Firstly: In the context of your Tai Chi Meditation practice, what is Compassion? What does to have Compassion, to be Compassionate, describe?

Likewise: In the context of your Tai Chi Meditation practice, what is Enlightenment? What does to be Enlightened, describe?

◦ Guidance: of taking a risk ◦

In Tai Chi Meditation it is sometimes necessary to jump, or leap, over the obstacle. For example, in answering the questions above, to jump over the impediments of powerful mystique that have attached to the words – to compassion and enlightenment – themselves. This is not a means of avoidance per se, but a tactic by which one can leave in place a specific difficulty, with the understanding that one will turn back to deal with it later.
Similarly, and as a further example, if working on a response to ‘Where is the Self centred?’, an enquiry posited formally as a koan to some earlier this year, then it may be useful to jump over the word or words that are an obstacle to you personally, which for many in the context of this koan were, ‘the Self’.

This jumping-over means to be released from the seemingly imperative grasp of rational thought, the thought which says, ‘It depends on what you mean by Self?’.
It is to leap, as if from cliffs, into a twilight-darkling sea. If you can undertake this, risk this, then all at once the medium of your thought, of your mind, is fathom-shifted – becomes Mind behind mind.

And it is then, so gently, as from the deep of the ocean calmly rising-up, that you may turn to see a dawn-lightening shore; it is behind you now. And the Self, your obstacle, appears there differently; it is not merely jumped-over, but overcome, is fallen entirely away, is understood.

All is in-a-moment clear.

You may swim now, roll-over, climb out to the dry land, continue your way in faith, with step following step, in the knowledge that something, wonderfully, is changed, is answered, has returned you to a truer you.

Until the next time? Yes! And the next? Well, the leap won’t seem so daunting then.

◦ Guidance: of Lao Tzu (16) and of the I Ching (25) ◦

◦ Empty yourself of everything.
  Let the mind become still.
  This returning to stillness is the way of nature, of constancy.
  Knowledge of constancy is enlightenment.
  Knowing constancy, the mind is open,
  And with an open mind you will be openhearted.

◦ The Tao of sincerity and innocence causes each and everything to be true to its nature,
   returning to a state of freedom from guile.
   Each thing contains its own truth; each thing returns to freedom from guile –
   (also freedom from insincerity/cynicism/the judgemental).
   Heaven and Earth are free; the Tao of self-cultivation sets free.

I have used translations of Gia Fu Feng and John Minford
in amending these texts
of Lao Tzu and the I Ching,
with respect and in deep gratitude.
On the image: A C19th Japanese ink painting in the Chinese style.
The sage in reddish robe is seated in
an ‘at lordly ease’ attitude (see article here), while
his disciple, in grey, is upright and cross-legged.
The attendant figure, kneeling behind them
and who may or may not be
carrying a qin (traditional instrument), appears
astounded by the fall of water cascading
beside their rocky tea-house promontory.
 
©September2025

SOUNDS can be integral to CHI KUNG/TAO YIN, especially as part of a healing regimen. They act by bringing an absolute focus to the moment at hand, bearing an intimate association to the organ they each are paired with in both a physiological and sympathetic sense. Where physical, emotional, or spiritual dullness may be occurring, their agency is of release, of restorative balance, of light. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, they may effect a continuity between the healing we are cultivating in ourselves and the healing we seek to promote in our immediate and wider society.

Sound, as a natural phenomenon of our world, is and has been in all places and times pre-existing of our current state of Human∙Being; it is our task through practice, repetition, with joy in creating it ourselves, to bond intrinsically with the elemental forces that surround us, of season, sun and moon, time and tide, and with the mysteries that therein lie.

In the main, and for our purposes, the sounds are made on a sustained pitch paired with a posture of our CHI KUNG. They may also be chanted rhythmically – although in that practice the order would be different than given here.

They may also be fired, canon-like, as a loud and abrupt exhortation, acting then as a talisman of self-protection in situations of challenge or perceived danger: HO!

©January 2023