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Quiescence and Vigilance in Tai Chi Chuan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Ram
Ram*
Affiliation:
Champtercier, France

Extract

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Delicately and with a voluptuous spiral movement the leaf from the tall beech tree detached itself from its branch and landed on the flaming bed made by its companions.

That autumn, that morning, while I was observing this unique event, I began to reflect on the emotion I felt in its probably universal connotation. Like aesthetic feeling, a great many concepts affect living beings in the deepest part of themselves, and come from the depths of the cognitive processes, those determinants that are innate dispositions to feel and know. Those depths have a reality and a meta-historical, infra- and extra-verbal dimension.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 50 , Issue 4: From East to West - Civilizations in a Looking-Glass: 50 Years, 1952-2002 , November 2003 , pp. 33 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2003

References

Notes

1. Particularly during late Buddhism and the Shivaism of Kashmir. On late Buddhism, see especially: T. Stcherbatsky, La Théorie de la connaissance et la logique chez les bouddhistes tardifs, Paris, Annales du Musée Guimet, no. 36, Paul Geuthner, 1926; Lilian Silburn, Instant et cause, essai sur le discontinu dans la pensée philosophique de l'Inde, Paris, Jean Vrin, republished by De Boccard, 1989; Aux sources du bouddhisme, texts translated and presented under the direction of Lilian Silburn, Paris, Fayard (republished 1997). On Kashmiri Shivaism the translations with commentaries by Lilian Silburn and André Padoux are a priceless treasure; among others see the Spanda Karika, Siva sutra, Vathulanatha sutra, Tantra Loka, etc. These texts are published by the Institut de la Civilisation Indienne, Collège de France, De Boccard.

2. Especially in Dharmakirti and Dignaga, see T. Stcherbatsky, 1926, op. cit.

3. In the 1970s, when I met the Chinese expert who became my teacher, there was only a tiny number of teachers of the art in Paris. It was in the 1960s that a wave of publications on the discipline started to come out in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US and then Europe.

4. For a classic presentation of Tai Chi Chuan, see in particular: Catherine Despeux, Taiji Quan, art martial, technique de longue vie, Paris, Guy Trédaniel, 1981; Jean Gortais, Taiji Quan. L'Enseignement de Li Guanghua, la tradition de l’école Yang, Paris (1st edn) 1981, (republished) Le Courrier du Livre 2002. See also T. Dufresne and J. Nguyen, Taiji Quan, art martial de la famille Chen, Paris, Budostore, 1997; this book lays particular emphasis on the role of the Chen family in transmitting Tai Chi Chuan and offers an almost entirely martial view of the art. See also Kristofer Schipper, Le Corps taoïste, Paris, Fayard, 1982; in this book the author, who is a brilliant sinologue, states that only the practice of Tai Chi Chuan is capable of giving a living experience of Tao.

5. Especially in the style carrying on what Mr Yang Chen Fu handed down.

6. From the Greek kinesis ‘movement and aisthêsis ‘sensation’; designates the inner sensations of the movement of the parts of the body.

7. Refers to the sensitivity whose stimuli arise from the organism itself, particularly the deep organs.

8. On this whole topic see Ram, L'Envol de la grue. Approche des processus cognitifs et de la gestion du mouvement à travers le Taiji Quan et certaines traditions d'Asie, Méolans-Revel, Désiris, 2000.

9. See J. Gortais, 1981/2002, op. cit. In the 1970s Mr Li Guang Hua was invited to set up and teach Tai Chi Chuan classes within the School of Psychomotor Medicine at the Salpétrière Hospital, Paris. He retained this position for several years alongside the private classes he gave.

10. In this connection see Catherine Despeux, 1981 op. cit., and T. Dufresne and Nguyen, 1997, op. cit.

11. Proprioceptive sensitivity corresponds to the stimulation of muscles, bones or joints.

12. Mr Yang Chen Fu.

13. Jean Gortais, 1981/2002, op. cit., p. 78.

14. In cognitive psychology this expresses the intensification of the capacity of one or several functions and the sense flows that proceed from it.

15. Tao-tö King, 16.