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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Sacred Thoughts

Coming across zero humidity hot dry desert, two days after seeing snow in a land known to have less than 10 inches of rain a year, I was abruptly standing in a sheltered area with permanent water.  The cenote is still of undetermined depth and water source.  Montezuma's Well in Arizona - an oasis named by a bunch of white guys who knew good and well that there was no evidence that Montezuma ever visited the area.


Year round, the water is 74 degrees.  In the 115 degree summer heat, the pool is 74 degrees.  When the area is freezing, the pool is 74 degrees.  Natural warmth during below freezing days, natural cooling during the summer's heat.

There is a cliff of about 40 feet surrounding the water, with many limestone overhangs that let the people coming there build walls and doorways to close the home in.  Agriculture is possible as the pool is constantly putting out a large enough volume of water to fill hand dug canals all around the area.  Many plants of known food value or medicinal value are all growing around the area including walnut trees and prickly pear cactus.


Where the well's outlet comes out, there is a deep shaded area with sycamore trees, including one that is the largest in Arizona.  The pale white and green bark with it's huge canopy less than 30 paces from a virtual moonscape had an other worldly appearance that brought back memories of Cameron's Avatar and the Elven forests of Rivendell.  How could such a tree in such a place not be sacred to someone?  Strikingly beautifully a thousand times taller than most of the nearby vegetation, so out of place while providing such rare welcome shade
Thank you nameless somebody as my camera is not synced with my iPad.

Indeed, the Montezuma's Well National Park service notes the area has religious significance for several tribes and is part of several tribal origin stories.  Not to discount the native religion, but guaranteed temperature control, shelter, food, and water in a desert with some impressively medicinal and nutritive greenery in such an isolated patch alone has many obvious important concrete advantages over the surrounding area.  The area is blessed with an abundance in stark contrast to the surrounding...starkness.

Did religious significance overshadow the reality of arsenic in the water, or that the CO2 count in the water is so high that fish do not live in this water, or that blood sucking leaches are very plentiful?  The people who lived here still left abruptly, with ceremonies still happening on occasion.

Dad and I had been discussing what makes a site sacred, and I came back to thinking about what made a practice sacred - that's what I know several people tell me their Aikido practice is for them.  The Guidelines for Practice say that Aikido should be martially effective, intelligent and strategic, endlessly creative, introspective, and life affirming while improving an individual's body and character.  That's a lot right there!  Many of these areas, I am somewhat comfortable taking and giving criticism on.  I am uncomfortable judging the sacred-ness of practice, or assisting a student to find the sacred.  I have my beliefs, but as a teacher maybe I'm just the guy who sees water in the desert and thinks, "I'm thirsty."

How many techniques are in Taiji?

When I studied Yang, Chen, and Wu/Hao Taiji I was shown forms that would take hours out of my day just to practice.  One long form took 35 minutes at speed, and I was often assured other forms were longer.  The number "108" apparently has some sacred connotation for Buddhism, so I was always told I was learning 108 or 88 movements.  One teacher told me to just do the whole form as one count, and I found this easier than remembering which was movement 73.

When I actually got into Taiji theory, I was told there were only 13 techniques.  Moreover, movements like Single Whip, Cloud Hands, Brush Knee, or Repulse the Monkey were not part of the list of the list of 13 techniques.  While movements did repeat, the most common movements were not representative of the 13.

Except, it is actually a list of 13 ideas.  Eight hand movements, which can also be eight torso movements or eight different ways to issue power; and five ways to move the feet.  The eight trigrams are from the YiJing which has 4019 distinct mathematical relationships when they are spread out into the 64 hexagrams.  Ultimately, this is just an extrapolation of Yin and Yang, but the YiJing is supposed to represent "the 10 000 things" (infinity).

The five elements are used in Chinese acupuncture, feng shui, and other martial arts.  This is not a list of five things, but a framework for interpreting multiple relationships between five different ideas that represent energy flowing cyclically, and eternally between five states.  The two main relationships, the Creation Cycle and the Destruction Cycle are both never ending, infinite cycles.

So, the 13 things are a way of saying Infinity times Infinity.  That's how many techniques Taiji has.  A handful of ideas are used to lead to an enormous number of ideas, much as the alphabet eventually leads to language.

  

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Tenkan

        

I remember traveling to a seminar, and being asked in front of the class what Tenkan was.  I reflexively replied "Blending."  I earned a glare; the instructor was looking for "Leading."

While the Tohei lineage does have a solo practice of 180 degrees and the hips bladed to the forward arm, in application there are several variables in play.

The initial shift - the distance and the direction.
Which leg is weighted at the start.
Which leg is weighted at the end.
Do the hips blade or stay neutral.
Sinking, rising, expanding, shrinking, pulsing

In partner practice, these variables get even more messy.  All the variables above mixed with my timing and placement in relation to Uke.  
How deep is the shift, In front/behind/neutral.
Collapsing Uke's strength from the inside, moving to the outer edges of Uke's strength, not affecting Uke's strength at all.
How many degrees, how much of the circle, is the turn.

The main English words I hear to define Tenkan are NeutralizeJoinLeadFollow, and Blend.  I linked to a thesaurus.  Just as these English words are not the same thing, (lead and follow are even opposites) I have come to think there are different basic Tenkan.