inner quiet

“Balance Bamboo” by Ren Adams

http://renadamsart.wordpress.com/portfolio/traditional-chinese-brush-paintings/

I’m not a Taoist, but I aspire to be one — to approach life as a Taoist approaches life.   I’d love to be able to deal with the craziness of life, its ups and downs, its stresses and demands, and still maintain a sense of inner serenity, relaxation, quiet, tranquility.   I live a hectic life, with a terrific wife and 2 wonderful, very young sons, and a very demanding job, and constant busyness, emails, deadlines, rushing, time crunches etc….like many people in America….at least those lucky enough to have a job.

Sometimes during a weekday, as I sit at my desk, I am able to momentarily reflect on what I’m doing in front of my computer, and realize that my shoulders are tensing up, I’m leaning to the side in some strange way, and barely breathing.  One thing that helps me, if I find myself in that state, is to purposely try to relax my shoulders, feel the muscles relaxing and dissolving.  I’ve been reading about Tai Chi Chuan, the martial art based on Taoist principles, and even recently started to take Tai Chi lessons. In Tai Chi, you are supposed to sit or stand while imagining that the top of your head, the crown point, is being suspended from above from an invisible string, which tends to lengthen your spine.  With your head suspended like that, you then let your shoulders drop, and relax the rest of the body completely.   You also tune in to your own breathing, becoming aware of your breath going in and out, and allowing your breaths to become long, slow, thin, and quiet.  If I can do these things, even for few seconds, occassionally during the day, it tends to de-stress me and settle me down.  I would love to get to the level of relaxation that people write about when you get good at Tai Chi, which is a kind of moving meditation.  The people who really do Tai Chi well describe reaching a state that is so relaxed and meditative that one’s whole body feels transparent.

“It is best to forget your own existence…Your entire body should be transparent and empty.”
–Waysun Liao, Tai Chi Classics, 1990, p. 126

To some, this sound weird or boring…but if you’re chronically stressed out, it could be really nice…restorative.

How do you get there? What seems even tougher is to maintain a sense of inner quiet during moments of heightening stress. What is amazing about Tai Chi, to me, is that a goal is to maintain this sense of inner calm and quiet even during a fight, which is one of the most stressful situations imaginable.  “Push hands” is part of Tai Chi training in which you begin to learn to apply the principles of Tai Chi to sparring with a partner.   I haven’t gotten there yet in my lessons, but have started to read about it…

“In Push Hands practice…regardless of how rapidly the situation changes, you should remain calm and easy…even if a difficult situation builds into a seemingly uncontrollable situation, you should still control yourself in a peaceful and easy manner…allowing no disturbance from external stimuli.”
–Waysun Liao, Tai Chi Classics, 1990, p. 122

“In performing the [Tai Chi] forms, you should be like the eagle which glides serenely on the wind, but which can swoop instantly to pluck a rabbit from the ground.”
–Waysun Liao, Tai Chi Classics, 1990, p. 115

I know, I know…poor rabbit. I don’t like it either. But that image of gliding serenely on the wind…sounds great to me. So you somehow reach a level in which you can be engaged in an extremely rapidly changing situation, fully, exquisitely aware of what’s going on around you so that you can react and respond to it in real time, yet maintain an inner quiet…how is this possible? I would love to be able to live like that…I hope in this blog to talk about my quest to try to find a way to do this…and a way to adopt other Taoist ways, which I’ll talk more about in future posts.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

Advertisement