Harmony Tai Chi - Classes 5 & 6 -

What is most perfect seems shabby and worn, but it is consecrated by use. What is fullest seems empty, a sheer capacity.
What is most true is not level;
what is most skilled is simple;
nothing prospers like poverty;
sincerity is most eloquent.
When it gets cold, move around.
When it gets hot, grow still.
In general, stay calm. (1)

Review

This might be a good time to do a quick thematic review.  Before beginning Tai Chi we prepare a state of readiness (Wu Qi) - what Crispin Sartwells' interpretation of the chapter 45 of the Tao Te Ching refers to as a 'sheer capacity'. The 'Te' part of  'Tao Te Ching' is often translated as virtue, but it can also be thought of as a cultivated power or capacity to respond without force or artifice to the always novel situations we find ourselves entwined within the world. Easy Peasy 😊

Once that is done we orient mind and body to environment with the first movement ( Beginning Tai Chi), and then play with the most basic transformations of yin and yang with the second movement (Grasp the Sparrows Tail). The esoteric third movement (exposition of the mystery) sets the theme for the 1st half (yin section) of the form, and is exemplified in the 5 movements I will cover in this post.

• Form 4 - Lifting Hands – The Great Straightness Seems Crooked
• Form 5 - Hidden Tiger – To Give More is to Have More
• Form 6 - White Crane Spreads it’s Wings – The Great Fullness Seems Empty
• Form 7 - Brush the Knee –Empty and Yet Productive
• Form 8 - Playing the Lute – The Greatly Skilled Seems Clumsy

 The Mysterious Theme 

So what is this mysterious theme underlying these postures? I have attempted to describe it as a receptivity to something missing in our current pattern of experiencing the world. We all have patterns, habits, beliefs, reflexive ways of feeling, moving, seeing, hearing, or putting things in ideological boxes. The sheer capacity referred to above involves perceiving certain things from perspectives that exceed our first impressions . When those first impressions suggest some degree of possible misalignment with how things really are the natural tendency is ignore that uncomfortable dissonance and try to force things into our patterned ways of perception.

So how might Tai Chi be useful in improving our capacity to harmonize with our situations as they are presented to us as an alternative to always responding with a reflexive patterned response? Well as the philosopher Mark Johnson points out our patterns of response begin (often unconsciously) as bodily feelings. Here he describes one way how dissonance between our world model and our actual situation, in the form of doubt, might present itself:

'As William James pointed out long ago, and Charles Sanders Peirce before him, one’s experience of doubt is a fully embodied experience of hesitation, withholding of assent, felt bodily tension, and general bodily restriction. Such felt bodily experiences are not merely accompaniments of doubt; rather, they are your doubt. The whole meaning of the situation you find yourself in is doubtful. Doubt retards or stops the harmonious flow of experience that preceded the doubt. You feel the restriction and tension in your diaphragm, your breathing, and perhaps in your gut. The meaning of doubt is precisely this bodily experience of holding back assent and feeling a blockage of the free flow of experience toward new thoughts, feelings, and experiences.' (2)

It is not required however that a single feeling or emotion must dominate a situation, stopping the harmonious flow of experience that preceded its appearance. Zhuangzi, in his beautiful passage on 'Cook Ting' describes how a skilled craftsman can deal with doubt when encountering a novel situation. The 'Cook' presented here is really a butcher, a lowly occupation selected by Zhuangzi to emphasize that artistic expression is not restricted by class or status.

' I have been using this same blade for nineteen years, cutting up thousands of oxen, and yet it is still as sharp as the day it came off the whetstone. For the joints have spaces within them, and the very edge of the blade has no thickness at all. When what has no thickness enters into an empty space, it is vast and open, with more than enough room for the play of the blade. That is why my knife is still as sharp as if it had just come off the whetstone, even after nineteen years.“Nonetheless, whenever I come to a clustered tangle, realizing that it is difficult to do anything about it, I instead restrain myself as if terrified, until my seeing comes to a complete halt. My activity slows, and the blade moves ever so slightly. Then all at once, I find the ox already dismembered at my feet like clumps of soil scattered on the ground. I retract the blade and stand there gazing at my work arrayed all around me, dawdling over it with satisfaction. Then I wipe off the blade and put it away.” (3)

I believe the 'blade that has no thickness' is a metaphor for a heart-mind that thinks and feels without coercion and responds freely to the play afforded by its situation. This is a very different conception of freedom from the pure free willing rational faculty often conceived of in west as independent from bodily feeling and emotion. In this passage the 'spaces' within the 'joints' represent the freedom that exists within situational constraints. When that free space for play is diminished as in the encountered 'clustered tangle' the doubt that emerges is embraced ('as if terrified'), but the cook does not let his seeing of the tangle completely separate him from his own developed skill and capacity. His seeing ( which consists of focusing on one piece of the situation ) stops, but his cultivated and embodied heart-mind-blade continues the application of its subtle yet skilled way-making capacity proceeding through the tangle. The successful outcome seems to have emerged through an attunement to the entire situation.

I have gone off on a tangent as I sometimes do which is semi-intentional given that all these concepts are metaphorical and fold back & forth upon each other. But lets get back to the postures covered in weeks 5 &6.

Form 4 - Lifting Hands – The Great Straightness Seems Crooked - 

This movement incorporates both linear and curved movement. The linear aspect looks out from a fixed frame with crossed forearms which then transitions to a curved tracing of the space we can work and play in. It is repeated in two directions and as it completes a complete circle has been traced. The movement can serve to mimic the loop that occurs when we make distinctions from our experience abstracting pieces which always under-determine yet feedback into the ongoing experience. The embodied meaning is captured in the 3rd line of the Tao Te chapter that introduced this post. 'What is most true is not level'.

Form 5 - Hidden Tiger – To Give More is to Have More - 

This is a hidden movement which symbolically represents an early stage of cultivation in which we have yet to discover the gifts we have to offer the world. The tiger theme evolves throughout the 108 postures representing stages in the relationship between the gifts we have to offer and the potential corrupting influences of the ego driven motivations. 

Form 6 - White Crane Spreads it’s Wings – The Great Fullness Seems Empty- 

This is a meditative movement without any stepping. The embodied meaning is captured in the 2nd line of the Tao Te chapter that introduced this post. 'What is fullest seems empty, a sheer capacity'.

Form 7 - Brush the Knee –Empty and Yet Productive- 

Chapter 11 from the Tao Te Ching devotes itself to this idea of an effective absence.

You make a wheel by arranging spokes, but the empty hub receives the axle. You make a vessel from clay, but it's the emptiness that holds things. You build a house from lumber, but you live in the space inside.We work with things and shape the emptiness. (4)

Form 8 - Playing the Lute – The Greatly Skilled Seems Clumsy-  

This posture is about attunement to and acceptance of that which we are ignorant of. It is about finding new ways to experience beauty. I recently read the essay 'Some notes on attunement' by Zadie Smith and found it to be one best descriptions of the way this intended meaning can play out if we allow ourselves to be surprised by new ways of experiencing beauty.

"I hated Joni Mitchell— and then I loved her. Her voice did nothing for me— until the day it undid me completely."

Crispin Sartwell also has a lovely little book (Six Names of Beauty) that that I recommend for providing alternative perspectives for thinking about and learning to appreciate beauty. The first line of the Tao Te chapter that introduced this post describes a type of beauty in Japanese culture known as Wabi Sabi:

 'What is most perfect seems shabby and worn, but it is consecrated by use'  

You can learn more of the Wabi Sabi concept  here.

1. Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching ( Chapter 45) and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 477-483). crispy press. Kindle Edition.

2.  Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (pp. 53-54). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

3. Zhuangzi; Ziporyn, Brook. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, With Selections from Traditional Commentaries (pp. 22-23). Hackett Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

4. Tzu, Lao. Waterway: a new translation of the Tao Te Ching and introducing the Wu Wei Ching (Kindle Locations 151-155). crispy press. Kindle Edition.  

5. Smith, Zadie. Feel Free: Essays (p. 106). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

6.  Sartwell, Crispin. Six Names of Beauty (pp. 83-89). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.