Arthur Rosenfeld

Soul On Fire

2009-02-13T12:33:00.001-08:00

CNN recently ran a story about the devastating wildfires raging across southern Australia, a natural disaster that may have involved climate change, normal weather patterns, and even arson. 200 people have died so far and the loss of homes and property is stunning. The story included an interview with a man who sent his family to safety and then endured the utter and complete loss of his home near Melbourne. Life as he knew it was over, and the man could have allowed himself to be crippled by grief, overcome by loss, or paralyzed by tragedy. Instead he responded like water to the obstacles before him and moved immediately to redefine his role in the world by becoming a relief worker who helped neighbors preserve what they could and reach safety. Heroic and straightforward, it is a tale of instantaneous transformation, an example of the ability of the human mind to avoid attachment and reach a state of higher consciousness.

The same morning I heard the story, I taught a class in sword sparring in a local park. I was reminded that such fluidity of mind is rare and wonderful. Showing my students a particular attack, I was surprised to see that they were unable to counter it even when they knew it was coming. In other words, shown the problem and shown the solution they had trouble adopting that solution even when it was physically trivial. Over and over again they would fall into the same trap, repeatedly making the same wrong move in response to the attack and then cursing themselves for doing it. Typically it took twenty to thirty tries before all of them could inhibit whatever reflexive panic reaction the attack had initially elicited in favor of a new, better response—one that allowed an effortless and effective defense.

It was a fascinating lesson in what creatures of habit we are, and in just how unusual and amazing was the Melbourne man’s ability to shift gears. We all suffer from an emotional and intellectual inertia that may in the case of physical movement also involve so-called muscle memory, but is more likely to stem from the way our brain works. We really are creatures of habit, and our tendency to get attached to things, habits, routines and reactions runs deep. While it is possible that the magnitude of the tragedy ripped the fire victim from his patterns and roots, it is also a well-known fact that even the threat of death does not always do so: soldiers freeze in battle and get blown away; pedestrians hesitate in the middle of the street and get run over, swordsmen of yore, stuck in their patterns of movement, were routinely cut in half.

Learning to remain relaxed and go with life’s flow is a high achievement indeed. Mind-body practice helps, meditation helps, but in the end it is self-awareness that is required—an ability to turn the zoom lens of the mind to the widest possible angle, one that allows us to see ourselves trapped in our habits and to see our place in the world in broader perspective. We must not expect ourselves not to feel—to do so would be to yearn to become a robot—but rather to feel, experience, and then regain our equilibrium and move on.

A recent San Francisco State study (http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2009/02/09/Happiness_study_Imagine_no_possessions/UPI-52681234159631/) shows that possessions don’t bring lasting happiness. Australian fire victims, facing the loss of their homes and possessions, are unlikely to find much succor in this news. Certainly the fires are a horror, a terrible human tragedy to be rued and mourned by all of us. Yet for the one person (perhaps there are many more) who managed to transcend suffering and act in a way that redefined himself, this particular example of material loss turned out to be a freeing and empowering development—a step toward something he might not otherwise have achieved.

Should we court disaster, natural or unnatural or wish it on anyone for the sake of personal growth? Obviously that’s a preposterous idea, and indeed perhaps the exception fire victim was already a living Bodhisattva, a person of enlightenment devoted to service who needed no such hot boot to behave as he did. If this was not the case, something both terrible and wonderful happened. The rest of us can only hope that when life takes a difficult turn or twist we find ourselves able to rise to meet it with grace.

On Mastery

2009-02-09T15:11:00.001-08:00

Some women claim their ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously is confirmation of the obvious superiority of the female mind; some men respond that multi-tasking is simply a term for doing a bunch of things badly. Parents lament that computer games and Internet surfing is costing their kids their intelligence; a new study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081014111043.htm shows that searching the Internet actually makes us smarter. However you spin it, the complexity of modern life has us more distracted than ever, and inundated by stimuli and messages that divide our time in such a way that no one activity is likely to bear the brunt of it.

It’s a pity, this, because while being a jack of all trades may make it easier to slip into current of 21st century life, the weapons of mass distraction around us make it harder and harder for us to achieve any kind of mastery. Without narrow focus, long practice and plenty of patience we are likely to see the beauty of the landscape around the lake, perhaps even notice the patterns on the water when the wind blows or we skim a stone, but we will probably miss the plants growing at the bottom, the baby garfish swimming between the tall weeds just above the bottom, and the flash of a watersnake’s tail as it navigates a cluster of thick branches just below the surface.
Has mastery become an old-fashioned notion? Maybe so, with information developing at such a rate that whatever we learn in school is obsolete by the time we get out and whatever technology we come to command at our first job will likely be considered archaic by the time we arrive at our second. Still as any quantum physicist or superstring theoretician knows, there are layers upon layers to experience, and universes within worlds. Spending time at one thing long enough to develop mastery develops a quantum awareness within us, lends us ability to see past the differences in things and tease out the similarities, to understand the sort of foundation truths that transcend fields of study, industries, software programs and even particular human relationships—truths that are all pervasive, meaningful and useful.

Some of us are lucky enough to have engaged a career whose dimensions have remained stable over time, allowing us to go deeper and deeper into our chosen field and thereby develop insights that not only make us valuable to employers, but which reveal the world to us in irreplaceable ways. In addition to a vocation or job, we might have worked long and hard at a succesful marriage. It seems we are increasingly unlikely to develop mastery in an avocation or hobby these days, not only because our culture puts a tremendous financial slant on activities and experience (if it doesn’t make you money, doesn’t get you something, why in the world are you doing it?) but because we have so many choices for each hour of free time that we’re unlikely to stick with any one for very long.

Mastering a hobby is unlikely in the zany “rush to the end” frenzy of modern life. We might like to garden but be pulled out of the yard and into the house by eBay auctions or on-demand video. We might like to play football but notice that our knees are often sore and anyway the kids like the Nintendo Wii more than mixing it up on real turf. We might in the past have learned to play a classical instrument or at least become knowledgeable connoisseurs of classical music, preferably at a live performance or on a really great high-fidelity system. Now we find that live orchestras are rare, hi-fi is an indulgence for a few wealthy folks, and most of the dynamic range and quality is removed from music by the recording process anyway. We listen rather than play, and sample a bit of this or a bit of that on our MP3/MP4 player, thereby missing the deeper experience of music and gaining no mastery over anything but switches and buttons.

Mastery takes time, something most of us have trouble finding. It takes discipline, a quality in short supply today. It takes patience, an attribute best appreciated in its absence. It takes dedication, something peer pressure and changing social mores makes more difficult all the time. And yet staying with a practice or a field for years on end offers even more than the insights already cited. Mastery, it turns out, is not merely valuable for the pure joy of gaining command of a flute, a sword, a foreign language, a woodcarver’s chisel, an artist’s palette, a golf club, tennis racket, calligraphy pen or guitar; mastery is all about self-knowledge. Nobody seems to talk about it anymore, but decades spent mastering something we truly love reveals us to ourselves in ways nothing else can.

So let go of fear and excuses and distractions and delay. Pick whatever really rings your chimes—you probably already know what it is—and commit to mastering it no matter how long it takes. The decision itself will make you stronger, and the rewards are sweeter than you can possibly imagine at the start.

Pushing Hands

2009-02-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

The more troublesome the nation’s economic woes become, the more each of us seems to complain about all the bad things “happening to me”. The distinction between happening in the world and happening to me may seem specious or trivial or even irrelevant, but in fact it could not be more important. Interpreting external events through our own eyes is a necessary consequence of having eyes, and indeed of being human, but interpreting events as aimed at you by some vast unknown conspiracy or because the university doesn’t like you or because God is punishing you is simply a road to misery. Pain, as the Buddhists say, is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

Some of us are inextricably married to the beleaguring idea that the world is cruel and unfair and choose to live in a judgmental, negative state that separates us from others. Others of us, by contrast, disconnect from the world because we find it too painful, building emotional or physical walls to prevent people, and pain, from entering. Both these tactics bring little joy and require lots of energy. The good news is there is a third option: to engage things more deeply, bringing our passion and energy and intelligence to bear on creating a whole that includes us, although it may not be controlled by us, a whole that evidences a harmonious interplay of opposing forces.

The sublime Chinese martial art of tai chi teaches the “mechanics” of this option in a lovely, lasting way, offering a laboratory for learning it so well you can easily apply the skill to real life. To do so, tai chi employs a game called Pushing Hands (some say sensing or sticking rather than pushing). There are various postures and patterns to the game—meaning we make different patterns and engage different timing with our hands and feet—but all involve the same principles.

The first stage of the game is to learn to keep our balance. To do this we try to relax, to offer no resistance, to feel light as a cloud in the torso and sunken, strong and rooted in the lower body. We also learn how to grip the ground with our feet and turn our waist to deflect a partner’s incoming force (note that tai chi uses the term partner, not opponent in this context because in Pushing Hands we help each other) as well as to keep our spine straight and our eyes level and to breath smoothly and easily.

The notion that job one is to keep our own balance is a consummately useful one out there in the world, not merely in tai chi class; without our own emotional and physical equilibrium how can we respond to what life dishes out? Taking care of yourself first is the principle on which the airline safety dictum install your own oxygen mask before assisting others is based. If we cannot breathe, we cannot help. If we are angry, desperate, fearful, depressed or falling down, we can’t see clearly or act appropriately.

In the next stage we concentrate on sensitivity. Our palms and fingers and forearms become hyperaware. We turn them into organic devices—think human stethescopes or x-ray machines—with which to see into our partner’s body and ultimately sense his or her intention even before there is the tiniest physical movement. Cultivating sensivity and applying it requires our complete attention. If the mind wanders for a moment we can lose track of what our partner is doing and he or she may then take us off balance. Concentrating on the other person in our two-person world—trying to feel what they are doing with their body so as to predict when and where their force will come—draws us out of our own dramas and pushes back our boundaries. Imagine how such skills could serve us not only as fighters but as lovers. Imagine how such a skill could enhance our ability to empathize, to sympathize, to understand another’s plight or point of view. Imagine what negotiators and diplomats we would all be if we were so sensitive to others.

At the highest level of Pushing Hands we lose the distinction between our partner and ourself. Gone is the notion of other, the sense of me and him or her. Gone are the senses of antagonism, preservation, agenda, reaction or even ego. When we have practiced to this level of achievement we have come to realize that there is no conflict if we choose to meld with it. The dual nature of mind, the notion of a world outside us that stands apart from us to either hinder or help us—is a misconception of our own making.

Does this third option require us to be passive? Does it obviate the possibility of evil or injustice in the world? Does it preclude the imperative that we should stand up for our own interests? No and no and no. What it does do is give us a nuts-and-bolts way both to duck life’s curve balls and when we can’t, to recognize they are not aimed at us.

Roles of the Spirit

2009-01-25T18:01:00.001-08:00

I was visiting a friend at work the other day when an attractive woman walked by his office, looked in and winked. He smiled back, then turned to confide that she had expressed an interest in him. Knowing he was married with three children and that the workplace is a common place for romance, I was surprised when he closed the office door and began to regale me with the possibilities, the fantasies, the opportunities and temptations of a liaison.

“Too bad it’s not a video game,” he mused. “Role playing has gotten so sophisticated you can be whoever you want to be. Take the latest version of Grand Theft auto. You can do good things and help people or you can be a thug who goes on a murder spree. Of course if you go bad, the cops chase you and you gotta run and hide.”

“Consequences,” I said. “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“Right,” he nodded. “You turn off the game and you’re done.”

“At least until you get a long-distance call in the middle of the night that doesn’t fit your agreement.”

“Ouch,” he smiled, a little bit thinly.

I got to thinking about the common denominator between the virtual world and the real world, between the world of the business hotel and the home. Long after the plane has landed, long after the game is switched off the ideas, images, rules, and even the energy of what was done in the video game remains in the mind of the traveler, the gamer. There’s a link there, a bridge of memories, values and emotions. Once the game is turned on again, or the plane’s wheels go up, that traffic begins to flow once more.

If this were not true, if there was no emotional resonance stirred by the games we play, the TV we watch, the movies we see, then studies would not find a correlation between on-screen violence and real-world violence; but they do. The mind is a delicate and complex entity. It can suspend the disbelief created by one set of senses to enjoy the reality created by another. That’s what makes the small screen, the big screen, and the computer screen so compelling. In the not-too-distant future perhaps we will have helmets and sensors all over our body and be able to “enter” worlds of technology’s making. In those worlds we will voyage to other planets, fight dinosaurs, rob banks, breathe quickly, feel fatigue and pain, shoot each other, and have pangs of guilt—or not—over morally reprehensible actions.

Probably it’s a good time to start considering how the mind—rife with sensory and motor nerves and including its bodily extensions, circulating hormones, pheromones, neurotransmitters and more—is shaped by experience. What we do in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. It comes home with us, and worms around inside us. What we do on the computer does the same thing. Over time, the worms of betrayal, wantonness, lust, dishonesty and violence bear fruit. That fruit may be something as truly horrific as a school shooting, but more likely it’s just a sense of unhappiness, uneases, or even self-loathing.

I happen to be a fan of video games, especially if I can play them with my son. As a martial artist I particularly favor those that involve a good round of kicking and punching or better yet some swordplay. I even wrote a video game parlor scene in my most recent novel, The Crocodile and the Crane. In it, an immortal plays the game in front of his student, and his foes evoke some of the real life challenges of his 3000 years on the planet. That immortal is a character of great substance, though, a semi-supernatural creature in no danger of being dragged down by two-dimensional war.

Although society demands a certain common ground, when it comes to our private lives, we all have our own ideas about what is right and what is wrong and we may well have different susceptibilities to experience and patterning too. A person’s beliefs and faith and choices are personal, so long as they don’t affect others. Free will is great, free choice is great. Business trips often bear great fruit, and there are many terrific options in the virtual world; action simulators, puzzles of beautifully drawn worlds within worlds, fascinating absorbing games like Spore and the Sim series. It’s a new frontier and the profit and possibilities draw some of our most creative minds.

In the end it turns out it’s all about what’s inside us, not what’s out there. Despite the barrage of temptations and entertainments, our lives continue to be about the choices we make; the resulting emotions are most often of our own making. Technology may support us and deepen our experience, or it may threaten to pull us away from our core and threaten our sense of reality.

As President Jimmy Carter famously confessed to doing, maybe we all lust in our minds from time to time, and maybe we all entertain shooting fantasies too. It’s great to imagine and it’s great to have fun, but if we are going to strive to be the best people we can be, to elevate ourselves according to a spiritual model we each carry with us in our heart, to touch something ineffable and larger than ourselves, then we have to be aware of the flow of energy within us and consider how even our virtual worlds affect us.

On Consumption

2008-12-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

Despite the failing economy, or perhaps because of it, much is being made these days about the perils and pitfalls of our consumer society. We rue what we can’t have or what we’ve lost when things go sour; when everything’s rosy, it’s easy to ignore our bad habits. There is a bit of the flavor of slamming the barn door after the horse has fled, but pundits still defend us for having been unwittingly trained to consume so as to build our consumer economy, environmentalists bewail our appetites as beyond the ability of the planet to support, religious and spiritual leaders and teachers warn that in consuming we are trying to fit a square peg of comfort into a round hole of despair. Despite all the commentary, nobody seems willing or able to tell us what to do about the problem, not even when it reaches such a head that Walmart door worker is trampled to death http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.htmlby a frenzied mob so in love with their stuff that they’re willing to kill for it.

Contrary to popular belief, consumption is not materialism. Materialism is another phenomenon entirely. On one level it can be seen in rural Africa in villages where people have nothing, in the Paraguayan bush surrounded by children who subsist exclusively on manioc, a root vegetable that has starch to offer and not much else, and of course in the face of fire poverty around the world. There, materialism is survival; as the people lack even enough for a reliable aboriginal existence. Their diet is inadequate and their shelter is too—never mind medical care, comforts, or an intellectual life.

For folks who have more, materialism reached its zenith during the European Renaissance in the west and the Chinese Tang Dynasty in the east. These were grand, celebrated times when people appreciated the beauty of objects made by man: a painting, a bowl, a knife, a piece of silk, a church, a mural on the wall, a piece of furniture, the tiles on a roof, a sterling fork or spoon. Beautiful tapestries and books of poetry arose from those ages, as did Faberge eggs. Materialism in those days meant the ability to enjoy the work of man as an echo of the work of God or nature. Valuing beauty and function defined folks as connoisseurs. It gave a loft feeling of sophistication. It had nothing to do with survival. It had nothing to do with a base, animal life; if anything, it was a thing that differentiated people from other animals.

There are few materialists left among us here in America, it seems, save perhaps the ultra-educated, aesthetes, and the superrich. We are consumers through and through and our job seems to be to go through as much as we can as fast as we can if we can afford it and if we can’t to scrimp and save with an eye toward being able to do so. We are ingesting the planet by taking its raw offerings and ores, transmuting them into some specific form—a big-screen TV, a fast car, a refrigerator, a carton, a plastic bag, a boat, a new jacket, earrings, panties, a fancy wristwatch, another pair of running shoes—which we acquire, wear out, pass on, sell, or put into a landfill. That’s consumption. It’s an action, not a state of being, although it reflects the state of being incredibly unhappy and confused.

The pundits are right: we have been trained. The environmentalists tell it truly, the Earth cannot sustain us in this way. The spiritualists and preachers are dead-on when they say we’re acting out of emotional desperation. Mostly we cleave to things out of a false sense of security. We sense our impermanence and we want something with us to gird us from what we think are the harsh forces of the naked world, things that we imagine will stave off aging and hardship and death.

There are two ways to break the consumption habit: you can follow a path, or you can experience a breakthrough. If you follow a path, you go step by step. If you like this idea, try starting with the substitution method. Instead of pressing the “add to shopping cart” button, jump to another website and spend an equal of greater amount on a charity site and give to those in need. Take a picnic to the mall and eat it after window-shopping, so you still have the social experience without carrying home a bunch of goods. Take a few spiritual books out of the library and try to reorient your attentions away from material goods and onto the condition of the world and its inhabitants. Cultivate compassionate acts instead of collecting things.

Another good method is to write a check out to yourself when you’re about to spend it on something, then deposit the checks at the end of the week. You’ll feel you earned free money, and you won’t suffer the burden of stuff. If there’s something you really need, the money will be there. Speaking of need and of charity, bear in mind that most of us feel unhappy when we compare ourselves to others. If we lack in comparison, we suffer. It’s not an absolute material level that determines success for us, but a relative one.

Try taking better care of the dwelling you were born with than the one you bought. Your body is your real home, and taking care of it provides much more security and, courtesy of endorphins and a lack of pain and abundant energy, more succor than stuff does. There’s no mortgage on your body, but there is upkeep and your time and money are best spent there because it’s a place you’re going to spend your entire life. Skip the new furniture and the kitchen renovation, pass on the new refrigerator and the driveway repairs for now and go for the tai chi class, the yoga class, the gym membership, the fresh produce and the free-range flesh.

Of course you can forsake the path to no consumption if you’re willing to take a leap toward enlightenment. Sound mystical and hokey? That’s okay. Maybe it is, but you can do it! Start charting the number of errands you run in support of your stuff or chasing after it and you will feel the urge for freedom from it all pretty quickly. Understanding that trading time for stuff is trading a non-renewable resource for a renewable one will drop the scales from your eyes in a flash. Worrying about your credit card debt rather than snuggling with your loved one can make you suddenly aware that you’ve enslaved yourself and have you yearning to break your bonds. Shed the habit. Become a materialist. Appreciate the beauty in things both man-made and natural, but leave the consumption behind. Appreciation is a boon, but ownership of what you don’t need bought with money you don’t have is a burden.

A Chat With Lao Tze

2008-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

I rang Lao Tze this morning to ask his help sorting through the befuddlement I’m suffering at the hands of the media and its endless stream of bad economic news. I told him I was confused about current events, didn’t understand what was happening to the economy, and was half blinded by fur flying and name-calling and finger pointing going on between such players as Pelosi, Bush, Obama, Paulson, Greenspan and others. I said I didn’t understand what they were saying about free-market capitalism, bailouts, rescue plans, socialism, Big Government, Small Government and more.

Lao Tze is probably the greatest of the Chinese sages (he vies for the title with his student, Confucius) and wrote a little book that has been more widely translated, and read by more people, than every piece of printed matter save the Bible. Because of this, or maybe despite it, the old sage is a gravelly sort and he doesn’t suffer fools lightly and in this area and many others I’m a fool so I only call him when I absolutely must.

He started by reminding me that things go in cycles, and that being in the middle of a rise or a fall makes it hard to see up or down or farther along the path. He said there are little cycles and big cycles and that people who learn to see them can predict earthquakes and the sudden appearance of miracles and also make a lot of money in the stock market. He said the best reason to study cycles is to keep from getting too excited when they go up and when they go down. He said keeping a cool head and having perspective is the sign of a superior person and since I called him in a breathless panic I was far from superior.

I admitted this was true.

He went on to say that despite all our dazzling technology we are not nearly so far from our animal nature as we think we are, and that this is a good thing, not a bad thing, for the farther we stray from nature the more trouble we find. He digressed for a moment to remind me to take a walk on the beach and then went back to discussing communism and socialism and capitalism. He said that communism was a utopia. I interrupted to point out that neither the USSR nor Communist China seem to utopian to me. He nearly smacked me.

“Those places weren’t communist,” he said. “They were just countries ruled by bad guys who stuck that word on a banner to make themselves look good and fool people. Real communism is about rights and equality and sharing. Real communism is a vision of a world in which everyone works together and has enough, a world in which nobody goes hungry or freezes to death in the forest. It’s a beautiful idea, and most thinking people embrace it as such, but it’s useless because it’s not human nature to be so kind. Left to their own devices, many people would share and get along but there are always going to be those who come in the night and whack you on the head and steal your stuff or kidnap your children or drag away women.”

It was my turn to interrupt him and point out that Buddha, his competition, seemed a lot more positive about human nature.

“Are you kidding? The guy talked about suffering all the time and spent his whole life teaching people to learn self-control. He wasn’t any more positive than I am about things. He was a realist and so am I and by the way he was way, way too skinny.”

“So what about free-market capitalism?” I asked. “What about letting the markets find their own level, let businesses do what they want unhampered by regulation or government tinkering?”
He sounded like he wanted to come to my house and hit me. “It’s the same thing,” he said. “People get greedy. Look at what’s been going on in your crazy, round-eye country. If government mixes out too much, thieves take over and they bribe government officials and pretty soon the people in power and their friends are getting rich and everyone else is bled dry.”

He must have heard me sniffling at all this because he softened a little bit after that. “Look. Lots of the Chinese kings read my book and I knew they would so I put in some passages to help them. I said governing a country is like frying a small fish. You have to pay attention and keep turning it: gently, so it doesn’t break into pieces, and often, to make sure it doesn’t burn.”
“You’re saying we should be socialist.”

“I’m saying that people have animal nature and need checks and balances. If that were not true you would not need police and you would not need soldiers, because nobody would ever try to break into your house or overrun your country. You need the kind of government that pays attention to what’s going on all the time, not the sort that concentrates on political diatribes, trumpets their own celebrity, spouts religious nonsense, or looks in the mirror too often.”
“How do we get that kind of government?” I broke in.

“Democracy,” he cried, a little bit hoarsely because he is, after all, 2500 years old. “Democracy is great. We never had it in China. Why do you think I spent so much time babysitting kings? But democracy takes a lot of the responsibility off the shoulders of the king and puts it on the people. That means people have to pay attention to whom they elect. It means they have to watch what their leaders are doing and make sure they’re turning the fish often enough.”

“Attention and responsibility,” I repeated.

“The kind of country you have is up to each and every one of you,” he said in that heavy accent of his.

Then, as he always does, he hung up without saying goodbye.

Tai Chi Sex

2008-11-19T15:22:00.000-08:00

On November 6th, US News and World Report featured a blog by Deborah Kotz discussing natural ways to boost a woman’s sex drive. http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2008/11/6/5-natural-ways-to-boost-sex-drive.html Kotz cites a study that finds that while 40% of women “have sexual problems” only 12% are concerned about them. She challenges the notion that such women need to be treated with drugs, and suggests a number of ways to enhance the female libido. One of these methods is exercise.

It’s not clear from the article who is suggesting there are problems, and exactly what the problems are, but everyone knows that exercise makes us feel sexier. Slimming down, getting stronger, seeing muscles grow, experiencing the flow of endorphins and having more stamina makes us more interested in lovemaking and makes us more desirable too.

Not all forms of exercise are created equal, though, particularly when it comes to sex. Tai chi’s philosophical and energetic underpinnings have everything to do with the binary universe—the brilliant observation made by Chinese sages thousands of years before the on/off switch created the computer age—that the world is defined by the harmonious interplay of opposing forces. Harmonious? Opposing? That’s right, light and dark, up and down, warm and cold, and of course male and female. Tai chi is a very sensual art in the sense that practicing it heightens our awareness of those very opposites. Every movement in tai chi both features male and female elements, hard and soft dimension, a weighty and a weightless arm or leg. Mastering tai chi requires great sensitivity, and women often attain mastery more easily and more quickly than men do because they are accustomed to using both softness and force to achieve their objective whereas many men rely on force alone.

Tai chi is as much medicine as philosophy though, and the medicine on which it is based studies and employs energy rather than pills. So in addition to heightening sensitivity and creating new awareness of the male and female elements of words, deeds, movements, feelings and forces, the art builds sexual power by enhancing the circulation of qi, life force, to vital areas including the sexual organs. In fact, a core goal of the practice (core is double entendre here because there is no better core-strengthening routine than a rigorous tai chi class) is to increase the sexual essence, or jing. In the best mind/body tradition, this means building reservoirs of power in both genders not only through the movements themselves, but through meditation, dietary changes, and mental training.

Last but not least, tai chi conveys a wealth of knowledge useful in lovemaking and in stimulating performance and desire, including: creative unpredictability, relaxation, rhythms, self-expression, going with the flow, receiving and giving, and more. The practice is a laboratory in which practitioners (known as players) study their own body in depth, learning new dimensions of their physical and mental being. There is nothing sexier than a healthy body and a healthy interest in how that body works. If your sex life is feeling dull or you are feeling stuck and just can’t get rolling, tai chi may be just to awaken your true and powerful sexual nature.

Fiancial Freedom

2008-11-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

In the growing economic crisis, invalids whose fixed income has diminished, retirees who have lost their life savings, and the desperately poor may actually see food and shelter and healthcare rise hopelessly out of reach. These people may indeed need charitable/governmental assistance to survive.

The rest of us, however, may be overestimating the extent to which the economy can destroy the pleasure and satisfaction we take in living. Deluged by media images that celebrate lives of excessive consumption—a recent McDonald’s billboard ad promotes a sweet hot drink with the line “Get Rich Quick”—we are prey to the pernicious notion that money is the root of happiness. Day by day we grow more and more worried about recession or depression because we think wealth is the only measure of our worth. Trapped in a gulf between expectation and reality, we’ve lost perspective on the real freedoms that make this country great, and are torturing ourselves in the process.

We may need sound financial advice to weather the storm, but we mustn’t lose sight of the more important work we all need to do inside. Volunteering for the homeless, or doing a web-based exploration of Third World suffering can help us gain perspective about how much we have, and have to be thankful for, even in a down economic cycle. Taking our eyes off the DJIA and putting them to work counting the blessings of health, family, religious and political freedom, and entrepreneurial opportunity is the first step to acquiring both immunity to the vicissitudes of the financial system, and an understanding of our bounty.

The rhythms and cycles of nature are truer, deeper, longer lasting, more all-encompassing, and more powerful than the ones human beings make for themselves. Exploring these cycles through spiritual study, meditation and mind/body practice we can halt our downward emotional spiral and learn to see world market shakeups and shakeouts as normal and expected, albeit superficial features of our world.

Do what you can to financially protect yourself and those you love by adjusting your strategy and planning for the longest possible horizon that fits your circumstances. Once you’ve done that, turn your attention inward to a deeper exploration of your needs. Treat your cravings, fears, impulses and desires with a suspicion born of the fact that most of these are learned. Recognize that you probably already have more than enough to enjoy life. If people around the world who have far, far less than we do can act with courtesy and compassion and find joy in life, we can do the same and more. Go out and spread the word. Help your community. Help the elderly, indigent and infirm. Reassure nervous friends and lift up the worriers around you with words of perspective and encouragement. You’ll feel better for it. In fact, you’ll feel downright, well. . .rich.

Battle-Tested, Ancient and Wise

2008-11-03T05:38:00.001-08:00

It could fairly be said, and often has been, that any hobby, sport or passion gives a person a context within which to test him or herself, and to grow. People often speak about the golf course or tennis court as a place where they learn as much about the workings of their own mind—and the workings of an opponent—as they do about the details or mechanics of the game. People with an eye toward pushing back their own boundaries and enhancing the experience of living often gravitate toward individual games and sports in order to explore and better the way they handle stress, competition, frustration and even defeat.

If we assume a certain attitude and perspective about life, pretty much anything we do and anything that happens to us helps us grow. Many religious and spiritual traditions embrace this idea, sometimes expressed as karma, sometimes as service, sometimes as testing, and sometimes simply as “what does not kill us makes us stronger”.
Tai chi practice is a particularly effective system of strengthening not only the muscles of the body, but the muscles of self-cultivation. The term “system” is what counts here, because rather than the myriad other games in which a person can explore weaknesses and strengths, tai chi is literally designed as a laboratory for testing and improving the body/mind. Think of it as a laboratory where the experiments (the questions) are outlined ahead of time and the correct solutions offered. The hard work of inquiry and evaluation must be done, but the results are guaranteed, if not always completely predictable.

Yes, its methods themselves are exceptionally brilliant, battle-tested, ancient and wise, but tai chi’s real uniqueness is the simple fact that its sole purpose is not to make you a better play on court, green or field, but to equip you for the game of life by teaching the true way nature works, the true rules that obtain in life, and the best way to take advantage of this knowledge with the least effort and the most result. Tai chi teachings can and should be applied to any human endeavor.

Tai chi was originally a battlefield martial art, so if your focus is on self-defense you will find much here. If your goal is to be healthy and fit and to forestall the degenerative diseases of aging you will be hard pressed to find more sophisticated body mechanics and such better information about the intricacies and cycles of the human body. Tai chi’s truths are ineluctable. If you seek a deep spiritual system that will pervasively flavor the way you look at people, places, things and events while teaching you to see patterns, links and trends, tai chi is for you, too. Sooner or later the principles will find your weak spots, and the practice will relentlessly reveal, but gently, precisely those areas of your mind, body and life that need work.
Believe it.

The Economy Within

2008-10-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Times (London) columnist Alice Thomson http://inchdeep.blogtownhall.com/2008/10/10/the_upside_of_a_recession.thtml cites a number of studies that show that recession may not be all bad. She says that folks tend to eat and drink more during boom times, and that lean times financially can translate into lean (read healthier) bodies. She mentions that a down economy means we have more opportunity to visit elderly relatives (not, of course, if they live far away) and that we spend more time with our children. Ms. Thomson is just one journalist among many to explore the consequences of the world’s changing financial picture.

In suggesting that we may be moving from a country of the miserable rich to the happy poor, it helps to remember that relative to the rest of the world—particularly developing areas—the average American lives a life of unimaginable luxury and comfort. More important still is to question the cultural paradigm that leads us to refer to our lives as a rat race or a grind, to coin such phrases as same sh**, different day. Could it be that a gathering global economic crisis is revealing to us precisely that truth that we have been seeking to avoid, namely that in locking our step with a consumer society we have enslaved ourselves to corporate masters?

Maybe so, but we can’t blame companies for manufacturing the goods we say we want, nor can we blame advertisers for pandering to those desires with slogans and images that urge us toward more and faster. In fact, for all but the poor and struggling, it may be time to stop blaming anyone but us. An economic downturn may be a turn away from this economic model—which is based on leveraging, gambling, and making goods we don’t need for us to buy with money we don’t have—but that doesn’t mean there are not other good models out there. Might it not be an idea, for example, to apply a chunk of the $700BB bailout to develop the restorative and sustainable technologies the world so badly needs (clean water, alternative energy, efficient food production and distribution), and become leaders again instead of finding ourselves mired in a global morass?

Any economic system is no more or less than a reflection of the people who create it—their values, goals, aspirations and industry. The first step in building a new world outside is to build a new one inside. This means getting in touch with the emotions that drive us, with our definitions of success, and with our notion of “enough”. Certainly there are people in this country who are afflicted by genuine poverty, but it may be that an emotional hole is even more common. If we feel a sense of powerlessness or futility, if our lives lack meaning and we feel out of control, we may not be thinking clearly enough to change things for the better.
Mind/body practices exist precisely to help us out of this hole. Working inside established traditions like tai chi, yoga, and meditation helps us out of the speed-and-greed world we have created for ourselves and puts us back in touch with a natural world we have forgotten, one born of our own biology and our true rhythms and needs. Inside a quieter space we may discover the foundation of a new and better economy, one that might, for example, prize peace more than power, and community and self-sufficiency more than acquisitiveness and dependence.

Given half a chance, we may remember that charity begins at home, industry begins at home, economy begins at home, and home is on the inside. If all this seems hopelessly utopian, good, for what better time to shoot for the moon than when we are rebuilding the gun?

Multitasking, Stress, and Tai Chi

2008-10-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom has it that multitasking is the sign of a competent brain fully engaged and meeting the demands of today’s busy lifestyle, but an October 9 NPR story http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95524385 shows that doing too many things at the same time actually causes a “brown-out” of the brain.

The story tells us that simultaneously chatting and messaging and surfing on the Web reduces the depth of our thinking and lessens the quality of whatever work we are doing when compared to simply starting a task, finishing it, and moving on to the next one. The same thing presumably goes for talking on the phone while driving, texting, and wiping up a toddler’s spill—all with the radio playing—or cleaning the house and doing the laundry and helping a child with his homework and cooking dinner all at the same time. Talking to your boss on a conference call while touching up your makeup and checking your e-mail messages, it turns out, is a sure way to miss something important or say something you’ll regret.

What is perhaps most interesting about the story is not that it deals a blow to the multi-tasking mystique (it does avow that brief, occasional multitasking sessions are not too harmful), but rather that it reveals so much about the stresses of modern life. Multitasking is not something we naturally choose to do; it is a response to needing to get a certain number of things done within a certain time frame. The background pressure of the ticking clock causes us to cut corners, thereby reducing the quality of thinking, results, and the quality of living, all the more when we are deluged by negative media messages, an endless train of bad economic news, and an ever-changing landscape of seemingly critical opportunities, options and choices. Our brain responds to this drumming rainstorm of input by putting relaxation and response aside in favor of quick reactions and actions that often prove shallow and ill-advised. We live from day to day in a state of what we perceive to be constant crisis.

Step one in changing our life from stressful to meaningful is to recognize that we are addicted to the short-term rush of ticking items off our to-do list. Step two is to learn to slow down, say no to distraction, and focus on one thing at a time. Mind/body practices help us do this by heightening self-awareness, and so are great tools for improving the quality of our lives, our decisions, our actions, and their outcomes.

Meditation is very effective, but many folks find that when they sit or stand or lie quietly impulses roar in so fiercely that no peace can be found. That’s where tai chi comes in. It’s can be practiced in a quiet, meditative, inwardly-focused fashion. Its movements are sufficiently challenging that full attention is required, but not so difficult as to bring on precisely the anxiety and frustration it is designed to overcome. The antidote to compulsive multitasking, tai chi teaches us to act with relaxed and organized efficiency, and to accomplish whatever needs doing without feeling that much was required after all. In this way the art is both instructor and safe haven.

Tai Chi and Relaxation

2008-10-19T06:48:00.000-07:00

The vitality and exuberance of the tai chi performance at the opening of the Beijing Olympics did much to dispel the association between the art and elderly folks moving delicately in the park. While tai chi is indeed helpful at any age, the movements in Beijing, executed by hundreds of synchronized “players” were low, fast, and so powerful as to be occasionally explosive.

Any gymnastic or martial practice can be great exercise, but tai chi adds a specific dimension to the cardiovascular workout that is little heralded and often misunderstood—relaxation. In our aboriginal state, strenuous activity was usually limited to the flight or fight syndrome. We ran not for pleasure but because the tiger was after us, the village was on fire, the hyena had our child in its mouth, or a warring party had just burst from the wood. We exercise this way today, motivating ourselves with exciting visualization or pushing relentlessly, and stressfully, toward a goal. As a result stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol attend our pounding heart and bring with them undesirable consequences (hypertension, impaired cognitive function, decreased bone density, lowered immunity and more) once the exercise session is complete.

Because of its relentless emphasis on relaxation during movement, tai chi is that rarest of exercises—the one that gets the heart pumping without stimulating the release of these undesirable chemicals into the bloodstream. In addition to sparing the body stress hormones, it also builds the heart by reducing backpressure, as peripheral blood vessels relax and dilate.
The October 2, 2008 edition of the New York Times featured a “Personal Best” column that explored relaxation in sport. In Before Hustling to Finish, Relaxed Is a Good Way to Start, writer Gina Kolata interviewed leading trainers and athletes. She brings into focus the fact that Michael Phelps and other great athletes go faster without getting tired by being relaxed, by being consistent in their strides and strokes. The article quotes Dr. Michael Joyner, a Masters swimmer and exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic as saying “At some level… everyone I know who has been a hard-core endurance athlete for many years is a covert religious mystic due to these types of experiences.”

We don’t need to be religious mystics, but we can have a relaxing and transcendent experience while we exercise, and in these stressful times there are few better ways to beat stress and gain fitness. Tai chi addresses tension we don’t even know we have—in the hips, the fact, the back, the jaw—and releases it while building our body with beautiful movement. In writer/director David Mamet’s recent film Redbelt, the protagonist, a martial arts teacher, tells a new student that the first step in training is the most difficult. “What is the first step?” the new student asks. “Leaving the outside world outside when you step in here,” is the answer. Part of tai chi’s magic is that it brings you to a relaxed place and helps you stay there even after you go home.

Mind/Body Investment

2008-10-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

Financial investments many of us spent a life making seem to be disappearing in a puff of dark smoke these days, leading many people to wail about a world spinning out of control. There’s a certain amount of gritty truth to objective numbers and certainly there are those folks out there whose food and shelter are in peril. The rest of us, however, might benefit from a change in perspective about what we can and cannot control: we can’t control the size of our 401K right now, but we can control our reaction to seeing it reduced; we can’t control constraints on our lifestyle and our choices, but we can control how we respond to those newly imposed limitations. We can, in short, train our body to react less strongly to stressors, and train our minds to be less attached to loss and more inclined in the direction of a deeper and wider view of life.

Mind/body training helps with precisely these things, and tai chi may be the finest mind/body training around. Tested by time, it has long helped everyday folks improve their health and extended their youth. In days of yore, Daoist mountain hermits bound the art with herbs, meditation and strict diet in pursuit of immortality, and ancient rulers gained a dramatic advantage over their enemies by plumbing its philosophical depths. Tai chi still confers these benefits today, and as such is the best tonic for loss of property and perspective. Strengthening our body raises our resistance to stress and makes us much less vulnerable to expensive-to-treat afflictions, including the degenerative diseases of aging. Training our mind helps us cultivate self-awareness, discipline, spiritual insight, and precisely those mental powers that help us avoid anxiety, depression, and the unwise urges that lead to more costly mistakes.

Think of tai chi as a kind of internal alchemy, a system founded on a set of guiding principles and deepened by a unique study of body mechanics and energetics. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) underpins it, and although that medicine was “sanitized” into “Maoist Medicine” during China’s so-called Cultural Revolution, tai chi still possesses the old system’s zing, the intuitive understanding of body systems that comes from 5000 years of paying attention. Daoist thinking provides another resource to the system, and the more competitive, crowded, challenging, and bereft of wild places the world becomes, the more relevant we find alchemical principles such as use force against force, and follow the flow of nature.

Perhaps tai chi’s clearest benefit is the way it restores wuji, the Chinese word for balance. Physical wuji helps range of illnesses from diabetes to Parkinson’s and stimulates the immune system. Mental wuji makes us calmer, more able to see different angles clearly, and reduces the swings of mood that come when the world around us seems chaotic. If things seem alarmingly out of kilter or scary to you right now, regain your equilibrium with tai chi practice. Experience for yourself how this ancient art helps you take quiet stock of what is really important. Be pleasantly surprised by how it enhances your mental equilibrium and deepens your positive experience of being alive. Wander by the park, the Y, a school or community center and step into the mind/body world of tai chi.

Origins of Tai Chi

2008-10-09T04:29:00.000-07:00

Tai Chi Ch’uan (abbreviates simply as Tai Chi) is the most exalted of the Chinese martial arts, with dynamics powerful enough to both defeat physical assailants and beat back the degenerative diseases of aging. Translated, the name means Ultimate Cosmic Fist and indeed the practice can transform our life and spirit, increase strength and flexibility, boost our energy, improve our awareness, sensitivity and balance, diminish pain and stiffness, lower our blood pressure, help us live longer, and give us a healthier way of looking at conflict and challenge. In many ways, it is the ultimate mind/body practice.

Legend has Tai Chi Ch’uan originating with a Daoist sage named Chang San-Feng at the turn of the last millennium. Historically, the authentic original system was created by Chen Wang-ting (1597-1664), a 9th generation member of the Chen family and resident of a small village in the north of China. Chen constructed the system upon a tripod of Daoist thought, traditional Chinese medicine, and proven martial techniques.

Daoists believe there is a guiding force or intelligence to the universe. They call this force Dao, which means The Way. In the Daoist view, pairs of opposing forces (yin and yang) arose from nothingness (wuji) in much the way the Judeo-Christian creation story chronicles God’s manufacture of heaven and earth from nothingness. Examples of yin and yang include male and female, light and dark, weak and strong. Every Tai Chi Ch’uan movement directly embodies this Daoist worldview. In fact, there may be no system of movement anywhere that more closely obeys metaphysical rules.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) differs from Western medicine in significant ways. Broadly put TCM costs less and has fewer side effects than its Western counterpart, and may be less effective for acute health crises and more effective for chronic conditions. TCM sees the body in terms of systems rather than organs. In the TCM model the body is crisscrossed by meridians, channels through which a life force called qi flows like water through a garden hose. Practicing Tai Chi increases this energy, opens the hoses, and aligns them for maximum flow.

China has a long and illustrious martial tradition. At times China has been little more than a conglomerate of warring states. Conceived by monks, doctors, scholars and warriors, numerous martial systems were derived from the movements of animals and the forces of nature. Early fighting techniques were tested in combat, and were lost if ineffective. The ones used in Tai Chi are many of the very best techniques to survive the ages.

Tai Chi was very nearly lost during China’s so-called “Cultural Revolution” when the armies of Mao Tse Tung gelded, killed, or banished its masters. These days the art is practiced worldwide by people of all ages. In this country the New Age movement has done much to spread the word about this wonderful form of exercise, but rising popularity also means the authentic art is threatened with dilution. Done properly, though, tai chi will bring you flexibility, harmony, strength, peace, insight, and longevity.

Spore

2008-10-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

In the Industrial Revolution, we designed machines to save us effort. Later, we created devices to save us time. The Holy Grail was to have the opportunity to spend more time with our family, to cultivate ourselves, to contribute to the community—in short to do what we wanted to do not what we had to do.

Early innovations saved us from backbreaking, lifespan-shortening work, but lately our inventions have taken an insidious turn. With the exception of a few miraculous medical tools, they now do us as much harm as good. The demands we make on ourselves in the face of our technology create stresses that literally kill us. The silicon chip, and cutting edge manufacturing have set a new pace for life on Earth, a pace better suited to our creations than it is to us. The machines we inhabit, the bodies we are, have vibrations, harmonics, rhythms and limitations that differ from those of our creations, but we often decide in favor of our creations rather than in favor of us. We have, in short, become slaves where once we were masters.

The solution became clearer than ever to me the other night when playing the new video game, Spore, with my 8-year-old son. Brilliantly conceived, Spore explains the process of evolution far better than I can. It involves creating a creature and helping it grow to meet the challenges of increasingly complex environments—to see it evolve from a single–celled organism in a primordial soup to a space traveler colonizing distant planets. The game reveals much about how the forces of nature act on us, and also the pressures we put on ourselves by letting our population run amok. To secure our place in the sun, we are driven to ever more competitive and ruthless behavior, and to use any tool and weapon we can find to survive.

What is a human being to do to find more meaning, less stress, greater fulfillment, and less complexity and speed? I was deep in the game when it hit me. I could decide against playing, bow out, and simply turn it off! What a metaphor for the world outside the personal computer. So obvious, so simple, so doh! but so few of us do it. Bowing out is an option that comes with increasing consciousness. It means to cooperate rather than contend, to use technology with awareness of its benefits and its costs, to emphasize depth, slow down, pay attention, achieve happiness by substituting spiritual goals for material ones. Be a person, not a bug! Let the spore of you fully flower.

Nine Tips for Thriving in Tumultuous Times

2008-09-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

1. Reconnect with your favorite spiritual/religious practice. Showing up at temple, church, or mosque can be especially rewarding if you have not been for a while. A unique perspective on your purpose in life is available there, as are connections to a neighborhood community.

2. Take a free, mini-vacation and disappear for a few hours. A visit to a park, the beach, or a nearby open space offers an opportunity to breathe deeply and reconnect with nature, to sense a timeless world that stands apart from the frenzies we create and the foibles we commit.

3. Take a mental inventory of those family members and friends who provide your personal emotional support system and then reach out to them. Don’t worry so much about how they can help you; focus instead on you can help them. The act of giving creates chemicals in your brain that will help calm you down and make you feel better.

4. Get some vigorous aerobic exercise. There’s nothing better for the blues than a good dose of endorphins, and nothing calms anxiety and tames fear faster than getting out there for a walk, a jog, a swim, or a visit to the gym. Push it hard enough to pant a bit, but if you’ve not exercised in a while go easy. Be sure and stretch your body before and after to avoid injury.

5. Start a mind/body program. Meditation helps you learn to watch yourself in a most helpful way, and yoga helps work the stress out of your muscles and joints. Best of all is tai chi, which does both.

6. Check a good novel out of the library, turn off the phone and curl up with it. There’s nothing wrong with disappearing into fiction for a while. Stay with fiction, though. Choosing one more book about global warming, terrorism, or financial crises is just going to worry you more.

7. Start a creative project. Anything that uses your creativity, imagination and passion can help you transcend your world and put problems into perspective. Writing, painting, sculpting, woodworking, even graphic arts on the computer are all good choices.

8. Revisit a place from your past or check in with a friend from school. Perhaps there’s someone you’ve been meaning to call, or a restaurant you’ve wanted to visit because you remember a good meal you had there years ago. Seeing how things both change and remain the same can broaden your perspective in invaluable ways and help turn today’s mountains into molehills.

9. Drink more water and watch what you eat. When we are preoccupied we are more likely to consume caffeine and sugar, which increase our swings of mood. We also often forget to drink lots of water. It is hard to think clearly when you are dehydrated, as both memory and logic elude you.

The Dao of the Dow

2008-09-25T15:27:00.001-07:00

The September 15th issue of the New York Times featured an article exploring our sometimes visceral reactions to awkward social situations. A Cold Stare Can Make You Crave Some Heat by Benedict Carey http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/health/research/16cold.html?_r=1&nl=8hlth&emc=hltha2&oref=slogin cited a new study that shows that when people receive a frosty reception at a cocktail party, they crave a hot drink. You read that right. Being frozen out of a social group—rejected, insulted, ignored—creates the desire to be “warmed up.” According to the article, the language of metaphor can activate a physical sensation, and vice versa. This may explain why we use the terms we do to describe people and situations, and it may also explain why we feel the way we do about events in the external world.

If an unsuccessful attempt to crack the clique at a party leaves us needing to be warmed up, what can we expect from the turmoil in the financial markets, and how can we use the power of mind to overcome a visceral, and possibly irrational, response? Many people have real work to do in the face of Wall Street developments. They may be best off buying, selling, diversifying, deferring payments, making bigger payments, shifting assets, seeking counsel and more. But for the average, long-term Main Street investor the best advice seems to be to sit tight and weather the cycle, and, the best prescription for stomach butterflies may be to sip the equivalent of that cup of hot tea.

The fascinating aspect of the financial debacle is that it is, in part, a reflection of our interior urges—greed, intemperance, laxity, haste, impatience, manipulation, and more. The markets, after all, are merely the external manifestation of the things people do. Industrial averages express the aggregate energy and intention of the people behind them. In reacting to them, we are often reacting, belatedly, to things we ourselves have done or felt, or to the inner upheavals of others. Understanding this means understanding that in the same way we ourselves have good days and bad days, successes and failures, triumphs and tribulations, the markets have them too. The way we respond to our own cycles is a good predictor of the way we will respond to larger-scale cycles that seem incomprehensible and feel uncontrollable.

Simply recognizing that the both internal and external events have cycles helps us gain perspective. Discerning our own reaction to external events requires a bit more mindfulness. It’s easy to see what’s going on outside; sometimes it’s harder to face things inside. Learning to notice the tell-tale signs of our own anxiety—troubled sleep, irritability, sadness, inability to concentrate or focus—as soon as they appear is the best way to nip them in the bud. Think of a saucepan on the burner. We want to catch those negative emotions when they are still little tiny bubbles forming on the bottom of the pan, long before the water explodes into a full boil. If the cold shoulder at a party makes us long for a hot drink, then uncertainty and change in the markets may cause us to seek familiarity and stability. Maybe we want the house immaculately clean. Maybe we want our kid’s room to look like as Spartan and organized as an empty jail cell. Maybe we want all our pencils lined up or we have the sudden need to detail our car—anything to create order inside when chaos reigns outside. These behaviors serve a purpose in helping us restore a sense of control but to make all our little tactics as calming and restorative as possible we must try to notice them. Watching ourselves, we see the little games we play, and seeing them we free ourselves from the hold they have over us. Becoming conscious in this way also helps us with perspective too, and a realistic appraisal of how much we really need for a safe and healthy life versus how much advertising and cultural messages teach us to want.

Mindfulness and Wellness

2008-09-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

A number of my students have lately wondered how it is that they still get sick even though they practice their tai chi assiduously. Some may have in mind, I suppose, that mind/body practice is such a powerful pill that it banishes all pathogens and enhances the immune system to beyond mortal levels. These folks are in good company. The history of martial arts is littered with great masters who thought they were invincible because of their art, and abused themselves with drugs, alcohol, promiscuity or other excesses only to die young and surprised.

The truth is the practice of tai chi or any other mind/body exercise is only one piece of the large picture of how we live our life. The mind part of the equation presupposes that we learn the lessons of the art and seek balance and peace and harmony in all things, not just the few hours per week that we practice. We’re supposed to be learning not to meet force with force, to go with the flow, and to relax as deeply as possible. That translates to everyday action, not just to class time. Seeing the practice this way blurs the distinction between tai chi the philosophy and tai chi ch’uan (ch’uan means fist) the martial art. After all, if we are practicing the principles all the time, where does one leave off and the other begin?

Sports icon Jim Fixx, took up running when he was 35, overweight, and a two-pack-a-day smoker. He discovered the joy of running, lost 60 pounds and stopped smoking. His books and media appearances were a source of inspiration to many folks who got out on the road, addressed their sedentary lifestyles, and changed their lives for the better. When he suffered a massive heart attack at 52, some people said Fixx’s premature end proved that running was a bad thing. What those critics failed to recognize was that Fixx had a family history of cardiovascular disease. His father suffered a heart attack at 35 and died of one at 42. Were Fixx’s ten extra years worth the effort? I bet he would say yes.

We all go through cycles of sickness and health. These cycles represent our body coping with assaults from the outside, and dealing with our stress at life’s challenges. If we always felt perfectly well, our body’s defense mechanisms would have no practice dealing with adversaries. We’d do great until boom, one day we just dropped dead from a mosquito bite. The up and down of our every day energy level is normal. The goal is to narrow the amplitude of the cycle so that we never feel really badly, and the big afflictions do not strike us.

If we want to achieve that goal, if we want to feel tip-top most of the time and avoid serious illness, we have to put our practice into our life on an hourly basis, from the way we bend and move to what we do when we face the refrigerator door at 11PM, to letting go of anger and frustration and judgment—self-judgment most of all. Mindfulness is the key. The practice has shown us what to do, but if we don’t do it and only pay lip service to the path, we can’t expect miracles. It is hard to be fully conscious all the time, but if we try, it gets easier, and the results are so worth it!

Changing Government from the Bottom up

2008-09-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, a friend of mine became a naturalized American citizen. At her swearing-in ceremony she received a packet of documents briefing her on different aspects of citizenship, including laws and responsibilities. Inside the packet was a letter on White House stationary, signed by President Bush. I read the document carefully, and while I am pretty certain the president did not write it, I hope he knows what it says because it is a powerful piece of work.
The second paragraph of four reads as follows:

“Americans are united across the generations by grand enduring ideals. The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, and that no insignificant person was ever born. Our country has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by principles that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every citizen must uphold these principles. And every new citizen, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”

I like this letter a great deal, especially the part about ideals and principles. It reminds me of my great-uncle Herbert Lehman, four-term governor of New York, senator, and Director General of UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. My great-uncle really believed in the precepts expressed in President Bush’s letter. As a child I was privileged to overhear conversations about the responsibilities of leadership and the strong and uncompromising principles required of public servants. That’s what this scion of the Democratic Party said about himself back then, that he was a public servant. There was no false humility, no working the angles, and no posturing either. His words weren’t rhetoric¬–they were spoken for the benefit of his family. A man of great compassion, I remember being with him the day JFK was assassinated, and I remember seeing a man in such anguish his heart might as well have been caught in a bear trap. He died a few days later, but my parents continued to repeat and emphasize his lessons for decades to follow.

I’ve been thinking of my great-uncle’s values in the context of my friend’s achievement, and of what it actually means to be a citizen. Our nation represents the sum total of what each of us does to become a better person, to subscribe to the ideals of the founding fathers, to participate together in perpetuating our grand experiment that in the not-so-distant past was the envy of the world. Seeing the whole as an expression of the sum of the parts, perhaps even more than the sum, fits perfectly with the ancient Eastern philosophy I teach and study professionally. That discipline emphasizes self-cultivation and learning the twin skills of going with the flow and keeping one’s equilibrium so as to produce harmony, and encourage peace.

Watching the conventions I couldn’t help but think that we would do better getting back to these core concepts rather than grandstanding and breast-beating and calling each other names. There’s great opportunity here to bring to fruition the magnificent ideals of the president's letter. How are we elevated by focusing on what we think is wrong with each other? Can we recognize that the sound byte and the clever quip are no substitute for thoughtful, substantive and respectful intercourse? Perhaps our culture has provided us too many weapons of "mass distraction." If immediate gratification, cynicism, consumption, celebrity worship, and politician-as-entertainer are not to be our cultural legacy, then let's be careful in our own lives to nurture better attributes such as kindness, compassion, and creativity. Turning our country around can really only happen from the bottom up, not the top down. It is a mind/body thing—to drive your actions with healthy, uplifting ideas. That’s what the ancient sages would recommend, and its what my great-uncle would do.

Stopping and Starting

2008-09-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Recently I've noticed that many of my tai chi students are lacking a bit of "flow" in their movements. When enduring painful low stances to develop strong legs and having focused breathing to relax the torso, we often forget that the sequence of movements we call "form practice" is intended to be done continuously and without even the slightest pause. I spent this past week thinking about the importance of this uninterrupted flow, and decided it has three primary highlights: body, energy and mind.

The body must move without interruption in any martial encounter, therefore we cannot simply practice one isolated movement well and disconnect to see what happens; an opponent will seize that opportunity to attack us. From an energetic point of view, our life force, or qi, flows through our body like an army obeying the commands of a general called yi, our intention. When that intention changes from movement to a pause, the energy flowing through our body stops too. It is rather like having the general yelling for the army to charge, and then a moment later crying "HALT!" The soldiers were about to conquer a critical hill or push through an obstruction in our energetic system--alleviate a headache, say, or bring much-needed circulation to an inflamed joint, but with the confusing command the maneuver fails, the energy recedes, and the benefit is lost.

It is in the training of the mind, however, that constant movement does the most good. Moving without stopping requires the mind to remain present and on task. Developing this ability deepens our ability with any task that requires focus and concentration, and certainly makes us better meditators. This dimension of tai chi is so important that it is definitional; when your mind wanders you are not doing tai chi. The practice returns when your attention resumes.

What about outside of tai chi? Staying focused without interruption is ever more difficult in our speed-and-greed world, ever more challenging when we are inundated by stimuli ranging from odors and noise and media bombardment to the unnatural pace of everyday life in the high-tech age. There are cycles to all things--times to stop and times to start, times to persist and times to leave off. Still, learning to beat back all comers and remove yourself from the fray can be a fine and powerful therapy for everything from high blood pressure to anxiety to digestive disorders and more.

I Discuss Violence and Martial Arts with a Highly-Trained Policeman

2008-08-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

Policeman (a long-time friend and "kung fu brother"):

Do you not agree that the martial paths to cultivation were born from violence?

Arthur:

I do. And I also think that definition of a "path" is that it leads somewhere. The farther along the true martial path one gets, the more uninteresting violence becomes. Capability may increase, but romance with violence goes down. I find that a natural outgrowth of my training is that my sensitivity and compassion grow daily, and my conviction that violence is the lowest of our behaviors grows with them.

Policeman:

I have found this to be true based on my experience at work. During my time in the Marines, we sought violence readily. In my early years as a police officer the same was true...could not wait for the next fight. After more than 18 years now....and with the benefit of our teacher’s training, I find myself more capable and looking forward to the next encounter less and less. At this point, I feel nothing during a physical encounter, even at its conclusion. I feel that it is violence without emotion that stems from a clear and empty mind. The shen level of training solidifies this. What one does with this ability is another issue entirely, but it is still a product of violence hence the term martial.

Arthur:

I am glad to hear you have less interest in fighting. I remember a particular student who kept pushing me to fight with him and show him something and I kept steering him in another direction and finally our teacher saw what was going on and told me "just throw him in the river" and I tried so hard to avoid it and then one day I had to so I did something like that. It had the desired effect on him, which was to get him to accept constructive direction without challenging it, but for me it felt as if I had been coerced into doing something I didn't want to do. Just like Lao Tze says "Whether you win or lose, mourn the fact you had to fight". Having to fight means that one's pursuit of the Dao is flawed, that one's skills for dealing with the world and going with the flow were not good enough to perceive trends and tendencies early, and you ended up resorting to fists and feet.

Policeman:

I never felt that resorting to violence meant that I lost the path, or anything. I feel that it is just temporarily shifting gears to follow a different natural path that is appropriate for the moment.

Arthur:

I feel it is inevitable that when you keep going with the mind-opening you come to have a different view of violence. The word "natural" is interesting, because in a sense everything that is is natural. Even the products of human industry are natural, because they arise from a natural source, us, in expression of natural urges. Yin/yang theory tells us that at any point there are two opposing forces at work, with one in abeyance and the other rising. We could say that at the moment of violent impulse or action one is at work and the other is waiting in the wings, but I also feel that if you draw back from that time and place, dial out your lens to a wide view, if you will, you will see that the cycle is OUT of balance when violence is required, not IN balance. Facing the violent side of human behavior and trying to reconcile it with the shift in consciousness necessary for us to survive as a species is one of the central themes of my thinking and my work. It is a fascinating subject, at least to me, and I've spent quite a lot of time discussing it with our teacher. He and I have some contrasting opinions. He feels we are past the turning point and bound for extinction and his only desire is, as an arhat, to reach enlightenment and leave. Personally, while I love practice and meditation, but I feel that if I ever "awaken" I will want to stick around and help. I believe that only a shift in consciousness that leads to a totally new way of looking at who and what we are will lead us out of the mess we're in. I see it as a biological possibility based on my nearly forty years studying evolution.

Policeman:

On this point our teacher and I are in agreement. My money is on the insects for the future dominant species of the planet.

Arthur:

I bet the bugs will still be around, although the reptiles will be eating them. I'm forced to say that whatever possibility there is for survival depends upon a specific kind of mental evolution, one that entails a total transformation of our behavior based on a transformation of our perceptions of who we are, what we are, what our place in the world actually is. We have to treat each other completely differently, and treat other living creatures and the biosphere as a whole as if it is sacred, or at least essential to our own perpetuation. Any other option and we go down in flames.

Policeman:

We have outsmarted ourselves and will pay the price; what we do to the environment is what will destroy us. The earth will evolve based on the conditions that we create, but we will not be able to evolve with it. Then, the next species will have its turn. I do not believe that we, as humans, are capable of seeing the long range effects of what we are doing, at least on a large enough scale to have any real effect in time. Oh well–it was a fun ride.

Usain Bolt

2008-08-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

Usain Bolt claims he was having fun in his record-busting, world-beating runs yesterday, and it sure looked like it to watch him. Beneath the joviality beats the art of a stunningly talented and highly disciplined athlete who has set records and won events at venues as diverse as Kingston (Jamaica), Debrecen (Hungary), London, Lausanne (Switzerland), and more, including, of course, Beijing. At 6’ 5” his long stride gives him a great advantage, and while the usual taller athlete has trouble “recycling” his stride to get his legs moving as quickly as his shorter competitors, Bolt manages to move those giant pins plenty fast, being genetically gifted in that certain special way that has led American runner Darvis Patton, and others, to call him a “freak of nature.”

Maybe being a freak of nature like Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz or Carl Lewis takes something away from achieving miraculous times, but looking at those three it doesn’t seem so. Gifts are what they are, but without the will and discipline to develop them, they lie useless and fallow. As Thomas Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Still, I wonder how being on the track or in the pool with someone whose gifts are so impossibly overarching makes the other competitors feel. Watching Bolt race, including his turning and taunting and gesticulating, and seeing the looks on the faces of those trying to catch him, it is obvious that none of the others gave up, in resigned fashion, to that freakish talent they could not possibly match. They all look intent, focused on their own best efforts to win, and determined to give their all so that they would know they did and one day tell their kids about the experience. Bringing out that indomitable quality of human spirit–that level of real and true competitiveness¬–might just be Usain Bolt’s greatest contribution to these games.

Kung Fu, Natural Cycles, Movie Stars and Tai Chi

2008-08-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

The 21 August issue of Rolling Stone features Erik Hedgaard’s beautifully written portrait of Robert Downey Jr. as a man who keeps knocking himself down and getting up again, all with such charm and innocence that we welcome him back each time. Downey’s cycle of self-abuse, self-loathing and redemption make perfect sense to me. We all have these cycles, both in our health and in our behavior. That’s why we get sick and then we get well, we gain some weight and then we lose some, we are mad at our kids (or our parents!) and then delighted by them. The moon grows bright and then darkens, the tide rises and then it falls.

I was interested to see that Downey studies Wing Chun kung fu, a close-quarter fighting art originally devised and titled for a nun (the name means Beautiful Springtime). I figure that his teacher may have shared the cyclical aspect of life with him in the context of Chinese medicine, part and parcel of all good kung fu training.

It was also nice to see Chinese kung fu (in this case tai chi) featured on the cover of the online edition of the New York Times today, 20 August. The story, by John Branch,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/sports/olympics/21park.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login)
is about parks in Beijing and the people who go there for their morning exercise, and who find an oasis for mind and body. The notion is that exercise and training are so endemic to Chinese culture (as contrasted to our nation of couch potatoes) that their Olympic successes should be no surprise to anyone.

Catrike

2008-07-30T04:36:00.000-07:00

I spent so many years of my life riding a motorcycle that some folks have reasonably inquired whether I have anything but saddle sores to show for the first half of my life. Motorcycle riding requires total concentration, and as such serves as a meditative therapy, a shortcut to states of mind that otherwise require the sort of quiet disciplined work that now engages me. I racked up hundreds of thousands of motorcycle miles around the country and around the world, contributed bike reviews and travel pieces to a several top motorcycle rags, and kept right on riding until my son reached his third birthday. At that point the risk/benefit analysis said quit, so I did.

I’ve been looking for a good substitute ever since. The speed of a bicycle is closer to the stop-and-smell-the-roses pace of life I prefer, and in that way suits me better than the speed of a motorcycle these days, but while I love bicycling it doesn’t love me. My neck and elbows hurt (perhaps it’s all those crotch rocket miles) and my nether regions grow numb. All the same I embrace the simplicity of cycling and the peace and quiet and the efficiency, the exercise, and the “greenness” of the whole activity. I see human power as one good answer to many of the world’s energy ills, not to mention what it does for the cardiovascular system and the waistline, so I’ve tried paddle boats and kayaks and recumbent bicycles and rowing shells all in quest for the right machine for my needs. These include a relaxing riding position, a light, responsive machine, and something that is just plain fun to ride.

I finally found the ideal get-out-there tool—the Catrike. It’s a tricycle, but any similarity to a child’s toy ends at the third wheel. It’s a high-tech, lightweight piece of equipment built around a simple aluminum frame, a go cart you power with your legs. The components are top-shelf bicycle bits, and the fit, finish and design are absolutely brilliant. There are several variants to choose from, emphasizing speed, practicality, touring, etc. I chose the best handler of the lot, the Speed model. I researched human powered vehicles extensively before choosing it. It’s not cheap—about the cost of a better quality mountain bike but thousands less than a competition machine for on or off-road—but you get what you pay for. Relaxing the upper body really allows a focus on the muscles being worked, and pushing it to a brisk pace sure gets your heart pumping.

In the short time I’ve owned it, I’ve been on it every single day, riding around the neighborhood and on the city bike paths. I’ve not done more than 20 miles at a sitting yet, but I plan to work my way up to more and faster miles, smiling all the way.

The Shift

2008-07-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking further about the exchange begun with the post Cigarettes, Killers and Zen. The idea there is perhaps the most interesting and important one that has come to me over the years, and represents a synthesis of my study of Chinese philosophy and my background in biological sciences. The notion, quite simply, is that the evolution can work on consciousness—an attribute of our structure and function, in precisely the same way it can work on our height, our toes, our lungs, or our teeth—and that such an evolutionary change must happen if we are to survive.

Our form came to be what it is, both mentally and anatomically, as a consequence of the characteristics and pressures of the world around us affecting us through the process of natural selection. We gained opposable thumbs to manage grasping tree branches and then began using it to wield tools (or perhaps it was the other way around. . . .) We gained an upright posture to allow us a better vantage point over the tall grass of the savannah, thereby enhancing our ability to see predators sneaking in and prey sneaking away.

We gained the mental ability for language because it was selected for over time pursuant to the advantage conferred (hunting, warning, survival) to those early members of our tribe who could communicate with each other. The structure, actions and capabilities of our brain have a long history of responding to environmental pressure. Now, in our eleventh hour on Earth, the pressure is mounting for a mental response (one could argue for more clearly physical ones too, perhaps the ability to eat plastic or breathe toxic gases or drink fouled water or survive comfortably in seawater or extremely hot temperatures) that will change our behavior in order to change our environment.

This shift is fascinating, because we have always responded to environmental pressure with genetic response and now, having created our environment ourselves, we have to respond to the changes we ourselves have made in order to survive. Nature, fighting back, has its finger on the doomsday switch I wrote about in The Crocodile and the Crane. As the deep ecologists say, the Earth needs to rid itself of the infection called humanity if it is to survive. The balance of a billion years or more of evolution is now tilting against us because of what we ourselves have done. If we don’t want nature to erase us we must evolve once again.

I believe that evolution will take the form of a shift in consciousness. No mere physical change will be enough. Right now our consciousness leads us—as a species—to kill each other and every other living thing on the planet, to rape and pillage and destroy every resource around us. A shift away from the duality of us-and-them, human-versus-the planet point of view to a caring, awake, sensitive consciousness could change all that, and it could happen within the time span of a single generation. Recently I came across a video about a movie being made around this very shift. There is even mention of evolution. It excites me to see others thinking this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOzGoz1K3Do&feature=related