11 July 2008

The Yin and Yang of Waking and Sleeping:

All creatures above a certain phylogenetic level sleep. This means that once the nervous system develops a brain and reaches a certain level of complexity, it shows the obvious yin/yang of wakefulness and sleep. I'm interested in this from a Daoist point of view, as Daoist theory, which presaged binary theory, can apply directly to our state of consciousness. I'll call sleeping yin and waking yang, because from a Daoist point of view the former is quiet and dark and the latter is loud and bright. This same concept applies to the rational versus the intuitive mind, as well as the left and right sides of the brain.

One of my students has had a long-term sleep problem. She has tried pharmaceutical sleep aids, aromatherapy, craniosacral therapy, massage, exercise, professional talk therapy, anti-depressants, white noise machines and more-pretty much exhausting the gamut. Today we discussed the idea that her yang, conscious, waking mind was somehow intruding on her yin, quiet sleeping mind and rousing her repeatedly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.

I suggested that she might try to address what's bothering her. She said there was nothing in her conscious mind that seemed an issue. I asked about her career, her family, marriage, health, finances-in short all the usual suspects. She replied that although no life was ever perfect, she did not feel she had any big, pressing problems. From a Daoist, or tai chi perspective it sounded as if her yin and yang were not in balance, that something that belonged on the yang side (wakefulness) had migrated over. The obvious question was how to get those two halves/sides back in equilibrium.

In the traditional tai chi world we often discuss the concept of wuji, which is a Chinese philosophical term that strictly speaking means emptiness pregnant with infinite possibility, but in a more nuts-and-bolts way means keeping your balance. Tai chi practice specializes in developing this balance on a physical level, while our Daoist meditations help on a mental/emotional side; in a sense they are analogues. I suggested she slow her physical practice down to focus on the meditative side of things (we can get a bit carried away with swords and halberds and spears in my little corner of South Florida) and create a bit more discipline around daily meditation practice. More on this as we see how increasing meditation time helps her sleep.

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7 July 2008

Demise of the Book

Rumors of the demise of the book remain exaggerated, but they are less exaggerated than they used to be. Publisher's Weekly 27 June 2008 piece about the disappearance of newspaper book reviews has really got me thinking about a whole spate of issues from the lack of quiet in our culture to the speed of life-and its attendant stresses-to the short attention spans common tasks now favor, and finally to the question of what it all means and where we're going.

http://www.publishersweekly.com
/article/CA6573670.html?nid=2286
&source=title&rid=1308854323&

Am I merely the novelist who mourns the slow passing of his chosen art form? I think I am, but I don't think it stops there. I wonder if Mark Twain had been deprived of the opportunity for wandering down a country lane with a piece of grass sticking out of his mouth, he would have been able to create characters who did. No quiet time in the country, I say, no Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Would today's Twain instead spend his time in linked Internet videogame shooting championships, and then put it all aside at night to create, on paper and between hard covers, superhero assassins working for secret government factions, completing intimate relations with their boyfriends and girlfriends all in the span of three minutes before rushing on to save the world from their evil counterparts? No, I don't think he would, because he wouldn't be taking the time to write-at least he wouldn't take the time to write a book. The primacy given newsbytes and on-line short content-including blogs like this one-herald not only the slow death of the book, but a retreat from contemplation and the resultant profound thinking.

As we speed up, I can't help but thinking we are buzzing like bees around a damaged hive. Anyone who has read my books knows that I am a fan of Deep Ecology, the model of the Earth as organism and human beings as a part of that organism that has run amok and needs to be put in check for the good of the whole. I believe we still have the power to turn things around in terms of how we treat each other and the environment, but speeding up every experience to the point that we are desensitized by all nature's messages including our own leaves me feeling we are in a downhill slide from which we cannot recover. To counter this fatal trend, we must make deliberate efforts to cultivate our minds and our senses, to slow down and smell the roses, to consider values and priorities actively and personally. We must transcend accepted views of who and what we are, and reverse course and change direction in accordance with wise models not based on self-gratification, consumption, and emotional numbness. We must make time for meditation and meditative practices, and we must consider carefully the thoughts and feelings of others, particularly those put forward with industry and care. There is no better way to accomplish the latter goal than to read, or write, a good book.

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20 June 2008

The Broad View

Time magazine’s 23 June issue bears an article that caught my attention. Crazy for Gold by Hannah Beach in Weifang discusses China’s desire to erase its “historic humiliation by colonial powers” by dominating in the upcoming Olympic Games. The article goes on to list the other ways in which China is no longer the “sick man of Asia” but a country of superlatives boasting the largest dam, the most urban areas with a population of more than 1 million, and the most-wired nation on earth.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/
0,9171,1813961,00.html

I could not help thinking that the perception of China's rise from "sick man of Asia" status to world superpower is taken through a very narrow lens. China was arguably the world's most magnificent culture for a period of several thousand years. Future historians will probably consider the last three or four dicey centuries nothing more than a blip on a radar picture of greatness.

The piece also repeatedly mentions the “common Chinese misperception that their bodies are not suited to athletics”. Tell it to the Kung Fu community! The Chinese martial artists I know have a healthy respect for their own physical competence, and for good reason. The phenomenon of a poor self-image is, to my mind, the result of governmental propaganda and policy rather than a true representation of the Chinese character, which is both strong and tough. I’ll never forget being passed by a 91 year old woman carrying a yoke bearing tin pails full of bricks as I attempted the narrow, dangerous climb up the back of Wudang mountain…

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13 June 2008

And End to Dodging

One of my long-time students experienced a breakthrough this week. Like everything else trying to learn a deep practice, tai chi players experience sometimes-interminable plateaus followed by sharp leaps in understanding and competence. In this case, the student, a slight man with quick reflexes and strong legs, had a habit of ducking and dodging combat confrontations. I figured it was a habit acquired in his youth, as he told me he was often bullied in the schoolyard. Evading, whether by running away or by shucking and jiving, was a good survival tactic for him and one that had served him well right into middle age. Going deeper into his practice, however, required that he lose the habit.

This habit came into sharp focus for him when, out of frustration at the absence of recent gains, he asked me to put my hands on him and tell him what I sensed. It was an honest request and it deserved an honest answer. I told him that I felt that whenever I brought a particular point in his body to his attention, rather than correcting what I identified, he shied away from it. It was as if I asked him the time and he answered with a weather report. He could not simply focus on the subject at hand. I told him that he would gain solidity and strength by keeping his attention on the matter at hand rather than dodging it.

At first he replied that he was not avoiding the work, but rather was "scanning" his body. I told him he was just rationalizing his pattern of avoiding incoming force. I pointed out that the act of scanning was an intellectual one, a left-brain activity otherwise characterized as quantifying or taking stock. I pointed out that what was needed for deep body changing was a right-brain, intuitive action, feeling rather than thinking. Daoist teaching is all about getting in touch with the intuitive mind, the right side of the brain, and allowing that it knows more than the rational mind can. The intuitive mind can subconsciously process far more variables, and more quickly, than the rational mind can, which is why when we fight we don't think about what we're going to do, we just do it.

When he disciplined his attention to the various places on his body that needed to relax and managed to keep his focus on the job at hand instead of dodging away from it by changing the subject, his martial prowess increased almost immediately. I have often noticed that a person's mental rigidity shows in their body's physical rigidity. The more I test this hypothesis, and its corollary-a person's mental flexibility shows in their body-the more I find it to be true. My student, by suddenly recognizing his lifelong pattern, was almost instantly able to stop it. This is a version of instant enlightenment, and his body evidenced the change right away by becoming suddenly more solid and dense to the touch. My guess is that the face he shows to the world, the way he interacts with others and the way they respond to him, will now change. I am certain that he will present with more gravitas, that folks will listen when he speaks when they might earlier have ignored him, and take his opinion more seriously than before. I suspect that this change will be the first rotation of a rolling snowball for him, and that he will, so long as he stays on this tack, become a more powerful person with each passing day.

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9 June 2008

Blood Lust

It seems wherever I turn I find more and more bloodlust. There are TV programs glorifying the anti-insurgent campaign in Iraq, there are movies about mixed martial arts fighters, there is glorification of mobsters on television, and there are video games teaching children how to kill with virtual arsenals that would be the envy of any flesh-and-blood soldier in the world. Rolling Stone arrived today. I love the magazine. While not carrying another ad for my books, the new issue bears a cover story about the UFC cage fighting empire. Citing the hyper-athleticism of the combatants, the article describes fans at the first UFC event in 1993 as pounding on each other in the stands, and women running around with their blouses ripped. "It was Roman," says the article.

I couldn't agree more. The lust for blood is Roman. We are in the last days of the empire, and the sound of the fiddle is drowning out all pleas for sanity and reason. A national preoccupation with violence-spiking now during a recession and the absence of an but material measures for happiness and success-is killing us physically, spiritually and economically. It is a flashing neon sign pointing to our degradation and devolution. As I wrote in my last blog, the physical need for empty-hand martial arts went out with the arrival of the gun. Unless you are a policeman or a soldier don't need to be able to pummel anyone into submission, gauge their eyes, crack open their head, and even if you are in one of those professions, to relish the prospect is to suffer dehumanization on a very personal scale.

Do we have rough neighborhoods in this country? You bet we do. But those inner city jungles bristle with .40 caliber handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and more. Submission wrestling skills won't help as the lead hurtles at you. Violence is not inextricably inside us as some ineffable part of our nature. It's there, to be sure, but so are greed, gluttony, megalomania, cruelty and myriad other unpleasant traits that life in decent society requires us to suppress.

I am entranced by the beauty of Chinese martial path, and enjoy holding a sword in my hand every day and using the art as a tool for self-cultivation. That doesn't mean I like to hack people up. Critics of martial artists of my stripe say we live in a fantasy world. UFC, they say, is the real world. Not. Using an ancient art form to strengthen my mind and body, bolster my immune system and stay fit with my friends is not fantasy, it's everyday life for most of us in the shrinking "free" world. Such training involves learning the lessons of culture (like the fate of Rome) and philosophies that explain the way the world works. It is consummately practical to combat the degenerative diseases and our own negative and self-defeating tendencies. Unbridled bloodlust is the real fantasy; lust to crush an opponent the questionable appetite. The stereotype of the killer as hero is the fantasy-he only causes suffering before wasting away in solitary confinement or dying in a hail of bullets. It is a self-delusion to think we can survive such an attitude. Glorifying violence only makes us prey to nature's need to rid the planet of our species. Let's set a new standard for the hero. We are our own worst enemy, and our mind is the cage, so let's exalt those who defeat their own demons rather than beating on others.

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2 June 2008

The Yin and Yang of Kung Fu Noir

It has been only a few short weeks since I coined the term Kung Fu Noir, and already I’ve received quite a few questions and more than a little commentary on the subject. As the kungfunoir.com splash page suggests, the phrase describes my particular combination of Chinese martial arts fiction (wuxia) with the American thriller.

One friend mentioned he thought the term was too dark. He said that although some folks would not know that noir means black in French, others would be familiar with its use in describing a genre of dark detective fiction, one usually featuring a femme fatale, a cold, alienated world, and a disenfranchised and solitary gumshoe out to set things right no matter what the cost. My friend was most concerned that labeling my work darkly was inconsistent with the spiritual bent of my life and teachings and also of the work itself.

He has a point, and one that every serious, thinking martial artist must consider—the juxtaposition of self-cultivation, arguably man’s highest pursuit, with violence, certainly his lowest. Einstein is alleged to have said one cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. In other words we cannot work toward peace and prepare ourselves to fight each other. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I would like to agree but find I don’t. Like other idealistic notions it is great in theory but doesn’t fit the historical facts or human nature.

In the same way I celebrate ancient Chinese philosophy, I rue the governing of modern China. There is duality in the way I engage China, and in the way I engage my stories. Duality is part and parcel of Daoism, the very core of seeing the world as organized into the harmonious interplay of opposing forces. We recognize there is evil out there, but we send it scurrying for cover. We see the terrible things nations, leaders, and people do to each other, and we strive to improve our nature, to protect others, and to work daily for a better world. There is a tension in all this, a pull and push that for better or worse is distinctly human. The books I write emphasize the light but they don’t ignore the darkness. I feel they are spiritual and positive and optimistic while at the same time recognizing human weaknesses and foibles.

Of course the traditional martial path turned spiritual the first day someone whipped out a gun. These days the path has nothing to do with cage fighting, pressing a button to shoot a missile at the enemy, or blowing oneself up in an airplane. It is about health, not disease, about strength, not cruelty, about ethics and morality, not crass entertainment. It is a dark fact —and perhaps a sign of the final days of the empire—that a great number of guys out there want to sit back on the couch with a beer and watch two frequently untrained combatants knock each other senseless in a cage. It is a bright fact that more and more kids are turning to traditional martial arts practice—replete with history and philosophy and a clear code of conduct—and from it learning discipline and respect and a love of physical fitness.

Kung Fu Noir is a good name both because it refers directly to an established and much loved literary genre and because it describes the struggle to rise above what we have been and continue to be and become something better. Character and plot are great tools for exploring higher consciousness within the context of culture and history.

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27 May 2008

My publisher’s new ad in the May 29 issue of Rolling Stone magazine prompted a number of comments about the placement of the ad next to an article on technological means of social repression in China. Some folks commented that the article puts China in a bad light and fuels antipathy toward the Asian behemoth. They wondered whether associating my kung fu noir thrillers with an exposé on Chinese Big Brother technology might be bad for book business. Other folks felt just the opposite, saying it was perfect placement sure to spur interest in my work.

A day after the ad came out, my young son mentioned to me that he had an idea for Special Person Day at school. Every year he and his classmates study a particular individual in history or public life, learn what they can about that person, and make a presentation to the other kids in which they begin with a line such as “my name is George Washington….” This year, my son wants to do presentation about the founder of his karate system, a Chinese man who immigrated to Okinawa and founded a martial arts school there.

I find a confluence in my son’s proposal and in the placement of the ad. In both cases there is juxtaposition between the old and the new, between modern and historic, between new values and old values, between a culture long gone and an anti-culture burgeoning by the day. The truth is I mourn the repressions and holocausts of the Chinese Communist government—the history of brutality, starvation, botched social and economic planning, oligarchic greed, political witch-hunting, and utter disregard for human rights—at the same time that I am utterly entranced by the zenith of Chinese culture fifteen hundred years ago: the art, the philosophy, the social conventions, the sublime martial practices. To fully appreciate what is going on in China these days, however, requires the same sort of historical perspective that my son looks for in mining the secrets of his system’s founder.

Kung Fu Noir, this category of fiction I’ve created, features exactly this sort of contrast. The books take place in a contemporary West rife with high-tech medical science and environmental and social issues, but constantly reach back to an ancient time in which traditional attitudes and understanding took root. In that sense, either by luck or the flair of a layout artist, the ad for my work is exactly where it should be, in precisely the magazine issue that best suits it.

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18 April 2008

I just got back from a quick trip to the Southwest. I took my young son and we met up with some old friends in Tucson and did a desert tour in a Jeep and hiked in Sabino Canyon, where we found a few beautiful canyon treefrogs. Hyla arenicolor is an amazing creature that takes on the background color of its environment. The ones we saw were pale and nearly pink. We saw a few whiptails and zebratail lizards, but not the rattlesnakes we were hoping for (my son and I are big fan of snakes) because it was a bit too early in the year.

We drove north out of Tucson for Santa Fe, and the desert grew cooler and windier along the way until by the time we got to Albuquerque freezing rain was falling and Santa Fe was white with snow. We took a ride up to Taos, had a great New Mexican meal at Orlando's (love that posole) and went to the pueblo only to find it was closed to visitors.

The following day we drove up to Durango, Colorado through the mountain passes. My boy loved the snow, but the driving was dicey. We turned in at a great old downtown hotel, the General Palmer, and over last weekend I ran a two-day taijiquan workshop hosted by my student and friend, Mary Jane Ward. It was a small but serious group and we spent the first day reviewing principles and ideas. The second day we worked on the body and blade alignment in the straight sword, and then on push-hands drills. We had a good Chinese buffet lunch both days and the weather was cool and fine.

I read a couple of books on Chinese meditation during the trip, and also a novel called The One That Is Both by L.E. Maroski. Very interesting ideas done in a New Age style story that reminds me of The Celestine Prophecy and also The Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes, a book I read and enjoyed back in the 1980s and a work that was a real vanguard in the New Age movement, perhaps fully as important as Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and as relevant back then as Eckhart Tolle's work is today.

I've posted some photos of the trip. Enjoy!

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5 April 2008

I've been polishing the second installment in the Dr. Xenon Pearl martial arts novel series. In Quiet Teacher, Xenon is back for more sword-wielding adventures, but there is still quite a bit of the medical thriller in the story along with a serial killer and flashbacks to Xenon's previous lives. I finished it at the end of last year, put it aside to work on a new biography of Lao Tze. I came back to polish it after achieving the hygiene of distance. In re-reading it, I find there is more madness than ever in "Zee" and I've had to refine that madness in such a way that he can still function as a doctor. Is he crazy? I suppose any vigilante with a sword is nuts, but there is a time-and-again context to Zee's madness--specifically his memories of his past lives--that gives his actions a special flavor. I'm hoping they cause you readers out there to think hard about reality and the role of upbringing, culture, and experience in creating it.

I'm not going to reveal the special twist to the Lao Tze book, but for those of you who love Chinese history and the way my characters engaged it in both the Pearl novels and The Crocodile and the Crane, you have a real treat in store. The historical Lao Tze is said to have been the court librarian. In addition to keeping scrolls of knowledge for the king, he also is credited with The Daodeqing, one of the world's most famous philosophical works. In truth Lao Tze was the court psychic. He made such predictions as when and if a river might flood, when and if an earthquake might occur, from which direction the king's many enemies might attack first, and was consulted for crop and growing issues as well as martial strategy. He was famous for the accuracy of his predictions--indeed I'm sure he would have been beheaded or at least tossed out for getting his facts wrong--and I imagine him as one of history's most fascinating figures. I go to sleep thinking about him and wake up thinking about him and wish for nothing so much as a time machine to travel back and see him in action. I figure the only way he could do what he did was to cultivate his intuition to an extraordinary degree and quiet his judgmental, rational mind enough to hear his interior, intuitive voice. Such cultivation means a great deal of sensitivity to nature and to the subtle forces at work in the world around us every minute. I work toward that kind of sensitivity in every aspect of my life.

Maybe some day I'll get there . . . .