Hallo, I am Bin Song. I am Ru scholar, therapist and college professor. This audio is written and recorded by me to introduce you to the practice of Tai Chi and Eight-Brocade Exercise in light of the philosophy and practice of Ru Meditation.

I once described the spirit of Ru meditation as Meditation in Motion, which aims to extend the state of energy equilibrium across both static and moving forms of meditation. For doing this, I explained that breathing practice is a foundation. On the basis of this, we can start to practice meditation in its static forms such as sleeping, cross-legged quiet-sitting, quiet-sitting on a chair, and standing. After this, we add three moving forms of Ru meditation into our list: walking meditation, eight-brocade exercise, and Tai Chi (or Taiji in pinyin) martial arts.

Eight-Brocade Exercise and Tai Chi martial arts should be counted as two most popular physical exercises that were created in ancient China and are still practiced by people all over the world. They are on the must-do list in many Qi Gong clubs, and through internet, you can also find abundant instructions in both video and word forms. I include links under the video to help you find these instructions; in Maryland and the greater Washington D.C area, I would also like to find friends to teach and practice these moving forms of meditation together. Nevertheless, I would not include a point-to-point instruction on how to do these two moving forms of Ru meditation here.

However, since we are talking about Ru meditation, it would be interesting to discuss the meaning of these practices to the tradition of Ruism. Using short videos (which are embedded in the above youtube video, starts from around 10:00 ), I will also demonstrate shortly how I do these moving forms of meditation in person.

First, I need to remind you that there are three major spiritual traditions in ancient China, Ruism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and in reality, all these three traditions played a significant role in originating, documenting, and spreading varying forms of physical exercises and martial arts.

For instance, focusing on the Ruist side, I will tell you that the first person who gave the name “eight-brocade exercise” and documented its practice is called Hong Mai (1123-1202 C.E) in Southern Song dynasty. Mr. Hong Mai grew up in a Ruist family, participated in civil examination, got the highest degree, and appointed as a scholar-official for varying governmental posts. Therefore, we can discern the deep Ruist background of Hong Mai’s scholarship. Another great example is Chen Wang-ting (1600-1680), the founder of the Chen-Style Tai Chi martial arts. He passed both the martial and civilian branches of civil examination, and his practice and scholarship on Tai Chi was versed deeply in the spirit of Ruist metaphysics and ethics. On top of these two examples, let’s remember that martial arts is a very important component of civil examination, and for examinees that finally succeeded to be appointed as a military official in the army, they can be seen as the martial side of the Ru tradition, vis-à-vis the civilian side of Ruism which people today may be mostly familiar with. But some greatest Ru scholars, such as Wang Yang-ming and Zeng Guofan, were also great military leaders. And for the sake of indicating loyalty, wisdom, and courage, all Ruist virtues, to their own country and people, and for the sake of self-cultivation, physical exercises and varying martials arts are very much integral to the life of those Ruist military officials.

In a word, what I tried to convey through these examples is that Ruism, Buddhism and Daoism, seen from their own philosophies and histories, are three self-organizing, yet mutually interacting comprehensive systems. A person can broadly learn all these three traditions, form their own philosophical views, and practice martial arts with these views. Or, a person can be a very staunch advocate devoted solely to one of these three traditions, and then, embed the practice of martials arts in it. For me, I understand Ruism as a tradition of liberal arts, and advocate a version of “anchored pluralism.” In other words, I take Ruism, its philosophy, history, and practice, as a major anchor of my personal life, but simultaneously, I also try to learn broadly from other Eastern and Western, scientific and humanistic traditions, so as to enrich my own life, and enrich the Ru tradition that I am advocating.

Therefore, in the following, I will mainly show how I understand and practice these two moving forms of meditation in a Ruist manner.

What I like the eight-brocade exercise the most is its coordination of breathing with body movements. For instance, this first move is called “ Two Hands Carry the Heavens while Regulating the Three Stoves,” (两手托天理三焦) and “Three stoves” means the three major parts of our inner organs from our heart to our lower abdomen. When doing this move, our hands start from crossing each other while rising. At this moment, we inhale. When we top our hands above our heads, we look upward, and reach the limit of inhale. Then, we look forward while holding the breath for a short moment. After that, our two hands fall down from the two sides of our body; during this process, we slowly exhale until a short pause to back to our commencing posture. Look, the principle of doing this exercise is almost exactly the same as our other practices of Ru meditation. For instance, In the breathing practice, the first stage is to use a series of numbers, or a mantra to help our attention focus upon our breath. In the walking meditation, we match our steps to our breathing, and contemplate varying parts of our body’s movement while walking. Here, in the eight-brocade exercise, we coordinate our breath with our body movements which are designed to exercise varying parts of our body, and during the process, our attention needs to follow each detail of the body movements while feeling our person united as a whole with the environment. See how consistent the practice of Ru meditation is. Because of this consistency, one of my most favorite moving practices of Ru meditation is actually to combine breathing, walking and the eight-brocade exercise. So I will take a deep breath, walk for some steps, and then, do a move of the eight-brocade exercise. How wonderful the feeling is after this!

Another point I particularly like this eight-brocade exercise is that each of its movement has a title, and combined all together, these titles read as a poem, and the spirit of this poem represents very well the holistic well-being that Ru meditation aims for. For instance, the seventh title reads as “clench your fist, show angry eyes, and then, increase your vital energies and strength” (攒拳怒目增气力). According to Ruist ethics, no emotion is essentially bad, and it all depends upon whether you can have the appropriate emotion in the right measure and at the right situation, including the one of Anger. For instance, Zhu Xi once said that “Anger caused by one’s hardened temper should not exist. Anger caused by one’s moral sense should not vanish.” (《朱子语类》) Therefore, when facing obvious social injustice, our social engagement needs to be supported by a deeply non-relativistic moral sense of right and wrong. In this sense, the practice of eight-brocade exercise, especially in this seventh move, can nurture our rooted moral feelings, and prepare us for substantial social engagement while nurturing an undisrupted inner state of tranquility and self-contentedness.

Good, let’s move on to the practice of Tai Chi (or Taiji in pinyin) martial arts. What I demonstrate in the video is part of the yang-style 24 move of Tai Chi martial arts, which is also one most popular for beginning practitioners of Tai Chi. Regarding the practice of Meditation in Motion in a Ruist manner by a human individual, nothing is more exemplary than Tai Chi martial arts.

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Firstly, the harmonious unity of heart-mind, air, body and environment, which I mentioned as a goal of Ru meditation, is vividly embodied by this practice. You need to match your attention to your breath, and then, your breath to the details of each move, and furthermore, feel your intimate and solid position between heaven and earth in a very holistic worldview. In particular, similar to the eight-brocade exercise, each move of Tai Chi has a name, and by pondering the name and its embodied move, we can furthermore appreciate the connection between us and the human civilization continuous to the nature. For instance, one move is called “a white crane spreads the wing”, and another move is called “hands embrace a Zither”. How beautiful these moves are!

Secondly, each detail of each move, and their mutual connection, is all about the subtle and smooth interaction between Yin and Yang aspects of the cosmic and human vital-energies, and thus, captures the spirit of dynamic harmony and meditation in motion very well. For instance, for the starting posture, you inhale, rise your hands, that is yang; but your palms need to face inwards, and this is yin. When your hands rise to the limit, you exhale and move the hands down, which is yin. But simultaneously, you palms need to face outwards, which is another form of Yang. Also, there are many circular or half-circular movements, representing the holistic commitment in this practice. Some move is solid, like standing solidly or closing your hands, while some is thought of as vacuous such as making the hand position like holding a ball. You see, these are a number of minor movements to embody the subtle interaction between yin and yang, which is a careful unfolding of the process of dynamic harmonization.

Thirdly, despite all these subtleties and varieties, all movements actually pivot upon our lower abdomen and its related belly and back. This part of our body is like the “ultimate pole”, the original meaning of Tai Chi, around which all our movements are pivoting. Impressively, this is a distinctively Ruist idea. First, the term of Tai Chi is from the Ruist Classic of Change, and it is used to describe the ultimate creative power of the entire universe; second, one central purpose of Ru meditation is to extend the state of energy equilibrium, or the one of centrality, to both static and moving forms of human activities. That means, despite changes and vicissitudes, our life is always centered upon a principle, and the principle is simple, consistent, and adaptable to change. You see? This is another great example of Ru wisdom.

Great! I hope you can find your own ways to practice these moving forms of meditation, and take care!

References:

Hallo, my name is Bin Song. I am a Ru scholar, therapist and college professor in the disciplines of philosophy, religion and theology. This audio is written and recorded by me to guide your Ru (Confucian) meditation using the postures of standing and walking.

The posture of standing meditation is fairly straightforward, since you already know the posture of the upper body when you do quiet-sitting on a chair or cross-legged quiet-sitting. While standing, your upper body remains the same as those postures.

Standing posture is very fit for moments when you need to stand for a longer while. For instance, when you ride a bus, a train, or other vehicle, especially when the vehicle is crowded, you need a space for yourself to go through the stress created by unhappy travels. In these moments, you can simply stand straight, or lean on something, focus upon your breath, and start to do Ru meditation according to the method I told you before. Or, another instance is that, before you enter into an auditorium for public speaking, you can simply stand up straightly, take a deep breath, and start to gather all the surrounding energy for courage, composure and confidence. In a deep meditative state, you can even start to visualize your speech in front of those dedicated audience so as to prepare yourself well for the speech.

In the spiritual level, the standing posture is very fit for the description given by the Ru tradition to an upright and outstanding junzi: they are “carrying the heaven, and standing on the earth.” In the terms of the Classic of Change, a junzi would combine the virtue of heaven as they work diligently towards daily renewal and self-strengthening, and the virtue of earth as they are all-caring and nurturing towards the other living beings. So, while standing up and meditating, please feel the unique position you take between the heaven and the earth as an upright Junzi who is dedicated to daily renewal and all-encompassing universal love.

Many postures I introduced in the past can be practiced as a package. For instance, before sleeping, you can do cross-legged quiet-sitting first, and then, sleeping meditation second. And another best package of practice is that, first, you do quiet-sitting on a chair, then, you stand up for a while, and finally, you start to walk. Therefore, in the following, I will start to introduce the first moving posture of Ru meditation in this series of broadcast: that is to meditate while walking.

There are beautiful passages in the Analects that record Confucius’s saying while he was walking with his students. One of my favorites is the last verse of Chapter 10. No interpreter in the commentarial history of this verse exactly knows what happened here, including me. But I will try my best to render it in accessible English, and in my own way. It says, when Confucius was walking in a mountain, he saw several beautiful hen-pheasants. While he looked at them, those pheasants flew away, and after circling around for a while, they settled down again. At this moment, Confucius said: “The hen-pheasant on the hill bridge – How timely! How timely!” Then, Zi Lu, one of Confucius’s close students, cupped his hands to greet those pheasants. These pheasants flapped their wings for several times, and then, took to the air. And this is the end of the scenario.

The fact that this verse is located at the end of one Chapter which talks about how Confucius sleeps, sits, stands, walks, looks, expresses his face, speaks, eats, cooks, and does all other details following his sense of ritual-propriety at evolving situations of life is very telling. In the context of Ru meditation, what this seemingly very obscure verse speaks to exactly what I tried to convey in previous podcasts of Ru meditation; that is, Confucius acclaims that a continually self-cultivating junzi, like those beautiful hen-pheasants, can timely move, and timely settle, so as to extend an inner state of energy equilibrium or centrality, to both static and moving moments of human life. This is actually what the Ruist idea “ritual-propriety” 禮 is all about: a properly ritualized human deed would let involved living beings in a specific situation harmoniously and dynamically fit together.

Understood in this perspective, the simplest moving posture of Ru meditation, the one of walking while meditating, is of crucial significance. This is because, for meditation practitioners, they may have formed a bad habit of enjoying stillness, while disliking movement. For instance, whenever they close their eyes, sit quietly, and focus upon their breathing, they feel great. However, whenever they need to deal with real human issues, or simply start to move, they will feel disturbed, distracted, and cannot bundle themselves up. Because of this, a discipline of moving meditation using the same method of Ru breathing will greatly balance our sense of body kinematics, and thus, integrate our life as a dedicated and functional whole. On the other hand, professionals in today’s world are usually sitting for too long a time, and routinely straining their eyes and bodies before screens too. In this case, sitting meditation may cause further harm to their body if they cannot command an alternative approach of standing or walking meditation.

Good, enough for the philosophy part of walking meditation in the Ru tradition. Let’s move on to talk of its method. (Pause, first half)

For the practice of walking meditation, it is better to do it while your breath starts to enter its second meditative stage, the so-called stage of “following breath,” according to the method of Ru breathing I explained before. This is because in the first stage of Ru breathing, your primary focus is to use counting to concentrate your heartmind upon your breath. In this initial stage, if you simultaneously walk while counting your breath, it will add another action to your initiative of meditation, which will make it harder. However, in the second stage of following breath, your breath has become calmer, slower, and deeper, and your attention has also been easily following each part of your breathing. Like what I suggest you to contemplate your body and contemplate your environment while you follow your breath, you can start to walk as well. Because the concentrated attention can now easily encompass each detail of your body movement, through walking meditation, you can furthermore integrate your moving body, your heartmind, the air, and the environment as a harmonious unity, which is the goal of Ru meditation.

Since it is better to do walking meditation when you succeed to follow your breath, beginning practitioners may need to do quiet-sitting on a chair, or standing meditation for a while before they walk. This is the reason why I said that some postures can be practiced as a package: sitting, standing, and walking. However, for adept practitioners, they can easily focus their heartmind upon breathing and follow their breath, so it would not be an issue for them to do walking meditation at any time they want.

There are several points for the method of walking Ru meditation:

• match your slow and deep breath with your steps. This may mean a few steps for inhale, a few steps for exhale, and fewer steps for the short pause, depending upon how slow your breathing is. However, it is important to put the attention of your heartmind simultaneously upon your breath, and upon moving details of your body.
• when moving, be aware of each step of your walking. You raise one of your legs, let the heel of one foot touch the ground first, and then, do feel how the bottom of foot, and your toe, touch the ground one after another. The same goes to the other foot. While contemplating a still body requires your attention to each part of your body, the same goes to your moving body, particularly the parts of lower legs and the feet, when you are walking. So, we will do walking meditation like this: a deep inhale, slowly walk, your left heel touches the ground, your right toe starts to leave the ground, then, the sole of your left foot settles; while your right foot leaves the ground, your left toe settles too. Then, a very relaxed exhale. The smooth move of your whole body is a subtle and beautiful interaction between the yang and the yin powers of the universe and yourself. So, heels down, toes up; one knee bends, another straights out; one step forward, one breath downward. If you can succeed to put your attention upon all these moving details of your body while walking, you realize the pattern-principle, li 理, in the context of meditative walking.
• feel the solid ground! That’s the primary component of your environment you need to contemplate when you are doing walking meditation. Also, all the other components of your environment are worth contemplating. I once did walking meditation on the beach, in the forest, in the parks, in the college campus, etc. In these cases, you can encompass the ocean, the sand, the wind, the tree, the chirping bird, the twisting worms, the historical building, and all the other components of your environment into your contemplation while walking and joyfully breathing. Believe me, this will be a transformative human and cosmic experience.
• The position of your upper body will be like the one when you do quiet-sitting on a chair or the cross-legged quiet-sitting, including how your position your backbone, chest, head, eyes, and tongue. However, because your body is slowly moving, your arms will swing a little bit, and this is totally normal; make the arm relaxed, and swing natural following the rhythm of your moving body.
• You can walk in straight lines, back and forth, just like what I am doing in the video; or walk along the four lines of a square. When reaching one end point, turn your body slowly, and feel how your muscles, bones, and your heartmind work together to make this smooth and peaceful turn. A key to understand moving forms of Ru meditation is that no matter whether your body is moving or not, you can always feel the inner quietude in your heartmind. This implies you extend the state of centrality, the one of energy equilibrium, to both still and moving parts of your life, which is really what Ru meditation is all about.

Good, these are the five major points for walking Ru meditation. Before concluding this session, I will share you my best experience of walking meditation. That happens during one night, perhaps around 12 o’clock am, when I practiced cross-legged quiet-sitting for a while. I entered the third stage of breathing, the one of settled breath. Then, I stood up and started to walk. What marvels me is that I keep myself on the same stage of settled breath for a long time. With only a slice of air breathed in, my breathing can be suspended there, and it is robust enough to support my walking. I feel my entire body is extremely light, transparent, and my mind is so clear of everything that happens in and surrounding me, which extends as far as the entire universe. This is what happens when the state of centrality is extended from a still body to a moving one because of the accumulative efforts of my practice of Ru meditation. Zhu Xi, one of the greatest Ruist philosophers after Confucius, once described his experience of Ru meditation as “It feels like lying on the clouds, and walking in the sky. I dare not talk of it.” Yes, I think I need to stop here since I already talked of it.

I Hope you have a nice walk today, and Take care!