows one to maintain equilibrium and upright posture. The aligned equilibrium that is prescribed in Taijiquan is associated with imagery of being "suspended" from the crown of the head. One can, therefore, draw upon the available imagery of both something that is loosened and hangs down, and that of the upright pine, whose limbs do not droop down, but are buoyant and lively.

Understanding the cultural and historic significance of hair in China will really help give meaning to the underlying metaphors of song.

Even going quite far back in Chinese history, hair styles were always regulated by the government. The way you wore your hair told everyone your status and rank. Hair was worn in a top knot with a pin. The Chinese concept of "pulling the pin" has some resenance in English because it is like our concept of "letting your hair down."

To "pull out the pin" meant to 'drop out,' to resign, to retire, it meant to give up your status and rank, thus dropping in status. Thus by inference, song means to sink. But it also means to discard worrying about what you think you should be doing- or even what other people think of you.
Another important reference comes from the fact that from 1644-to 1911 China was ruled by the Manchu, an eastern Mongolian ethnic group called Jurchen allied with other Mongolian and Tibetan groups. All Han (ethnic Chinese) males were forced to wear their hair in a cue as a form of national humiliation. If you cut your cue the penalty was death. Historically the cue was used at night by the Jurchen people to tie their slaves to a post. So the term song could easily be understood as harboring some revolutionary bravado.

Gods also have hair styles. Zhenwu, or Ziwei, is the Chinese god of fate and the central deity of the Chinese pantheon. He is the North Star, the point on the top of your head, and the perfected warrior. He represents the physicality of fearlessness, the perfect mix of pure discipline and extraordinary spontaneity that is the basis for Daoist meditation. In his iconography his hair is song, part of it is tied back in a loose braid with silk and chain to protect his neck from sharp blades, the rest is long and hanging loosely about his shoulders. His hair is a throwback (I couldn't resist) to ancient shaman-warriors who showed their utter lack of concern for status by letting their hair go wild.

Does this sound like what you're doing?

UPDATE: George Xu and I were talking about "song" and he said it is like a pine cone opening. A simultaneous spreading out into space and letting go.