There are many forms and variables of balance; even chaos has balance, this is what Tai Chi means.

It follows that there is a balance to be found within each of our senses, and then between or through them.

For example: within sight there is both seeing – the receptive yin principle, and looking – the active yang principle. Hearing is yin, listening therefore yang, and so on… Breath in, yin; breath out, yang? Yes mostly, but the reverse may also be true. And what-about to breathe, and to be breathed? It gets complicated…

And how about the Tai Chi/balance between or through our senses? In practising Forms should all our senses play equally? And what of the Mind: is it a sense at all?

Question tumbling after question: this is the intellect’s Yang principle gaming a lead, raising an internal prejudice; maybe we should seek its Yin response.

To be still…
To hear in our eyes,
See with our ears,
Sound with our touch,
Taste in our Minds,
Mind in our breath... *

There is something remarkable here, eventually. We may call it Time’s Tai Chi: past has passed, future comes presently to meet us… No effect of no cause. Thus freed we become ourselves, enter the stream, and leave no footprints.

* In writing the above I am reminded, and humbly too, of the twelfth entry in Lao Tzu: “The five colours blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear, the five flavours dull the taste. Racing and hunting madden the mind; precious things lead one astray. Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees… He lets go of that and chooses this.” (trans: Gia Fu Feng)

March 2012 ©