​Breathing with the Universe

​Process Theology and Tai Ji

Tai Ji for Kids, Prisoners, Seniors, and College Students
It's Not Just for Old People:
A Chinese Student Discovers Tai Ji
​
 by Xu Lin (徐麟)

I am from Sechuan Province.  I am twenty-one years old, studying at a university in the United States.  I am taking a Tai Ji class.  Here is the character for Tai Ji: 太极.  I'm taking the class with some fellow students, some from Africa and some from the US.   Tai Ji may seem Chinese, but it is also global.  It is one of China's gifts to the world.

I have always been curious about Tai Ji.   Growing up in China I never did it.  I wanted to do it and I was attracted to people who did it.  There seemed to be a peace inside them.  But I was too busy to be at peace.

I also like the ideas behind Tai Ji, which came from Taoism.  I liked the idea that the universe has a kind of balance and the idea that we can live in balance with the universe (宇宙).

When I see the yin-yang (阴阳) diagram, I think of balance.  Why didn't I practice Tai Ji in China?  I have said I was too busy, but I also would have felt a little embarrassed.   Most of my friends thought that only older people did it.   Young people felt that it was "old school."  Some of them might exercise for the sake of physical health, but they would not do Tai Ji.

But in the United States I see more and more people doing Tai Ji, including and maybe even especially young people; and most of them know that it is more than just a physical activity.  They do it for health both physical and psychological.  Maybe even spiritual.

I am impressed with all of these aspects of Tai Ji including the physical side.  A Tai Ji master in China says it can help with chronic diseases.  He died when he was ninety-six, living a long and healthy life.  

When I go back to China, I plan to continue to do it.  I will do it outside, where there is fresh air.  Why will I do it?  I will certainly do it for health reasons and psychological reasons.  Maybe even spiritual reasons, too.   

But I don't think of spirituality and science as being different.  Science helps us understand the universe conceptually.  Tai Ji helps us understand it bodily and psychologically; it is science through movement.   Here is the Chinese for "being connected with the universe": 天人合一.  It sounds a bit bold, but it is indeed a high ideal for all people.  Science and Tai Ji are forms of connectedness.

When I think of Tai Ji I have the yin-yang image in mind.  For me the one below is especially interesting, because there are many yin-yang images.  This makes sense to me.  There are worlds inside of worlds.  A living cell contains many worlds.  And so do we ourselves.  

Two of of our worlds are emotion and reason.  But there are worlds within these worlds.  In the world of feeling, for example, there are the worlds of love and hatred.  And in the world of reason there are the worlds of logic and empirical observations.  Worlds within worlds within worlds within worlds.  That is our universe.  

And all of these worlds -- everything -- is seeking balance.  This is a key idea in Chinese culture to find harmony (和谐) in the worlds within us and outside of us.  

It seems to me that to seek harmony is to seek wisdom.   I do Tai Ji as a way of seeking wisdom.   In this website the authors speak of seeking wisdom for daily life as poetics. 

​That is a nice word, but it can sound very academic.  Tai Ji is poetics, too.  It is lived poetics.  It is movement.  Tai Ji is seeking wisdom through dancing.  In the movement we know something.  We know who we are in the larger scheme of things.  We know 太极.
Process Theology and Tai Ji
by Jay McDaniel 

Process (Open Horizon) thinking is deeply appreciative of 太极 for the same reasons that Lin Xu has started to practice it.  

First, along with Lin Xu, we process thinkers believe that the universe is a vast and evolving network of events which seek harmony or balance.  The universe is, for us, an Adventure in which many kinds of entities -- molecules and atoms, stars and galaxies, planets and people -- exist together, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in consonance.  Let us speak of this Adventure as the Ten Thousand Things or, to use the Chinese expression, wan wu.  We humans are small but included in their unfolding dynamic.  In a Whiteheadian context, the "things" are actually events or moments of concresence.  Hence we can speak of the Ten Thousand Concrescences.  Amid their unfolding, in which new concrescences appear at every moment, there is a leaning or a tendency toward harmony: that is, toward existing together in a kind of balance.  This balance is not a static balance, like the balance of parts in a statue.  It is a dynamic balance, like the balance of an unfolding symphony.  It is like a movement, like the movement of music, like the movement of Tai Ji.  We might say that the universe itself is an activity of Tai Ji.

Second, along with Lin Xu, we process thinkers believe that each human being is a microcosm of the macrocosm.  If the macrocosm is Tal Ji, then we humans are Tai Ji, too.  We humans are movings within the Moving; dancings within the Dancing; concrescences within the Concrescing of the universe.  Like the Adventure of the universe, we seek harmony or balance.  This is our subjective aim.  Ultimately, says Whitehead, it is the aim -- the hope -- for a kind of Peace, a sense of the harmony of harmonies.

Third, along with Lin Xu, we process thinkers believe that there are many ways of knowing, many ways of understanding the Moving of the universe.  One of these modes of knowing is moving itself.  In moving we participate in the larger Moving of the universe, and we understand the larger moving with our bodies, hearts, and minds.  This understanding is not to much an understanding that comes from mental activity alone; it is instead an understanding from body to mind.  In the process perspective it makes sense to speak of learning (1) from body to mind as one kind of learning, complementary to, not contractory of, (2) learning from mind to body.  When we read books we are learning from mind to body.  When we do Tai Ji we are learning from body to mind.  The "withness of the body," to use Whitehead's phrase, is a withness of understanding.

Fourth, along with Lin Xu, we process thinkers understand science as a way of understanding the interconnectedness of things with the mind, complementary to which is Tai Ji, which is a way of understanding the interconnectedness of things with the body.  Of course science is not the only way of understanding this interconnectedness with the mind; poetry also offers us understanding.  Science focuses on those aspects of the interconnectedness which are available for mathematical analysis; poetry focuses on those aspects which are available for emotional apprehension.  Both are valuable.  But a complete understanding can be enriched by bodily understanding: by understanding the interconnectedness with the movements of our legs and arms and, of course, our hearts.

Fifth. along with Lin Xu, we process thinkers believe that spirituality, however defined, involves and requires a sense of felt connection -- of prehensive connection -- with the surrounding world.  This felt connection is a moving connection, because the surrounding world is moving.  In Tai Ji we move with the world.  It is understanding, to be sure.k But it is also prayer.  Not exactly prayer to God; but rather a praying with God.  For process thinkers the Oneness of the universe is God.  God is the Adventure of the Universe as One.  When we do Tai Ji, we are participating in this Oneness, which forever aims at harmony.  We are joining the prayer of the universe, not just with our minds, but with our bodies, too.  We become God's prayer, even if we don't believe in God.  The dancing itself is the prayer: a prayer for balance or harmony.  And in the sense of balance that we ourselves enjoy, the prayer is answered.

Sixth, we process thinkers would note that, with its bodily nature, Tai Ji is an act of experiencing the world in the mode of causal efficacy (Whitehead's phrase), and thus a way of prehending the prehensions of other realities.  Even more technically we might propose that it is a way of experiencing, and moving with, the subjective or mental poles of other actualities, thus exemplifying what Whitehead calls "hybrid prehensions."  These are physical prehensions of the mental poles of other actualities; they are ways of physically feeling what others are feeling.  Thus Tao Ji can be understood as a kind of knowing, but also a kind of empathy with the Ten Thousand Things.  Not a static empathy but a moving empathy. Empathy through dancing.

Seventh, we process thinkers want to add that the reclaiming of Tai Ji is, for Lin Xu and for others, a deeply postmodern activity.  It is "postmodern," not in the sense of rejecting all that is modern, but rather in moving beyond the "modern" and shallow assumption that there is no value in tradition.  A constructive postmodernist is someone who has the freedom to say "yes" to modernity and "yes" to tradition, weaving them together into a novel whole.  Look at Lin Xu in the photo at the top.  Look at the American students, too.  All are postmodern.  All are the hope of the future.  All are deserving of our respect, for not blindly following the teachings of modernity, and for having the courage, the brilliance, of reclaiming forgotten wisdom, in hopes for a more sustainable future.  Perhaps that reclamanation begins, not just with thinking, but with dancing with the trees and the moon and the rivers.  With moving in consonance with the movements of wan wu.  With dancing a certain kind of trust in the universe emerges, whatever you happen to believe.  This trust is an important dimension of religious faith, un-thematized but felt, providing confidence for taking a next step in life.
Open Horizons