T

It starts with texture and sound

The feeling of unglazed clay on the fingertips

As the coarse scratch of the turning lid awakens memory.

The buttery smoothness of porcelain as cups take position.

The crunch of scooping up dry jade pearls

Is followed by the first aroma. Strong, encompassing, promising.

The boiling roar of water as the bubbles reach ‘cat eye-sized’

Then, effortless water meets glassy surfaces, like a river over granite.

Leafs which have longed for the element that completes them

Finally attain wholeness.

The scent rises on wafts of steam.

Qi is made visible and it carries memories of green hillsides.

Cloud-covered mountains rise as the life of the leaf 

Tells its story and asks us to bear witness.

All the body’s sensations; all thoughts; the entirety of a moment

Crystallizes and dissolves

As tea finds tongue.

Breath follows, time starts again.

Each cup stands unique as it seeks to encapsulate creation.

Taoist Contextual Morality

 Today I’m challenging myself to tackle a topic I’ve found difficult to articulate for years.  I’m going to dive into examining morality from the standpoint of philosophical Taoism, particularly the concepts of good and evil.  Taoism suggests a wholly contextual moral evaluation unlike most moral frameworks.  I remember reading about Taoism as a teenager and immediately finding this the hardest element of the philosophy to get a grip on.  I have a much more nuanced understanding of this now and it will be little surprise that appearances aside, the concepts of good and evil in Taoism are anything but black and white.

Western morality fundamentally asks “How should I act, and why?” Further, are some acts reprehensible?  In the West this can be simplified to “how can I be good and not be evil”.    However, is evil even an important concept in Taoism?  In contrast I would argue that Taoism seeks to answer two alternative questions.   “How do we know how to act, and how do we find significance in our experience?” Taoism didn’t develop in a vacuum.  The ideas of the Confucians and Moists and later Buddhists were attempting to answer these and other moral questions, especially the first, in very set, prescriptive ways.   In some ways Taoism only articulates its answer to these questions as a response to and argument against formalised and prescriptive ways of answering.  Taoism does not have any rules, but it has many principles.  It also has some values.  All of these are intended to be taken in the context of the web of relations and events present in the moment they are being evaluated.  This separates it from any other tradition of morality I’m aware of.  Taoism places all the responsibility on the person making an action, both for the consequences of the action but also for the decision of whether that action was right to take in the first place.

In Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Jing, the character 'Shan' (善) is commonly translated as 'good,' and 'bu shan' as 'evil,' though these translations oversimplify their meaning.  Interestingly the character more normally means to be good (at something) rather than good in some moral sense.  Not good at something, bu shan, is more an interpretation from a limited perspective than a truth about the thing being perceived. So in Taoism this good and evil are in the eyes of the perceiver.  In the Zhuangzi, the author considers our goal to be being able to see the good(at something) in all things.  This capacity to find the good, to perceive value and potential in everything, is the closest thing offered to a moral good.  Being unable to see the good in something means you are likely to misuse, abuse, or squander it and thus be wasting it’s potential to contribute to the whole (the Tao) and this is the closest we get to evil.  The same can be said if one fails to see one’s own potential. Taoists intentionally avoid labeling actions as morally good or evil because doing so would imply actions have intrinsic, context-free value.  A key take away is that nothing can be judged outside of its context and nothing has any intrinsic meaning outside of its complex web of relationships.

The opposite of 'Shan,' often translated as 'evil,' more accurately signifies something lacking skill or appropriateness rather than moral evil.  To imply something is good (at something) implies something else is not good (at something) This seems to be a weak case for evil in the western sense.  Zhuangzi, especially would consider this not good (at something) a challenge for us to see what the not good is actually good for.  A virtuous person is one who sees the virtue in all things and people, neglecting none.

The character pair  ren仁/ bu ren不仁, sometimes translated as good/evil, seems to be specifically referring to institutional morality, as opposed to the capacity to have innate moral feeling.  According to the Tao Te Jing, ‘Heaven and Earth’ do not engage with this sort of good/evil, thus the Tao does not engage with it.   In contrast, all things are described as ‘straw dogs’ in the eyes of the Tao, referring to an object that is sacred for a time and then discarded when its time is past.  The Tao will care for all things, but sometimes that care can be the transformation that appears like destruction.

 We might have to ask what care means if some things are cared for by destroying them.  I think the best example might be the workings of a living body.  Every cell has goals it’s attempting to achieve in the body, and one of those goals is not becoming a cancerous cell.  The body as a system helps the cell achieve that final goal by either communicating that it should auto-destruct or by destroying the cell itself.  In this way, care could be defined as helping something achieve its innate goals, even if those goals involve its own destruction.  There is conflict when the cell changes its goals to no longer be in line with the system, and seeks to continue as a cancer cell, selfishly.  Within the system of the body, this selfishness would be ‘against the Tao’. If we zoomed out, the propensity of cells to become cancerous may be an important function necessary to maintain balance and life and so is ‘with the Tao’. In this way good and evil are defined by their context and unable to be broken down into simple rules or maxims.  Institutional morality cannot possibly be flexible enough to handle all the contexts we find ourselves in and is much too restrictive and inflexible for the purposes of the Tao.

In the world view of the Taoist, everything is always in transformation.  Good cannot remain permanently good, evil cannot remain forever evil.  Any distinction we use to characterise anything is only contextual and temporary.  Things are not ‘good’ in any meaningful way at all times and for all things, they have their time and place and never cease to change and respond.

Tao creates good and evil.  No one and nothing is beyond redemption as all things are transforming.  Taoism asks the Taoist to examine context and change and find a way to see the usefulness and virtue of all things.  Additionally, Taoism invites us to actively participate in transforming what is 'not good' into something beneficial or harmonious.

  

In Chapter 60 of the Tao Te Jing it's stated that the Tao can make harmless what we perceive as evil.  Ecological examples can clarify this point.  Take the example of ecosystems where there is an invasive species.  At first, out of balance with the environment the species will overtake its surroundings and overwhelm other species with nothing keeping it in check.  The Tao is always at work though, transforming the other species in the environment and even the invasive species itself to try to find a new balance where it is no longer a danger to the whole.  To us this may be a slow process, but the process of bringing things into the Tao of their surroundings is constant. Taoism asks for us to take active roles in supporting that ‘bringing into the Tao’.  A concrete example in Chinese folk belief is the belief that ghosts are ancestors we have not properly honored and brought into meaningful relationship with the living.  Through cultivating relationships with the deceased we gain the support of protective ancestors rather than the danger of unfulfilled ghosts.  The same is true of the living.  Bad people are so defined by their capacity to become good people, good people are defined by their ability to help that transformation.  

Rather than good or bad being opposite points, there is an endless continuum of more right or more wrong.  The Zhuangzi says this explicitly, again attacking our notion of their being a singular right action.  Instead we can look to cultivate greater awareness and relationship with our contextual environment and take more right action as a result.  Further the Zhuangzi makes the more radical claim that all parts of the whole are necessary, regardless where they fall on the continuum.  Perhaps more meaningful practically rather than metaphysically, we can assume there is a way for all things to help the whole and so we are asked not to give up on anything, or anyone, on moral grounds.  Which is not to say at all that we should not encourage its transformation, which may entail its destruction.

Largely religious moral codes have existed to manage social relations and cohesion with the assumption that normal people cannot be trusted to act properly in a way that isn’t dangerous to the social fabric and general welfare.  We are told we need rules and we come to believe we will be lost without them.  Taoists challenge this, arguing that we are atrophing our capacity to be in tune with our situation and our nature and in leaning on prescribed rules we lose our ability to cultivate our own internal compass.  Whether we agree and are willing to risk being afloat in moral uncertainty in order to develop this internal compass is a choice we are left with.

Attunement and Taoist Reflections

 I don’t remember when I first took notice of Taoism, but as long as I can remember I have found myself drawn to the poetic but inscrutable verses of the Tao Te Jing.

 Long before I knew of flow states, I was attracted to the idea of some possible universal flow one could tap into and find ease with.   I was raised in a contentious, striving culture though, and I deeply believed you had to push hard and fight for what you wanted.  The deep acceptance asked for by Taoists, receiving and welcoming all things as they come, seemed too foreign to me.  Even as I type this I know I still harbour lingering beliefs which compel me to resist and compete.  The doctrine of non-action, Wu Wei, was about as far from my cultural background and personal leanings as a philosophy could be.  But still, something seemed profoundly right in it.  

Years of exploring these ideas and observing the world around me has furthered my understanding while wearing away my initial resistance to them.  Exploring the psychology of flow states, the dynamics of systems theory and the emergent behaviours of ecology all have given me nudges in the direction of acceptance and accommodation.  

Taoism is a lived and practiced wisdom tradition, with specific practical skillsets which help us to gain understanding of the philosophy and learn how the ideas can be applied to our embodied experience.  Martial arts, qi gong, meditation, even tea drinking are vehicles of the transmission of these principles.  I love the quote attributed to Gary Player, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”  Through lucky moments of flow state I first experienced what I have come to call ‘Attunement’.  I describe Attunement as the harmonious interaction of two or more dynamic systems, with each responding naturally and enhancing the performance of one or more of those systems. What  was luck has become more consistent as I seek to recreate the conditions that offered this experience.  ‘Lo and behold’, the more I experience Attunement, the more the works of Taoist authors seem to me to be providing clues to help us cultivate this experience.  

 I believe throughout nature systems are adapting to and accommodating one another’s behaviours and needs all the time, and this is itself key to the success of life.

  As is often the case, as humans we may need to be more conscious of  processes that are likely automatic for many other living things.  This begins with developing a keen awareness of the behaviour of another dynamic system, such as another living being. If we accommodate to its changes and reactions rather than forcibly controlling or restricting its behaviour, we can with minimal force guide that other system and ourselves in the performance of a shared behaviour.  The behavior can be beneficial for one or both systems, but critically it is not contending against the natural behaviours and reactions of either system.

There are innumerable examples of this in our lives and I would propose it is an essential expression of Taoist philosophy.  Examine a conversation.  If one party is speaking over another, not listening, forcing a particular line of thought, there is no attunement and poor communication.  Likewise if someone is not engaged with listening, responding to, and flowing with the ideas and reactions of the other, they are not realising the highest expression of their interaction.  Leadership, dance, fighting, love-making all exhibit easy to grasp expressions of this principle.

  Going further from this perspective, I realised a crucial insight: attunement begins within ourselves.  Other people and dynamic environments aside, just being in touch with the dynamic processes active in ourselves and working with rather than against them can dramatically change our relationship with our own practices. 

 I found this in parkour when I stopped seeking to force myself to do particular moves but let my training arise from the interaction of my environment with my own body’s feedback.  If I want to try something, I create the conditions where my body will begin to feel curious and capable to do the movement, and wait for that moment, rather than forcing it with an act of will.

We talk about making something an extension of ourselves, especially with tools and instruments.  Attunement really goes one step further, as we become an extension of something or someone else. Riding a horse or surfing a wave both exemplify the skillful engagement of one dynamic system with another non-human or even non-living example.  Sometimes we can try to be coercive and force our way, but we will always have the greatest success when working with rather than against the other system.  The highest performances in many disciplines arise from moments of  dynamic attunement and seemingly effortless flow.  

Personally, I think I’m a novice at this particular approach to attaining flow states; states where you lose a rigid idea of self as you become fully absorbed by the task you are performing and seem to perfectly adapt to every challenge as it arises.  I have had enough experiences of it now to have a sense for how to put it into practice but ultimately many elements of attunement seem esoteric or ineffable.

  I believe attuned states, as with many other exceptional states, engage intuitive pattern recognition in the brain at a level we’re not able to consciously understand or even recognise.  This doesn’t require esoteric explanations but the experience itself feels like it should.  By trying to ‘be one’ with someone or something else we may be priming our mind to engage much more sensitive and targeted pattern recognition.  This will probably be more than we can process consciously, but we may find ourselves reacting to cues we can’t explain and reacting in ways that don’t seem to arise from our own ideas. 

 This is, I believe, a fundamentally creative state.  Attempting to adapt to the subtle signals of another system, we have opportunities for creative and divergent exploration unhindered by what are normally preconceived notions and plans. This is common to many examples of flow state, where sometimes creative solutions to problems are found on the fly while in this intense state of concentration and response.  

One possible key to this state is specifically attempting to let go of preconceived expectations and plans.  The more we approach a situation with a fixed notion of how to act the less we will be able to attune to it as it actually is.  A mantra I have used in parkour for a long time is “I have no idea what is going to happen.”  For me this is often enough to trigger heightened awareness as my brain realises it needs to pay much closer attention.  

 Some Taoist concepts seem instrumental to understanding attunement.  These three, often translated as non-doing, non-desiring, and non-knowing deserve to be unpacked.  Based on the translation work of Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall these can be better understood as:

• Wu Wei: Acting without forcing against the nature (De) of things.

•  Wu Yu:  Desiring only what is present and available rather than what is absent.

•  Wu Zhi- Knowing intuitively without resorting to fixed concepts and intellectual frameworks.

 These may be difficult to maintain all the time in full and I believe Taoists would consider such  a state enlightenment.  Still, during an act of attuned flow state this seems very reasonable.  We don’t try to force the system we are working with; dynamic systems have complex feedback loops and a small amount of input can initiate the behaviour of that system to change dramatically so the slightest influence guides the system to behave naturally, aligned with its inherent tendencies.  We don’t remain attached to any desired outcome, instead appreciating the opportunity afforded by each moment as the constantly fluctuating actions of both systems offer new possibilities to adapt to constantly.  Finally we know in an intuitive way, not seeking to engage our intellectual mind, which would pull us from the flow-state. Instead as we react from cognitively deep and uncannily sensitive pattern recognition, we experience a sense of knowing the other system(s) more akin to how we normally ‘know’ ourselves. 

I feel fresh on my journey to understand the concepts of attunement to the level of Taoist masters but even the small gains I have seen have had huge meaning in terms of the richness of my experience. 

 I invite you to question your own compulsion to control and coerce and experiment with guiding through accommodation.   Let go of some of your fixed objectives and open yourself to the opportunities arising in the moment.  May the winding words of Laozi and Zhuangzi grow meaningful for you as you find space in yourself to trust and attune.

Chinese martial arts, thoughts after 20 years

 Each person's perspective is shaped by their unique journey through life, informed by experiences both aligning with and diverging from those of their peers.  This is how we gain an understanding of any discipline or practice and how we root those disciplines in the world around us.  Martial arts are no different and how we inform and develop that discipline is a reflection of our personal journey.  

I was drawn to Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (TCMA) or kung fu because of the beauty and complexity of its movements.  Few movement arts rival the Northern Chinese styles for the sheer diversity of the movements incorporated in the practice.  This emphasis on movement complexity and diversity invites comparison to modern dance and other very broad styles of movement.   For many,  TCMA has become a danceform devoid of any combat context.  For myself, my experience in weapon based competition before TCMA gave me an early desire to see how the movements I was learning could be used under pressure in combat.  

Fighting is a form of serious play with structure and rules like any game.  The exception is when individuals seek to use violence against others but don’t want to engage in the game of fighting at all, instead using some hidden advantage or surprise to get what they want.   The world of ‘self-defense’ is attempting to prepare people for these surprise violent encounters.  In contrast, ritualised combat as we find in sports and even ‘street fights’ are games with some measure of rules and specific contexts which determine what will be effective or will not.  There is social expectation and pressure on how to act and what to do.  If someone tries to get into a street fight with you and you drop your trousers and wave your hands in the air as though you’re not in your right mind, they probably won’t want to play with you .  The context in which you are playing this game will decide what movements are favoured by the rules, the environment, or the physicality of the fighters.

  In any fighting discipline, there is a balance being found between the advantage gained by being really good at a few techniques, specialising in strategies for how to use them, and the advantage gained by doing diverse techniques the opponent is not prepared for, expecting, or experienced with.  Should I have a huge list of options that keep the opponent guessing? Or should I just master a few techniques, improve my tactics with them, and focus on getting as fast and as strong as possible.  This is not a new question and martial artists have always grappled with this.  There are hundreds of TCMA styles and they all answered these questions differently as well.  The Northern Shaolin style I have dedicated myself to chose diversity over specialisation.

Sport Combat traditionally limited the number of techniques a person could use (ie. only certain punches, kicks, or throws), simplifying that aspect of the game so that physical ability, tactics, and willpower became the clear source of success.  Creativity occasionally finds ways to challenge this formula but that is not the norm.  These games are the best way to get really good at a subset of techniques.  Boxers will be the best at using the handful of techniques allowed in boxing.  Taekwondo competitors will be the best at using their subset of kicks.  In the modern era, mixed martial arts competition typically take the limited technique subsets from these sports and add them together into larger subsets for a more complex game.  Thanks to flexible rules, movements beyond the classical sport systems (boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu, judo, k-1 kickboxing, muay thai, taekwondo, karate point fighting) do occasionally find their way into the mix. However, generally everyone has a handful of techniques taken from the styles they or their coaches have had the most experience with putting into practice in other games.  No one practices every judo throw or kickboxing attack; instead, fighters focus on moves they trust will work for them within the complexity of the game.

Few would dispute that modern MMA's repertoire of techniques continues to expand.  At some point in the near future, if you took all the moves used by all the fighters in MMA I think it will be as diverse and complex a library of movements and techniques as you typically find in TCMA.  Most traditional martial arts are mixed martial arts, involving all the types of fighting ‘games’ you might encounter.  The fact that you might kill or be killed didn’t stop these from being games in my perspective.  You  needed to be ready for whatever the other person tried to do and you had to be good enough at some of those games that you were likely to be able to outsmart or overwhelm your opponent in that way.  

Additionally, training involved the entire physical culture of preparation.  This included all the training and conditioning necessary to get the body to be able to both perform desired techniques and avoid being overwhelmed by the techniques of others.  Before modern workout methods, Kung fu styles were famous for their intense strength, flexibility, and toughness training.  Long hours in challenging positions built isometric strength, vital for strengthening tendons and ligaments.  Iron body skills, a form of conditioning to develop the body’s capacity to withstand impact, thickened bones, skin and connective tissue.  Training TCMA in a traditional way requires a lot of time spent pursuing these methods, although they may be derided for being outdated or suboptimal.  My own experience has shown these traditional techniques to be effective for all the needs of my own training.  Additionally, this sort of training prioritises moderation and longevity, with a cultural focus on being capable and strong for as many years as possible.

Along with the development of martial skills, importance was given to the development of an individual’s sense of virtue.  Especially given the ties between martial arts and the religious movements in China, a responsibility of any teacher was to imbue a sense of ethic in their students, known as Wǔdé. This is a focus of TCMA which is somewhat underappreciated or missing in modern sport styles.  Understanding how to choose the appropriate and minimal amount of force for any encounter was one key, while seeking the best and often non-violent way to protect those in danger was another.  This ethic of minimising violence has sometimes become a justification for those who do not wish to engage in fighting games at all, and has lead to TCMA moving further and further from combat efficacy over time.

Unlike most people who love fighting and competition, I love forms.  Forms, or tàolù, are central to many TCMA systems.  These are choreographed sequences done alone or in pairs.  These do not teach you how to fight and they were never intended to.  They teach you principles of movement, good mechanics of force generation, posture and footwork.  They are not sufficient for any of these skills either however.  Subjectively my body loves practicing them, and I feel great doing them.  Having choreographies passed down to me that I keep with me everywhere I go and that keep my body feeling capable and strong are a tremendous gift.  They are a storehouse of techniques, practices, and ideas influenced by all the teachers who knew the form before me.  Whether a given form is a few centuries old or a few decades old does not change this embodiment of knowledge and experience.  As a practitioner you have to trust that each teacher included the techniques they personally had the most experience with while preserving the techniques of other teachers, even when those techniques didn’t work as well for themselves.  This leads to a comprehensive library of possible techniques, combinations of techniques, and hints to the strategies for applying them.  Coding the knowledge of the system in this way makes the tradition much more resilient than memory would otherwise allow.  Also, even movements I do not find personally useful might be ideal for my students with different body types or dispositions and this prevents me from only showing those techniques I favour.

My journey as a martial artist and a teacher has been to understand all of the movements passed down to me.  I was lucky that my Sifu and the other teachers who helped me offered me a good understanding of many applications for the movements in the forms.  This was much more help than many people get learning TCMA.  For my interest this still wasn’t enough.  My goal has been to understand and feel confident in using all the movements I know.  This has led me to seek out techniques and strategies from other styles but specifically sport styles who have the most experience putting their techniques into practice.  

Often, once I have learned a key principle which enables a movement I know to work, it unlocks many other variations on the movement which are already locked away in my forms.  When I get better at other systems of wrestling, or striking, or throwing, I am much better able to make use of all that my own system has to offer.  My hope is to do much of this work so that those following after me don’t have to.  People who learn from me should get the chance to develop all of those skills and to a level that permits them to jump into competition with people who specialise in those specific games, and at least offer some challenge.  After that, they can choose to specialise and develop in the ways they personally prefer, but regardless, the mixed martial arts system of Northern Shaolin kung fu will continue to be a complete system from which someone can be based.

Most people who practice traditional martial arts and value being able to realistically put their art into practice have a difficult position in the modern culture of fighting.  The skillsets used in combat games are really good at winning those combat games.  TCMA won’t be as good at those games which favour other movements.  Modern MMA competition has decided the best skillsets are the ones used in those combat games.  Many traditional martial artists lack opportunities to engage deeply with their own combat games, which limits their ability to refine their skillsets and thus contribute to broader conversations on martial arts.  Also, even those who get good at one game, such as taiji ‘push hands’ or wing chun ‘sticky hands’ don’t play other games so that they could become well-rounded mixed martial artists.  Because people are not training this way, there are not good examples of TCMA winning fights in modern competition.  This doesn’t mean that the arts can’t be used that way, but its current practitioners haven’t done the work to do so.  Without any fighters ‘proving the system’, the techniques and principles are often disregarded as ineffective.   Often the martial artists who want to develop their skillset for competition are told they have to use other systems, and so even people who say they are doing kung fu rarely fight using the techniques of their system.  I have encountered this for years. 

 I don’t have enough people who practice what I do with whom to play the games I need to in order to get good at my movements. Instead I go and play games with people from other styles and try to beat them at their own games, which is not as good at getting me good at what I do.  I would argue some of my greatest insights come from teaching and working with my students but this is still not equal to having regular competition with practitioners at my skill level.  I’m still trying anyway and as I step into boxing/mma/kickboxing matches, I have to accept not doing as well as I would like and often losing.  Even as I continue to get better at my skillset, getting good at ring fighting and becoming proficient at managing nerves, excitement, and fear is its own challenge. 

In 20 years of training, I cannot remember a single year in which I did not gain new insights into how to better practice and apply my art.  It has provided me a relationship to my body and access to states of flow which have seen me through my hardest times.  Foremost, in games with competitors, training partners and students it has been a deep source of fun.  I hope I’ll be able to say the same in 20 more years.

12

12. 12 years since 2012. Twelve fingers I was born with—until my family and doctors, worried about my ability to fit in, had them removed. 12 years since I felt called to share my thoughts in a wider way; since I tried writing and organising them in this somewhat public forum. 12 seems to recur in significant ways as we organise our experience in the Western world. In hours and in months.

We are excellent at finding connections between entirely different aspects of our experience. We see connections and significance everywhere we look. We get lost in noticing it or we rebel and become adamant there is no significance in these synchronicities and coincidences at all. We get lost in denying significance. We forget that we are the arbiters of significance and we choose what matters as we craft the story of ourselves.

I chose ‘finding logos’, years ago, because I was enchanted by the concept of words making sense of the cosmos. Granting sense to the cosmos. The greek idea of Logos, as described by Heraclitus, seemed to be the same Tao spoken of by Laozi. Perhaps proving that it is “not something that can be forgotten or left in the marketplace” or something which must be “passed from father to son,” but instead something any of us can find. We find signs of the connective ordering principle of the universe whenever we open ourselves to noticing it. In chinese Tao or 道 dào, is a path, or perhaps more accurately ‘way-making’. In philosophy, it’s something active, that we do, and which everything does. We do not so much find our way as work with everything else to make our way. Logos is the word, it is speech and it is ‘sense-making’. The Greeks leaned on language to find reason, whereas the Chinese from the outset denied it as getting in the way, but then went on talking.

“Now I will try to say some words here about ‘this’... Now I have said something. But I do not-yet know; has what I have said really said anything? Or has it not really said anything?” Zhuangzi

Well, let’s find some words and make our way.

I haven’t lived in trees in a long time, more than for a night or two, but I know them much better now and I am finding my way to back to sleeping in their boughs.

I’m still learning languages. Fluency, like a carrot on a stick, dangles just out of reach—sometimes closer, sometimes farther and with each language pulling me in different . I have accepted my relationship with languages will always be frustrating.

I still train parkour. Though I flip less than I used to, I feel more comfortable than ever moving with confidence in the ways I have practiced. The gift of time for sure.

I still practice kung fu. In 12 years I gained students and began teaching. I left those students to find other training as I left the country, the continent, and all the communities that had helped me become who I am. I teach now again. I still learn, and I haven’t stopped being amazed at what my art reveals to me over time.

So little else about my life is the same after all this time. Not long after my last entry in 2012, I met my partner H. Some time later we decided we would leave the US and make a life for ourselves elsewhere. We got married in a ceremony only attended by siblings and our two closest friends and then we left. We set out to do relationship and marriage differently, and better, and I think we largely have. For this reason we keep our marriage mostly to ourselves, something we picked up a long the way.

We lived in several countries, trying to learn who we were and who we could be, in new environments and in a new partnership. We realised what mattered to us more and more as we went on and became better able to search those things out and cultivate them when we found them.

We settled in Scotland, feeling called to the temperate rainforests we had found in the western stretches of Ireland and the UK. The shockingly green woods reveal themselves as if from a fairy tale, daring you to deny the magic of the natural world.

We embraced a much closer relationship to the natural world than we had felt able to cultivate before. I slept in trees before, but now I cultivated relationships with them. I learned their rhythms, their stories; their friendships and rivalries. Staying still, I found myself learning all the plants and fungi in this new home. I let myself grow roots and try to see where I fit in my adopted ecosystem.

Community and human connection emerged as critical sources of meaning. H and I knew early on we were going to live in community everywhere we went and that where we couldn’t find it we would make it. We now live in a house with 8 others and we have been living this way, in intentional community for most of the past 7 years. We are working towards a vision of community in the woods, with treehouses and friends that will be the next step in our journey.

We also embraced a journey to not close the doors to the love that could come into our lives through new connections. Early in our relationship we discussed our beliefs in the value of being open to romance and love with others and I realised how much I had always felt called to romantic love with more than one person. We worked to create space in our relationship to live polyamorously and allow as much connection and love into our lives as we could respectfully and logistically hold. Years later, we are as in love with each other as ever and both have other significant others with whom we learn, love, and grow. We could not be who we are now without those people we chose to invite into our lives and the journey it has taken in order to try to do so well.

I wrote this mostly for myself, feeling a tear in the fabric that needed a patch, linking past and present. I am excited to share the λόγος I continue to find and hope you, too, can weave meaning from all this madness.

There’s so much more to say but that’s a start.

Exhale, reflections on the journey

      “The road is ready for everyone, but not everyone is ready for the road,” said Kull, a man who gave me a ride in the countryside of Western Arkansas.  These words, like so many others, coupled with the faces and names to which they are attached ricochet within the chambers of my remembrance as I look back on the past many months of my life.  So many words form and then dissolve as I try to capture some thread that I might follow to recount or at least debrief the story of my most recent adventures.  I have traveled all of my life.  I inherited traveling much as one might gain some family recipe or the list of recipients for Christmas Cards.  Like for the recipe, I was first taken through the steps as a child would normally be, watching a family member create the dish they are to become so fond of.   But, as with the child that is destined first to gain a sweet tooth, and then doubly doomed by becoming a baker, the process of  enjoying and providing myself with travel recalls the earlier memories but stands on its own feet having become an art and experience beyond the reach of my younger self.
       I have gone farther from home on almost every real trip I have ever taken before this one, but within my own perceptions and in tracing the nebulous outline which defines my self I have perhaps never gone so far.  A little more than a year ago, were I to examine my knowledge of love, of faith, of despair, of trust, and so many other gems that grant us the depth of our humanity, I would surely have found my previous experiences had well-informed and developed my awareness and understanding.  I have tried to live my life passionately and freely and I think I have lived it well for how short it has been.  I could not have guessed that I would find so much about these things in this year such that it might contend with all those before it.  I’m not going to talk about the deep ideological and political struggles I witnessed and was afloat in.  Nor do I find this the time or place to begin to craft some epic poem describing all the harrowing adventures I had as I tried to survive and thrive on  the road.  Instead, I want to let this be a deep breath after the Odyssey, where I look you in the eyes and perhaps through my words the transformation wrought by the journey is made clear.
      I covered more than 15000 miles of road this year, all of it spent with total strangers or long lost friends.  I hitchhiked on the backs of pickups and with families in their minivans.  I snuck onto buses and trains.  I slept on streets, in mansions, and in more trees than I could count.  I lived without a penny to my name for weeks sometimes, and having already exhausted all my savings for many months.  I met hobos, hillbillies, rockstars, and leaders in business and politics.  I learned that we are all the same and that also there is no common man.  Most importantly I realized that I can.  I can live a life trusting in complete strangers and the whims of fate because however we try to hide it, we all must.  I learned that no dollar is as valuable as the next stranger you have the good fortune to speak to.  There is no dark and dangerous street that someone has not had to call a home.  There is no expensive and beautiful place that cannot be made to feel like a prison.  Happiness, freedom, wealth, friendship- all these things are more internal than external.  They cannot be given if they are not ready to be received and for those who know how to really have them they can never be taken.
     I think anyone’s life can be examined from the question of how they have lived with fear.  I think our entire society is a means of mitigating our fears.  Every thing around us seeks to distance us from our fears.  For our health and sanity I’m sure there was some point to which it was necessary, but it has all run away from us now.  The world must constantly create new fears to justify itself as old fears are vanquished.  It is through our fear of change, change to our wellbeing and to our security and to our ideologies, that we allow the most disastrous changes to be wrought.  We have changed the natural world around us, our bodies, our diets, our ways of interacting and caring, and most of these changes have occurred because we were afraid.  We fear each other, our governments, nature, and ourselves.  But what if we didn‘t? 
    I’m not worried about anyone else’s answer anymore.  I don’t hold anyone’s choices against them.  This world will not be saved or ruined by anything I think.  This world will not be saved or ruined.  Making a decision does not need to mean that decision is right for anyone else.  Choosing to do something does not need to be decided based upon how likely it is to be successful. Living should not happen out of fear of dying but if anything a fear of not living.  I’m done with everything that is not living.
    The past few years of my life may outwardly have had the appearance of this shift, but trust me the decision was an internal one recently made and perhaps it needs to be remade every day.  I am not afraid to die poor and starving on some street somewhere.  I am not afraid that my life will pass without having made a difference.   I am not afraid of being forgotten.  I am not afraid of being alone or sick or successful.  I welcome all those things.  Whatever my story is destined to be I am completely at peace with.  My life will pass and will be whatever it was but I can drink every moment for what it is worth.  I don’t need a  plan, a safety net, a fallback, or anything.  Every day will bring what it needs, be it hardship or plenty.  What I need and what I have is passion.  Passion for the things I love to live my life doing and compassion for all those other things living theirs.  I will wake up every morning I can, high in a tree, greeted by the dances of leaves.  I will touch down to the earth and take off at a run, vaulting and flipping over the world we have found and created.  I will converse with others in word or in movement and share our experiences of this organic spaceship we hug to the surface of.  I will have ideas big and small.  I will not let them rule me, but I will follow them for so long as they tug upon my heart and foster my loves.  I will leave.  Not tomorrow or next month, but soon, sooner than I can sometimes bear, on adventures that have no end.  I will leave on foot and by thumb and head west until I hit ocean.  I will talk my way over sea or air until I’m on land and then continue the process repeated.  I will learn every language I can, climb trees, master my arts every day with all my strength, be hungry, be poor, be lost, be helpful, be a shoulder to cry on and a hand for the fallen, and I will be happy as I am right now no matter where I am and what is happening.   I will write books I may never publish and scribble poems I may never share,  invent moves and forget them, learn words and leave them behind.  I will tell stories and listen to others.  Nothing is as valuable to the human mind as the story, and I will be a very wealthy man.
     I don’t know if I’ll continue this blog or not, but I’ll give some thoughts.  Not advice, but these things help open doors for me all the time.  Smile and mean it.  Hug, and when you do, realize that every hug may be both of your last on this world.  Trees are better than any gym anyone can build.  Do what ever you love every day because then no matter what happens, a day will never feel wasted.  If you’re a traveler find something you love to do and don’t give it up because of the road, in fact bring it with you and hold it close.  Drink lots of water. 

Journey to the East... Coast

Hi everyone, been a little while. This will be my first blog since my tablet died and now I type on a smartphone. First of all, why did I head east? Well, originally it was the idea of friends who ended up not showing up unfortunately. Once the initial seed had been planted I gave it a lot of my own motivations. I needed to travel, and if it had not been here it would have been Mexico or Asia I imagine. I really needed to see for myself how the occupy movement was doing in the part of the country that started it, and I'll speak more on that in a bit. I also felt a need to see my own country a bit more, especially as it is in this strange age it finds itself. However what really sealed my need to come this way was that I had not seen my grandparents on this side of the country in a decade, and no matter how you cut it that is unacceptable.
The trip has been met by fairly mixed fortunes since the beginning. Catching a rideshare off of craigslist, I meet some great people, and made a very good friend with whom I rode the whole way. We were lucky that we had an amazing amount in common and got along great since four whole days is a long time to spend with a complete stranger. We both got a friend for life from the experience I feel. Unfortunately, after Oklahoma city, we could find no other riders with whom we could split gas, so the trip was much more expensive than either of us had expected. His poor van also had a dying transmission made worse by the cold. We never knew for sure each time the car stopped, how long before it would start again, or whether it would again at all. We spent those four days eating as little as we could, passing through the coldest parts of the country, trying to stay warm sleeping in a freezing car.
Getting into dc, walking past all these crazy sites I'd only seen in movies was a bit of a trip. DC has two occupations, huge encampments in the center of the nation's capital. I made my way to the larger, somewhat more chaotic original encampment, where spirits were high and a single broad leafed evergreen, stood near the heart of camp, beckoning me to hide my portable treehouse.
Cold and rainy weather coupled with dumpster salvaged or donated meals should convince all doubters as to the commitment of these demanders of social and political change. The camp has a library, a kitchen, a radical anarchist/ communist reading room, a tea house, and now bicycle powered generators.
The day we marched on congress and the other seats of power, was a tremendous and impressionable day. Speaking in front of the national General assembly about Albuquerque's name change in support of indigenous and colonized peoples was amazing and it was great to see the huge support for something that has troubled some people needlessly. I love speaking to crowds. It was so reaffirming standing with so many others who call for and believe in the the power of non violent revolution to move for a better more equal and sustainable world. I felt a part of a peaceful army. We get by in non armed military encampments of artists and philosophers. We marshal from near and far and march to symbolic landmarks where we take and hold ground. Our only powers are our numbers, our voices, and our minds. My first view of the US supreme court was as the vanguard of a liberating army, rushing our banner up the steps and past the guards as we quickly unfurled it to welcome the thousands following us. On the fence of the white house we shared stories of hardships and family members lost to unnecessary war or curable diseases while commandos and snipers kept us in their sights.
Coming down from this day I don't know what happens next. We are still too few, and the times are just comfortable enough for enough people that they don't yet question whether we could do better for ourselves, our species, and our planet. As a warrior trained to fight, I'm still learning how to make myself useful in a peaceful revolution. As communicator, deescalator, farmer, organizer, engineer, there is a lot of learning I need before I can be more useful, but I'll do my best. I do feel we have to try, whether we have a hope of change or not.
Now, voice still hoarse from chanting, limbs cold and stiff from winter outside in a tree, I look to the next step. The friends I knew have moved on. A homeless man told the police about my hammock. We're not taking the Capital back for the disenfranchised this trip. Time to move on. We'll see how long it takes to get to south Florida, and what adventures that road holds.