Tai Chi Chuan – Desire Gets In Your Way

Tai Chi Chuan –  Desire Gets In Your Way

It’s a curious problem, the problem of desire.  Desire can motive and propel.  So it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But desire can also blind and twist perception.

If you are full of desire, the world does you.

If you are empty of desire, you do the world.

Let’s consider…

If you are full of desire, you need to manipulate and massage the world so that it will bend to your will.  But that implies that you are being controlled by this world.  It will do as it will with you as you bend and twist in order to get that world to comply.  So in a very real sense, it will control you because you are in a relationship where it has what you want.  If you get what you want easily, you move on.  If not, you work all the harder to find a way into the world to get what you want.  The world is the cat; you are the mouse.   Ultimately, it has control over your situation and your actions. You need to comply with its demands in order to get what you want.  The world does you. 

If you lack desire, you do the world.  That is, you are free to match the demands of living without expectation or any manipulation.  If you don’t want anything from it, it has no control over you.  You are the cat; the world is the mouse.  So you are free to interact in a playful way devoid of manipulation.  Opportunity will present itself and you can take it or leave it.  You do the world.  

I think to suggest to have no desire creates a false image in the American mind.  It seems as if you have rolled over and died.  We are that attached to desire, getting ahead, being successful, being on top, the winner, the rich one, the respected one, the knowledgeable one and so forth.  All that is fine but it can often be at the expense of real freedom.  It’s like being trapped in a elaborate labyrinth that has few paths to freedom.  As you face the wall/obstacle, your sense of entrapment increases and so does your desire.  All of this works against you. 

There is a fine difference between doing your best and trying too hard.   If your desire becomes struggle, it may work against you.  Yes, this is hard to measure.  A little struggle may be a good thing.  Or it may not. It’s up to you to decide if this is helping or hurting.

In tai chi, we are working at NOT struggling, not making an effort.  Yet to get this, we need to make a tremendous effort and work very hard to create that possibility.  But here is the difference: Are you caught up in struggle, or are you playing with possibility?  Are you working too hard, or are you hard at work?

To claim our tai chi space, we want to do less and less so that more and more is the result.  I recently heard an Italian phrase which captures a similar goal as tai chi:  Make Simple the Difficult.

Desire can blind you and lock you in.  In tai chi, we want to see and be free and flexible, responsive and agile.

In tai chi push hands, I let you go where you want to go.  The attacker (the one with desire) defeats himself.  If you run too slowly, you never get there.  If you run too fast, you trip and fall or exhaust yourself.

To digress: Is the glass half empty? Or half full?

In tai chi, the glass is empty so that the chi can fill and manifest and let the body do what it needs to do in any situation.  It reflects the need of the moment, not the desire of the moment.  It is all about the OTHER, not ME.  You become that clean dish waiting to serve and fulfill its function. 

In other words, your attachment or desire to make a statement about who you are to the world dissolves and goes away. All that ME stuff.  Here, it just doesn’t help. This can be the work of a lifetime if you take it seriously. (Denying all that ME stuff is just more ME stuff!)

With tai chi, we are better able to connect to and integrate with the demands of the outer world, and we become happier.  Everything is useful to a tai chi player, it’s all good!  Our goal is to take it all in.  Resistance to what is, is futile. 

Compare questions 1 and 2:

1. Why is this in my way?  How can I get away from this obstacle? 

2.  How can I use this to my advantage?  What is required?

Which one is more helpful?

That’s one reason we practice push hands.  In push hands, the outside world initially is our opponent (friction, irritation, anger, the other, something to defeat, fear, an “it”), but ultimately the outside world becomes your friend (helpful, full of opportunity, instructive, playful, connection, “us”). 

It’s the same world, but you have changed….