An Impetus

Writing about Tai Chi, or even thinking about writing about Tai Chi, is tricky. It's not a subject with a large audience, and you can sense a disturbance in the force when you even think about putting pen to paper. You can feel that there are numerous practitioners out there already forming a counter take.

Tai Chi is wonderful, beautiful, and strangely, dominated by ego. Which is weird because it supposedly is based on the Tao Te Ching. Now I don’t necessarily mean that anyone who offers their opinion in response is a narcissist, but once you start opening your mouth many will expect you to back it up with more than words (might makes right, which is not really Taoist) or at least will have very strong opinions that the opposite of what you say is true because of what they were taught.

Case in point, yesterday I went to the weekly Tuishou (push hands) class in town. I was quite a bit late but there was one person not paired up with anyone so I jumped right in. At a certain point we were chatting and we stopped to listen to a conversation a few others were having. A woman who was new to this particular group but has studied under a different style than the other people there made a comment along the lines that her style was "more practical".

Now there may have been a language barrier there and I'm sure she meant "with all due respect" but where I come from those are the kind of sentiments some consider "fightin' words". Everyone there is quite respectful and kind so of course no fighting ensued but that simple comment of someone finding the style they are used to being "more practical" shows something I've found difficult in the Tai Chi world.

And don't get me wrong, I see these kind of sentiments pop up in my own mind at times, and there are years of learning from my teacher and his teachers that have caused me to have firm belief in the principles of Tai Chi as I've learned and experienced them.

Something my teacher said recently has stuck in my head and has merged with something I heard another famous teacher say at the end of last year. He talked about how most people have this idea that no one is as good as the old masters, like the art has experienced a kind of photo-copier effect as time has gone by. He disagreed with this idea and said that he believes his teachers were better than their teachers, reached a higher level or greater refinement, and the goal was for us to keep improving.

Another thing I heard last year from a famous teacher was that Tai Chi needs to evolve in order to survive. Obviously we should not forget the teachers of the past, and we should honor and be grateful for their work. But can we do that with a loose fist as we grasp for the higher rungs on the ladder? We'll see what comes.