21ST CENTURY TAI CHI |
Tools and Ideas for updating your practice
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21ST CENTURY TAI CHI |
Tools and Ideas for updating your practice
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And so we bid farewell to the the spirit of the moment with this final climatic episode. On the eve of the monks departure, I discover a dusty, tea-stained document left on my desk: 5 Secrets for Living a Purposeful Life. This, I have recorded as an audio file. Little remains now but to leave his words to settle, like wind blown snow flakes on an empty landscape. As I look around the quiet training halls of the temple, there is little evidence of his presence, other than Yak prints in the snow. I even find myself questioning the very existence of the Bean Curd Boxer. Was it all just a figment of our collective imagination, a projection of our collective hunger? A poignant reminder to simply Leave Things Alone? Who knows? Who can tell these days in this time of transition and dust, what is real and what is fake, what is substantial and what is imaginary . We must all make of it all, as we will. SECRETS As for the notion of secrets - are these really secrets? I'm not so sure. People talk a lot in the internal arts about secrets from within the inner-circles, family styles, private transmissions. They are referring to special techniques passed down in the dusty corners of training halls between masters and select students - sworn under a swirling cloud of incense or kneeling alongside a miniature gifted zen garden - secrets that are blood bonds, secrets that were meant to be kept hidden. This manuscript belongs to another history. These are the secrets that hide in plain site - revealing only what is uncarved, the simple, the obvious, the overlooked. WHAT TO MAKE OF IT ALL? Ultimately, what you or I make of this document is not important. Left here in the spirit of transparency it is no more than a passing farewell from a man and his obsession with tea, as he prepares to leave behind The World of Dust. And so I fulfil my part. I give you the Top 5 Tips for Living a Purposeful Life amidst the fakery of the 21st century - given here not in exchange for an email address nor a Paypal donation - but as something to laugh at, to prod, to share or to step over, depending on your point of view and style of walking. As the mOnk would often remind me, we were meant to play with them, not study. 5 Secrets for Living a Purposeful LifeSecret No 1: Remove BordersDo not obsess over styles, Forms, names, borders, currencies, accents or allegiances. The arts depend on such artificial perimeters about as much as Donald Trump depends on a dictionary before tweeting.
Secret No 2: Put Away your Toys
Secret No 3: Comic books are fine...but have their place.
Secret No 4: Let it go
Secret No 5:Do Good
So is that it?So it seems that is that. I was left with a dusty and coffee stained document laying on my desk this morning, with the telltale warmed teapot left to one side. Subtitled: Ways of living for the 21st century - it occurs to me that it may speak of the obvious, but - at the same time, I feel it is a message that still resonates. When the lines between neighbours are clear one day, but intentionally blurred the next, it is a time of concern. Where yesterday we resided in Oceania, today it is, surprise surprise, Eurasia. As I now peer outside the window of the Temple, I can still see the tell-tale Yak tracks in the snow, but I am not sad - for he leaves in his wake an abundant and fertile crop upon which you may harvest. An inner temple of goodies…. Looking around the teapot temple I can see he has been a busy mOnk this last year. He has produced 4 online courses - he released all his books from the stranglehold of Amazon and distributed them to all digital platforms - iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Gumroad, and to libraries everywhere - he wrote another book or two - recorded 3 audiobooks - organised a summer of free classes in Devon England, Celebrated World Tai Chi Day with the excellent people from Central Tai Chi in Birmingham - and completed this series of 10 podcasts -
For context, best visit the home of the mOnk: https://www.teapotmonk.com/
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