Monday Morning Tai Chi Training Tip # 359
More on Tai Chi Meditation
We have been examining meditation from the Tai Chi perspective for the last several weeks. Since most students of Tai Chi are seeking meditative exercise, let’s look one more time at this topic.
Buddhism arrived in China at the beginning of the first century AD. Around 400 AD, Ta-Mo, a Buddhist monk from India, is credited with introducing what later became know as Shaolin Kung Fu, or Zen (Chan) Buddhism, which evolved into Tai Chi Chuan. This is of course a simplification of a process that took place over hundreds of years.
There were/are at least seven types of mediation in the Zen Buddhist (Tai Chi) school. They are:
- Mediation through breathing exercises;
- Meditation by concentrating one’s mind on a single point;
- Meditation through visualization;
- Meditation through Mantrum Yoga – the reciting or intoning of incantations or mystic words;
- Meditation by absorbing one’s mind in Good Will, or devotional thoughts;
- Meditation by identifying the Mind Essence;
- Meditation through movement.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to see how Tai Chi uses all of these, some are more obvious than others. Most students and instructors separate out the meditative aspects (Qigong) from the form work. But it is my experience that the form contains all the meditative aspects. See if you can figure out how and where they are used in the form.