theWheel

theOwl

My teacher Sifu John Bright-Fey –

(Update – 6.20.08 – I want to say a lot more about wu su and Sifu Bright-Fey’s New Forest style, but haven’t known where to start or how to break the ice.

This is a good place.)

theOwl

A quote from pages 21-22 of Douchan Gersi’s Faces in the Smoke (with my emphasis)-

“Our culture filters the information we receive and ultimately determines our perception of the world around us. Like a lens, it brings some aspects of the world into sharp focus, while blurring its other aspects. If we change cultures, we change the way in which we perceive the world. We then live in a different world, where different interactions become possible. What is impossible for us remains impossible as long as we live in the cultural world that formed our perceptions. Thus each culture creates its own limitations and its own limitless possibilities.”

theOwl

There is something fundamental about eye contact. We construct our universes through a process of “I know you know I know you know…”

Po a baby gets off on “Peekaboo” because peekaboo is the baby’s introduction to “I know you know I know” – at the moment the baby makes eye contact he/she knows that his mother knows where he is and also that she knows he knows she knows where he is.

This is magic.

Tonight when I was tucking my youngest child into bed I flipped her momma quilt so it billowed over her and covered her face and playfully played peekaboo with her as we did when she was a baby. It still worked. Something still happens among non-babies that, though less novel, is just as powerful as ever.

Infant metaphysics.

Today I went to see the Dalai Lama at our local basketball arena. This is one of the things I like about Ann Arbor. When the Pope comes to America, he sets up shop in Washington and New York. The Dalai Lama spends a few days in my home town… » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

What is compassion?

A dog walks across the road. It is struck by a car and lies in the gutter broken, in pain. Compassion is what we feel for that dog. We wish to relieve it’s suffering.

On page 65 of The Joy of Living and Dying in Peace the Dalai Lama writes: … » Read the rest of this entry «

by theOwl

Last August 29th, I was at work driving a bus and thinking about my New Forest Qigong. I had never felt that I had adequately grokked “9 Shine”, an element in the Yin Fu Ching form, and I had the feeling that I had found an insight. When Stevie Wonder performs at the piano he often waves his head from side to side, clearly possessed by the music. On occasion, I have seen impersonators seize upon this mannerism to say “Stevie Wonder” clearer than words.

And Stevie shines. I was thinking that what Stevie does is 9 Shine. » Read the rest of this entry «