Spring 2015 Newsletter
(May 2015)
Dear Living Tao Friends:
Happy Spring to you ALL! It’s been too many months since my Autumn 2014 letter to you. So much has happened, and I count my blessings to have continued to be creatively engaged with life’s many offerings. It is with gratitude that I recount these wonderful events of sharing, learning, and travel.
Last October was another kindred gathering in Sedona, Arizona with David Darling and an overdue reunion with singer Susan Osborn and her artist husband David Densmore. It was a small gathering there, but the music and Tai Ji dancing we shared was heartwarming and joyfully appreciated by all.
Next, it was back to Esalen Institute for my annual Thanksgiving teacher-in-residency, followed by the “Creative Tai Ji” seminar and the weekend seminar with Amory Lovins on “Personal and Global Ecology”.
Christmas Holidays were spent with family: daughters, grand children, my sister Yuliang and brother-in-law Donald and their children and grand son. Luckily we are all living near enough to make Portland, Oregon the central place to come together.
Celebrating our 50th anniversary, my wife, Suzanne, and I journeyed to Vietnam and Cambodia, a first for us, then on to Australia and New Zealand. The experience was powerful and fascinating, with so much to learn and absorb still.
Arriving in Melbourne, we visited our niece Pauline Watson, the daughter of my half-sister, Villein. After the wartime separation, and two different mothers, we were not close with few opportunities to connect. Our hope is find ways to come together again in the near future. Alas, too many “must dos” in such short life. My nightly prayer is, “Grant me few more incarnations please!”
This was Suzanne’s first visit to Australia, and my second. In 1980 I danced in front of the Sydney Opera House at the harbor. Alice Spring is no longer the outback, now fully altered to welcome tourists. But, Uluru, the Ayer Rock in the middle of the country—in spite of the tourists—was magnificent. We could still feel the spirit of the Aborigines and was fascinated with their Art – same for the Maoris in New Zealand. It was the stunning natural scenic beauty of Australia, and especially New Zealand, which was truly memorable for us.
On our way back, we stopped over in Honolulu to help celebrate dancer Jean Erdman’s (Mrs. Joseph Campbell) 99th birthday. Jean learned Tai Ji with me on her 80th birthday and has been practicing ever since. She is vague on short-term memories, but her physical mobility is still amazing. Amongst the Hawaiian Erdman clan, Jean’s many students and former Dance Company members, the Joseph Campbell Foundation folks, and Living Tao friends, we are now joining forces to plan for Jean’s 100th-year birthday celebration during the first weekend of February, around the Chinese Lunar New Year in 2016. It will be quite an event in Honolulu. So, just in case you happen to travel that way, plan on to be part of this special ALOHA Dance in Honolulu next Chinese New Year.
Following Honolulu, I went directly to Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, for their perennial seminar, which began more than a dozen years ago. I feel honored by the genuine interest of the students who formed the “Wonder Collective” to organize and fund this annual 3-day weekend. I could feel the impact of Living Tao Tai Ji philosophy influencing their body, mind and spirit in the most positive ways. We have had several students from Evergreen participate in our River House summer courses, and in Lan Ting Institute in China. We need and must continue to cultivate and absorb younger generations to join our ongoing studies. The exchanges are beginning to happen more frequently with your moral support and several members’ financial contribution. Keep on coming with your support, please. Thank you!
Directly from Evergreen College weekend, I joined in the second Heritage Seminar at the River House with guest teacher Deng Ming-Dao, assisted by my younger sister Weng Liang, introducing the Ba Ji Quan legacy from “Mama” Huang. As an important supplement to our Living Tao core curriculum, this new immersion study with Martial Arts discipline has proven to be ever challenging, and most enriching. We plan to continue this annual Heritage seminar for two more years, learning 2 sets of movement motifs each year, to complete the Eight Trigrams of the I Ching.
Now, in the Chinese New Year of Wood Yaang (sheep/goat/lamb), I am writing this newsletter in London, having just completely the annual Easter Week in Winterthur, Switzerland. While in London, I am meeting with my Singing Dragon publisher Jessica Kingsley, to continue brainstorming on future book projects—soon to be revealed to you.
Now, back in Urbana to welcome many coming for our annual Spring seminar on the University of Illinois campus, another annual tradition in the Midwest. Right after that, a group will meet in China for another Lan Ting Study trip there. This year we include the Shanxi Province to visit Wu Tai Shan and other historic and cultural relics before settling at our own base in Wu Yi Mountain. Wish you could all join us there.
From these many enriching teaching experiences there are several observations and experiences that I’d like to share with all of you. In each seminar we were all astonished to realize how much we had covered—almost overwhelming, to be able to fully digest and assimilate properly. My advice to you, also to myself, is to let go all that is not totally resolved and purified inside. Release and empty anything that is half-baked and not quite, totally integrated into our personal learning to call our own. Suddenly, “Less is always more” becomes the “loud and clear” wisdom we had hoped for.
It is clear how all that accumulated learning does crystalize into “Pure Gold” as we collect the gems, the “JING”, into our very Center–physically, emotionally and intellectually–all the way, both ways, up and down our Seven Chakras of the spiral “Kundalini”; patterning the Up-Middle-Lower “I Ching Trigram”; the Yin/Yang recycling of CHI flow, circulating the 3 levels within our dantian. For a few brief moments, the synthesis of “Jing-Chi-Shen” becomes One Wholeness in our suddenly enlightened “Satori” awareness of being.
Another powerful “re-learning” to keep in mind is the dance of the Zen poem of “The Monkey and the Moon”. Learning again and again to release often in order to take in and gather the good, and not let things become deadly stale by our stubborn “Monkey Mind” of holding on and resisting change-transformation and the inevitable metamorphosis.
We still have the rest of the year of the Wood/Wind “Yaang-Sheep/Lamb/Goat” learning, “Threading Safely on Uncertain Ground”, to find Balance and Centering in our daily lives.
And lastly, I wish to take a moment to remember Claudia Legler. Another of life’s constant change and transformation that we learn to dance to is losing our elders. This year, Claudia Legler who had been a faithful Living Tao friend since she joined us in early Murren, Vevey seminars in Switzerland passed away peacefully at her home in Portugal. Shortly before her passing, I was able to exchange a long phone conversation with her, reminiscing on so many fond memories of her Tai Ji journeys with us throughout the years. We will miss her in person, but her spirit will join all our Living Tao tutus in Celestial Heaven…
For now, enjoy the Spring and keep on dancing with CHI-fullness,
Chungliang