following

“Goldfish at Sunset” by Ren Adams

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Our modern American culture tends to value leadership and devalue following.  “Be a leader, not a follower.”  This message is ingrained in us, starting from an early age.  Our TV ads and movies repeat and reinforce the message.  Many schools or colleges state that they aim “to educate the future leaders of America.”  Although we are a democratic country, we still tend to value “movers and shakers” and charismatic, assertive political leaders who can inspire or goad others to follow their own goals, agenda, or priorities.

In contrast, Taoists don’t emphasize the importance of attaining leadership, at least not in the sense of out-competing others, gaining and asserting power and control over others, or achieving recognition, popularity, prestige, or fame.  None of these things appeals to them (see my earlier post non-striving).  Typically, Taoists are not even in the mainstream of society, but rather are often nonconformist,  sometimes even recluses.  They are independent minded, and are not impressed or swayed by charismatic, manipulative leaders.

Perhaps the one sense in which Taoists themselves might be considered leaders is in setting an example of a way to live that is simple, unconventional, and centered on the Tao.  If they are leaders in their chosen fields of endeavor, it is out of sheer love for the work itself, rather than out of grasping for fame and glory.  Although Taoists don’t tend to seek political power, the Tao Te Ching includes advice for political leaders, and emphasizes the seemingly paradoxical need for leaders to follow the people they are leading, to show humility, to respect and listen to and understand the people, to put the best interests of the people ahead of their own desires for power and control.

“All streams flow to the sea
because it is lower than they are.
Humility gives it its power.

If you want to govern the people,
you must place yourself below them.
If you want to lead the people,
you must learn how to follow them.”

-Tao Te Ching, Chapter 66, Stephen Mitchell translation

“If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.”

– Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57, Stephen Mitchell translation

This idea that leaders should stop trying to control and start following the people and the Tao was a particularly radical idea at the time that the Tao Te Ching was written in China, when emperors and warlords held total power over the population.  But this Taoist goal seems difficult to fully attain even in our modern, Western democracy.  Even in a democracy, in which the people can vote, political leaders’ efforts to follow the people are not necessarily sincere.   Insincere, Machiavellian “following” involves determining what is currently popular and fashionable, following the daily poll numbers, and tailoring your message to the polls to attain or hold on to power.  In contrast, the Tao Te Ching encourages a sincere, non-manipulative form of following that is not motivated by a desire for power, but rather by an interest in following the Tao.

“The Master is above the people,
and no one feels oppressed.
She goes ahead of the people,
and no one feels manipulated.”

-Tao Te Ching, Chapter 66, Stephen Mitchell translation

A leader’s sincere following of the people is not, however, passive and indiscriminate.  It doesn’t mean being a slave to the superficial whims, fashions, fads, prejudices, or hatreds that can spread quickly through a crowd, and that are often transient emotional reactions.  Rather, sincere following, in the Taoist sense, seems to mean following the people’s deepest and most enduring values, the part of them that is centered and peaceful, the part of them that is attuned with Tao.  This probably sounds overly idealistic, virtually impossible to achieve….even the Tao Te Ching itself admits it…but it is worth aspiring to:

“Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.”

—Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67, Stephen Mitchell translation

The usefulness of following applies not only to political leaders, but to leaders in all sorts of areas.  In his book Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, the  coach Phil Jackson, writes  about applying Buddhist and Taoist principles of listening and following to leadership in the high pressure world of professional basketball:

“Though there are occasions when a firm hand is needed, I learned early that one of the most important qualities of a leader is listening without judgment, or with what Buddhists call bare attention.  This sounds easier than it is, especially when the stakes are high and you desperately need your charges to perform.  But many of the men I’ve coached have come from troubled families and needed all the support they could get.  I find that when I can be truly present with impartial, open awareness, I get a much better feel for the players’ concerns than when I try to impose my own agenda.  And, paradoxically, when I back off and just listen, I get much better results on the court.

“In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider writes:

‘The wise leader is of service:  receptive, yielding, following.  The group members’ vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows.  But soon it is the member’s consciousness which is transformed.  It is the job of the leader to be aware of the group members’ process; it is the need of the group member to be received and paid attention to.  Both get what they need, if the leader has the wisdom to serve and follow.’”

–Phil Jackson Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, p. 67-68

Learning to “follow” another person or group of people, and to engage in a form of mutual, interactive following with others, is an important Taoist skill.  Again, this type of following does not involve a passive surrendering of one’s will to another, nor does it involve giving in to peer pressure.  It does not need to involve one person gaining power or control over another (except, perhaps, when the principle of following is used in the context of competitive sports or martial arts—see the discussion of basketball and Tai Chi Chuan below—but in those cases, paradoxically, it is the one who is most skilled at following who is able to achieve mastery and control over the interaction).  Rather, it involves a way of listening and connecting to each other, of understanding each other more deeply.  If we devalue and neglect this type of listening and following, and value only “leadership” in the modern American sense—asserting and imposing ourselves on others— we risk becoming more and more self-involved and more disconnected from the people and things around us, which can end up limiting and hindering us.  To continue the basketball example, even with the superstar Michael Jordan on their Chicago Bulls team, Phil Jackson and his assistant coach, Tex Winter, had the team work on de-emphasizing the dominating leadership presence of Jordan, and work on functioning together better as a team.  Jackson and Winter taught their players to use a strategy called the triangle offense, that Phil Jackson said is best described as “five man Tai Chi.” The triangle offense requires continuous moment-to-moment awareness and following, both of teammates and members of the opposing team.  In addition to the talents of the team members, it was this training in awareness, listening, following, working together as a team that Jackson believes led to their successes.

Another example that comes to my mind of the value of listening and following comes from my experiences playing in musical groups.  When I was in high school, I studied the clarinet quite seriously, and played in various youth orchestras.  I remember a conductor who I played under for about 4 years urging the orchestra members to listen to each other and follow each other and him while playing together.  To illustrate this type of following, he asked one of the violinists to stand up and walk while the conductor tried to follow his walking pace.  First, the conductor acted out the type of following he didn’t want.  The violinist walked, and the conductor walked along with him, but was always lagging slightly behind the violinist, never really with him.  Then, the conductor illustrated true “listening” and following…this time, as the violinist walked, the conductor stayed exactly with him, so the two looked perfectly in sync, and it was difficult for the onlooker to tell who was leading and who was following.  This type of following takes a high level of awareness and attunement to the other person, and an instantaneous translation of this attunement into motion.  This illustration, however, just shows one side of the following.  In playing music together, there would ideally be a mutual, reciprocal type of listening and following that goes on between performers that results in an exhilarating type of communication and attunement.  This is where the magic can happen in musical performances.   BBC Music Magazine recently wrote this about a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic:  “What’s extraordinary about the the Berlin ensemble is not just their clarity of sound, nor their crisp articulation, but the level of freedom with which the players move as one, each tracking the other like swallows in flight.”

This type of following also can be learned and strengthened in practicing the Taoist martial art, Tai Chi Chuan.  In Tai Chi Chuan, one learns to follow the teacher in the class, and carry out the movements in synch with the teacher.  Also, in learning push hands with a partner in Tai Chi Chuan, the challenge is to learn to very sensitively perceive what your partner is doing or intending to do, and to follow your partner’s movements so closely that you stay in continual, steady contact.  As your partner advances towards you, you yield, while remaining in contact; as your partner retreats away from you, you advance towards him, while remaining in contact.  My Tai Chi teacher quotes his teacher, Dr. Tao Ping-siang, who said repeatedly when instructing students in pushing hands, “Don’t push back, and don’t pull away.”   The other person may try to increase or decrease the pressure in the contact between you, but you stay with them, and don’t allow any change in pressure between you to occur.

“If your [opponent's] side is hard, change your own side to make it soft.  This is called following.  If your opponent is moving and you adhere to him while following in the same direction, it is called sticking.  Then you are attached to your opponent:  when he moves faster, you also move faster; when he moves slower, you move slower, thereby matching his movement…When he moves forward, he should feel that he cannot reach you, and when he retreats, he should feel that he has nowhere to escape to…If you achieve this level of sensitivity, there is no force that will defeat you…The T’ai Chi principle is as simple as this:  yield yourself and follow the external forces.”

– “T’ai Chi Classics II.  Treatise by Master Wong Chung-yua” in T’ai Chi Classics, translated and with commentary by Waysun Liao, 1990, pp.99-107

This is much easier said than done, and requires an inner calm, a deep state of relaxation, a continuous, moment-to-moment awareness, and a “listening” and sensitivity to your partner. (See three of my previous posts: inner quiet, relaxation and serenity, listening.)

Chen Ziqiang (left) and David Gaffney (right) practicing an advanced form of Tai Chi Push Hands called Da Lu

As you read this, you might be wondering about what seems to be a contradiction in Taoist values.  Why is it that Taoists tend to be so independent and unconventional,  so uninterested in following the crowd or domineering leaders, and yet, in another sense, value certain types of following so highly?  Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching emphasizes the independence and unconventionality of Taoists, their lack of susceptibility to peer pressures.

“Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don’t care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharper;
I alone am dull.
Other people have a purpose;
I alone don’t know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.”

– Tao Te Ching, Chapter 20, Stephen Mitchell translation

The seeming contradiction between independence from others, on the one hand, and the high value placed on following, on the other hand, can be resolved by understanding that what Taoists value is to be attuned to the Tao, to be “immersed in the wonder of Tao,” to follow Tao, as indicated in the last line just quoted from Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching.  Taoists are independent of superficial fads and fashions, independent of peer pressures or pressures from “charismatic leaders” that are not deeply rooted in the Tao.  But they are very interested in listening to and connecting with others on a much deeper level, and in sensing and following Tao in others.

“Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower…”

—Tao Te Ching, Chapter 38, Stephen Mitchell translation

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

Gustav Mahler—a Taoist?

I wanted to say a bit more about my comment  following my post becoming Tao: music in nature.  In that comment, repeated in the next paragraph, I speculated that the composer, Gustav Mahler, may have been a Taoist at heart.  There are several themes in Mahler’s life and work that seem to resonate with Taoism, even to point explicitly to Taoism:  his search for a philosophical understanding of life and death, but lack of comfort in conventional religion; his love of Nature, and his feeling of unity with and attunement to Nature; his finding some sadness, but ultimately comfort and consolation in the idea that Nature goes on and on, beyond the lifespan of any individual, who returns and reunites with Nature upon death;  and the use of a Chinese poem by Li Bai, with explicitly Taoist themes, as the words to one of his greatest works, The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde).  Here’s the comment I had written previously:

“For the last several years I’ve been a bit obsessed with the music of Gustav Mahler. I have a kind of ‘out there’ theory that he was a Taoist at heart, or became one later in his life, although he may not have described it as such, and perhaps was groping toward something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He composed most of his music in the summers immersed in nature, while staying in the Alps, or by a lake in the middle of the Alps. He was deeply affected by nature. There are some intriguing things I learned in a video entitled What the Universe Tells Me: Unraveling the Mysteries of Mahler’s Third Symphony. The music historian, Morten Solvik, comments, ‘Mahler was a religious person who was not at all dogmatic. He was born a Jew; he converted to Catholicism; and yet he felt at home in neither religion. His search was a philosophical one, not a dogmatic or religious one, in the narrow sense of the word. It was all embracing.’ And Catherine Keller, a theologian at Drew University, comments in that same video about the last movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, which has the structure of a chorale, and has been described as a prayer without words: ‘What does it mean, that, in some sense, Mahler is praying with us in this final movement without words. I think a prayer, for him, is not about gabbing at God, telling God what we need, or pouring out all of our self-deprications. A prayer, at this depth, seems to be about profound attunement to the spirit of life [I might replace 'spirit of life' with 'Tao'].’ Although his music can express quite a bit of angst, it seems to move toward transcendence and serenity. In addition to being a composer, he was primarily known in his lifetime as a prominent conductor, and his conducting style went from being very physically active and dramatic early in his career, to very minimalistic (one might say, wu wei) later in his career. And later in his career he became fascinated by Chinese poetry and culture, and set his later work “Song of the Earth” to a Chinese poem by Li Bai. I like to imagine that he was a Taoist without fully realizing it or revealing it…”

This idea of Mahler as a Taoist began to occur to me as I have been reading and listening to various descriptions of Mahler’s life and work.  In a course from The Teaching Company, Professor Robert Greenberg states the following, regarding Mahler’s Second Symphony, the “Resurrection” Symphony, which, by it’s title, had previously sounded to me Christian in theme:

“Mahler Symphony #2 is a philosophical tract, a spiritual and emotional journey that documented Mahler’s pan-religious belief structure, at least as it existed in 1894.  It’s not a Jewish religiosity.  It’s not a Christian religiosity.  Frankly,…the message of the symphony has more in common with various Indian and Eastern religious philosophies than European.”

–Robert Greenberg’s lecture #4 in “Great Masters:  Mahler–His Life and Music,” Course #756, The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, 2001.

In that same course, Professor Greenberg touches up on the idea that, although Mahler suffered from all sorts of inner torment, he also was trying to find his way toward a sense of inner harmony, a very Taoist goal.  Professor Greenberg quotes from a letter that the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote to Mahler in December of 1904, after attending a performance of Mahler’s Symphony #3:

“My Dear Director,  I must not speak as a musician to a musician, if I am to give any idea of the incredible impression your symphony made on me.  I can only speak as one human being to another, for I saw your very soul.  It was revealed to me as a stretch of wild and secret country.  I felt it as an event of nature.  I felt your symphony.  I shared in the battling for illusion.  I suffered the pangs of disillusionment.  I saw the forces of evil and good wrestling with each other.  I saw a man in torment struggling towards inward harmony…”

–excerpt from a letter from Arnold Schoenberg to Gustav Mahler, December, 1904, quoted in Robert Greenberg’s lecture #6 in “Great Masters:  Mahler–His Life and Music,” Course #756, The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, 2001.

Also, in the video Mahler—I Have Lost Touch with the World,  the Mahler biographer, Henry-Louis de la Grange, discusses Mahler’s composition, The Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), and, in that discussion, makes reference to Chinese philosophy and religion.  Mahler wrote Das Lied von der Erde one year after the devastating loss of his beloved 4 1/2-year-old daughter, Marie, called affectionately Putzi, who died of diphtheria.  The last section of the piece, called Der Abschied (The Farewell) was written, in part, as a kind of farewell to Putzi, whom Mahler adored, and is pervaded with the themes of death and farewell, but also of life and the renewal of nature.  The last words of Der Abschied are, “The dear earth everywhere / Blossom in spring and grows green again! / Everywhere and eternally the distance shines! / Bright and Blue!  Forever….forever.”

Gustav Mahler and his daughter, Putzi

In talking about Das Lied von der Erde in the video Mahler—I Have Lost Touch with the World, Henry-Louis de la Grange describes Mahler’s philosophy and views of death in a way that makes them sound distinctly Taoist:

“He had religious feelings, more than beliefs.  I think he was neither a Catholic nor a practicing Jew, and I think he was much more a pantheist and influenced by Oriental philosophies, and that’s why it’s so interesting to see him setting Chinese poems to music in the Lied van der Erde … I think … the Orientals are…more familiar with this mixture of sadness and gaiety and this sense of farewell which is very sad and also rather mystical, rather otherworldly and does not express any particular belief in the case of the Lied van der Erde…  It is the renewal of nature every year in spring which is … when human beings compare their death to the fact that nature remains after their death.  It is a thing that is very inspiring and very moving, and I know very few passages in all of music which are more moving than the end of Lied van der Erde.”

Another Mahler biographer, Stuart Feder, also writes of Das Lied van der Erde, that, “In Der Abschied…The ultimate ‘place,’ the end point of human destiny has been transformed from the ‘heavens’ of the Second and Fourth symphonies, the Mutter Haus of Kindertotenlieder, and the occassional moments of grace in the lieder to a unique ‘place’ never before articulated in music.  At the same time, musical acts of mourning evident earlier find a point of resolution and comfort beyond mere resignation in the last moments of Das Lied.

“In this final movement, boundaries dissolve between the living and the dead; the human and the nonhuman; the organic and the inorganic.  By the same token, music, poetry, and philosophy merge in a confluence of meaning that none could adequately elaborate singly.  The truly engaged listener is drawn into the amalgam in such a way that there is a co-mingling of music and self.”

–Stuart Feder, Gustav Mahler:  A Life in Crisis, 2004, Yale University Press, p. 149

It seems that in this final movement, the living and the dead, the human and the nonhuman, the organic and the inorganic, the listener and the music all become one with Tao.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

liberation from the fear of death

“Plum Blossom Curve” by Ren Adams

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In his 1992 book 365 Tao:  Daily Meditations (p. 57), Deng Ming-Dao writes, “Of all the spiritual traditions, following Tao is among the least popular…many traditions offer heaven, forgiveness, comfort, ecstasy, belonging, power, and wealth.  Tao offers only three things:  sound health, a way through the bewilderment of life, and liberation from the fear of death.”  Fear and horror of death is a powerful, if often avoided, feeling in many of us.  In Helen Liang’s ordeal with cancer, described in the last post, she was able to let go of her fear, even as she was facing what seemed to be imminent death.  By meditating on the Taoist idea that there is no separation between her and the universe, on the idea that she is Tao, there seemed nothing to be frightened of anymore.   From a Taoist perspective, each of us came from Tao, is a manifestation of Tao, and returns to Tao upon death.   In that sense, there is a continuity between the time before life, life itself, and the time after life.  Taoists sometimes say that the life that we are living now is only a dream.  Buddhists speak of “no self,” that is, the idea that our perception of ourselves as separate individuals is not really real.  What do these ideas mean?  From the modern, American perspective, they sound virtually delusional.

Here’s my beginner’s take on this, my work in progress toward understanding the Taoist point of view.  When you adopt the long view and contemplate the immensity of space and time, our separateness as individuals begins to seem less prominent, and you can start to let go of your deep attachment to the importance, the centrality, of yourself as a separate from everything else in the world.  Imagine taking off from a rocket ship from earth, going from the perspective of a small place and time on earth and rising up to the a view of the big, big picture, and looking back at the earth in space.  When you have the long view, then maybe all of our daily worries and conflicts, even our identity as separate from all other beings on earth, doesn’t seem so crucially important anymore.  Yes, each of us is unique and precious, and each of our lives should be cherished.  But part of what makes us each so incredibly valuable is that we are manifestations of Tao, the source of all things, which is infinite in space and time, and does not end upon death, even though our consciousness as a separate individual may end.  At death, we return to the source, in some sense, become the source.

“Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.”

–Tao Te Ching, Chapter 16, Stephen Mitchell translation, 1988

When Taoists speak of becoming an “immortal,” I don’t think that they mean literally living forever in this life, which is impossible.  Instead, they seem to mean achieving a deep realization of one’s unity with Tao.  Yes, we will all age and die, but during our lives we can cultivate the Tao within ourselves, can become “immersed in the wonder of the Tao” through various means, including meditation, qigong, Tai Chi Chuan, connections with other people, music, art, and immersion in the beauty of nature.  By doing so, we can let go of some of the anguish of the inevitable aging of our bodies, and more fully experience life, and realize our deep connection with—our identity with—the Tao that lasts forever.  This mindset and these practices can keep a youthful well of internal energy in us, even as our bodies age.  In the book Kung Fu:  History, Philosophy and Technique by David Chow and Richard Spangler, in the chapter “Taoist Contribution to Kung Fu,” there is a wonderful picture of the Nei Kung master, Kuo Ling Ying, then 85-years-old, in a standing meditation.  In the caption of the picture, there is a quote from Kuo Ling Ying: “Big moves are not as polished as short moves.  Short moves are not as polished as stillness.”  With his shaved head and traditional Chinese garb, he looks, in some superficial physical sense, like he could be in his eighties.  But his face and posture in the standing meditation seem to radiate an uncanny energy and awareness, an openness to life, a blissfulness, and an inner youthfulness rarely seen even in the young.  Anxiety and fear of death appear to be the farthest things from his mind.  I can only aspire to be that way if I make it to my eighties!

The Taoist view of life and death is beautifully described in the book Taoism:  The Road to Immortality by John Blofeld.  The passage from the book below really has helped me to begin to understand the Taoist views on death, views so different from the typical Western perspective.  Because this is difficult for me to do justice to by summarizing, I chose to include a long quotation from the book below:

“…it is possible to understand what is really involved in cultivation of the Way.  Man’s true nature (Mind as it is called in Ch’an (Zen) terminology) is not the personal possession of the individual; rather, individual existence is the prime illusion to be discarded.  Belonging to none, the Tao is present in all.  Therefore, as Mahayana Buddists are also fond of pointing out, the only difference in this present life between realised immortals and ordinary men is that the former are aware of their underlying identity with the Tao, whereas the latter have not experienced that identity.  Cultivation, then, is a matter of unveiling, peeling off successive layers of delusion, each more subtle than the one before.  It is a process of liberation.  When the final delusion of personal separateness has been cast off, only the physical body (soon to be discarded) remains to be mistaken by the spiritually blind for a personal possession.  By then, death has no meaning, except as a welcome release from bondage to an ageing carcass.  The adept’s real nature—-the nature of all being—cannot possibly be diminished by the loss of an identity that has had no reality from the first.  When clouds obscure the sun, its orb is not diminished; when they are blown away, its brightness is not augmented; the sun is always as it is, whether visible to the eye or not.  Thus nothing starts with birth or ends with death; the real is there all the time.  However, to understand this intellectually is not enough; it must become a direct perception.  To this end, the would-be immortal (goal-winner) follows a regime set forth very simply some two thousand years ago in a work of the Han dynasty:

‘Taking good care of his human body, perfecting within himself his endowment of the Real, cleansing will and thought, not straying into the paths of ordinary mortals, his mind and senses utterly serene, impervious to the effects of every sort of ill, welcoming life and death as parts of a seamless unity and therefore not clinging to the one or anxious about the other, free from every kind of anxiety and fear, roaming the world imperturbably at ease, he attains the Way.’

“How marvelous to wander through the world ‘imperturbably at ease,’ no matter where one goes or what circumstances arise!  No wonder the poems of the mountain-dwelling recluses are full of joy!  With this philosophy they were able to welcome life’s lovely scents and colours as gifts to be enjoyed from moment to moment, never regretting their transience or their passing, with never a twinge of anxiety or fear.  Where even the prospect of sudden, imminent death has no power to disturb, much less appall, one’s feeling of security is as absolute as that of a child in its mother’s arms!”

–John Blofeld, Taoism:  The Road to Immortality, 1985, pp. 161-162

To relax, to ease up on the excessive striving and anxieties, to “try on” the mindset of “roaming the world imperturbably at ease,” to perceive the Tao inside of oneself and in others, to let go of the fear of death…these are steps towards attaining the Way.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

meditation and Tai Chi Chuan, in illness and in health

“Quan Yin, Chinese Goddess of Compassion” by Ren Adams

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Daily practice of meditation, yoga, or Tai Chi Chuan can be remarkably helpful in relieving stress, and, in that way, can benefit our health.  There are stories of individuals, exceptionally adept in Taoism, Buddism, yoga, or Tai Chi, who remained unusually healthy and youthful appearing until quite late in life.  In “The Tao of Pooh,” Benjamin Hoff recounts the story (reportedly true) of Li Chung Yun, who lived an astonishingly long life, appearing much younger than his age, and remaining in vigorous health.  Although he regularly practiced Taoist exercises and walked long distances, Li Chung Yun attributed his long life and good health mostly to his inner state of mind, what he called “inner quiet.”  Whether the various stories about Taoist adepts are fully true, exaggerated, or even fabricated, the message they convey, and the inner kernel of truth that they share, is that, by adopting a daily practice that cultivates serenity and reduces stress, we can enjoy a better quality of life, and probably a healthier life.

The July/August 2003 issue of Kungfu/Qigong magazine had a fascinating article about Helen Liang, an accomplished martial artist and daughter of the esteemed martial artist, Shou-Yu Liang of Vancouver (http://www.shouyuliang.com).  You can find the full article at this website:

http://www.shouyuliang.com/helen-liang-opening-and-closing-the-gates-of-heaven.shtml

It tells the story of Helen’s ordeal with cancer, and the way that she used meditation and Tai Chi Chuan to help her get through it.

She was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma in her late teens, and underwent months of chemotherapy, which failed to put the cancer into remission.  She was still extremely ill,  and her oncologist told her and her family that the only remaining possibility for curing the cancer was a bone marrow transplant, which had less than a 5% chance of success.  Without the bone marrow transplant, the doctors predicted that she had only a couple of weeks to live.  She made the difficult decision to forgo the bone marrow transplant, leave the hospital, and live out her remaining days at home with her family.  Despite the grim prognosis, her father and their family doctor did not give up hope, and worked with her intensively on Buddist and Taoist qigong, meditation, tai chi, Chinese herbal medicine, and alternative Western medicine, in a last-ditch effort to save her life.  Every day, Helen spent prolonged periods meditating or doing tai chi outside.  Weeks passed, and she did not deteriorate or die, but rather her fevers began to subside.  The article describes in some detail her meditation practices:

“As Helen’s recovery progressed she practiced Buddist and Taoist qigong with her father, and also a serious amount of meditation by herself.  ’Every day,’ she recalls, ‘I’d go in the backyard where we had flowers and bamboo.  In the morning, facing the sun, with no noise, I’d sit and meditate.  I’d combine methods, and shorten then, tailor them to me.  I focused sometimes on the goddess Kuan Yin; I’d feel peaceful whenever I’d think of her.  So I’d do something that has something to do with her, visualize an image of healing light.

‘Another thing that really helped me, I found it myself.  I would sit there and imagine I am one with the universe, almost that I’m not there.  When you think about that, how immense the universe is—the good, the bad, disease and everything, how everything moves on, recycling, coming in a circle—you’re no longer afraid of anything.  I’d think, I’m not even sick right now, I’m the universe—feel how powerful the universe is—I’m not there and yet I’m powerful.

‘Sometimes feeling the pain, the side effects from chemo, I’d feel horrible, that’s when I meditated the most.  I’d wake up and feel refreshed—peaceful and powerful—I was the universe.’

“As her body healed, Helen had the strength to practice more taiji and other internal styles…In the quiet bamboo shade of her garden, or the salty air of the Vancouver beach, Helen’s focus never wavered.  She took in life moment by moment, day by day, becoming one with nature.

‘Everyone tried not to talk about it at the beginning,’ she remembers.  ‘Then three weeks passed, four weeks passed, then I just don’t think about it anymore.  One of the things I learned most is let nature run its own course.  Don’t worry about the outcome.  Worry about the process, and let nature go from there.  Always try your best, but don’t worry.  If you fail and lose, it doesn’t matter.  That’s part of nature.’”

–Martha Burr, “Opening and Closing the Gates of Heaven:  Helen Liang’s Triumph over Tragedy, Battling Lymphoma with Qigong, Tai Chi and Chinese Medicine,” Kung Fu Magazine, July/August 2003 issue

Over the course of about a year, she progressively regained her strength, and the cancer seemed to go into remission or disappear, as she continued to use Chinese herbal medicines, practice mediation, qigong, and tai chi.  She has lived to this day, 14 years after the cancer diagnosis, in good health, and she still practices and teaches martial arts as President of the Shou-Yu Liang Wushu Taiji Qigong Institute in Vancouver.

Someone with a background in Qigong or traditional Chinese medicine may have a theoretical framework that can provide some explanation for why or how Helen recovered.  But as someone who comes from a background in modern, Western medicine, who is not well versed in Qigong, and who is not typically an advocate of alternative medicine, I found this story fascinating and puzzling.  What are we Westerners to make of it?  The facts of the story seem to be indisputable:  Helen Liang is a real person, and this happened to her, and she is still alive today, recovered from an apparently fatal cancer, for unknown reasons.  To try to understand it, my tendency is to first use the framework of Western medicine to think of all sorts of possible explanations.  Could the initial diagnosis have been inaccurate?  Or could this have been such a rare form of lymphoma that so little was known about it, including the fact that it sometimes can “spontaneously” remit…in other words, could the doctors’ prognosis have been wrong?   But, on the other hand, if the diagnosis and prognosis were correct, and she really was on the edge of death, then what was it that allowed her to recover, despite there seeming to be no chance?  As the article itself says, “Whether to attribute this miracle to Kuan Yin, the goddess or mercy, to qigong, to bitter Chinese herbs, to a family’s unwavering love, or to Helen’s own will to heal her cancer, the answer is still a mystery.”

I don’t know which of these factors or combination of factors, if any, made the cancer go away.  In the parlance of Western medicine, Helen’s story is “anecdotal,” a single case, and therefore it is not possible to make any definitive conclusion about what caused her to recover.  I don’t tell this story to encourage anyone to forsake conventional medicine, or to use only alternative or non-Western medicine.  If I, or someone close to me, had a serious illness, I  would seek out conventional, Western medical care, although I respect the right of others to choose alternative approaches, and clearly, as in Helen’s story, there are situations in which one can run out of good treatment options in conventional medicine.  If I were in Helen’s situation, after the chemotherapy failed, I’m not sure what I would have decided about the bone marrow transplant.  One thing is certain, though—that the meditation and Tai Chi that she practiced was wonderfully effective in relieving her fear and stress, and in enabling her, in the midst of this situation, to reach a state of inner peace and calm…even bliss.  Helping patients to cope with the potentially crushing burden of fear and stress inflicted by serious illness is so important, but so often neglected by conventional Western medicine.  And why does Western medicine neglect it?  Even from a hard-nosed, skeptical, Western scientific/medical perspective, there are reams of convincing data indicating that severe anxiety and stress can have strongly negative consequences on our physical and mental health.

I was moved by reading about the situation that Helen faced, and by the way her meditations about the immensity of the universe and feeling one with the universe enabled her to reach a state of no fear…and by her stance of letting nature takes its course…trying your best, but not worrying about the outcome…if you lose, fail, or even die, it is OK…it is part of nature.  Who knows?….maybe her ability to let go of fear and stress really did contribute to her recovery.  In our society, we have a tendency, quite different from Helen’s, to encourage people with serious illnesses to “fight” and “battle” the disease.   This attitude of “fighting” apparently helps many people to not give up, to hold on to hope and to a sense of control.  But sometimes I wonder whether all this talk of “fighting,” “struggling,” and “winning the battle” against the disease could, at least in some people, be counterproductive, could even contribute to stress or to a feeling of defeat and failure if things don’t go the way they were hoping.  I wonder whether Helen’s stance—not of fighting and struggling, but of becoming a part of nature, doing her best to care for herself but not worrying so much about the outcome, going with the flow of nature—may be more relieving of stress and burden for some people…it would seem more relieving to me, at least.   And, in the end, by not worrying about “winning,” she won.  She embodied wu wei, “doing not doing” or “effortless action.”  Whether one is ill or healthy, it seems clear that joining the flow of nature through meditation and Tai Chi can enhance our quality of life, can help us let go of the stresses that wear us down, and can help us reach a state of inner peacefulness and happiness.  That is why I want to continue practicing Tai Chi Chuan, no matter what happens in life, letting the attitude that Helen describes sink in.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

becoming Tao: sailing

“Man in a Boat” by Ren Adams

http://plasticpumpkin.etsy.com

I’ve always been attracted to sailing.  I’ve been thinking about sailing more lately, maybe because it’s summer…or maybe because of feeling upset about the horrible polluting of the ocean by the ongoing BP oil spill disaster.   Many years ago, I spent a summer working in my college’s sailing center, maintaining boats and getting some sailing lessons.  There is something soothing, yet thrilling about the beautiful boats, the gentle clinking sounds of the rigging in the wind, the white sails against the blue sky, the feeling of lift and the sound of rushing water as wind fills the sails, and the spray of water as boats move through the waves.  Recently, I’ve been thinking about how sailing resonates with Taoism.  In the Tao Te Ching, there are many comparisons of Tao to water and descriptions of Tao as flowing.

“The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.”

–Tao Te Ching, Chapter 8, Stephen Mitchell translation

“The great Tao flows everywhere…”

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 34, Stephen Mitchell translation

“All things end in the Tao
as rivers flow into the sea.”

–Tao Te Ching, Chapter 32, Stephen Mitchell translation

The strategies used in sailing are analagous to those of Tai Chi Chuan.  In sailing, you accomplish what you want—moving in a particular direction—not by forcing or by artificially pushing against nature with the help of a motor, but rather by “listening” continuously to the wind and water currents; by skillfully aligning yourself, your boat, and your sails to those currents and thus borrowing the energy from nature.  The awareness and listening are very important.  By staying in the moment, with a calm and clear mind, aware and aligned with the continually shifting wind and water flow,  you become a part of what is around you…in some sense you become the wind, the water, the boat and sails moving with them…you become the Tao.  Albert Einstein, who loved sailing, described an experience like this on the water:

“Never before have I lived through a storm like the one this night…The sea has a look of indescribable grandeur, especially when the sun falls on it.  One feels as if one is dissolved and merged into Nature.”

–Albert Einstein, December 10, 1931

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

finding Tao in science

“Tang Dynasty Nobleman Wanders in the Snow” by Ren Adams

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My oldest son just finished kindergarten, and his favorite subject by far, and the favorite of many of his kindergarten classmates, was science.  This popularity of science among the kindergarteners may be partly attributable to the school’s terrific science teacher.  But I also think that the wonder that most kids feel toward the natural world and science is a fundamental, inherent, not yet “civilized away” fascination with Tao.  Many adults still have some of this curiosity and wonder, but it often seems at least half forgotten.

My own career in research is really driven by that same childlike, endless fascination with nature.  My wife and I wonder, sometimes, why I chose and continue to pursue a career in science that can be so grueling, but I think my stubborn persistence is mostly due to this fascination that is like a gravitational pull for me.

Many aspects of scientific work can be repetitive, monotonous, and annoying.  A career in science requires a high level of anxiety and frustration tolerance.  But there are times when we make an unexpected discovery, however small, or when I hear a great scientific presentation, that reminds me of why I do this.  For example, I remember hearing a talk years ago that gave me such a sense of new depth of understanding, and a sense of the possibility of even deeper understanding, that I felt almost like laughing with excitement at how cool it was.  It may sound unusual, but, at times like that,  I can feel a euphoria of understanding that is almost kinesthetic, a feeling akin to falling through space, much as Carl Sagan described the feeling of contemplating the cosmos, as I quoted in an earlier blog:  “Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height.  We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries” (Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” 1980, Random House, p. 4).  I think it is these moments that keep me going.

Dudley Herschbach, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has a surprising perspective on what someone needs to be a good scientist:

“Interviewer:  What do you think is the most important skill or characteristic a scientist should have?  Is it curiosity or perseverance or analytical skills or something else?

Herschbach:  All of those are important, but if you ask me to say the single most important one—certainly not unique to science—but the most important one is the capacity to fall in love.  To get excited, enthralled, obsessed with some question or problem and helplessly give themselves over to their destiny.

Interviewer:  Like the mad scientist.

Herschbach:  I don’t think it’s a mad scientist so much.  I think it’s fulfillment of human potential to experience this kind of thing in your life, to be fascinated by some questions.  It’s very much manifest in many scientists I know, but also artists and musicians.  You know how many of those people struggle.  Our society undervalues them enormously and yet they are in love with what they are doing.  That is why they do it at all costs.  I think that is the most important single thing.”

–Harvard Alumni Gazette, June, 1989

I remember when I first began working in a neurobiology laboratory, and learning about the incredible intricacy and complexity of the intracellular “machinery” of neurons.  The amazing complexity of it, and the fact that somehow it all works and somehow contributes to our mental functioning…contemplating all of this conjured up in me thoughts of “God.”  The thoughts were not of an anthropomorphized God, the creator, like a clockmaker, who created all of this with his hands.  Rather, I had the sense that whatever “God” or the Tao is, is manifested in this awe-inspiring and beautiful intricacy of nature.  Although there is a popular belief that science and religion are diametrically opposed (despite the fact that some of the great scientists of history were religious, like Isaac Newton), many theoretical physicists, such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, refer in their work to God or understanding the “mind of God.”  Whether or not a scientist is a practicing member of a formal religion, or believes in God in the conventional sense, there is something in scientific work that can conjure up a sense of mystery, of awe at nature, that feels, for lack of a better word, spiritual, because it helps one become closer to the mystery of Tao.

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”

Albert Einstein – “The Merging of Spirit and Science”

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”

–Albert Einstein

“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description .. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”

–Albert Einstein

“We know nothing about [God, the world] at all.  All our knowledge is but the knowledge of schoolchildren.  Possibly we shall know a little more than we do now, but the real nature of things, that we shall never know, never.”

–Albert Einstein, quoted in “The Expanded Quotable Einstein,” Princeton University Press, p. 207

Although, as Einstein wrote, we will never know the real nature of things (“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”), the thrill of science is that it can get us a little closer to the Tao.   I think that is why kids love it, and why some adults hold on to that childlike fascination with nature and science.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

becoming Tao: music in nature

“Spring Green Willow Tree” by Ren Adams

http://www.etsy.com/shop/plasticpumpkin

With the unofficial beginning of summer marked by this Memorial Day weekend, I’ve been remembering one of the best summers of my life, too many years ago…27 years ago, to be exact.  Back in high school, I studied the clarinet very seriously, and was very lucky to spend the entire summer of 1983 participating in the Young Artists Instrumental Program at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.  Although it was so long ago, I still remember that summer very vividly.  There was and is something indescribably beautiful about the combination of nature and music at Tanglewood.  There are these wide open lawns, tall trees, lakes, and the rolling forested landscape of the Berkshire mountains…and, as I would drift slowly with my friends through the wide open landscape of Tanglewood, even in the middle of a weekday with no concert scheduled, we could start to hear in the distance, almost dreamlike, the sounds of the great Boston Symphony Orchestra rehearsing.  My favorite clarinetist, Harold Wright, was then the principal clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  The music critic, Richard Dyer, of the Boston Globe, described what was so special about Harold Wright’s playing:  “Although Harold Wright is a consummate virtuoso of the clarinet, you don’t so much listen to him as overhear him as he steals sound from silence; drawing us into a volatile private world of thought, feeling, and dream.”  My friends and I spent our days at Tanglewood listening to or playing music in an open air setting, and being outside, in close contact with nature.  I became so immersed that I often forgot what day of the week it was.  The problems of the rest of the world seemed very far away.  Although I hadn’t heard of the word “Tao” back then, in retrospect I realize that there was something about this aesthetic experience of music mingling with nature that made us feel a part of both, and got us very close to the heart of Tao.  Of course, many of the great composers felt inspired by nature and echoed or conjured up elements of nature in their music, composers like Beethoven, Strauss, Mahler.

Even before this summer of 1983, the very first time that I visited Tanglewood was several years earlier, in the summer of 1980.  Seeing a concert there in that summer of 1980 was one of the experiences that made me want to immerse myself in music.  I sat on the lawn during the first half of the concert, but during the intermission, a storm began to gather, and some seats inside the performance shed became available.  I was able to get a seat in the shed quite close to the orchestra.  During the intermission, Harold Wright came out onstage early to warm up, and I was immediately struck by the beauty of his clarinet tone.  In the second half of the concert, Seiji Ozawa conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  At 14 years old, I had never heard this music before, in fact had never seen a symphony orchestra perform live before.  As the orchestra began to play, the thunder storm started.  It increased in strength progressively as the music progressed.  Thunder rumbled; rain pelted down on the roof in a crescendo; wind blew in; and a few birds soared in from the outside and glided beneath the high roof of the shed, perching on the rafters.  The tremendous power and energy of the music seemed to blend perfectly and reflect the furious power of the storm that we all felt in the open air shed.  The music seemed to become the storm, and the storm the music, and, in that experience, the music, the orchestra, the audience, and the storm seemed to be one, to be Tao.

 

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

working in harmony with Tao, leaving no trace

The ongoing news about the torrent of oil spewing continuously from a man-made hole on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, with its devastating impact on the environment, is sickening.  My son’s kindergarten teachers have been discussing with the kids the Quaker testimony of stewardship, the idea that, during our limited lifetimes, we are responsible for the earth and how we treat it.  Despite the current fashion among advertisers to promote everything as “green,” there is an impetus in our modern culture for each of us to maximize our profits, push the envelope, make an impact on the world, make our mark.  But what kind of mark do we want to make, exactly?

“Give up wanting to be important; let your footsteps leave no trace.”

–Chuang-tzu, translated by Stephen Mitchell in “The Second Book of the Tao,” Penguin Books, 2009, p. 86.

Rather than pushing the envelope at all costs, there is a way to use our scientific and technological advancements with less greed and carelessness, with more wisdom, and more of a sense of stewardship.  In other words, there is a way to work in harmony with Tao.  For example, our curiosity, our scientific and technological progress can be directed toward energy sources like the wind and the sun, using what is all around us, barely leaving a trace of waste behind.  When you work in harmony with Tao, you can accomplish things without leaving an artificial swath of destruction in your wake.

“Rocks at the North Passage” by Ren Adams

http://www.etsy.com/shop/plasticpumpkin

“In harmony with the Tao,
the sky is clear and spacious,
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves,
endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.”

–Tao Te Ching, Chapter 39, Stephen Mitchell translation

In working with Tao, in becoming like the Tao, you can accomplish huge feats, yet can do so with such graceful fluidity, with such lack of forcing, with a such a sense of respect for what is around you, that you seem to leave no trace…you almost seem to have never been there at all, and yet, what you achieved was so much a part of the Tao that it never dies.

“To him who dwells not in himself, the forms of things reveal themselves as they are.  He moves like water, reflects like a mirror, responds like an echo.  His lightness makes him seem to disappear.  Still as a clear lake, he is harmonious in his relations with those around him, and remains so through profit and loss.  He does not precede others, but follows them instead.”

–Chuang-tzu quoted in the Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff, 1992, p. 186

“A good walker leaves no tracks…”

–Tao Te Ching, chapter 27, translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

In the Forward to his translation of the Tao Te Ching (1988), Stephen Mitchell notes that, “About Lao-tzu, its author, there is practically nothing to be said….Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left no traces…All he left us is his book…”  The Iroquois woodsmen and other Native Americans were able to live in harmony with the natural world, valuing it and using it as a source of sustenance, but not depleting it or destroying it.  By setting aside our greed, corruption, and impatience, by cultivating wisdom, we in the modern world can do the same, using our science and technology to preserve the world, rather than destroy it.

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

yielding

The Tai Chi Chuan that I’ve been studying is Yang Style from the Cheng Man Ching lineage.  My teacher studied Tai Chi Chuan with Ben Lo of San Francisco, Dr. Tao Ping-siang of Seattle, William C. C. Chen of New York, and Maggie Newman of New York, all of whom were students of Cheng Man Ching.  Recently I’ve been looking through a website on Cheng Man Ching that has some great articles in it:  http://www.chengmanching.com/index.html.  I especially recommend reading one entitled “The Power of Yielding:  Getting it Done by Not Doing It” by Fred Lehrman, who was a senior student of Cheng Man Ching for 9 years.  This article beautifully expresses some of the principles of Taoism and Tai Chi that I’ve been gradually beginning to explore, experience, and try to express in my blog:

http://www.chengmanching.com/yield1.html

 

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved

becoming Tao: the flow of creating

“Plum Flow” by Ren Adams

http://www.etsy.com/shop/plasticpumpkin

As I mentioned in my last post, it seems to me that becoming immersed in creative work is a way to become attuned to the Tao, and to mirror the Tao.  After all, the Tao is thought to be the ultimate creator of all things.  “The Tao gives birth to all beings…” (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 51, Stephen Mitchell translation).  During immersion in creative work, one can reach a state of mind in which one feels suspended in time, with a heightened sense of awareness of the present moment, and with an unusual mixture of calmness and euphoria.  During this state, one can be surprisingly productive without striving (see my earlier post “non-striving”).  A New York Times article by Daniel Goleman from 1992 describes this flow state in an artist, Gregory Gillespie:

“Consider the artist Gregory Gillespie in his studio in a meadow near Amherst, Mass…At times like this, when he contemplates the intricacies of composition or is rapt, putting brush to canvas, Mr. Gillepsie says he feels “super-alert.”  Time dissolves, and a day passes like an hour.

“That elastic sense of time—vanishing into a kind of hyperspeed or crystallizing into a stop-frame slow motion—is a mark of what psychologists call the ‘flow’ state, an altered awareness found in people performing at their peak….flow is …the thrill that motivates artists to keep at it year after year.

“Mr. Gillespie’s paintings are now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the Hirshhorn.  But when he began he was willing to live in near-poverty rather than work a full-time job so he would have time to paint.  ‘I loved it,’ says the artist…’I felt painting was the greatest job I could have, even though I wasn’t making a cent from it.’

“Such early disregard for financial reward is a hallmark of nascent artists who later have successful careers, according to Prof. Mike Csikzentmihalyi, a University of Chicago psychologist who has led the research on flow and creativity.  He and his colleagues studied 200 artists, first in art school, and then 18 years later.  Those who had most savored the joy of painting itself, valuing the process more than the product, stayed with it; from their ranks eventually emerged the most successful.  But those who had been spurred by fantasies of fame and wealth had largely disappeared from the art world soon after graduation.

“’Painters must want to paint above all else,’ says Professor Csikzentmihalyi.  ‘If the artist in front of the canvas begins to wonder how much he will sell it for, or what the critics will think, he won’t be able to pursue original avenues.  Creative achievements depend on single-minded immersion.’”

–Daniel Goleman, “Pondering the Riddle of Creativity,” New York Times, March 22, 1992

In this flow state of creating, one lets go, not only of striving, but also of self-consciousness—one forgets about oneself.  It reminds me of the description from the Tai Chi Classics of the state one should reach during Tai Chi Chuan practice:

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

The modern psychological description of the flow state of the artist Gregory Gillespie, quoted above, is remarkably reminiscent of a much older story of Ch’ing, the master wood carver, that was told by the Taoist, Chuang-tzu, during the 4^th century B.C.E.:

“Ch’ing the master woodworker carved a bell stand so intricately graceful that all who saw it were astonished.  They thought that a god must have made it.

“The Marquis of Lu asked, ‘How did your art achieve something of such unearthly beauty?’

“‘My lord,’ Ch’ing said, ‘I’m just a simple woodworker–I don’t know anything about art.  But here’s what I can tell you.  Whenever I begin to carve… I concentrate my mind.  After three days of meditating, I no longer have any thoughts of praise or blame.  After five days, I no longer have any thoughts of success or failure.  After seven days, I’m not identified with a body.  All my power is focused on my task; there are no distractions.  At that point, I enter the mountain forest.  I examine the trees until exactly the right one appears.  If I can see a bell stand inside it, the real work is done, and all I have to do is get started.  Thus I harmonize inner and outer.  That’s why people think that my work must be superhuman.”

–Chuang-tzu, quoted in Stephen Mitchell “The Second Book of the Tao,” Penguin Books, 2010, Chapter 46, p. 92

 

©2009-2011 Aspiring Taoist.  All Rights Reserved