In the Rose Garden, Part II

The drama between the cat and the crow is over. After their intense confrontation I try to return to Wuji. This is not easy. I try to focus on my breath but my mind is far from being cooperative. It is full of thoughts and ideas, running wild like a swollen river in spring. I grow impatient because I have to teach soon. I have a tight schedule today. But I persist, focusing on my breath. Finally my mind quiets down. I wait until a feeling moves me to sink my weight into my right leg. With the separation of weight Wuji has given way to Taiji and yet something of Wuji’s emptiness remains within me.
As I move through the form, I become aware that my moving from Wuji to Taiji, from stillness to movement, replicates the Chinese idea of how the universe was created. In the beginning there was not a void but rather emptiness. Inside the emptiness latent energy was gaining force like a volcano before its eruption. Finally the energy could no longer be contained. It exploded, a big bang, and the world separated and expanded from one into two and into ten and into ten thousand. The emptiness was Wuji and the separation into Yin and Yang was Taiji. And within the separation was emptiness and within the emptiness was separation. They had different forms but were the same like the ocean and the waves.
Then, a page turns and a different story replaces the Chinese one. It is a narrative that has strong roots in this land. While it is different from the Chinese story, it tells an astonishingly similar tale.
‘In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and empty (Wuji); and darkness was on the face of the deep. And a wind (Qi) from God moved over the surface of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness.’ He separated them into Yin and Yang, the dark being Yin and light being Yang. And later he made woman and man, also a separation into Yin and Yang. In fact the entire Biblical creation narrative is one of separation into complementary opposites.
But, in contrast to the Chinese story, the Jewish narrative ascribes God as the First Cause. He was the Prime Mover of creation. He created Dao, the emptiness of Wuji and the energy within it. He created and determined how the laws of the universe will function. While similar when describing the material universe, the Jewish and Chinese stories of creation diverge sharply with regard to its origins.
I can live with this contradiction. I am content to swim in the waters of both traditions and to let the unknowable remain that way until it is revealed. When the Messiah comes, I tell my Christian friends, I have one question: ‘Is this your first or second visit to Jerusalem?’ I have my questions but they can wait.
What I do know is this: I am aware of my past, my present and my future. I can think logically and strategically. I know I am the product of thousands of years of Jewish history. This is why I am here in this Rose Garden in this Holy City. But I am also the product of thousands of years of Chinese history. This is why I am doing Taiji in this garden. These two ancient traditions, contained within me, are parallel streams that meet here. A Chinese proverb says that all rivers eventually merge with the sea. Perhaps this is the way of all traditions; that at some point they will be subsumed within a larger truth.
Today my mind seems to have a mind of its own. I am giving it free reign and allowing it to roam where it will. On the physical plane I have moved from Wuji to Taiji and returned to Wuji, the beginning posture, completing the circle. Each time I do Taiji, it is different and yet it is the same form with the same principles.
Taiji is a spiraling circle. No point on the spiral ever returns to the same place. This is not unlike the Jewish holidays, the same but always different. There is no accounting for what might happen. Life is full of cats and crows, of worlds within worlds. It is full of God and it is full of human beings with the wisdom to create Taiji and the wherewithal to study it.
My students are arriving. It is time for another act of creation. I will try to teach them how to stand and move in the Taiji way. To begin, I will endeavor to introduce the idea of Wuji. After greeting my students I stand in front of the class. But before I begin, a student asks: ‘I was wondering, where did Taiji come from?’ ‘China,’ I say with a straight face. There is laughter. ‘I’m glad you asked that,’ I say, changing course in mid-stream, ‘I’ve been waiting to tell you the story of Zheng San-feng and the creation of Taijiquan.’
Wuji will have to wait like my stack of unanswered questions. Taiji has taught me patience.