Month: December 2012

December 21, 3 AM, Foothills of the Appalachian, PA

There are a legion of distractions pulling us one way or another, often different influences/temptations bombarding our senses, that we fail to listen to what is authentic and what is essential. To me, it is important to listen deep, in stillness. Since it is the year of the Water Dragon, the darkness offers the wisdom that we can listen to. The organ at this time in the season is the Kidneys. Their sense openings are the ears … they connect us to the external and internal worlds. While we can listen to the outside world, we can also listen to the internal.  Water stands for flexibility and softness and deep wisdom.

One of my father’s favorite words was “meretricious.” It means something — an object, phenomenon, a person, a goal, status or event — that is attractive, sensational and seductive.  Something that can turn our heads and make us lose sight of and forget what is truly valuable and genuine. Something that can also make us lose our anchor to our deeper Self, the spiritual and eternal, the flame that burns in our Heart. The Siren Song that pulls us away from our life and destiny.

I have often gone back to the ancient classics of Daoism. I have read them carefully — drank of their wisdom elixir. Simple words but deep and meaningful. Here are three passages — two from the Dao De Jing and one from Zhuangzi.

The masters of this ancient path

are mysterious and profound

Their inner state baffles all inquiry

Their depths  go beyond all knowing

Thus, despite every effort,

we can only tell of their outer signs –

Deliberate, as if treading over the stones of a winter brook

Watchful, as if meeting danger on all sides

Reverent, as if meeting an honored guest

Selfless, like a melting block of ice

Pure, like uncarved wood

Accepting, like an open valley

Through the course of nature

muddy water becomes clear

Through the unfolding of life

man reaches perfection

Through sustained activity

that supreme rest is finally found

Those who have the Tao want nothing else

Though seemingly empty

they are ever full

Though seemingly old

they are beyond the reach of birth and death

Chapter 15, Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star

It mentions virtues that the ancient sages cultivated and how these virtues were applied to certain situations. The passage is actually an affirmation that we can read and memorize. In studying it, we should allow its message to emerge from the waters like a lotus.

At the center of our meditation is stillness. Beyond movement and contemplation, beyond theories and practices, is the subtle and elusive concept of stillness. Since humans are possessed of a Monkey Mind, it is difficult to arrive at stillness, that place of nothingness/ emptiness that no concepts, ideas, ambitions, dreams, achievements, pursuits can reach. It is where we finally find our …  Self.

Chapter 16, Dao De Jing: Definitive Edition by Jonathan Star

Become totally empty

Quiet the restlessness of the mind

Only then will you witness everything

unfolding from emptiness

See all things flourish and dance

in endless variation

And once again merge back into perfect emptiness –

Their true repose

Their true nature

Emerging, flourishing, dissolving back again

This is the eternal process of return

To know this process brings enlightenment

To miss this process brings disaster

Be still

Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity

Eternity embraces the all-possible

The all-possible leads to a vision of oneness

A vision of oneness brings about universal love

Universal love supports the great truth of Nature

The great truth of Nature is Tao

Whoever knows this truth lives forever

The body may perish, deeds may be forgotten

But he who has Tao has all eternity

Zhuangzi, Chapter 4. Fasting of the Heart/Xin (modified from Essential Zhuangzi by Hamill and Seaton)

… Yen Hui said, “May I ask what method you’d employ?”

“Fast,” Confucius said, “and then I’ll tell you. But having the method is one thing, carrying it out is another. Will it be easy? Whoever thinks it might be easy is not suited to the job.”

“My family is poor,” Yen Hui said. “I haven’t tasted either meat or wine for months. Is that what you would call fasting?”

“That’s fasting for a sacrifice,” said Confucius. “It is not the fasting of the heart.”

“What is fasting of the heart, then?”

“Set your heart on the One,” said Confucius. “Don’t listen with your ears; listen with your heart. Then stop listening with your heart and listen with your Qi. Hearing stops with the ear, the heart stops with words and symbols. The Qi is empty. Being so, it can attend to all phenomena. Dao begins to roost in emptiness  The emptiness is the fasting of the heart.”

December 19, 2012. In the foothills of the Appalachian, PA.

I don’t know what you are going to do and where you’re going to be, but blessings to you and yours on this most sacred time of the year. I will be in NY City December 21, 22 and 23. I leave for the Philippines on Monday December 24.

No, the world is not going to end on December 21, notwithstanding dire and apocalyptic prophecies. Yes, there is going to be a shift in the astronomical alignment, but only to the extent that we are moving to another season (Spring and the return of the Light). No, we do not have to do anything extraordinary (like a pilgrimage to Chichen Itza in Mexico or the pyramids o Giza in f Egypt), but it’s important to be aware of the shift our own body is taking as we slowly move through the seasons. Yes, we should do a meditation to align ourselves to Nature and its transformation. So perhaps on the 21st or 22nd, we should spend an hour or so early in the morning or late at night (preferably at 11 pm to 1 am) in stillness. Since it is the year of the Water Dragon, focusing on the Kidneys and the Water Element would help re-orient us to the 5 Elements (Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal). I will do my own practice. On the 22nd I will also be at Columbus Park in Chinatown at 8 am to practice Tai chi chuan. If you are interested, please feel free to come.

To me, change in the world has to start from within. Self-cultivation practices are important in human transformation. So each and everyone of us has to have a serious meditative, spiritual and/or qigong regimen. It is good to do it with others, a group or community of friends and practitioners. But often we have to do it alone. We have to work on the Heart to be able to see ha any concrete and significant effect out there. Ultimately, society is just a mirror of what happens from within.

May I share some brief notes from my journal at this time of year:

Winter Solstice is associated with the coming of the Light in many ancient cultures. In the I Ching/Book of Change, Hexagram 24, this is depicted as Return/Fu. The Yang emerging from the Darkness of the Yin.

“The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation” by Al Huang (Inner Traditions: 1998) says:

“Fu plays an important role in the I Ching. It is one of the twelve tidal gua used to explain the cosmology of the changing of the seasons — to go around and begin again. It represents the eleventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar, or December. According to the I Ching, ‘When Yang turns back, it is Fu.’

“At the Winter Solstice, the twenty-second day of the eleventh month, the yang energy emerges. In Northern China, people can actually feel the yang energy begin to surface at the turning point of that specific day. There is an ancient saying handed over thousands of years: ‘At winter solstice, yang begins to surge.’ This idea is vividly expressed in the structure of the gua. For this reason, during the Zhou dynasty the Chinese New Year began with the winter solstice. The yang energy starts a new cycle.” page 212.

In the Taoist meditative and health exercise of Taoyin (now called Qigong), Winter Solstice is associated with the 5th lumbar vertebra and its activation. Each of the 24 vertebrae in the spine corresponds to a day in the calendar. So a vertebra is covered once every 15 days. Chen Xiyi, a Taoist of the 10th and 11th century CE, who lived on Huashan/Flower Mountain, choreographed exercises. He said that the set for the Winter Solstice should be done between 11 pm and 3 am on the second half of the Eleventh Moon to remedy cases of cold and damp in the jingluo channels and the extremities, lumbar pain, and counterflow qi under the navel/CV8/Shenque. Master Chen is also famous as the founder of Liu He Ba Fa/6 Harmonies, 8 Methods and Sleeping and Dreaming Qigong.

“Ancient Way to Keep Fit” (Hai Feng Publications HK: 1990), page 45.

With David Verdesi (www.david verdesi.com) and other students, I visited the Basilica di San Clemente in Rome 3 times within a period of 1 month 3 years ago. We were training in Lei Shan Dao at the time. Beneath the church were the ruins of the ancient temple of Mithras. There were pillars, a fresh water spring, and most prominently a cauldron-like excavation for bull sacrifice. I did not know anything about Mithras except he was supposed to be a Persian god or prophet. A quick look at the internet showed that he preached love and compassion, had 12 disciples, died and was resurrected on the third day. He was born on December 25 about 500 to 600 years before Jesus.

Here is a passage from a book that I’ve been reading:

“One of the imported religions that was gaining a large following in Rome was the Iranian cult of Mithras. According to legend, Mithras had been sent to Earth by the Supreme God of Light to slay a bull whose blood was the source of all fertility. Only men (most of them Roman soldiers) participated in Mithraic rites. Neophytes were required to undergo baptism and to perform deeds of self-sacrifice and courage, thereby progressing through seven stages of initiation. The process was said to bring about a gradual purification of character, leading finally to the unconditioned state that the soul had known before birth. Having achieved this seventh degree, the initiate was regarded as an incarnation of the divine.

“The central event of the cult myth, the slaying of the cosmic bull, was regarded as the greatest event in the history of the world – the act of Creation at the beginning of time, and of redemption at the end. Believers reenacted the drama in a nocturnal bull sacrifice in a cave or grotto. This ceremony was seen as a celebration of the union of opposites – life and death, spring and autumn, beginning and ending. Sculptures of the bull slaying showed grains flowing from the wound in the animal’s neck.

“Mithras’s birth was supposed to have been attended by shepherds. At the end of his time on Earth, he and his disciples shared a last supper, which was later commemorated by believers in a communion of bread and wine. Furthermore the hero was said not to have died but to have returned to heaven, and his followers believed that he would come again at the end of the world. Then the dead would rise from their graves for a final judgment.

“The Mithraic holy day was Sun-day, a fact no doubt noted by Emperor Aurelian, who, with so many of his soldiers being initiated into the Iranian cult, must have wondered: Why not consolidate the worship of Mithras with that of Sol Invictus? Accordingly he declared December 25th the official birth festival not only of Sol but of Mithras as well.

“By the fourth century, a radical Jewish sect calling themselves Christians was brewing trouble for the Roman authorities. The Emperor Constantine, realizing the best way to defuse the movement might be to co-opt it, made Christianity the state religion with himself at its head. The Christians went along, though doing so entailed a few revisions to their rites and beliefs. Previously their Sabbath was Saturn-day; but for unity’s sake, Constantine changed it to Sun-day, the feast day of both Sol and Mithras. This was acceptable to Christians since, after all, Christ’s resurrection had occurred on a Sunday, the day after the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) following the Passover.

“Moreover, within another quarter of a century or so (by the year 360, certainly) the December 25 feast-day of Sol and Mithras had become the principal Christian festival as well, the day for the commemoration of the birth of Jesus. This date met with the approval of Christians because, first of all, no one knew Jesus’s real birthday anyway; and second, the winter Solstice had always been seen as a time of renewal. It was the time of the rebirth of the Sun and of light. Therefore how fitting to use it as the day to celebrate the birth of the true spiritual light of the world! And, even though the Solstice ceased to occur on December 25 centuries ago due to calendrical inaccuracies, Christians have celebrated Christmas on this day every year since.”

“Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms through Festival and Ceremony” by Richard Heinberg (Quest Books: 1993), page 104.

I was in Mexico a few times in the mid-80s. These photos were taken at the Chichen Itsa Mayan pyramid complex. There’s the pyramid of Kukulkan, the cenote/sacrificial pool, the observatory and the leopard inside the pyramid.

It was in the Winter of 1994 — I have to consult my diary about it — and  enroute to Hawaii from the Philippines, the plane stopped over at Narita in Japan. I was with a couple of Chinese women I met in Hongkong. (Our United Airlines flight was delayed for a whole day in HK because of a terrorist report. I’ll tell you the story another time.)  We had a whole day to kill, so we decided to  take  a train to Tokyo and walked around. We  were not dressed for the cold weather. I saw this park and did Tai chi there, something I have done in many parks around the world. The women took a few photos of me. We eventually landed in Oahu, Hawaii. It turned out the Chinese women were going to spend a few days at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. I took them around the island. Another coincidence: we met again in Harvard University a week or two later. (There is no space to follow the thread, so I’ll also reserve it for later.) Perhaps, life has a lesson or two to teach us when we encounter synchronicity. Perhaps it is just happenstance — random, incomprehensible events that have no meaning?

In the outskirts of Hangzhou are the tea plantations and the temples. Some of the buddhas were carved on the mountainsides. I have been to Hangzhou a few times. To me, it is the most interesting city in all of China. I spent many memorable hours doing Tai chi inside a walled garden devoted to bonsai on Xihu/West Lake. You paid for a flask of hot water and a spoonful of tea and you sit on the patio. Because there is an entrance fee, there aren’t many practitioners of Tai chi there, so you can actually have the place to yourself for hours. If you arrive early enough, there are no guards and you can come in for free. Within walking distance there’s Hefang, a street with old wooden houses. The place is a kind of mall with shops vending tea, scarves, paintings, decor, gourds, buddhas, wu-shu weapons, clothes, bags. There’s a food court on one side selling delicacies of the city — Su Dong Po pork, West Lake carp, duck bills and feet, stinky tofu. There’s also near the entrance a couple of massage centers run by the blind.

My birthday celebrated with the family at one of my favorite restaurants, the Seoul Garden, on E 32nd Street and Broadway in Manhattan. With my granddaughters Ava and Isabel. Seoul Garden has some of the best doufu in town. I’ve celebrated several of my birthdays there.

I make it a point to go to Walden Pond every time I go to Boston. I often do Tai chi in the parking lot in the summer or by the water in other seasons. The guards do not bother me; they just tell me to practice farther from the weekend traffic, especially when I have my Dao/Knife and Jian/Sword. After practice, I walk around the lake, stop by the original location of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin and light an incense or two there.

One time, in observance of Spring Equinox, on a Sunday I went to Concord and spent a couple of hours sauntering around Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau lived for a couple of years in his famous cabin. Sauntering: from sainte terre, now meaning a pilgrimage to a sacred place.

I have done it many times before, especially during my years studying and later teaching in acupuncture school outside of Boston. There were occasions at Walden when I practiced Tai chi chuan for hours at The Farm with my friend Debra Kang Dean, an award-winning poet and Tai chi teacher and aficionada (www.debrakangdean.com). Her late husband Bradley Dean was a respected Thoreau scholar.

I almost always end up at the original location of Thoreau’s cabin where a cairn has been built nearby. A sign was posted saying (from Walden, or A Life in the Woods):

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I did repair to the store on the premises and bought a few memorabilia: a couple of items with Thoreauvian quotes:

“Surely joy is the condition of life.”
“Always you have to contend with the stupidity of men.”
“Simplify. Simplify.”

I also got some cards with the famous line:

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

At Fengdu, the city of the dead. The cruise ship stops at different points on the trip to the 3 Gorges and the Great Dam. There were vendors peddling memorabilia, umbrellas, masks, snacks, bottled water. Inside there were statues of people undergoing punishment in the different circles of hell.

I was in Paris a long time ago. I practiced Tai chi at the Jardin de Tuileries before I went to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, two of my favorite art objects in the museum. I cannot remember now if I.M. Bei’s pyramid was already in place at the time, but somehow in my memory, it has always been there during the times I was visiting. In the photo, I posed in the White Crane posture.

If you are at the Tao Garden, GM Mantak Chia’s first-rate resort in Doi Saket, Chiangmai, Thailand, be sure to take a walk around the village. There are temples where you can listen to the monks chanting early at dawn, a noodle shoppe run by the thoughtful and lovely Pilat, and a few arts and crafts stores. These giant tamarind trees in the photo have their own spirit house and a small chapel for pilgrims. And oh, yes, don’t miss the coconut ice cream in a private house across the creek. It is the best ice cream I have had anywhere. We often snuck up to the freezer at night and helped ourselves, always leaving the payment on the table.

A viewing window at the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, the Venice of the East. One time when I was visiting, there was a small ensemble playing traditional music on traditional instruments like the zheng/zither and the pipa/lute. Easy to be transported to the past in these surroundings.

My first time in Chichen Itza, near Tulum and Cancun, was in 1984. I had been there many times in the 80s. I guess that was before the New Age people discovered the place. Nowadays, it is a center of pilgrimage for thousands during the equinoxes and solstices. One of my memories is seeing the serpent crawl down the steps. Since then, there have been much research into the different pyramids. It is amazing how much esoteric information is encoded in them.