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Author’s note: For those that may be dropping in here, there are three preceding parts to this article: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. In each part I identify 1) one of the four things that are always true, 2) how each thing is a definition (or condition) of love, 3) universal spiritual precepts that evolve from the truth, 4) examples of how the truth may be used as a contemplation in meditation, and 5) taiji practice principles and notable wisdom related to taiji practice that emerge from each underlying truth.
The truths are universal (by definition) and, to quote Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. But the specific list, and the idea that all universal spiritual precepts, philosophical thought, and definitions of love unfold from these four truths, are mine.
To resume the list. . .
Truth #4
The last of the four things that are always true is this: we are finite beings of limited capacity living in an infinite universe. What we do not know will always be exponentially greater than what we do know.
. . . we are finite beings of limited capacity living in an infinite universe. What we do not know will always be exponentially greater than what we do know.
Imagine a balance scale. On one side is what any individual may know and is represented with a feather. On the other side is the totality of what any individual does not know and is proportionally represented by an elephant. Perhaps you are quite intelligent, relatively speaking—maybe you are DaVinci/Bach/Einstein level genius and have 10 feathers on your scale. Congratulations on that, but the elephant sitting on the other side is laughing at you.
This is in no way a pessimistic viewpoint. To the contrary it is recognition of a tremendous blessing, a celebration of being human. My nickname for this truth is “man, I feel sorry for God.” I am bored to the point of disinterest if I know the final score of a game before watching. My own monkey mind is distracting enough—if I knew the thoughts of other people sitting in a room with me I would go mad. Now imagine a divine being that knew everything—every score of every game that will ever be played, every thought of every being that ever existed, every subatomic particle interaction in every universe throughout all time. And that all-knowing divine being is stuck there, with no hope of ever discovering or experiencing anything new, for eternity. Of course you can’t begin to imagine that, for you are a finite being attempting to consider the infinite. Eternal anything sounds like it would suck big time (thank goodness for the ever changing dynamic inherent in truth #3), but to me Dante’s frozen Hell imagines being stuck for eternity, the final state of a mind/soul/being that has ceased to move—no longer learning, no longer reaching beyond itself and therefore incapable of loving.
Learning and personal growth are key to human well-being. To stop learning is to start dying. DaVinci recognized that learning is vitality, strength, and happiness: “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” That life without learning fails its purpose is the meaning of one of Socrate’s most famous sayings: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Non-Knowing as Essential to Love
The first three of the four things that are always true are, or contain, a definition of love (and hence are first principles of universal spiritual and philosophical precepts). Not-knowing, the fourth thing that is always true, is not a definition but rather an essential ingredient necessary to love, for to recognize that you do not know is to live in humility, and humility, to paraphrase Thomas Aquinas, is the foundation of all the other virtues. Love requires humility, and humility grows through love.
Universal Recognition of the Wisdom of Humility and Folly of Hubris
Humility is universally linked to wisdom and moral clarity. The greatest thinkers across the humanities and science recognized the limitation of human intellect:
No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it. -Ecclesiastes 8:17 “I am wiser than this man; for neither of us appears to know anything great, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I know that I do not know.” -Socrates, via Plato, Apology “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” -Proverbs 11:2 "To think you know when you do not is a disease.” -Dao De Jing, Ch.71 "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, 1675. "Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite." -Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963. "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt." -Bertrand Russell, The Triumph of Stupidity, 1933.
Quotes conveying the limitations of human intellect are so voluminous that it is hard to pick just a few, but that last one by Bertrand Russell seems so apropos today I had to throw it in. Indeed, I would contend that a vast proportion of the world literary canon treats hubris as a central danger of the human condition, often embodied in a major character.
Humility and Awe
Humility is not only essential for love but is also the gateway to awe. The experience of awe, in turn, exponentially magnifies humility.
Awe arises naturally when one can gaze curiously and sincerely, in awareness, and without prejudgment, ideological crutches or false certainty. Awe is the feeling of experiencing something greater than oneself that expands perception and humbles the ego. Awe is salient and motivational—a dopamine dump for sure:
And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. - William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey).
Awe is a powerful experience, at once joyous and ecstatic but also bewildering and overwhelming. Awe is a transformative moment; the perception of beauty edged with terror:
". . . For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure, and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying." - Rainer Maria Rilke, The First Elegy.
Not knowing, humility and awe; the advice of the world’s greatest scientists and sages:
"Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment." - Rumi . . . The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. - Einstein, The World As I See It).
Truth #4 in Contemplation
There is not much to incorporating truth #4 in any contemplation. One simply needs to adopt the attitude of humility, welcoming not-knowing. The Serenity Prayer is recognition of humility fostering serenity: “Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Experiencing Awe
If I were tasked with describing the feeling of sitting in meditation in a single word, it would probably be “awe.” Above I wrote “Awe arises naturally when one can gaze curiously and sincerely, in awareness, and without prejudgment, ideological crutches or false certainty.” In other words, awe arises as a matter of course when practicing sitting meditation in humility.
Don’t Control or Orchestrate Nature
For goodness’ sake stop thinking that you know what “should” happen in meditation. You do not know until you experience it, and what you experience will change over time. Trying to make things happen or ordering nature to follow your commands is the opposite of sitting in stillness—”moving your energy,” what nonsense! Do you know what, exactly, you are orchestrating and conducting by “moving qi?” And to what end? How does the tension and “noise” of this mental force advance quiescence, the goal of sitting?
Do you know that the modern new-age or pop martial culture concept of qi as a manipulable vital life force heretofore unknown to and undetectable by the world’s greatest physicists, or the idea that qi is a pre-scientific explanation of physiological phenomena (such as nerve signaling, blood flow, piezoelectric fascia tension, metabolic processes or autonomic regulation), are very different from how Wu Yuxiang, the author of the Taijiquan treatise and a mid-19th century neo-Confucian scholar, would have understood qi? To a neo-Confucian scholar, qi was not a power source or something you had or used; it was not something you moved with your mind. To Wu Yuxiang, qi was inseparable from li. Li is the inherent pattern or order of all things; qi is the medium through which that order is manifest. Li is always perfect; it can be obstructed but never corrupted. Qi, however, varies in clarity and quality. Qi must be refined so that li can appear unobstructed in thought, action, and movement. This is an entirely different understanding of qi from today’s mainstream pop culture concept of a mystical or biomechanical force. To Wu Yuxiang, to quiet your mind and emotions is to refine your qi and to allow your natural order to emerge. Forcing anything would be the opposite—it would disrupt your qi and therefore obstruct li.
Of course we can refer to the felt sense of capacity for action/movement/change as energy, and we certainly experience increasing physical and mental vitality in direct proportion to the degree in which we enter quiescence in meditation. Focusing the senses on any point on or within the body is as valid a technique as any to quiet the mind—that is provided you do not equate sensations with advancement in meditation. I have done it for 40 years.
But going deeper in meditation is not akin to advancing levels in a video game. Meditation programs that offer progressively advancing levels of “qi circulation” are monetization schemes—quite effective marketing strategies for our pop culture influenced pattern seeking minds but contrary to truth #4, humility and good sitting practice (and contrary to how the neo-Confucian author of the Taijiquan Treatise would have understood the function of qi 🙂 ).
As Grandmaster Hu Yaozhen said, when the mind is still the qi will move. You will know what that means when you experience it. You’ll also know it is not something you command with your ego.
Truth #4 and Taiji Wisdom
Beginner’s Mind
In learning taiji it has been my experience that the aphorism “the more you know the more you realize you don’t know” is absolutely true. To metaphorically compare learning taiji to exploring the ocean, the more you learn the deeper the water gets. Who has touched bottom? Learning a particular form choreography is not equivalent to learning taiji. Learning a choreographed form is maybe smelling the salt air on the drive to the ocean— letting the surf touch your toes at the most. It’s only the beginning of the beginning; a tool for which explore and discover what internal power (nei jin) is. If your instructors only teach choreography, then you have little chance of even getting to the surf zone.
Those who do learn taiji deeply always maintain a beginner’s mind—an attitude of openness and eagerness and a lack of preconceptions or belief that there is nothing left to learn. Our school motto is a famous quote from Solomon of Athens (approx. 640-560 BCE), first proffered by Dr. Paul Schupp, professor emeritus of mathematics here at the University of Illinois and a longtime taiji student who passed away a couple years ago: “I grow old, always learning.”
Beyond This Master
Every person is your teacher and every person has two things to teach you: how to do or be and how not to do or be. And it is always true that what anybody knows is immeasurably less than what they do not know. Knowing more than you does not make them a master. There is no master sitting on a cliff that will answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. There is no person with superhuman powers that defy the laws of physics. The faraway monk is not the smartest. All teachers are human.
Humility is essential to learning; a master of anything is a master of humility. If you sense your instructor seeks or expects praise or status or that all energy and activity orbits around them, my advice is to run, and not walk, away.
Actually there is only one master and one thing to master, and those are you and yourself. Everybody is different, no two bodies are identical, no two masters are the same, no two artists produce the same work. The only mastery is to ultimately make the art uniquely yours. That is truly understanding the neo-Confucian philosophy of the taiji classics—refining your qi to allow your unique li or natural pattern to emerge. (Lest there be some confusion here, everybody is the same, too, and the five steps for the generation and issuance of internal power are the exact same for everybody. Bonus points awarded for those noting that all of the four things that are always true are included in the above two brief paragraphs 🙂 .)
I have previously written my thoughts on what a “master” is and won’t repeat things here. In recognizing the relativity of the concept of mastery and that no person knows everything about anything, the oral tradition of the Chinese martial arts asserts:
Humility and Confidence
Confidence is paramount for any martial skill. However, confidence born of hubris, and overestimating oneself and underestimating one’s opponent, are ignorance and arrogance.
Real confidence is born of experience and humility. Mistakes will be made, and unexpected things will happen, but with confidence you can remain calm and know that you will ultimately be able to overcome any obstacle. That is also faith—the courage to step off of the cliff, standing serenely at the edge of terror, welcoming whatever may come with an open mind.
Summary of the Four Things That Are Always True
I don’t know, but it seems as though a list of things that are always true, if only subjectively, is worthwhile. By “always true” I mean for every person, without exception, for all time. Because they are always true they underlie every human situation.
My thesis is this:
- There are four things that are always true and they are:
- Everybody is the different;
- Everybody is the same;
- Complementary duality—our perception of reality is structured by complementary opposites whose tension constitutes the unity of the world; and
- Not knowing—as finite beings of limited capacity existing in an infinite universe, what we don’t know will always be much greater than what we do.
- Each of the four things that are always true either contains a unique definition of love or is a condition necessary for love to exist. “Any supposed truth that cannot be spoken in love and inward peace is not truth.” Burtt, E.A. The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (1955).
- Love may therefore be succinctly defined as “living in harmony with that which is always true.” Attachment born of desire for physical pleasure, biological impulse, material security or emotional dependence is quite the opposite of love.
- As definitions of love, or essential conditions for love, the four things that are always true are the first principles of all universal spiritual precepts and philosophical thought. Acceptance, inward gazing, compassion, empathy, mercy, kinship with all beings and the Golden Rule, non-attachment, non-judgement, balance and moderation, and humility and awe—all of these precepts arise in recognition of one or more of the four things that are always true, all are universal, all describe the path of love.
- All beings seek inner peace. Love is the only path to lasting contentment and inner peace. “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” (Eric Fromm, The Art of Loving). As inner peace is the purpose of sitting meditation, contemplation of the four things that are always true makes for a fine sitting meditation program.
The four things that are always true are also the first principles of, or reasons for, how taijiquan (or probably any art, for that matter) should be approached, understood, and practiced. Certainly they are critical for grasping the big picture and understanding the “why” of taijiquan’s traditional adages.
Love may therefore be succinctly defined as “living in harmony with that which is always true.”
Morality?
Morality is a human construct shaped by historical and cultural conditions, not a fixed set of timeless truths. David Hume, one of the founders of modern philosophy, famously observed that morality arises from sentiment, not reason, and that moral approval reflects human psychology and social context. The rather obvious observation that morality is dependent upon time and culture is often termed “moral relativism.”
As there is no absolute morality the concept is useful only to the culture police; Herodotus observed that “custom is the king of all” around 2500 years ago in one of the world’s first anthropological insights.
Love is the only absolute truth. There is only either living in harmony with that which is always true, or not.
Challenging my own logic
I foresee that the super-reductionists out there would try to reduce the four things that are always true even further. For arguments’ sake, one could claim that truth #4 (non-knowing) is just another way we are all the same (truth #2). Further, difference and sameness (truths 1 and 2) could be a complementary pair, and all complementary pairs are but poles of an underlying unity (truth #3). So everything reduces to the unity of yin and yang. Led Zeppelin was right, man—all are one and one is all.
But I believe that this argument would take reductionism a bit too far. For one, the statement that “all is one” is of little value to us mere mortals practicing meditation; it is doubtful anyone will experience oneness with the universe by contemplating clichés or Led Zeppelin lyrics (soberly). The flower needs to open to see the beauty of the petals; we need the four truths to define love, the path to tranquility. For this reason, I believe truth #4 (not-knowing and humility) is distinct from truth #2 (everyone is the same), as the two principles yield different and unique definitions of love. (As explained above truth #4 is actually a condition necessary for love and not a strict definition.) Last, I would contend that truth #1 and truth #2 are NOT a complementary pair. They are standalone absolute truths and are neither mutually dependent, relative nor non-absolute; the extreme of one is not the birth of the other. Because they are not a complementary pair they don’t reduce to one.
To paraphrase Einstein, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. The four things that are always true have been my attempt to do just that while offering a contemplative meditation program aimed at realizing the ultimate goal of sitting meditation, and taking the opportunities afforded to ruminate a bit about “little dao” taijiquan practice as I went along. Let me know what I have left out.