Hares boxing: martial arts

Being Practical

Vertical Golden Thread swings: in the rise of the swing keep Earth under your feet, and in the fall of the swing keep Heaven at the top of you head. And the use of the word ‘thread’ here is not a misnomer: the energy that moves in the long bone (spine) is spiral, or, more accurately, helical: centrifugal, centripetal, and bi-directional. Imagine a thread cross-section and you will see it.
Bear in mind that structure of the posture and inner-pattern is described by the Chi Kung series, and developed in the Forms (tai chi, hsing I, weapons etc).
Tai Chi is meditation with the whole body, whole mind.

Being Thoughtful

You cannot go with/from nothing into Emptiness wu. You have to go through something first – which is Form, which is discipline.

From Other Peoples’ Teaching, but in my words

Instruction, which is an instrument of guidance, can/must be let go of – after a time. The real teaching, which can not be let go, is the teaching in the body of and to itself.

(after Rosen Takeshina, Soto Zen Primate)

(Ch‘an saying)

How is it that we are born and grow with an inherent sense of the spiritual yet can neither see it nor touch it, nor taste nor smell it? Logically therefore, as we mature, we may decide to discard it, let go of the mystery; not necessarily in a meant way, but unknowingly, as one discard’s ones first teeth. And yet something within our hearts and minds may continue to long for it, to return to it, to know that it does exist.

It is like this: deep down our spiritual nature is unchanging/here, constant/now, undying/always.

As to its source, even the brush of Lao Tzu could not reveal: ‘I do not know its origin,’ he marks, ‘and so… call it Tao.’

(after Olson – from The Jade Emperor’s Mind Seal Classic)