Virtue/power is
not an active process that imposes but a passive one that permits.
(Ray Grigg)
Power to use
Te is a power that you can use but cannot keep. It is not something that
adds to you.
It is not like body building where lifting weights will lead to larger
muscles.
Te works in a very different way. By letting things go their natural way, we
can use power.
But we do not have/own the power.
Consider: a person swings a punch at you and you block it.
The incoming kinetic energy is lost and the impact is jarring.
Having blocked, either person is now free to make the next move.
By contrast, if you move out of the way of the punch, either by stepping or
within your stance, the kinetic force is not impeded.
If you make sympathetic contact, softly meeting the incoming force and
gently re-direct it - along the path it is already taking - there is no
block, no stopping, no jarring.
You can in fact neutralise the punch with no more effort than it takes to
press a key on a keyboard.
To neutralise the punch you employed
yielding and 4 ounces of
pressure.
But you personally have demonstrated no power.
You have used the physics of the situation to your advantage.
Hence, you have not built/developed/accomplished anything - you have simply
accorded yourself appropriately with what was happening.
This is 'te'.
Wu wei
A bird uses the currents in the air. A sea creature rides
the currents of the ocean.
By
according themselves
with what is happening they move more quickly and easily.
Not using te is akin to swimming against the current. It is
tiring and energetically uneconomical.
The wise person does not force anything, they borrow strength
from the event and move with ease.
Using strength
This zen story perfectly expresses te.
Kung Yi-tsu was famous for his strength.
King Hsuan of Chou went to call on him with full ceremony,
but when he got there, he found that Kung was a weakling.
The king asked, "How strong are you?"
Kung replied, "I can break the waist of a spring insect,
I can bear the wing of an autumn cicada."
The king flushed and said,
"I'm strong enough to tear apart rhinoceros hide and drag nine oxen by the tail
- yet I still lament my weakness.
How can it be that you are so famous for strength?"
Kung replied, "My fame is not for having such strength,
it is for being able to use such strength."
(Zen story/David Schiller)
Kung's final statement is a very succinct insight into te.
There is a subtle but significant difference between the two qualities he
mentions: having and using are not the same thing.
The Wang treatise from the
tai chi classics asks how a weak old man
can defeat younger attackers.
Wang indicates that it cannot be due to strength and speed.
How is this feat accomplished? Te.
No te
It is extremely common for beginners to demonstrate no
understanding of te at all.
The most obvious fault is
forcing.
Rather than let the
reeling silk undulation wave do the work,
the student uses
brute force.
This may be fine in an external class, but in tai chi it is
clumsy.
Only an inexperienced
tai chi person uses
strength
rather than
jing.
Jing is akin to the ocean tossing a
boulder. The water uses no strength. It just undulates.
The kinetic motion does all the work. This is te.
Page created 26 December 1998