TURNING NOTHING INTO SOMETHING

This morning I was composing a new post in my head, about a topic I’ve hesitated to talk about.  This is in the “epiphany” category and I’ve seen a few good statements here and there on the web, generally advising IMA-ists of the up-and-coming variety, not to get too worked up over those ah-ha moments that might lose a lot of sparkle very rapidly.

Then again, it depends.  Some insights are golden, world-changing.  Others disppoint, or fail to pan out.  How can we tell the difference?

In some fields, the problem would simply be that a change-of-mind doth not bring instant results in the real world.  Even assuming you can hold on to a good chunk of your mental flash, reality is not immediately rearranged to suit the new view.

In Zen, however…

However in Zen.  However Zen in.  Zen in however.  In however-Zen.

More helpfully: since internal martial arts have to use feeling as a road map, it may be that if the mind change creates feeling change, then we can say that yes, something has changed.

So I had a kinda clever and entertaining post pretty much worked out, it included the rather odd source of inspiration for the epiphany that I wanted (and didn’t want) to discuss; some amusing sidelights; and a bit of detail on the results that I seemed to obtain.  Maybe I’ll still write it, but instead I offer this right now.

Something happens when we move.  We were here, now we’re there.  Or vice versa.  A place that was full emptied out.  A place — a space — that was empty, filled in.

Okay, fine.  So what?

What struck me on that evening two or three months ago, was that in moving into the empty place next to the full place, I changed its yin-yang state.  Changed space itself.  Most likely one would say from yin to yang.  But one can usually see a way to see the opposite.  But the change, that’s indisputable.

You might still say “So what?”; but I didn’t.  Maybe I’ll try to tell the tale some time.  What’s hilarious is that I didn’t think I could keep the post to manageable length.  So I write this instead??

Immediately I was in better control of my movement.  And more surprisingly, I found I was also able to produce a better quality of stillness.  A switch had been flipped somewhere.  The source of the inspiration was crazier still.  Is this martial arts?  Can’t build nothin’ without building blocks.

 

MICROFINANCE

It’s been quite a number of years since I first heard of a powerful and relatively new force in our world: microfinance.  If you live in a rich country and don’t pay much attention to the several billions of your neighbors whose main concern is making sure that the family eats at least once per day, you can go a long time without hearing about such things.  I did.  But I’ve been spared long enough to increase my horizons a bit.

What I finally heard about was one organization in this field: Women’s World Banking.  In a nutshell: it has been proven that you can loan the price of a First-World restaurant meal (or a few such meals) to a hardworking woman in an impoverished area.  Someone who under normal circumstances will almost never see any spare cash — at all — accumulate within her lifetime.  But having the cash as seed money, she will grow a small business, pay back the loan, maybe borrow some more; and a few years later she and those around her will be enjoying a quantum leap in their quality of life, albeit always with continuing hard work.  But work that now offers hope beyond keeping the Grim Reaper off one’s doorstep.

In honor of Senator Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign, I’d like to post a little info about microfinance.  Maybe there are others like me who didn’t know about it.

http://www.swwb.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women’s_World_Banking

I suppose some people might ask, why focus on helping women?  (Seriously, some would probably ask that.)  For one thing, it’s been proven that this way works.  At the risk of some reverse sexism, my personal observations suggest that, all things being equal, the woman might be more likely to persist and succeed with the nurturing enterprise, with a smaller chance of monies being spent on liquor, cigarettes, and gambling.  If you look at the general run of humanity throughout the ages.  Well, end of sermon.  But microfinance deserves to be widespread, and widely known.

Speaking of the Clintons, former President Bill Clinton is mentioned in this article which also gives a great overview of microfinance at work around the world:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/30/MN7QRSUKA.DTL&tsp=1

 

THE GREAT CENTRAL CHANNEL

I hadn’t checked on Sunyata Namaskar blog for awhile and when I did just now I found this great overview of the internal realm with numerous charts, illustrations, and brief descriptions.  Don’t think I’ve posted this link before… so here it is…

http://sunyatanamaskar.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/inner-landscapes/

Any info I can find on the Central is always welcome, as I make my baby steps (sometimes in the forward direction) and become aware of small changes and feelings that seem to indicate something.

Now if I could break bricks, I could describe that precisely and wouldn’t have to hem, haw, and equivocate.  However I need my hands for my work; some computer, some handiwork, and some heavy lifting, every day.  In past years I’ve been through carpal tunnel syndrome, serious back injuries, high blood pressure, “50-year shoulder”, and so forth.  To prove I’m getting smarter not just older, I strongly intend to keep all this kind of crap at bay.  Add to the picture that I don’t enjoy going to the doctor, missing work days, getting sick, and so on.

That reminds me, I wanted to mention this article about healthy bacteria in and on the human body.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/science/23gene.html?ex=1369281600&en=f0a0b5aee2ed1605&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

The micro-world of our bodies is mind-boggling; truly each of us is a sort of miniature universe.  Which may bring possibilities, if certain adjustments, balances, and awarenesses can be developed…

 

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

I’ve tried like hell to avoid blogging about politics on Taijiquestion.  For a number of good reasons.  But I guess I’ll just get this off my chest.  Since the news tells of another major, key endorsement for Barack Obama:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/politics/14cnd-edwards.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Hillary C., I’m not a big fan of yours but I respect you, for the most part, and I would have voted for you over John McCain (who is a good man and probably the best candidate the Republicans could have put forward).  But now you have an important job to do: help to elect the first African-American president of the United States, a good and great nation that unfortunately permitted slavery, a terrible, evil, immoral, sinful, unjust thing, in the past.  And the end of slavery didn’t bring the end of slavery-like abuses.  But things have changed and they need to keep changing.

What did you say in one of your speeches some time ago, Hillary?  “Now is not the time to turn the clock back!”  That was typical of you, Ms. Clinton.  Some of your supporters like my friend said that Obama lacks substance.  No more than you do!  When I heard what you said I thought, “Gee, Hillary, what WOULD be a good time to turn the clock back?”.  But you were already in your mode of playing to the reactionary/sound-bite crowd.

In the future, assuming America has a future, we will have woman presidents, just like other countries do.  Maybe one of them will be named Clinton.  But you and your husband made a big deal out of your racial fairness, progressiveness, right-mindedness.  Get your mind right, Senator Clinton.  Sure this disappointment has got to hurt like hell.  So, just ask yourself if you are being martyred… or if the world has gone topsy-turvy… or just maybe if you need to be a real, real big person and do the right thing with all the power, all the… character?… that you possess.

 

SALUTE THE FARM CATTLE TOO

One of the (damn, wish I could employ a more macho-sounding word) charms of studying the eastern martial arts, is the doorway into the past.  For me, it’s not so much the last few hundred years, which are full of relatively well-recorded information.  So many masters, so many styles, so many families, so much history.  Some people are quite expert in these areas.  Maybe one day I will know more, to study history is good mental exercise.  Especially when the history lives, it is not just a dry recital.

But for now what really gets my juices flowing is peering into the remote past.  Antiquity.  Ancientness.  The roots.  Simple people doing simple things to live and stay alive.  But not so simple people, not so simple things.  But simple.

Like what could be more simple than an ox-tail?  That is the question.  Once in the Philippines I tried kare-kare, that’s oxtail in peanut sauce.  Didn’t like it — and it was the most expensive item on the menu!  My mistake.  The first time I dined with new friends in the Philippines, I just ordered rice.  No one could believe the crazy American.  Just give me rice I said.  I like rice.  Plus my stomach was bad from the airline trip.

But in more recent years, the first time I got my hands on Professor Cheng Man-ching’s teachings, it was quite a discovery.  And what small thing do I seize upon that I haven’t yet let go of?  CMC mentions something about an “ox tail dance” in olden times.  And how part of our taiji is reminiscent of that.  I found that fascinating.

But it’s been hard to follow-up on.  All things in due course, I suppose.  Every so often I take a stab at chasing the ox’s tail, and what do I get for my trouble?  Not much.  Take a look at this link if you want a good laugh.  Actually I don’t mean that.  It’s a translated version of an article on folkways and when I tried to read it I realize the translation maybe not so good!  But it is oddly enjoyable and fun to try to figure out what is being imparted here.  Once I read a long interview with an MA master whose english was not too good and it was real mental exercise to follow what he was explaining.  But I got one phrase out of all that talk that I had never heard anywhere else… it was a big piece of the puzzle.

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00999/one%20home%20one%20drum1.files/page0008.htm

 

THE BIGGEST MUSCLE

Glad I’ve gone back to reading the new York Times more frequently.  They sometimes get slagged for being left-of-center, but wot the heck, a class act is a class act whether or not it resonates with your own personal style.  You should see what passes for a newspaper where I live.  But they too once had a lot of class and substance.  Time changes all things here on Earth… sometimes not for the better.

Speaking of change, I noted this article that discusses a change we hope to forestall: the — for lack of a nicer term — degradation of our mental faculties as we enter into the later stages of life….

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/technology/03brain.html?ex=1367553600&en=429f42c57b8364b5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

There is some buzz on this topic currently regarding mental exercise; the “use it or lose it” school of thought.  Seems like a good thing to pursue.  Most of us need to be smarter, cleverer, more imaginative, more creative, better at solving problems, better at reaching good decisions, better at using emotions effectively, better at memory capacity and management, better at knowing when to quit talking… whoops, that’s me.  Actually the whole list is for me, other folks might have a somewhat different list of upgrades to the old cranium and its contents.

So my point was… that is, I needed to remember to say… oh yeah, when I started exploring taiji some years back and pretty quickly fell down the rabbit hole, I began to realize that it was less about physical kung fu and more about nonphysical kung fu.  That just came as a surprise to me.  But when I realized dimly what a complete package taiji had to offer, I knew that this was what I wanted.  Something I could use to keep improving myself on a daily basis between now and that final reunion with heaven and earth.

 

HOW TO TURN THINGS AROUND?

Ah, he’s back — one of my favorite pundits and voices-of-reason, NYT columnist Thomas L. Friedman.  Good piece reprinted in my local paper this morning about America’s slow slide into decrepitude, and what we might hope to do about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/opinion/04friedman.html?ex=1367726400&en=a4da0b53ca69fbef&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

 

FACE, HOW THE WORLD SEES US

Formosa Neijia posted a clip of some Chinese taiji bigwigs testing each other’s skills at a gathering:

http://formosaneijia.com/2008/04/28/when-taiji-masters-get-real/

With my push hands experience not quite enough to fill a thimble, I watched the vid and read the comments and said Hmmm.  But because there were some big names pushing each other, the concept of saving face was mentioned.  Normally in push hands we’re not supposed to worry about “losing”, in a sense it’s better to lose well than to win badly.  But after you add “Master” to your name, things can change I guess.

Well anyway I put in my two cent’s worth about ‘”face”, speaking more from intuition than knowledge.  But having married into a Filipino family I’ve tried to learn about things like Pakikisama (don’t rock the boat); Utan na loob (debt of honor); Hiya (shame); Kapwa (we are one people); Bayanihan (helping one’s neighbor is heroic); etc.  As well as habits like it’s preferable to lie to someone, or at least dissemble, rather than risk hurt feelings or worse yet, an uproar.  In America we tend to honor honest behaviors (if not painful frankness) but in some cultures, the “truth” is heavily subordinate to the “good”…  the common good.

But the topic was China and I belatedly thought to try to educate myself a bit about this whole “face” thing which everybody has heard of, but perhaps have not lived it as an overriding cultural imperative.  Good old Google, I found some helpful articles straightaway:

http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/face/

http://www.renmenbi.com/face-and-guanxi-beginners

 

WHO ESTABLISHES “REALITY”?

I was interested to see this title in the New York Times newspaper today: “Zen and the Art of Coping with Alzheimer’s”.  So I checked it out:

http://health.nytimes.com/ref/health/healthguide/esn-alzheimers-ess.html?WT.mc_id=HL-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M038-ROS-0308-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click&mkt=HL-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M038-ROS-0308-HDR&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I have a little experience with this scenario in my own family, though blessedly, just a little.  My wonderful grandmother lived to a healthy old age, unfortunately in a way, because her body outlasted her mind to a certain extent.  This is how we roll the dice with modern healthcare.

And in the last few years when we’d go to visit her, as time went by her recognition of the “here & now” became erratic.  She was glad to have visitors.  But confusion would set in, for example she would call me by my father’s name (she hadn’t seen him for many years).  Or she wouldn’t know what year it really was.  Or she would not be able to communicate clearly at all.

Acting on my own instincts, I decided that if she need me to be my father that time, I would be.  It was not important to be myself.  If she could not communicate coherently, I would not try to help her talk.  We could share the room in silence.

I got some advice that said it was important to correct Grandma if she got confused, that I should not yield to her perceptions if they were “wrong”, etc.  I disagreed.  She was in an assisted-living environment, she did not have to do for herself.  Her husband had left this world years before.  She had only her memories, what she could summon of them… and small comforts like my wife rubbing her back or brushing her hair, even on days when she didn’t remember our names.  We were just souls sharing a few more hours together.  In the end, the names did not matter.

 

FALCONRY IN CHINA

I’m reading a historical novel (takes place in 11th-century England).  One thing we sometimes hear about in historical dramas is the ancient practice of falconry or hawking.  Trying to find out a little more about this interesting subject, I located a good site by a native Briton named Alan Gates who has a lifelong love for birds (especially eagles) and their potential as co-respected working partners of humans.  Plenty of material here about traditional and modern falconry in China, other parts of Asia, and around the world.

http://www.avmv20.dsl.pipex.com/Photo%20Album/China/Chapter%20page.htm