The Journey Within

Snail – the ultimate Tai Chi master

Shang Lee — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:34:03 +0000

I don’t remember having a class outdoors where we consciously observe a moving animal and learn from it. It seems like a story from the “olden days” where the Master will teach the Student to observe the Grasshopper. Wait, that’s also from TV. Today, my training ended up with watching the ultimate Tai Chi master – the Snail.

It’s becoming less common to see animals in the city, so spotting a snail after a rainy day is quite refreshing, until I start to notice how the snail is moving. It is so slow as though it is not moving at all. And yet, the movement is concerted. It moved “as a whole” rather than bit by bit.

I was doing push hands with my teacher previously, and seeing how the snail moved just nailed the lesson for me. Moving together is so difficult, it’s amazing how the conductor of an orchestra can move all the musicians to play together. I’m the conductor for my own body, and they still don’t listen to me. Actually, it is I who don’t listen to them. They told me that they can’t go further, but I didn’t care. I pushed my legs further. They retaliated. I sweat. None of us is getting anywhere.

The trick is to treat them like children. Let them find out the joy of relaxing into the posture. Let them find out the ease of moving together. Then, we will move like the snail. Time for me to speak to them again, I mean treat them to an ice-cream.

p/s: I just want to say a big THANK YOU for subscribing. It is because of your action that inspires me to write more. So thank you again for your support. If you want to know where I get my inspiration from, see the books I read here, or get the The Journey Within - Extended, where you can find quotes and links to anything I find interesting on the web.

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Earning the right to learn

Shang Lee — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:06:11 +0000

My journey within has brought me to understand more deeply about the economics of teaching and learning. Our current economic structure requires payment in monetary terms in exchange for teaching. This solution is actually quite elegant, as it avoids the uncertain non-monetary payments e.g. do I take the teacher out for dinner or get him a gift etc to show my appreciation? Money seems to be easier. Yet, in exchange of that, I witnessed a student who required a high “return on investment”.

I believe there is an expectation to learn something once you have paid for something. That is how a school does it. That is how a university does it. That is why an MBA course can charge so much for it. Unfortunately, whether you actually learn something is another matter. So what do you do in such an instance? What do you do to prove that you have actually learnt something? Exams is an obvious answer. A form of test. What I don’t see often, is a form of test to check whether a student is ready to learn, i.e. has the student earn the right to learn?

To put this into context, let me explain what I witnessed.

A student was at every instant asking the teacher to point out his errors. To this student, the teacher must always be giving tips. This method is rather unfair in a group setting but the teacher always obliges. It is only later that I understood why. In a group setting, whenever you’re teaching one, it’s never for that one. It’s for everyone.

Unfortunately, after a few weeks of such “taunting”, the teacher did crack. The student has not progressed from previous weeks’ pointers but wanted more. From my point of view, the student has not earned the right to learn anything, as his cup is overflowing with his ego. In his mind, he thinks he can absorb anything the teacher throws at him, and that was what made the teacher ignored him eventually.

To let you know how strong his ego is, after one lesson with the teacher in push hands, he started “guiding” other students, saying how relaxed he is and how stiff the others were and they should relax like him. He is no where near relaxed…

I guess the point is this. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. They are rarely equal. Once you have paid your price, you can never change the price that you paid. But you can change the value that you can receive. If you are not prepared to receive any value, you will not get any, no matter how high a price you have paid. If you paid me $1 million dollars, I might fake it and say you have learnt something, but you will know the real deal. Come to think of it, maybe not. With a full cup, it’s hard that you will ever know the real deal.

Drop the ego. Smash the cup. Or pay the price.

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Chen Zhonghua and his Chen Style Taijiquan Practical Method (Part 4)

Shang Lee — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:31:20 +0000

This is Part 4 of the translation and my interpretation of the text written by Sun Zhonghua. He is the 19^th generation master of Chen Style Taijiquan and a 2^nd generation master of Hunyuan Tai Ji. You can find the full text here if you can read Chinese. Just in case you missed previous parts, here they are: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

A little story

Before I compare the different Tai Ji systems to understand CZH and his practical method better, let me tell you a little story.

In 2001, at Canada Edmonton’s Huan Yuan Tai Ji academy, a car drove by and parked by the roadside. A man walked straight into the main hall of the academy and asked the first person he saw “Excuse me, I would like to meet Mr Chen”.

“That’s me. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I am Trevor Jelic. My friend Wei Ping, who’s also a teacher, insisted that I should come and meet you.” And while Trevor was speaking, he was already checking out CZH, trying to hide his curiosity and his feeling of superiority.

“I know Wei Ping, why do you want to meet me?” CZH feels that Trevor has a sharp eye, a good physique, a strong stance and a general strong aura, expecting him to be a martial artist.

Trevor said “Mr Wei Ping thinks highly of your Tai Ji, and emphasized that I should experience it myself.”

CZH understood and just said “I’m happy to be able to practise with you. What kind of martial art do you train in?”

Trevor happily tells him “I trained with Mr Chen for 3 years, Mr Xu for 5 years, and Mr Zhang for 1 year.” These are all famous teachers.

“Do we begin now?” asked CZH.

Trevor replied “That would be best.”, and stepped forward.

As their hands meet, Trevor used both his hands to control CZH’s wrist and elbow, while using the contact on these joints to push CZH. He must have figured that CZH is but 1.6m tall and can’t be more than 60kg. With his strength and skill, his force must be able to push him far right?

Trevor did not expect his hands to be twisted into a spiraling motion and redirected back to his own throat, yet he could not exert any strength in both his hands. But this is not Trevor’s first fight, so he knows immediately that he had to change his tactic. CZH is just one step ahead of him. He sunk his hands and we just hear 2 thuds – Trevor was on his knees.

CZH just said “I’m sorry. My bad.” And immediately lent his hand to pick him up. The people around him is already used to this sight, so no one actually said anything and made any gestures.

Trevor however remained kneeled. CZH wasn’t sure what’s going on, just to see that this large man was suddenly crying. CZH was going to tell him that winning or losing is just normal in life, but Trevor was half choking while muttering “have I just wasted 9 years of my life?”

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Chen Zhonghua and his Chen Style Taijiquan Practical Method (Part 3)

Shang Lee — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:10:33 +0000

This is Part 3 of the translation and my interpretation of the text written by Sun Zhonghua. He is the 19^th generation master of Chen Style Taijiquan and a 2^nd generation master of Hunyuan Tai Ji. You can find the full text here if you can read Chinese. Here are the links to the other parts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

To be a top Tai Ji master, you need to have the following five conditions.

Love the art
Have the time
Have moral and ethics
Able to learn and comprehend
Have a good teacher

I won’t go into further details about 1 to 4, as the majority of us will find that we cannot fulfill condition number 5, i.e. it is difficult to look for a good teacher.

Tai Ji is a martial art that places great emphasis on both theory and practice. It is difficult enough for an accomplished teacher to perform a proper excution of Tai Ji as martial art, it will be more difficult without a teacher. A teacher will determine the success or failure of a student, hence the strong emphasis on finding a good teacher. A good teacher needs to fulfill a lot of criteria. What the previous masters find most important is only 2: The teacher has to “have the goods” and “can teach”.

Have the goods

“Having the goods” means having the real thing (even better if the teacher expanded on what he learnt). You can’t listen to whoever who brands himself well, or have a large student following. You can’t even say that the person has the goods just because he is famous. To know whether a person has the goods, you need to understand the person from various sources and consciously observe the teacher. You first have to look at the lineage of teachers before him, but again, just because he’s on some famous lineage does not mean he has the goods. You still have to consciously observe. As choosing the right teacher is that important, you cannot take this exercise lightly. If not, you might end up learning all the wrong things again.

Can teach

“Can teach” means the teacher is able to pass on his knowledge effectively to the students. This is a bit more than willing to teach, although willing to teach is a key criteria. Some who has the goods are unwilling to teach, hence misleading his students, and concurrently destroying his name and lineage. There are others who doesn’t have the goods, and yet imitate the masters as though he has the goods. He doesn’t even have the fake goods…

Having said all these, you must be wondering, where are all these teachers who “have the goods” and “can teach”?

Yes, these teachers do not come by often, but I manage to chance upon one. His name is Chen Zhong Hua. He is the student of 2 teachers, Hong Jun Sheng and Feng Zhi Qiang, both are 18^th generation master of Chen Style Tai Ji. Chen Zhong Hua (CZH) is now the international standard bearer of the Chen Style Practical Method Tai Ji. People who witness his skills are just astounded.

A little story

Before I compare the different Tai Ji systems to understand CZH and his practical method better, let me tell you a little story.

(to be continued…)

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My Tai Chi journey brought me back to basics

Shang Lee — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:05:57 +0000

I tell people I do Tai Chi. I can rattle off the number of forms I do (or did). I can tell people how many years I’ve been “at it” (it’s in the double digits now). I can rant on about Tai Chi as if I know a lot, and yet, my journey brought me back to the basic of the basics.

I know Chen Style. I know Yang style. I know Sun style. Hey, I even know a bit of praying mantis! But I still know nothing. It’s quite sad really. While translating the text by Sun Zhonghua, I can actually feel the author’s pain, before he “got it”, before he understood the real Tai Ji. I am still pursuing the real Tai Ji, and now, I’m going back to the basics.

No forms. No hands. Just legs. Well, actually, just kua.

I’m sweating more profusely doing 1 minute of this. My previously thought “limits” where actually not the limit yet. I thought I was sinking low, but apparently not. I thought I was going further to the sides, but again, no. Even when I thought I’ve corrected myself to go lower and further, it’s still a bit shy off the “point”.

And this is the point.

There is a point when you hit the sweet spot. The sweet spot that makes everything go away. The sweet spot that says you’ve made it. Until then, I must strive for this sweet spot. And the thing is, the more I strive, the more counter-productive it is. I have to let go to let this sweet spot come to me.

Sounds strange? You bet. Everything worth learning will be strange, and probably painful when learning it. As Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight:

The night is the darkest just before the dawn.

p/s: pictured a “back to basics” diary. Haven’t decided how to use this. It’s a birthday gift, but it looks really pretty.

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Chen Zhonghua and his Chen Style Taijiquan Practical Method (Part 2)

Shang Lee — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:08:17 +0000

This is Part 2 of the translation and my interpretation of the text written by Sun Zhonghua. He is the 19^th generation master of Chen Style Taijiquan and a 2^nd generation master of Hunyuan Tai Ji. You can find the full text here if you can read Chinese. Here are the links to the other parts: Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4

Foreword (continued)

Whenever I am giving a talk, I always urge my audiences, “To pass on and expand on the real Tai Ji, anyone who is interested and has the necessary conditions to learn the martial aspect of Tai Ji, please spare some time and effort into it.”

However, this leads to another problem. Regardless of how many passionate people learning the martial aspects of Tai Ji, only very few actually “get it”. Millions of Tai Ji student had to stop their pursuit of Tai Ji, causing them to regret the journey they have taken to get them this far. Another group of Tai Ji practitioners may have been “winning” when they use Tai Ji as martial art. This group of people is then acknowledged to have some degree of skill, but they are actually only showing the pros and cons of their mistakes. To put it in a different way, the latter group has not awakened from their dream state yet. It is hard to say which group among these 2 are the worse off…

Millions of people have spent and invested a great amount of time, money, effort and emotions, only to have the real Tai Ji elude them for life. Some will never have the chance to see and experience what real Tai Ji is. The real Tai Ji, as passed down by our ancestors, are facing a slow and painful death. The cost of this death is too high, the reality too cruel. This is just too depressing…

So, what’s going on here? Does real Tai Ji actually exist? If so, where is it?

I am also one of those people who possess that rare gene in my DNA. I am fairly accomplished in a lot of other kind of sports, but having spent 40 years searching for the real Tai Ji, I do not dare to stop my pursuit of the real deal. Just like many fans of Tai Ji, I have been through the long and arduous route of training and learning, sometimes feeling lost, depressed and sheer and utter disappointment. I remember telling my friends, “I haven’t really failed at anything I chose to do, but I failed in Tai Ji.”

Eventually, I chanced upon the real Tai Ji, and that is through logic and practical experimentation, based on my years of experience that built up my sensitivity towards differentiating the right from the wrong. It was a moment of tremendous joy and simultaneously a moment of tremendous sorrow. I was happy that I have finally found the real Tai Ji, but was sad that I am now an old man. I am too old now to learn the real Tai Ji. My thoughts drifted to some of the sayings from the sages,

“Since you have found the true path, just follow the path as it is laid before you”.

“Just take one step at a time, understand one bit at a time. There is no fame. There is no obvious sign. Just follow the purity of the true path, while enjoying the journey and the process.”

With these wise sayings, I started to feel relieved and a deep sense of gratitude.

(to be continued…)

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Dummy’s guide to solve that blank page in your wordpress dashboard

Shang Lee — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:43:12 +0000

As much as I like wordpress, things do go wrong. In fact, I don’t even know what the error was because I did not see one. I couldn’t log into my wordpress admin! I had to manually and randomly delete some plugins to allow me to just log in. And then, staring right in my face, was a blank screen, in wordpress dashboard… This will rank quite high on my horror list of managing a website. I truly needed a dummy’s guide…

I am truly grateful to be able to call upon my support structure. This time, moongster came to the rescue. I had to go into the sql database to deactivate the active plugins by running sql queries… If that all sounds incomprehensible… it is, to me anyway. He had to walk me through what they are. If you do find you run into this blank page (a white screen death!), you might want to try the following.

Step 1: Go to the cpanel of your host

A lot of host should have this. You’ll need to login to your own host and find the cpanel. It’s an administration access to a lot of your website’s functionality. I’ve only been in once or twice a year, normally when something bad happens e.g. hacked, bandwidth problems… This is another occasion that I needed to login. Hope you kept your login details safe from the time you signed up with your host!

Step 2: Look for phpmyadmin or mysqldatabase

The idea here is to dive into the database. You see, all the information about anything on wordpress is collected in this vast information vault known as the database. And within this database, there are separate sub-database to identify what type of database they are. There is a sub-database on your posts, a sub-database on your comments, a sub-database on your plugins, a sub-database on what you tell the plugins to do…

Step 3: Look for that sub-database

It is this sub-database, the sub-database that tells the plugins whether to switch them on or not, that you’re looking for. Here is the sql query (a command to ask this phpmyadmin to do its thing) that you require. It will give you a list of all the active plugins, although in an incomprehensible format.

SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = ‘active_plugins’;

Step 4: Make a backup of it, just in case

Go to the edit function (mine is shown as a pencil). You will then see a long string of characters. Copy the text somewhere. Save it, just in case.

Step 5: Deactivate all the plugins

Now that you have backed-up the command, you can replace the whole command in Step 3 with the following.

‘a:0:{}’

This will tell this sub-database to switch off all the active plugins. Your plugins will still be intact. They are just being deactivated.

Step 6: Go back to your wordpress dashboard

You should be able to access your wordpress dashboard now and do your thing. Switch on the plugin one by one. Test your website after every plugin that you switch on. Find out which one is the culprit.

While you’re at it, make a backup of your posts. You might also want to consider upgrading to WordPress 3.0 now. That is what I did. Might as well… It’s working fine now.

Step 7: Congratulate yourself!

Have a break. Pat yourself on the back. You have just done an amazing thing with very little technical knowledge. I was quite impressed with myself, but wouldn’t have gone through this not without some help.

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Chen Zhonghua and his Chen Style Taijiquan Practical Method (Part 1)

Shang Lee — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:18:22 +0000

This is a translation and my interpretation of the text written by Sun Zhonghua. He is the 19^th generation master of Chen Style Taijiquan and a 2^nd generation master of Hunyuan Tai Ji. I hope I did it justice with my translation, and didn’t lose the spirit he is trying to convey. I have to split it in parts as this is a long article and it’ll probably take me some time to translate. Also, I’m savouring the text. It’s great reading it the second time round. Hope you enjoy it. You can find the full text here if you can read Chinese. You can find other parts here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

Foreword:

People train in martial arts for a variety of reasons, but if there is someone who is in love with martial arts to the point of addiction, this must be caused by a rare gene in his DNA. The evolution of this gene would most likely come from hunting and the battles that the previous generations have to fight, where those instincts are then secretly passed on to these “martial art addicts”. History has shown that even with the ban on martial arts or the downplay of martial arts to give way to a more “civilized” way of learning, all did not manage to suppress this rare gene from being passed down through the generations.

There are plenty of different martial arts, and Tai Ji Quan is one of them. It has a rich content, focusing both on health and self-defense. All you need to train in Tai Ji is a bit of space. There are no special requirements on how tall you are or how heavy you are. Because of this lack of special requirements, there are now plenty of people choosing this over other forms of martial art, one estimate of practitioners numbering 200 million people!

Now that the benefits of health and general well-being is being recognized in Tai Ji, the application and self-defense part of Tai Ji is largely neglected. There is nothing wrong with this being a personal choice, but do not think that your personal choice of ignoring Tai Ji applications makes what you are learning is Tai Ji. By removing applications from Tai Ji, Tai Ji becomes fake Tai Ji, it losses its intrinsic nature. Just like how you would say that a dance is not a dance because it doesn’t look like dancing. Moreover, if you don’t understand the application, the external movements will be wrong. This can only lead to one conclusion – we are not inheriting and passing on Tai Ji as a complete cultural artifact, instead we are stripping the spirit of Tai Ji from the art, mutating it, and allowing it to be passed on only in name. I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but this inevitable outcome has given me sleepless nights. Whenever I am giving a talk, I always urge my audiences, “To pass on and expand on the real Tai Ji, anyone who is interested and has the necessary conditions to learn the martial aspects of Tai Ji, please devote as much time and effort into it as you can.”

Continued in Part 2…

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One touch email

Shang Lee — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:43:45 +0000

I first come across this concept from David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. It is on dealing with emails and why having only one touch is so important. I didn’t understand it then, but I just understood it when I came out of the shower today. I have to say, it is surprising how many of my “aha” moments came from showering. Must be the water…

It’s the football season. Having just watched Spain lift the World Cup, the commentators talked about how Spain was so effective in their one touch (or first touch). I remember watching them. Their passing was very quick. Some of the time, all it took is a touch. I believe this is football skills at its highest. Not only you must receive the ball. You must diffuse the force from the ball, and redirect it to another player or space. This creates a kind of speed that is very rare in quality. It is not just speed, but efficiency coupled with accuracy. I find it quite hard to describe this quality, but I am sure you know it when you see it.

It is also like how my teacher does his Tai Chi push hands. It is definitely one touch. Once he touch, he knows where you are going, where is your imbalance point, how should he diffuse your force, and how should he redirect your force back to you. All from a single touch.

So what about the one touch emails I have just understood?

It’s again about deciding what to do with that email with just one touch. From the very first moment you saw that email, you must decide what to do with it at that moment itself. The direction must change in order for it to qualify as a one touch email. It must change to something different, something that moves towards the path to resolving that email. This is one touch email.

Let’s use an example. An email lands in your inbox. You look at it. You read it. You don’t have an answer. You don’t know what to do with it. You leave it there and look for some more interesting email. A few minutes later, (or hours) after you have gone through all the emails, you are left with no unread emails in your inbox. But those emails you have read are still there. You decide maybe you should now go through these emails more thoroughly and see if you can do something about them. So you open the email a second time. Looked at it, and can’t decide if you want to go out to dinner with a bunch of friends. You leave it in your inbox for the second time round. And go to the next “read” email. The cycle continues…

Now you see how one touch is so efficient. You have to know what to do with that email at the point you first see that email. You see, you read, you conquer i.e. you decide what is the next action for it. Most of the time, it’s probably delete. Otherwise, you just file it in your filing system. The remaining ones you can either decide what to do with it to move it along, or delegate it to someone else. Deciding what to with it might be simply calling Susan to find out who’s going to that party. You don’t have to answer Yes or No for now. As long as you know why is it you don’t want to attend the party. Maybe there’s someone you don’t like there, someone whom you just absolutely hate. So you think you better find out if this person is going. That is your very next action. Call Susan to find out. Or email Susan. This is the power of one touch. You have moved it closer to the resolution of that email.

Striving for the one touch philosophy is hard. I have been trying in my push hands, and now I will extend this quality to emails. Even though it’s hard, I like the quality of progress it gives. It makes competition irrelevant.

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How I found sanity by joining an asylum

Shang Lee — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:37:05 +0000

I really think these people are on drugs. Seriously. Who in their right mind will devote so much time and energy to make other people successful? They have nothing to gain (not much anyway). Their current hourly rate is probably closer to $20. Respectable, but for 16 hours a day? Including weekends? Most unions would have come pounding on the corporate slavery wall, but no… not these people. These people are serious. They are seriously motivated and they are seriously passionate about what they do.

I couldn’t keep up with them.

I couldn’t keep up with their pace. I couldn’t keep up with their knowledge. I couldn’t keep up with the slew of information coming my way. Just look at the stuff that is being churned out… on a DAILY basis!! Is it time to play catch up? Maybe you just want to Eat like a Human. Or learn what dancing with Parkinson’s Disease can teach you about inspiration. Or go back to basic and grab the Beginner’s Guide to Juggling Life. These are only a selection. There are more. Many MANY more. I am not even talking about mediocre stuff here. These people write, and they write well, getting better with each posting.

I just wish they have pills for this. I wish I can just pop some magic pills and become like them. Unfortunately, they don’t sell those. They will be rich beyond their wildest dreams if they did. They are only selling the truth, which most of the time, the truth is harder to swallow.

They tell you directly what’s working and what’s not. They tell you right in your face that what you’re doing is not right. They knock you down, but pick you up again. They knock you down further, and let you go some distance before picking you up again.

Now, I’m popping pills to prevent me from going insane. That is why I am in this asylum. I am getting daily (if not hourly!) dose of sanity pills. They are now part of my support infrastructure to improve myself, to improve my writing, to improve my thinking, ultimately to improve my journey within and to share my journey with you.

I do hope you will join me in this asylum as well. If you don’t believe me, you can see what Aileen has to say below.

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Breaking a habit