Ng Yue Wah
There were only cars, but no train in the old times. Today, we have aircraft, which is very convenient in terms of transportation means. When we fly in the sky, we think the sky is endless. However, there is a “space” outward. In Chinese, “TaiHung” means “space”. Therefore the word “Tai” means something that reach its extreme. Similarly, the meaning of “Chi” is also referring to the sense of unlimited extension. The Earth is very very big. When this bigness expands beyond its limited, we call it “Tai Chi”. Therefore, literally the word “Tai” “Chi” includes the meaning of infinity. That’s why “Tai Chi” Chuan literally refers to a boxing of extreme infinity.
When a teacher is teaching her students, he would say, “Embraces the ball”. It is actually a signal to start the Tai Chi Chuan.
Tai Chi Chuan is a boxing with very deep meaning.
Mountains are with fixed shape and form while water is not. Tai Chi Chuan just likes water.
Like the Shaolin boxing, it can be regarded as a tangible boxing while Tai Chi Chuan is an intangible boxing without fixed shape and form. Shaolin boxing is a martial art with using force, but Tai Chi Chuan is a martial art without using force. The difference between these two is very important. If you don’t understand this difference, you will not know what you are learning when you practice Tai Chi.
Some people do their moves which “look like” Tai Chi Chuan, but actually they just able to mimic its empirical movement instead of getting into the core. A great Tai Chi Master, Mr. Wang Zongyue had once said, “a great mistake will be caused by a small error at the very beginning”. Let’s don’t discuss about what the difference between “Tai Chi Chao” and “Tai Chi Chuan” at this moment. Even we are on the road of learning the proper form of Tai Chi Chuan, as long as there is a small mistake, it means that we are still miles apart from the proper form of Tai Chi Chuan.
Tai Chi Chuan has always been very difficult to learn and it is very difficult to teach as well. My teacher, Master Gu Lau Xin, was well-intentioned and wanted to let all Chinese have a chance to learn Tai Chi. So he requested Jiang Qing to relay the message to Chairman Mao Zedong to promote Tai Chi Chuan. Jiang promised and Mao in one of his speeches had mentioned about this issue. You know, Mao’s instruction was an order at that time. Therefore, the whole country started to promote Tai Chi Chuan. It resulted in a serious shortage of teachers. Therefore, the authority conducted some high-speed training in order to provide a massive amount of Tai Chi Chuan teachers. By three months time, they had trained a large number of Tai Chi Chuan teachers. They immediately started to teach the others. Their students, after learning the Tai Chi Chuan for three to six months, then came out as another batch of teachers. Consequently, more and more people seem to “know” what Tai Chi Chuan is and able to perform the empirical gesture, but they would never know the real contents of Tai Chi Chuan. Tai Chi Chuan was said only leaving with a piece of skin, while the core sense of Tai Chi could never be popularized or to be taught properly. When Master Gu talked to me about this, he looked so frustrated and helpless! Now same situation happens in Hong Kong. The teachers in Hong Kong are mostly teaching Tai Chi Chao, which is simply a kind of daily exercise, instead of Tai Chi Chuan, because this is also how the teachers were being trained, to only focus on the outward gesture instead of the philosophical core. I am so frustrated because I could foresee “the same piece of skin” that left remain in HK.
The current situation would definitely leads to devastating consequences, as it would inhibit the spreading of Tai Chi Chuan, or even distort its nature.
Tai Chi Chuan is an intangible martial art, but also a kind of “arbitrary” boxing.
Tai Chi Chuan has three states: water , solid (ice) and gas.
Water state means boxing like liquid. It can be treated as a soft body (a lot of people are practising boxing with soft body). After that, what shall we aim for? We shall start the training to enter into the solid state, which is the same as hard as ice. That is a rigid and powerful body “Kong Ti”. (Please note that it is rigid, but not the same as the iron ). Ice melts, and then turn into liquid. It can be changed back and forth. However, a lot of people just know that Tai Chi Chuan has the soft body, but not the rigid body. For some people, they think that the rigid body and the soft body are complementary to each other, but not the same body. However, Master Chung said the rigid body and soft body are in fact the same body. If you want to train out the soft body and hard body successfully, it is not that difficult. In the book of Master Chung, “Tai Chi Chun Heng” has talked about it. However, many people do not bother to read it; even it is only a very thin book. I find that interesting. —-
What next? Finally, we shall aim for getting into the gas state (we are not talking about “qigong” and please don’t mix up with it). That is, an empty body. How can we achieve the empty body? It is not that difficult as well. Master Chung has told us in the internet that “ …Practising more Tai Chi Chuan so as to make the movement running more smooth, more completeness and less hindered, then we shall of course be able to understand the nature and merge with it and then enter into a non-I state. This is a form of the emptiness. … in push hands practice, the emptiness is a kind of complementary interaction to achieve the harmony, the harmony with your opponent. We shall get not only the physical harmony, but also the harmony with his ideas. … so as to achieve a full harmony and finally merged and united with your opponent so that what he can feel is just the emptiness, like air, and you seem to be disappeared … “Emptiness” is not nothing. On the contrarily, it includes every thing……
Tai Chi Chuan is indeed very difficult to learn, but as long as you are running on a right track, you will eventually achieve your goal!