Please do contact me
to let me know your Tao world, that we might create a dialogue to
celebrate our common humanity, our world in all its fragilities and
strengths.
Sat May 12th
Sun, at last! First we have a drought order imposed - and then the heavens open! Someone, smiling somewhere? Slide show below, hope it runs alright. Let me know if problems.
Sun May 6th
Well, we nearly got bitten there! In the Treading (or Stepping Hexgram No.10) there is the youngest daughter following an older man (father?). This is a picture of dealing with Yin and Yang interactions, especially in families and communities....a
nd the book talks about 'respect and reverence' needed. Not common properties, perhaps, nowadays. Three lines change in the hexagram I threw this morning... I mention these in passing: Six at the Third - 'one-eyed! you get bitten! Misfortune' - the interest here is that you get bitten - unlike the hexagram main text, which says you do not get bitten. So doubly watch it! It's going to hurt!
[Slide show below of three acolytes performing the Winter Brocade, or Treading Tigers yesterday. Combats tiger-injuries.]
The Six at the Third also speaks of 'walking in military formation' ...and 'risking your life to fulfil your mission'. Yes, we know about that.
The Nine at the Fourth then says - 'beware! beware!' - to ram this home. You have much to fear.
Then the Nine at the Top says - 'observe your own stepping, record the omens!' - and speaks of the 'source of the good fortune'. It is clearly speaking about divination from Heaven. How Heaven decides our fate - and we can only watch our stepping through the world and record the omens. The famous poem on this line, I include in my translation (see here), goes as follows:
Wherever the human heart is, there is goodness.
However there is goodness, there is Oneness.
Wherever there is Oneness,
You encompass the Heavenly heart.
Omens are revealed and good fortune.
The gist here is the union of the human and Heavenly heart. As we step along with the mandate of Heaven we step in accord with the world. This is a kind of 'whole-functioning' - which, I suppose, one could crudely render as being 'in the bubble'. Sports-people use this kind of language. And basically that's all there is to Taoism, Yijing, Acupuncture and Divination, combined - not to mention cookery(!). All ways of finding how to get 'into the bubble' of our existence. That's what the originating blessings are, mentioned in so many hexagrams. (Wilhelm put 'supreme success'', Chinese is yuanheng) See for instance in the first Hexagram, the Creative.
Good luck with your Yijing Studies, next workshop probably July 8th. Just finalising dates.
Sat May 5th
Today is my Stepping on the Tail of the Tiger Yijing workshop. More on what we got up to -- and how to avoid getting bitten (!) - tomorrow. Apologies for many links being broken today, pictures missing and the site being absent last week - movement to another Domain Manager underway. All back soon.
The Three Mounds of ancient Chinese tradition:
Mon 30th Apr
Monday. Wind. Rain. Storm. Here is relief in unfurling the banner of acupuncture...
Fri 19th Apr
Here we are, one more day, - poised on a delicate planet, on the soft skin of a ball of rock, hr'led through the sky!
I am reading Robert Bridges: A Testament of Beauty. (I have modernised his spelling). Here is what he says about balance...and disease...
Yea: and how delicate! Life's might mystery
spring from eternal seeds in the elemental fire,
self-animate in forms that fire annihilates;
all its selfpropagating organisms exist
only within a few degrees of the long scale
ranging from measured zero to unimagin'd heat,
a little oasis of Life in Nature's desert;
and even therein are our soft bodies vext and harm'd
by their own small distemperature, nor could they endure
were it not that by a secret miracle of chemistry
they hold internal poise upon a razor-edge
that may not even by blunted, lest we sicken and die.
This
'secret miracle of chemistry' is of course the dance of oxygen and
carbon molucules, internal respiration of the 'cell' - the foundation of
life. And it is the tension within the mitochondria and also across
the cell-wall which drives life. Interestingly enough - Melvyn Bragg
was talking about Heraclitus a few weeks ago on Radio 4 (BBC) and his
idea of the 'bow' (Aka: 'bio') - being the same as 'life'. It is the inner tension which makes both!
Yin
and Yang again. And or course Heraclitus spoke also of the world as
all fire, and also of 'flux'. His big thing. Was he not a pre-eminent
Yijing scholar in the making?!
Ta-ta for now.
Tue 17th Apr
Wow!
It's raining and Iogged on just to tell you that! We have 17 counties
in the UK officially in drought now. Is this the beginning of
water-wars we hear so much about? I won't go on about water to you all -
just read Tao-te Ching Ch.8. It speaks of 'yielding' - I wonder...
Sat 31st Mar Ok
Woke kinda early today. Perhaps because I had this idea just bubbling for a new edition of Chinese Yoga for Home Use, my d-i-y Chinese Qigong book. This is only available at the moment at the clinic.
But soon hopefully will be out more generally. I have been feeling
lately very inadequte at how I express and communicate what I know about
Taoism to you all out there - the 'general public'. So that's why I am
doing these workshops and publishing these books - to learn to do it
better! Please bear with me. Really, we are dealing with an energy
flow - which cannot be seen, it'd that sorta 'sqiggly-wiggly' - which is
life. Here is a little poem about the Standing Three Circles exercise, sometimes called the Standing Pole, or Embracing the Tree. I can supply directions if any of you want - just email me direct.
Within the movement, stillness.
Within the stillness, movement.
Better a small movement, than a big movement,
Better no movement, than a small movement.
Moving being a tiger or dragon,
Still, be like a Buddha.
I have to credit this to Wang Xiang Zhai, the founder of the Zhan Zhuang exercise. The best link to one of his surviving pupils Yu Yongnian is here.
Sun 25th Mar
To Cornwall yesterday. New pictures (video) on Sensorium page. Enjoy,
as they say. I will be rewriting the site soon as have a new idea how
to introduce Taoism for the beginner.....looking forward to it.
Mon 19th Mar
Just
announced today, my next Yijing Workshop. A Day in May, May 5th
Saturday at Nine Springs, Yeovil. See opposite. Good luck contacting
the Tiger energy of the spring! 
Mon 5th Mar
The news is firstly that I have a workshop this Saturday10th March - at Nine Springs Natural Health Center. Yeovil. There is still time to book. Please email me here if
you are wanting to come. I will be using my new translation. The
second news is that a new essay on this page, incorporating Buddhist
themes and Taoist self-protection...see here.
A Day with the Yijing - - - - - - - - - -
–Saturday 10th March–
A
day on a single book! We live in a world always changing. The
ancient Chinese knew how to navigate a path through these ups and down.
It was recorded in The Book of Change (Yijing or I Ching), one of
the Daoist classics. We will explain the history, architecture and
imagery of the book, using my new translation Yijing: Shamanic Oracle of Change
(Singing Dragon 2012). With quiet sitting, we will re-find/refine the
sense of wonder (one-der), and child-like inquiry (discovery) which is
the hallmark of mental health. In addition - simple qigong with its
elements and separate trigrams.
10am – 5pm, £45 the whole day, £25 half-day. Contact Richard here . Please Bring a lunch!
Tue 10th Jan
Twenty-five
more minutes today, compared to 22nd December on the solstice, when the
sun 'stands still'. Sol-sticks. Gettit? The birds already seem to
consider it Spring, what with a 10 min dawn chorus this am, despite the
cloud. Here is a shot from my window.
Still dark, sorry.
It is the full moon setting by the way, not the sun.
Fri 6th Jan
Link to the Babe's Breathing exercise on this page. This exercise has some pedigree. I have formerly taught it as Tonggong, The Old Man's Breathing and Yin and Yang Recombined. They all mean the same thing!
As
promised here is Wangbi commentating on Chapter 16 of the Tao-te Ching.
First the passage from the scripture. Then the commentary:
All the ten-thousand things are created
While I watch their rise and fall...
All things flourish,
Each one returning to its root.
Returning to the root they are at peace.
This means they return to life.
Returning to life they are eternal.
Knowing the eternal they are shining.
Not knowing the eternal is to blunder into disaster,
Wangbi:
The eternal is something neither partial nor prominent. It appears
neither bright nor dark - it feels neither hot nor cold. So it is said,
'knowing the eternal they are shining'. Only through this 'returning to
the root' can one reach out and embrace all myriad things, without
missing one of them. If you lose this and act, duplicity enters your lot
and things are separated from their fate. So then it is said, 'not
knowing the eternal is to blunder into disaster.'When there is nothing in the whole world I do not universally embrace, I reach the point of forming a unity with Heaven.
This
'unity with Heaven' is the goal of Taoist practice - a merging of self
and world, a distict Taoist ecstacy. But hold, it does not have to be a
big thing...it can just be a comfortable bed and pillow, a beautiful
glance, a sky, and taste of fish and lemon, and so on.
Tue 3rd Jan
Pouring
rain and gales outside my window. Nice day to stay home. I have been
updating the Tao Booklets page. So read on! Also loading up my The Writings of Lao Tzu, as ebooks. Here is Chapter Sixteen as an example. I omit my commentary for now, perhaps tomorrow I will include it.
sixteen / returning to the root
OBTAINING UTTER EMPTINESS,
I guard this profound peace.
All the ten-thousand things are created
While I watch their rise and fall...
All things flourish,
Each one returning to its root.
Returning to the root they are at peace.
This means they return to life.
Returning to life they are eternal.
Knowing the eternal they are shining.
Not knowing the eternal is to blunder into disaster,
Knowing the eternal, I find forbearance,
With forbearance, I am openhearted,
Being openhearted, I act royally,
Acting royally, I communicate with Heaven,
Communicating with Heaven, I am one with the Tao.
One with the Tao, my life is everlasting.
Blessings to you all for 2012.
Sun 1st Jan
Today
begins a re-write of these web-pages. You will find the links beneath possibly broken, at the moment, so sorry.
So I apologise that two
purchases of my e-books have failed in the last 24hrs. I am changing my
payment methods. More details later. Please contact me if you have trouble with buying these books. Thanks.
In
passing, some of my web-readers have had trouble with the dark pictures
below - it may be your browser, I know they are dark but, hey, the most
important things are unseen, n'est-ce pas? What!? Wwhat do we have the
presumption to know!
Here is the Tao-te Ching (Daode Jing) Ch. 71 on knowledge. This is from my Treasuries of the Tao e-book (see Tao Booklets),
with commentaries by both Wangbi and Heshang Gong. My summary follows
at the end of the chapter. Yes, folks, it stresses the unreliability of
thinking that we know! And it describes the font of all knowledge -
the 'speechless realm'. I think it can also be called 'primary
processing' in Gestalt Therapy. We might also say a 'hunch' -
intuition, perhaps?
Have a nice day (!).
71. The Trouble in Knowing
To know that you do not know is best; not to know and to think you know means trouble.
If one can only take trouble over trouble, he is untroubled.
The sage is untroubled, because he takes trouble over trouble. Therefore he is untroubled.
To know that you do not know is best;
To know the Way means you do not know. This is to display the highest virtue.
Not to know and to think you know means trouble.
Not to know the Way means you think you know. This is the kind of virtue that means trouble.
Courtier Wangbi says: Not to know the unreliability of thinking you know, means trouble.
If one can only take trouble over trouble, he is untroubled.
If you can only take the trouble to be sensitive over others having the
trouble of this knowledge forced upon them, you are untroubled.
The sage is untroubled, because he takes trouble over trouble.
The sage escapes the trouble of this forced knowledge, because he is always sensitive to others having this trouble.
Therefore he is untroubled.
Because of this, he is not like other people. He is untroubled. The
sage holds an inner understanding within his heart. He justifies it
through not knowing he knows. He wants to imbue all under Heaven with
the qualities of the uncarved block - substance and simplicity, loyalty
and truth. Then each one may protect the purity of their inner nature.
Small people do not understand the significance of the Way. They apply
themselves frantically using a forced knowledge, struggling to make it
evident, damaging their mental vision, eroding their lives, as their
years ebb away.
Truly,
as Laozi states, when you know the Way, it is as if you did not know
the Way. There is an alchemical saying concerning the transformation of
the energy (qi) and essences (jing) into spirit: 'the spiritual which
shows as the unspiritual is the most spiritual'.Laozi says: Those who
know do not say, those who say do not know. And Laozi also states 'Great
wisdom seems stupid.'
- If
you do not know - but are under the illusion you do - this causes
trouble. This is 'the trouble in knowing'. The previous chapter (70) The Difficulty in Understanding
states: 'My words have a direct cause, my actions have a master.' Both
chapters outline Laozi's total engagement with the speechless realm from
which all words and actions derive. If you do not understand this, you
are only thinking about the Way! Feng Giafu said: 'What you are
thinking, that is just not it!' Wangbi identifies this chapter as
concerned with the 'unreliability of thinking that we know'. This is the
whole cause of the 'ills' of mankind. The character for 'trouble'
(bing) means more specifically 'sickness' or 'disease'.
Tue 27th Dec
The shortest day gone, the world on the pivot. Here is a photo of a Quantock walk yestereday at dusk.
Editing the Yijing:Casting the Oracle video, at the moment. Soon be up here. 
The second picture is wall, tree, door, sky
- and then two pictures, one of St.Michael's hill at sunset, behind
where we live and its18th-Century tower. Then some crystals on Ham
Hill, and view of Triagulation Point on Will's Neck, in Somerset. The
crystal formations, embedded leaf and assorted natural stuffs were in
Ham-Hill quarry. Truely a mine of images , enjoy them!
Pictures are worth a thousand words! All I hope is that these might depict li - principle. The organic patterning, both within our hearts and within the natural world. 
A Hexagram is such a paltry thing - but it says it all - in its own way.
