What Center?

For anyone who's ever read any of Pema Chodron's books, there's a familiar theme. It's the theme of no exit, of groundlessness, of not clinging to hope. Not in a negative, nihilistic way, but in a way that says once you surrender to groundlessness, you'll feel grounded, and you'll be liberated.

Taijiquan is very similar, I thought this morning as I was walking back from practice. In the practice of the form, it's very easy to feel a feeling of stolidity, of being a mountain. However, once you enter into the realm of pushing hands, you find that this relaxed feeling of being a mountain gets you pushed all over the place. In essence, there is no fixed place, no center.

One push-hands partner of mine at our Sunday Meetup group would start to roll-back as I began my push towards her, but then sink into a horse stance. She had a karate background, so it was a natural response, but I realized that she was sinking into more than just a physical stance. She was sinking into a feeling of stolidity, retreating to an idea of groundedness. She wanted to feel immovable, to feel safe.

Buddhism and taiji are the same in that they offer no sure havens. In Buddhism, you get rocked on your cushion as you sit with all your ideas; dashed hopes, dreams that didn't fructify, all sorts of ideas about yourself. In push-hands, you learn that resisting the forces on you only make them all the more powerful, that you cannot always stand against the outside. In both instances, you have to yield. On the cushion, you yield to the idea and let it pass unhindered, and in taiji you yield to the push and let it move you. 

The Art of War states that, "...if the enemy is quietly encamped, he can be forced to move." Therefore, the idea of stability in itself carries within it the seed of instability. Falling back like my partner onto something that feels always stable has within it the potential to be moved.

The Buddhist and the taiji practitioner first try to accord his or herself with the idea of being moved. No one likes it, but it's inevitable, and one may as well get comfortable with the idea. After long practice, and acceptance of being moved, one is moved less and less. Finally, one day, it appears to the outside observer that the practitioner cannot be moved at all. They still can, of course, but they move along with "it" so well that it appears as if they are unmoved, as if they are unperturbed. 

Sink first into this leg, than that one. Let this idea arise, and then watch it fall. Hold the center, and move along with it. Therein is liberation.

Mechanism Unknown

Does anyone actually eat food anymore? I know, of course they do. But you could be forgiven for thinking that people are chucking food in favor of pills these days, what with all the advertisements for more and more prescription drugs.
Plenty of my colleagues have already posted and written about food as medicine, and that with a balanced diet, you don't need half the drugs out there, so aside from that sentence, I'm not going to address it. I would like to focus on the hypocrisy of the drug industry vis-a-vis those of us who prescribe herbs.
Tons of these medications are being marketed directly to patients despite the lack of hard evidence for why they work. Don't believe me? Try looking up some on the web, or wikipedia, and you'll often times find the phrase, "...mechanism of action unknown."
Perhaps the biggest class of drugs with unknown mechanism that has been marketed most fiercely is the antidepressants. Knowing people that are clinically depressed, I'm all for prescribing someone something that may possibly help. However, the propensity to prescribe these drugs to anyone at the drop of a hat or at the earliest signs of sadness is definitely overkill.
People should give good nutrition a chance first, then move on to stronger medicine as warranted. Just today, it was reported on CBS This Morning yet again that exercise is definitely good for your brain. From a Chinese medicine point of view, exercise moves the Liver Qi, helping to augment the Kidney Qi and thus benefitting the "Sea of Marrow" (a Chinese Med term for the brain).
So, the next time a doctor sneers at you for getting acupuncture (admittedly an occurrence happening with less and less frequency as more doctors embrace Chinese medicine), just ask him: If big pharma doesn't know how they're stuff works, why so hot and bothered about knowing how acu works?

Thanksgiving

Here's hoping everyone out there has a happy, and safe, Thanksgiving! Be sure to stock up on plenty of Boa He Wan for the calorie-fest, both for this month and Christmas.

Mind, Desire, and Suffering

Right now I'm reading an interesting book; "Buddha at the Apocalypse," by Kurt Spellmeyer. In it, he talks about what a lot of Buddhist books and scholars talk about; namely, that the source of suffering is the desire for things to be other than they are. Not seeing things as they are is opposite to Right View, one of the branches of the Noble Eight-fold Path.
What's interesting about Mr. Spellmeyer's book is how he equates this wrong view, of wanting things to be different, or to our liking, with what he calls "Apocalyptic thinking," the idea inherent in Abrahamic tradition that time has a beginning and it's on a path toward an end. Since all is slated for destruction at this future "end," there's no need to be conservative with resources, the world, or nature. Another term for this kind of thinking is what Mr. Spellmeyer calls "world despising."
Not only does this kind of thinking cause the thinker to suffer, it causes many, many other sentient beings, people and other creatures, to suffer because as resources and the natural world are consumed, destroyed, or befouled, those sentients find their lives negatively impacted, or even erased altogether.
Looking at the state of our natural world, it's clear that we have to look for a better way. A better way is  not a negative better way, wherein one says, "You shouldn't do 'x'..." but a positive way, wherein one says, "Love your neighbor." In fact, I think someone did say that. If you really loved your neighbor, would you go about polluting his water? Tainting his food? Ruining his air? All of that is world despising and, in Buddhist terms, ego grasping. The polluter is doing it, because he doesn't like things as they are.
If you can bring mindfulness to what you're feeling vis-a-vis the external world, and see that this mind that wants to change things brings suffering, to you and others, perhaps you can shift your perspective a little. It would seem that there is nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.

Superstorm Sandy, People, and the Five Elements

Just a little thought regarding Five Element (Phase) Theory in light of Hurricane Sandy.
Sandy, as everyone already knows, wreaked untold havoc on the east coast, especially the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. I'm not going to go into the damage here, as that information is easily found elsewhere. I do want to talk about something that came out in conversation while walking around the city today.
At the entrance to Fort Tryon Park, a woman and I got to talking about trees that came down. During the course of the conversation, it struck me how accurate the Chinese were in formulating Five Element theory. Wood indeed controls Earth, by rooting into it and securing it. Water indeed controls Water, by forming natural berms and dams that channel it. Water indeed controls fire but extinguishing it or lowering heat, one of the three legs of the fire stool (the others being fuel and oxygen). Fire indeed controls metal by melting. Metal controls Wood by cutting.
This is the controlling, or ke cycle. The flip-side is the engendering, or sheng, cycle: Wood begets Fire by fuel (there's that stool again). Fire begets Earth by converting Wood to ash. Earth begets Metal by virtue of ores found in the Earth. Metal begets water, mostly in this case by condensation. Water begets Wood, by nourishing trees.
These Five Elements are always seeking to balance each other, in much the same way that the body seeks homeostasis. There is nothing static. Therefore, if there is a disturbance in the system, the system will look to balance itself. Always. If the system is, however, is always being disturbed, then it will always seek to balance itself to the point of running amok.
This is happening now, with out climate. What we have is a case of Metal over-controlling Wood. How? Axes, chainsaws, earthmovers; all the Metal accouterments of modern civilization. With this disruption, the system (Earth, or Gaia) is now looking to balance itself. The result? Weather run amok; Earth is eroding and sliding into the sea; Fire is rampant, adding heat to the seas and with this energy, Water has new-found force, with little to counter-balance it.
We love Metal. It's in everything that we identify with in the modern world; jewelry, cars, iPhones, Blackberries, our homes. Everything. Metal, the Son, is running rampant and drawing way, way too much on Earth, the Mother. But that's because we are drawing far too much on our Mother, making demands on her that go way beyond her ability to balance out what we are asking.
We as people have to recognize that we, contrary to what it says in some doofy book, are not masters of all that we survey. We are a part of this world just as much as any tree, rock, bird, fish, dog, pig. We are not apart from, but part and parcel with all that we see. It's incumbent on us, then, to take care of, and be mindful towards, the others who inhabit this rock with us. Because if we are not mindful of this green paradise, it can very well turn against us. And we have nowhere else to go.