Single gesture, whole of reality

What's in a word, a movement, an expression? Everything. Potentially, at least. This is the intriguing premise of "The Beauty of Gesture: The Invisible Keyboard of Piano and Tai Chi," by Catherine David.

To be present in every step means that the forward motion of one's foot, if experienced fully, embodies the whole of reality at a given time.

Being a Tai Chi practitioner myself, I understand what David is saying. The key word here is "fully."

When I'm moving through a Tai Chi form, often my mind is only partially engaged in what I'm doing. So my reality is split between the here and now and the there and then that's the subject of my mental meanderings. This is half-assed Tai Chi.

In Asian traditions, it sometimes takes an entire lifetime to reach that state of consciousness which opens the way to a genuine act. Turning a handle, soldering a joint, cleaning the house – each gesture contains the entire being of the person who performs it.

It's also half-assed anything, as David points out.

Part of the problem is that we don't fully embrace our self as we are at every moment, continually changing in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

How to be sure we are not half-kissing, mechanically stroking, laughing too loudly, simulating emotions? How not to doubt my own sincerity when I smile, when I flirt? How can I fill my gestures, make them real, harmonious, efficient? How can I give the present moment – the only reality – the attention it deserves?

Another problem is imitation. Though proverbially it's the finest form of flattery, and necessary to learn Tai Chi or almost any other skill, at some point it becomes a barrier to future progress.

Accurate aiming is no artifice: it is his own self the archer sends into the center of the target. If the archer is absent from the bow and arrow, the success of his shot becomes a failure, a parody. True accomplishment goes beyond skill and frees itself from the rules, providing the rules have been previously mastered. From up there, they say, the view is unobstructed all around.

My Tai Chi instructor encourages every student to find his or her own unique expression of this art. And everyone does. There's no way around it, because each person has a unique body, a unique mind, a unique spirit, a unique energy.

Metaphysical awe is converted into research. Reflexive consciousness merges into action. The why retreats behind the how. Anxiety is lifted by creating a technique. The question, How can I really be myself? is instantly followed by, What can I do about it?

Behind the question how, calling for immediate practical answers and lifelong reflection, the ontological vertigo begins to fade. I don't know who I am; we'll look into that later. But for the time being, how shall I manage to truly live my life, be who I am, eat what I eat, walk when I walk, hear what I listen to, see what I see, savor my feelings, my sensations, enjoy the world's and art's creatures, make them mine?

Is there, by any chance, a task more important than to live one's own life?

Gestures…

Charan Singh, the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru back when I joined the organization in 1971, habitually used certain gestures when he gave talks. They were graceful, part of his unique demeanor.

When he'd speak about concentrating during meditation at the "eye center," his right hand would trace a smooth arc up to the spot between his eyebrows, an index finger pointing at the purported spiritual centering point. Other gestures were used when discussing additional meditative techniques.

Charan Singh's gestures were his own, part and parcel of him. But I remember listening to a disciple give a talk who, obviously, wasn't the guru.

This guy did his best to copy Charan Singh's mannerisms, gestures, and speaking style. It was ghastly. I'm sure he thought this was how one honored the guru: by imitating him and setting aside the speaker's own personality.

How it came across, though, was as fakery. Authenticity was absent from the talk. I lost interest in what he was saying almost from the first word. He was like a puppet, the strings being pulled by a misguided sense of what reducing the ego means.

How can I unite the expression of my feelings with their inner truth? Is it possible to overcome that instinctive cheating which causes us to act other than what we really are, makes us foreign to our gestures as if they were someone else's, prompts us to look for truth in its caricature?

The way I see it, to honor whatever has made us who we are – call this God, Nature, Cosmos, Tao, Ultimate Reality, Laws of Nature, anything else you like – is to be just who we are, honestly, truthfully, sincerely, fully.

In the smallest things as well as the largest. In a single step as well as the longest journey.

Nothing has prepared us for the concept that everyday gestures might be philosophical exercises. No one has advised us to pay attention to them, to stop viewing them as chores, to start loving them and perfecting them.

Comments

[Edward]

gah, worship of the self, and all the connections to "authenticity" is delusion. Reality is not in the relative position to deserve or not deserve attention. What a superstitious bunch of claptrap. As though I am hurting the world when I am driving down the road trying to decide between vanilla or chocolate and I miss my turn. "Driving while unclear," is the ticket I receive from such karma kops.

I agree that one sweeps a floor in order to sweep the floor, not to be done sweeping the floor. But that is not because some fictional "spirit of the clean floor" deserves my loving attention. The so-called art of being alive is an aesthetic practice, not a creed or spiritual requirement from the source of all. We are not called to be authentic: falseness is an intellectual position opposing trueness. Is is annoying? Possibly. Cripes, move on.

The genius that spoke through Andy Kaufman was that fakery is also vastly entertaining. But dig it, that is because there is a uniquely abled person performing that fakery.

[Edward]

Monstrum for Epimetheus

To a God, what’s potential is most alive.
Re-forming, re-writing scripture,
the possible and the probable writhing
dragon and tiger in the high temples.
That valley of ten-thousand things is alive,
real and so dissolute.

When the treeline finally collapses,
and your idylls expire,
the last thing out of Pandora's pithos
will be the first thing entering a dead man's heart.

Just Hope’s gesture casts the world
in flecks of vermillion on the landscape.
Rodin leads out a bronze burgher’s chin
and in dim and sooty lamp light
we find "The Potato Eaters."

But you remember:
Sheltered in a copse of slowing heartbeats,
after the acrid escape of every ill into existence,
a stunned and foolish girl leaned in to look.

[Brian]

Edward, per usual I enjoy your comments -- both agreeing and not agreeing with them, both understanding and not understanding them.

Wonderful.

I don't believe the Tai Chi woman was looking upon the authenticity of "gesture" to be an injunction by the cosmos.

It's something else. Hard to put into words. Not technique, but what makes technique or mere action into something else.

I agree, though, that the quest for authenticity as if it is something objectively real seems ridiculous.

I can't stand all those Zen stories where some poor student responds to his Zen master and gets hit over the head, or laughed at, or whatever.

Supposedly there's some authentic way of acting or speaking, and the poor student missed it. So he slinks out the door, meditates for another ten years, and tries again to say something spontaneously authentic.

To my mind, this makes Zen into another fundamentalism. Except, the dogma isn't in a book; it's in the mind of the Zen master who only accepts what matches his way of looking at the universe.

So I liked your "The so-called art of being alive is an aesthetic practice, not a creed or spiritual requirement from the source of all."