The Ground is a Heart Platform

 

Technique is a Whisper

Some Thoughts from John Kells:

"Put everything into the initial connexion.
The posture thereafter must spring from that connexion.
The initial connexion has to be whole-hearted.
What happens thereafter must not be a distraction.
In other words, the heart keeps pumping out that connexion.
The technique is a whisper.
What is completed between you has the feeling of an entirety – of a being.
The responsibility is to be open.

The working of the mind is too slow to deal with real life.
To be sincere in this matter is not a question of thinking about it.
Sufficient practice must be undertaken so that basic body usage is not a grinding problem.
It is impossible to describe how thorough going your dedication needs to be.
What bit of you has the wisdom to know what is unknowable?
There is no mind to deliberate or be backwards.
If there isn't a feeling of coming home and finding a lively peace within then you are missing the point.

If there is a way of life or living it has to be joining from the heart.
The eyes are so quick to translate your heart feelings.
The ground is a heart platform.
Although important the eyes have to take second place to the heart.
Be open to the connecting of your heart with the other person's heart.
If the other person wants information about you let them open their heart.
Connecting is not a personal matter.
In any real interchange it is the Third Heart that counts.
Light and embracing, but embracing as a giving from the heart rather than capturing.
And the inspiration of the Third Heart is nutrition for your becoming.
The spirit must be allowed freedom to dart about and tempt the heart at the right moment.
To be a believer is to be a positive being – a believer is someone who is becoming.
Becoming leaves no imprint.
Becoming swallows what is commonly known as destiny.
Spirit is the effervescence of real interest in something other than yourself.

The essence of true destiny is yielding.
The essence of yielding is softness.
The essence of softness is entering.
The essence of entering is welcoming openness.
The essence of openness is heart."

Grandmaster John Kells

Steven Moore and John Kells

British Tai Chi Chuan Association and John Kells

Words of John Kells

A repost from Cloud Hands Blog from 2006

On Becoming Who You Are

 

"As it turns out, to "become who you are: is not about finding a "who" you have always been looking for.  It is not about separating "you" off from everybody else.  And it not about existing as you truly "are" for all time.  The self does not lie passively in wait for us to discover it.  Selfhood is made in the active, ongoing process, in the German verb werden, "to become."  The enduring nature of being human is to turn into something else.  This may come as a great disappointment to one who goes in search of the self.  What one is, essentially, is this active transformation, nothing more, nothing less.  This is not a grand wisdom quest or hero's journey and it doesn't require one to escape to the mountains.  No mountain is high enough.  Just a bit of cheese and any fast moving river will suffice." 
-  By John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are, 2018, p.220

“Research has shown that it takes 31 days of conscious effort to make or break a habit.  That means, if one practices something consistently for 31 days, on the 32nd day it does become a habit.  Information has been internalized into behavioral change, which is called transformation.”
 –  Shiv Khera

"Really changing might make you dissatisfied with yourself and many others also dissatisfied with you.  Changing can be risky, can be dangerous, can be disastrous; not changing might be the same.  Transformation tests the mettle of free will."
-   Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions

Transformation: Quotes, Sayings

Searching for Chimeras

"We really can be happier if we think about our lives, if we work on ourselves, if we learn to make more sensible decisions, or indeed if we alter our thoughts, our beliefs, or the way we imagine ourselves in the world.  The great paradox of happiness is that it can be tamed while still remaining essentially beyond our control.  Happiness is a matter of fate and chance; but it can also stem from a rational, deliberate approach."
-  Frederic Lenoir, Happiness 

Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide.  By Frederic Lenoir.  Melville House, 2015.  208 pages.

Happiness: Quotes, Sayings, Bibliography by Mike Garofalo

Cresting Into One's Present

"This nondescript, never-to-be-defined daytime is
The secret of where it takes place
And we can no longer return to the various
Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory
Of the principal witnesses. All we know
Is that we are a little early, that
Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.
I used to think they were all alike,
That the present always looked the same to everybody
But this confusion drains away as one
Is always cresting into one's present."
- John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

Time and Becoming

Process Philosophy

"But all the clocks in the city
     Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
     You cannot conquer time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
     Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
     And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
     Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
     To-morrow or to-day.

"Into many a green valley
     Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
     And the diver's brilliant bow.

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
     The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
     A lane to the land of the dead."
-  W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening, 1937 

Process Philosophy

Process Philosophy   A hypertext notebook by Michael Garofalo including quotes, bibliography, links, notes, research, and related information.  

My summer reading list includes books on process philosophy by Nicholas Rescher, Alfred North Whitehead, Robert Mesle, Hank Keeton, and Elizabeth Kraus.  

"Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heraclitus, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Nail, Alfred Korzybski, R. G. Collingwood, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science."  -  Process Philosophy - Wikipedia     

Process Philosophy - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Whitehead, Alfred North  (1861-1947)

Wikipedia     Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  

Whitehead, Alfred North.  Science and the Modern World.  1926, 218 pages.  Kindle Version, VSCL . 

Whitehead, Alfred North.  Process and Reality.  Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh during the Session 1927-1928.  Published in 1929.  Free Press, 1979, 413 pages.  VSCL. 

Whitehead:  Keeton, Hank.  Dao De Jing: A Process Perspective.  By Yu Fu and Hank Keeton.  Susanna Mennicke, Designer.  Seeing Tao Pub., 2019, 296 pages.  VSCL. 

Whitehead:  Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead.  By C. Robert Mesle.  TFP, 2008, 136 pages.  VSCL. 

Whitehead:  Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues.  By Nicholas Rescher.  University of Pittsburgh, 2000, 152 pages. 

Whitehead: Emptiness and Becoming: Integhrating Madhyamika Buddhism and Process Philosophy.  By Peter Paul Kakol.  D. K. Printworld, 2009, 432 pages. 

Whitehead:  Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy.  By Nicholas Rescher.  SUNY, 1996, 240 pages. 
 

Whitehead:  Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne.  By Daniel A. Dombrowski.  Edinburgh University Press, 2019, 224 pages. 

Whitehead:  The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead's Process and Reality.  By Elizabeth Kraus.  Fordham University Press, 2018, 256 pages.  Kindle, VSCL. 

The Concept of "Hunyuan"

"Hunyuan is an ancient, central concept of Daoist philosophy and meditation practice. Hun means undifferentiated unity, the state of mind and being that occurs when one does not divide the world into concepts. In other words, hun is equivalent to inner silence. Yuan means origin or original. The importance of Yuan is attested by the fact that it is the opening word of Qian, the first chapter of the Yi Jing (The Classic of Change). "Original [Yuan], Penetrating [Heng], Auspicious [Li], Correct [Zhen]." This mantric phrase may be interpreted as four stages in the creation or evolution of an idea or phenomenon; or it may represent the four seasons.

Yuan is the root or antecedent of any action. It is the creative spark or impulse, like a seed planted in Spring which is just ready to sprout. Heng is the Summer, and represents germination and development. The character heng originally meant a sacrificial cup used to make offerings to the Gods. Most commentators explain heng as tong, penetrating or reaching to the Gods. Li means to cut grain, to harvest or reap the benefits of what was grown. It is thus the Autumn season. Zhen, which originally included the character for tripod means steady and correct. It also means divination. Zhen is the winter season, when the energies of life retreat back into the ground and people return from the fields to their homes. The spark of yang is hidden in the yin. Winter is a time for inner work rather than outer work, a time to perfect one's character and prepare for the coming year by consulting oracles.

The character yuan was originally a composite of shang the word "above" with ren, the word "person." Hence, yuan means the upper part of a person's body, the head, or, as we say in English to go ahead, to be first. Interestingly, the Chinese character Dao also contains an element that means both head and first, shou. One of my Daoist teachers, the late B. P. Chan, defined Dao as "the path to the origin." We could also interpret this as returning to the origin. When the body Returns to the Origin, it renews itself with the energy of life, the all pervading qi of the universe. It becomes like an uncarved block of wood-- the Daoist symbol of a person uncorrupted by the stresses and worries of life. As Lao Zi says, "See the unbleached silk, embrace the uncarved block; reduce selfishness, lessen desire." (When the mind Returns to the Origin, it becomes simple and pure like a newborn babe, able to perceive the world with a fresh innocence.)

Hun with yuan becomes the concept Hunyuan, the Primordial State of Being. The term is synonymous with the word Dao itself and also with Taiji (the Undifferentiated, as in Taiji Quan, a martial art and healing art that blends yin and yang, suppleness with strength). Philosophy and personal cultivation are not separate categories in Daoist thought. Thus, Hunyuan is the Primal Being (God) or Beingness that both precedes and underlies all creation. It is also the spiritual state of a person who practices Daoist meditation."

- Hunyuan Qigong: Tracing Life to Its Roots
  An excellent essay by Master Kenneth Cohen, 2007


Hun Yuan Qigong

Hun Yuan Taijiquan

Months and Seasons of the Year

Becoming is Being

"We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water.  We are not stuff that abides, put patterns that perpetuate themselves."
-  Norbet Weiner, 1950

The human body is 60% water.   
The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells (6x10^13). 
There are about 60 trillion atoms in a human cell.   

"The structure of the human brain is enormously complex.  It contains about 10 billion nerve cells (neurons), which are interlinked in a vast network through 1,000 billion junctions (synapses).  The whole brain can be divided into subsections, or sub-networks, which communicate with each other in a network fashion.  All this results in intricate patterns of intertwined webs, networks of nesting within larger networks."
-  Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understandinf of Living Systems, 1996, p. 82

"In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as by Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the cornerstone of reality—the cornerstone of the Being thought as Becoming. Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Robert M. Pirsig, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare and Nicholas Rescher. In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science."
-  Process Philosophy in Wikipedia

"Although people may think of their body as a fairly permanent structure, most of it is in a state of constant flux as old cells are discarded and new ones generated in their place. Each kind of tissue has its own turnover time, depending in part on the workload endured by its cells. The cells lining the stomach, as mentioned, last only five days. The red blood cells, bruised and battered after traveling nearly 1,000 miles through the maze of the body's circulatory system, last only 120 days or so on average before being dispatched to their graveyard in the spleen.  White blood cells live on average more than a year. 
The epidermis, or surface layer of the skin, is recycled every two weeks or so. The reason for the quick replacement is that "this is the body's saran wrap, and it can be easily damaged by scratching, solvents, wear and tear," said Elaine Fuchs, an expert on the skin's stem cells at the Rockefeller University.
As for the liver, the detoxifier of all the natural plant poisons and drugs that pass a person's lips, its life on the chemical-warfare front is quite short. An adult human liver probably has a turnover time of 300 to 500 days, said Markus Grompe, an expert on the liver's stem cells at the Oregon Health & Science University.
Other tissues have lifetimes measured in years, not days, but are still far from permanent. Even the bones endure nonstop makeover. The entire human skeleton is thought to be replaced every 10 years or so in adults, as twin construction crews of bone-dissolving and bone-rebuilding cells combine to remodel it.
About the only pieces of the body that last a lifetime, on present evidence, seem to be the neurons of the cerebral cortex, the inner lens cells of the eye and perhaps the muscle cells of the heart. The inner lens cells form in the embryo and then lapse into such inertness for the rest of their owner's lifetime that they dispense altogether with their nucleus and other cellular organelles."
-  Nicholas Wade, Your Body is Younger Than You Think

Complexity