William S. Dockens skriver:

T'ai Chi Chuan Merging




Shadow boxing is the doorway to advanced knowledge of T’ai Chi Chuan. For martial artists, it is the key to executing T’ai Chi tactics and strategy. For dancers, gymnasts, monks and psychologists, shadow boxing is the vital link between meditation, thought and action. For the serious student, shadow boxing is the key to merging essence and art. And to the merely curious, it is a barrier that will deny entrance to advanced levels.


Shadow boxing is a challenging but necessary step toward understanding T’ai Chi merging. The major obstacle is psychological. Western analytical reasoning, holistic thinking and T’ai Chi Chuan are three strategies that are not always compatible. Technically, T’ai Chi Chuan entails emergent phenomena that cannot exist in Western rationalistic logic. The primary reason for failure to reach advanced stages is because emergent, though common, is not a simple concept. In T’ai Chi it is the result of mixing Yin, that is exceedingly passive, and Yang, that is exceedingly active, to produce Chi. Chi is the emergent. Most important, Chi resembles neither Yin nor Yang.


Adapting T’ai Chi Chuan reasoning to Western cultures’ thought patterns is not a problem for geneticists or cognitive psychology based on color perception, but for logicians, philosophers and clergy, for whom Aristotle’s reasoning is fundament, T’ai Chi cannot exist. For them, T’ai Chi is a “counter culture” illusion. The Tao Circle makes no attempt to change their beliefs. For us, applications of T’ai Chi Chuan shadow boxing demonstrates, often dramatically, that what may be an illusion for some can be a powerful reality for others.


Describing your shadow boxing movements is much more, difficult than describing how you ride a bicycle. Explanations become increasingly difficult when essence is involved. Since T’ai Chi merging is different for every individual and the experience is quite personal, many who have achieved it prefer to remain silent, rather than explain. We are, nevertheless, confronted by curious, and often doubting spouses, partners, friends, relatives and associates, to whom we may owe an explanation for devoting a great deal of undisturbed time to shadow boxing.


Chinese translations of T’ai Chi words into English and retranslation into Scandinavian languages create major problems, even with the generous help of native Chinese instructors. Shadow boxing demonstrations often make verbal explanations unnecessary, especially if the audience is well trained in martial arts. Merging will present more difficult problems.


Merging is especially important because we must adapt our individual 21st century T’ai Chi Chuan reality to an increasingly digital, and more complex, global culture. It is fairly obvious to advanced students in any art that accessing your essence is essential to mastery. For similar reasons, your individual essence is central in merging Shadow boxing and T’ai Chi reasoning. Unfortunately, the problem is made more difficult because conventional Western reasoning precludes merging Tai Chi Chuan and Western science.


Tao Circle is not the first, and probably will not be the last, to attempt to merge ancient Chinese wisdom with contemporary science. Our only claim to uniqueness may be our formal solution, which uses psychohistory to assimilate T’ai Chi Chuan’s philosophy, cybernetics complexity theory and big history.


The technical details will be published on Silverington.com, but the result is a philosophy personified by ecological pragmatism. The strategy of how Tao Circle resolves the problem of incompatibility between Western analytical reasoning, Eastern holistic thinking and T’ai Chi Chuan is based on exploiting three main points:


1. T’ai Chi Chuan can merge Western reasoning, but the opposite is not likely.
2. T’ai Chi Chuan eliminates cultural and gender biases that precludes cooperation across boarders and
3. Shadow boxing, like music, dance, painting and calligraphy, requires essence for mastery.