Author Archives: Rick

The Power of Nothing

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plate_12As long as I can remember, I’ve had a passion for mindlessly gazing at horizons, skylines, and the open sky, particularly at twilight. Later in college I discovered the works of Alan Watts, who made the great wisdom traditions of the East comprehensible to the Western mind, particularly Zen, and Taoism. In the Great Way exemplified by these traditions the “nothing” is highly revered over the “something”. Space is the place. The artwork from these transformative paths features a lavish use of uncluttered space. Just gazing at these paintings, one’s mind opens and expands into something impossible to pin down with thinking.

The poetry exemplifies a stunning simplicity baffling to the Western mind. Ponder this famous haiku of Basho

“the Ancient Pond

Frog jumps in

Sound of water”

Stark simplicity. An  enigma to our modern minds, rabidly geared to gobbling  and manipulating information.

Debussy, the famous french composer said “Music is the space between the notes”

So, consider, where are the “holes”, the gaps, the spaces in your experience?

The great Sage of our age, Nisargadatta said “everything needs it’s “absence”

Could you notice the the “blanks” in your experiential flow, when the data of experience is in abeyance? This is real meditation.

Just notice the space, the absence, right where you are, between your fingers and toes, outside of you and saturating  your physical sense.

Don’t be so convinced of yourself, catch the absence.

 

 

 

Radiant Release-Radiant Reception

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The gateway to the Real is often so obvious, it’s not obvious.

Over 2000 years ago, the legendary Tao-ist Sage, Lao-tsu prescribed a simple praxis:

Release accumulation, to the point of open emptiness,  and abide in crystal clear childlike awareness.

Amazing! This self-empty, innocent, open receptivity is the Natural Fulcrum of  healing and transformation. Our very form, and all form reflects this great process. We “inspire”, and we “expire”, existentially in a lifespan, and every moment in a breath cycle.

Our “Sage”, noticing  this Universal Process, aligns and conforms to the Great Way of Tao, through her breathing, moving, even all conventional knowing and experiencing, released, surrendered back into the Unknown Depth of her very Being. She learns to forget self and world. She simply knows well enough, to give -up, and release this strangle-hold on “me”, and “my” world.

This can be strange and counter-intuitive in a culture. rabidly purposed to accumulation.

Radiant Release-Radiant Reception, consciously  enacts, sacramentally, through breath, and full-feeling, this self-emptying-opening.

In short, the most important thing to learn, is how to let go.

Breaking Through the Haze

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Be reminded as often as possible, that your life, Life itself, is unexplainable. The existence of anything at all is an astonishment, sheer mystery. The social convention of acquiring knowledge and experience, blocks this obvious fact, the unexplainable fact of anything at all. Mind stopping wonderment is disabled in pretty much all of us. The tacit assumption that absorbs each one of us is that we know what is going on in any given moment. This shuts down the Power of  New. For starts,ponder deeply, contemplate, that you don’t know. At the base of anything happening, is a Blank, that the “figuring-out mind” can’t get past.Things just “are”, everything just “is”. Appearances, and observers of appearances are just popping out of an inconceivable Space. This kind of contemplation is a gesture that leaves the conventional mind behind. Contemplation opens attention to the space, the yawning absence in which, happening, is happening. Get this, daily, as often as possible.

Original Perfection T’ai Chi

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This practice is a reflection of a universal process at the heart of our world. I recall reading that a great Zen sage, when asked what his initial impression was immediately upon experiencing “satori”, or Great Awakening, said, “embarrassment”, “for not having seen It before”. You might ponder your own inner awakening Sage. No doubt, you’ve had strings of these existential openings, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it”  Zen is like a prototype of this process of opening. Life is a process of dumbing down, fixating, in all kinds of little and big, long and short. ways, often until a threshold is reached, and “bang”, there IT is, the spectacles you are insanely seeking for, are right on your own nose. One of the greatest understandings of our modern era, is how  we incorporate past trauma, into our present experience, blocking the direct see-ing-knowing of the Real

So ,  the “spectacles ” that are “discovered” in Original Perfection Tai Chi is the “light of consciousness”, that shines equally and inescapably in every moment of experience. Reading this as words doesn’t do it. The “hit”, is a quite a game-changer. It can spawn whole new “paradigms”, personal and collective, and in the long run, is a real “childhood’s end”. That’s the “power of new”. One great spiritual teacher said that being in the awakened state, was like experiencing a continuous succession of infinities.The bad news is that our buffers to that “natural condition” of openness to the All-That-Is are pervasive, complex, and very very old. The great, great news, is that the “pointers”, the directions, and the “Great Help” back to that Original Effulgence, have never been more clear , or more available. The Great Awakening that was the opportunity and capacity of a very very small number of us, is about going viral. Original Perfection Tai Chi is a contribution to that end.                Rick Campion