Posts tagged with "Taoism"

Tai Chi/Taoism Paradoxes

Another cor­re­la­tion between the phys­i­cal expres­sion of Tai Chi and philo­soph­i­cal ideas of Taoism is the ubiq­ui­tous exis­tence of para­dox­es in both. There are con­tra­dic­to­ry answers to many ques­tions, and at the same time, the answers are very sim­ple (a para­dox in itself).

An exam­ple from Tai Chi is the pos­ture of the p’eng shape. If you’re too stiff, you can be pushed over eas­i­ly. If you’re too relaxed, you can be col­lapsed eas­i­ly. People make the mis­take of think­ing that you have to be one or the either — that you’re either resist­ing a force or let­ting it move you — with­out under­stand­ing that there exists a “some­where in between”. It’s dif­fi­cult to explain how some­thing can be struc­tured and relaxed at the same time.

A Taoist exam­ple is the idea of wu wei, or “action with­out action”. Practically speak­ing, it’s the con­cept that you don’t do any­thing that isn’t nec­es­sary, and by remain­ing reac­tionary you let nature (or the inter­ac­tion of Heaven and Earth, as Taoists roman­ti­cal­ly say) run it’s course. In doing so, “noth­ing is done yet noth­ing is left undone”.

Last class, my teacher said “Tai Chi is easy, that’s why so few peo­ple do it well.” His words remind­ed me of verse 70 of the Tao Te Ching.

My teach­ings are very easy to under­stand
  and very easy to teach
yet so few in this world under­stand
  and so few are able to prac­tice

The answers remain elu­sive and dif­fi­cult to explain because they must be felt, as in Tai Chi, or expe­ri­enced, as in Taoism, a char­ac­ter­is­tic of the para­dox­i­cal nature of both the ancient Chinese mar­tial art and phi­los­o­phy.

A Reason For All

The crooked become straight
The emp­ty become full
The worn become new
Have lit­tle and gain much
Have much and be con­fused
So the Sage embraces the One and becomes a mod­el for the world

—Verse 22, Tao Te Ching

Yesterday, I woke up from a nap at four in the after­noon. Usually, when I wake up from a long nap, I feel grog­gy and uneasy, but this time I was bright and rest­ed.

When I went out­side, the rain had stopped. It washed the bird poop off my wind­shield, it filled the air with the lin­ger­ing scent of clean­li­ness. In my car, Becky start­ed singing in the stereo.

I had You Broke My Heart by Lavender Diamond play­ing here

And every time she hit me with the words “cav­al­ry of light” in her waver­ing vibra­to, I had to sing at the top of my lungs along with her, my voice crack­ing, my dig­ni­ty left behind me.

I can’t even remem­ber the last time I’ve been so hap­py.

This morn­ing, I was run­ning late for work. But by the time I got to the car, the sun had been out long enough to warm the breeze. I could roll the win­dows down and let the air in. The traf­fic made me even more late, but it let me take my time too. It gave me the chance to enjoy Lenny croon­ing to me about how true love leaves no traces.

It’s like I’m wait­ing for some­thing to go wrong, because I’m not used to things going this well. But noth­ing’s going wrong. Things are be work­ing out. Everything has a rea­son, no mat­ter how small or triv­ial.

Taoist the­o­ry says that sur­ren­der brings per­fec­tion. Don’t force any­thing. Allow things to hap­pen, and they’ll nat­u­ral­ly bal­ance out. Perhaps I’m final­ly believ­ing this, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing it.

When things are going bad­ly, you’re not real­ly behind.

You’re just wait­ing for the good that would­n’t be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise.

Tattwo

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

The tao tattoo

Concept

Some peo­ple ask me whether I feel more Chinese or Canadian. While some first-gen­er­a­tion Canadians say that they’re nei­ther, I feel like I’m both, because I appre­ci­ate and under­stand things from both cul­tures. I have the best of both worlds.

I already have a the hanzi char­ac­ter for “tao” on my right wrist, so I got the word “tao” on my left in English. This tat­too serves two pur­pos­es: as an expres­sion of this dual her­itage, and as anoth­er reminder for me to fol­low the tao.

The Operation

I went back to Jay at New Moon, who did an awe­some job on my first tat­too. When I walked in, he had the lat­est Mars Volta album on, which I did­n’t even know was out until that day. Most of the time was passed com­par­ing them to Tool, two of our favourite bands1.

Can you tell when he’s going over my artery? (Hint: I start to swear)

Typography

tao typography

The three-let­ter word is writ­ten in Avenir. As the Humanist, sans-serif type­face designed by Adrian Fruitiger (also used for the title and menu of this site), it’s my favourite font. Clean, sharp, min­i­mal­ist, and leg­i­ble. The most dis­tin­guish­ing part, as with most good fonts, is the dou­ble-sto­ry “a”, which increas­es leg­i­bil­i­ty.

I had over a dozen vari­a­tions, at dif­fer­ent point sizes, kern­ing val­ues, and weights. I want­ed the weight, size, and posi­tion to bal­ance with the one on my right wrist. In the end, I went with one that was 63.78 points, and the 35 “light” weight.

Continue read­ing “Tattwo”…

  1. Tool was a favourite until Lateralus came out, and I dis­cov­ered Dream Theater. Ænima remains one of my top albums though. [↩]

Hold Fast

I was late for work this morn­ing. The weath­er was beau­ti­ful on the dri­ve in. There were thick, dark clouds hang­ing omi­nous­ly in the dis­tance and high in the sky, but the sun was out, bathing every­thing in bright­ness. The wind was refresh­ing­ly cool, so I had to roll the win­dows down.

In anoth­er weird phase late­ly. Hyper again. Currently feel­ing this part from verse 35 of the Tao Te Jing:

Hold fast to the Great Form with­in and let the world pass as it may
Then the changes of life will not bring pain but con­tent­ment, joy, and well-being

Sometimes, I feel like I’m being test­ed. It has­n’t real­ly been going bad­ly, but it’s cer­tain­ly a mix of ups and downs, res­o­lu­tions and frus­tra­tions.

I start­ed to notice that I’ve been talk­ing to myself when alone. Sometimes I laugh aloud too. I once read an arti­cle about a young man who did a solo transat­lantic jour­ney by boat that took sev­er­al weeks, and he said that talk­ing to your­self is nor­mal; it’s when you start to answer your own ques­tions that you should be wor­ried. I think I’ll be alright.

I’ve come to accept the way things have turned out. I’ve felt this way before, but it nev­er last­ed more than a cou­ple months, some­thing that hap­pens when I lose sight of the tao. Hopefully it won’t be so ephemer­al this time. I just need to remem­ber that things will con­tin­ue to work out on their own. To stop try­ing to force things to hap­pen. To breathe.

And to hold fast to the way that can­not be walked.

Psychoanalytic Reflections 03

My ther­a­pist is on vaca­tion now. When he gets back, I’ll start to see him on a bi-month­ly instead of week­ly basis. At first he sug­gest­ed that we slow down only once I get a han­dle on my anx­i­ety, but when I explained that the ses­sions were putting me in a neg­a­tive cash-flow sce­nario, he under­stood and agreed1.

  • My depres­sion is gone. Most like­ly, it was a side effect of my anx­i­ety, or gen­er­al­ized anx­i­ety dis­or­der, which is most­ly gone now.
    • The root of this is from my habit of pre­dict­ing neg­a­tive out­comes and ask­ing too many “what ifs”, which I’m still learn­ing to con­trol.
  • There’s this idea of learned help­less­ness that I strug­gle with. The big­ger issue is that when I feel help­less, I get depressed as a result, about things out of my con­trol such as the weath­er.
    • I love how the prac­ti­cal side of psy­chol­o­gy falls in line with Taoism. In this case, I think of verse 29 of the Tao Te Ching:

      Allow your life to unfold nat­u­ral­ly
      Know that it too is a ves­sel of per­fec­tion
      Just as you breathe in and out
      Sometimes you’re ahead and oth­er times behind
      Sometimes you’re strong and oth­er times weak
      Sometimes you’re with peo­ple and oth­er times alone
      To the Sage all of life is a move­ment toward per­fec­tion

  • One issue I had a hard time under­stand­ing was my belief that attempt­ing some­thing is a waste of time if I don’t suc­ceed. I sup­pose that it seems rather sil­ly now that I think about it (such as avoid­ing get­ting in a rela­tion­ship just for the fact that one may get hurt), but I spent an entire ses­sion on this sub­ject alone. It’s a prob­lem because I give up on cer­tain things before I try, and lose impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties as a result.
  • I’m start­ing to become more aware of my auto­mat­ic thought pat­terns. I’d auto­mat­i­cal­ly avoid cer­tain sit­u­a­tions because they would give me anx­i­ety, or pre­dict how oth­er peo­ple would react based on past expe­ri­ences, with­out even real­iz­ing it. This is wrong.
  • I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal about the use­ful­ness of thought records at first, but now that I’ve fin­ished about a half-dozen, I notice a change in my thought process. Every time I get flus­tered, I think in my head of what I’ll write down lat­er (sim­ply because I don’t have time to write it in the moment) and just doing this helps a great deal.
  • My ther­a­pist is a fan of Chappelle’s Show (which is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a low-class and crude form of humour), because it breaks social bar­ri­ers by mak­ing fun of stereo­types, there­by rob­bing them of their sig­nif­i­cance. This makes him the coolest mid­dle-aged white guy ever, and makes me want to smoke a spliff with him.
    • He also calls weed, “grass”, which is cute.
  1. We’re both baf­fled by the fact that the ses­sions aren’t cov­ered by OHIP, where­as phys­i­cal health prob­lems are. [↩]