Natural Action - 4th Essential Principle of RDTC

by Richard Farmer

The burn of the whip across my face was still there and I felt naked without my glasses. I could see him opposite me in the orange glow of the street light. He was big, as big as me. I could hear his breathing and see his red eyes looking at me and seeing nothing. He was younger than me, I could see that now, kind of overweight, thick set and a bit podgy but strong. I had already felt that when he attacked me with that whip.

Now what? Inexplicably, I wanted to know him.

I had disarmed him. I had resisted using my martial knowledge, fuelled by righteous anger, to smash him to pulp. He was clearly out of it. I moved closer, just out of range. I could smell the alcohol but there was more, something else. Drugs, I thought, be careful.

I moved a little closer. "Why did you attack me?" I asked. "Because you had white trousers on" he replied in a thick Welsh valleys accent. "The man who beat me up yesterday had white trousers on, you …….!" He moved towards me, I moved back. We locked on. I began to breathe into my body, feeling my feet, straightening my back, releasing my belly. I could feel the fear in my mind and the anger, the wish to exterminate him. I released them all. I felt for him in his pride and hurt. It came to me very suddenly. We were like lovers. This was a very intimate space between us, it excluded all others. It excluded Jay who was across the street phoning the police. It excluded Flow who was still standing nearby. I did not want him unleashed on her. I stepped closer to him.

I was within his reach now and I could see him building. I breathed into my body again and saw him relax a little. I relaxed and saw him relax more, I came into my heart, the centre of my chest and moved a step closer breathing into him. We stayed there.

Then I had a thought, What now? It was like a division between us. He snapped and kneed me in the groin. I managed to dull the blow and stepped out of range. We began our dance again. I breathed and moved closer. He relaxed, I crossed that line, within his grasp, and kept just breathing. We stood there looking and then I had a thought, What now? It separated us again and again he exploded and this time I moved as he moved, until we just stood.

I breathed again, again coming back into my body, again releasing the anger and the fear, again moving back to that hearted place, again within his reach, again to just here, just him, just me. Again I had the thought, What now? Again like a wall between us the thought came down, and again we danced to its tune.

Finally I could feel the only thing I could do. I relaxed and we began again. In that silent place, when it was just him and just me, where there was no thought I turned, grabbed Flow and ran.

This experience was a fundamental one for me because it showed where the principles were naturally in me and what was just beginning to take root. In the face of real danger and with the fear and anger in me and with the martial knowledge that I had, I could have taken him out. However something else moved -compassion, presence and release - and as these lived in me, so he calmed down. However what was lacking was an action which naturally flowed from this place. It took quite a few cycles before I realised that I could simply turn and run. For me, this was the beginning of my journey with the exploration of the fourth principle. This experience showed me I had internalised the first three and it was this last principle which was now ready to be explored. The principle of natural action.

Be Natural. Be yourself. Be a human being. Let the appropriate action spring out of your true nature, just like pouring a cup of tea!

It can be said that everything which comes out of us is natural action. But whose natural action is it? Is it fear’s natural action? Survival’s natural action? Reactivity’s natural action? The natural action we want to allow to flow from us is the Tao’s natural action. It is our true nature’s action. It is the action of the universal, manifested in the personal.

Just you, be yourself - In relationship, it took a gift from Marigold, my wife, to show me the fourth principle. She wanted to live with the man not the teacher. She wanted a human being. She wanted a flesh and blood, eating and breathing personal relationship. She did not want to be married to an impression of the Tao Te Ching.

In the past I had tried to shape myself as my meditation teacher, Geshe Damcho, or some other spiritual teacher. I did the enlightened thing not because it was mine but more like a learnt response. It was what I thought I was meant to do. The truth is, however, that if I pretend to be somebody else or act out the 'right' action, it can only be a pale reflection of the real thing. There is no other person in the world just like me, just like you, so why be somebody else?

Emmanuel, another teacher, wrote in his book to me, "Richard, no forethought is required, you are to Live!" Can I really trust me to do this? What had stopped me thus far was a fear of becoming ego-centred, of not trusting Richard Farmer for fear that I might get it wrong.

And yet what I knew by exploring the three principles was that I am here when I embody in the noble spine, I am fluid when I unwrinkle and relax my defence and I am compassion when I engage heart. In that space only good will come.

Marigold wanted to be in relationship to “me” and I recognised the truth in that request. I wanted it too. I knew that following the three principles would take me into my being, now it was time to put the human back into that beingness.

Be in your True Nature - There is a saying that to understand the Tao, look at Nature. When I go for a walk I look at nature and what I see is that everything is authentic, everything is being itself perfectly. An Ash is not trying to be an Oak. Each is true completely to its own Nature. When the sun shines and the wind blows each tree will respond differently, each one is acting appropriately, perfectly in its nature. It does so because it is without reaction. If you put a seed of barley in the ground you get barley, if the conditions are right. Some years ago I went for a walk and my question to myself was "What would I look like, if the planted seed of Richard was just allowed to grow?"

I began to explore it in little things, in a supermarket for instance, which toothpaste to choose, what to buy for tonight's meal. I began to feel for my own timing in things, when to write the letter, when to rest, when to put my foot down. Instead of automatically asking Marigold what she wanted to do, I would first feel into myself and at least have a sense of what I thought before asking her.

"Forget Self and follow the Tao" is not only the first three principles it also includes the fourth one - 'Natural Action' - which allows me to be myself. There is The Tao and there is each individual Tao, the personal Tao. The Tao of the tree, the grass, the Tao of the horse and the Tao of the Human Being. The Tao of Me and the Tao of You.

The Original Shape - Take a brass band for instance. Each instrument is a particular shape, trombone, trumpet, horn, saxophone and because of that shape we get the sound of the instrument. Together they make an orchestra and yet although they are all different they are powered by the same force, air.

It is the same with us, it is the same power moving through us, the Tao, life force, call it what you will. We are born undented as it were. We are in our original shape. As we grow up we acquire dents, some from the outside and some, because of our reactivity, from the inside. The wrinkle in the mind is a dent on the original shape of the mind. The tension that pulls the spine out is a dent on the original spine.

Often we compensate for a dent by changing shape again to create a note similar to our original note. We try to fix it but the dent still remains. However just like the trumpet, if we can relax we create a space which is free of the tourniquet of reactivity, we return to our original shape. We become an instrument. Because there is space, the life force can move through us and our sound is created - non action. The three principles allow us to regain and rest in our original shape. All we have to do then is let it sound, through the voice, through our mind, through our actions, so that we can become part of God's orchestra. The one Tao manifested in ten thousand different forms.

This is Wu Wei or non action - an action which is totally personal and yet empowered by the universal. Each tree grows around the silence out of the stillness - an awesome aliveness that trembles in the smallest breeze, in the tiniest leaf.

Authentic action - We like to think that we can do nothing. But if you sit still in a room, if you sit long enough, you will be impelled to move - to get a drink or to go to the toilet, something. As human beings we do things. Each of us does the same things in different ways. We all have the same attributes, hair, face and arms, but none of us is the same. When faced with the same set of circumstances we will all act differently. The fourth principle of natural authentic action, is an action which is true to my nature.

Where is the fourth principle in the Form? If we take a natural step, for instance. When people come to Tai Chi their natural step is distorted, dented. Gradually, through applying the principles, they become present enough to see this distortion and they let go of the tensions and feel the original shape of a natural step. When this happens no-one is trying any more to take a natural step, it just happens.

Allowing - Let’s take the alignment of the spine as another example. We can hold our spine straight or we can find that inner feeling of nobleness or authority or poise, and through the first three principles, allow that feeling to be in the spine as we move. We allow this. We move around this. We let this relate to and communicate with each move. This is very different from control. This is natural action.

Natural Movement - It is the same with the Form. We begin by trying to learn it, forcing ourselves to remember it. We squeeze ourselves into it and by doing that we miss the natural movement of it which is going on underneath the trying. As we go on, as we get more experienced, we relax more and we begin to feel the movements, we feel the circles, we feel the weight shifts. We come to understand the directions and the martial forces that Tai Chi as “Shadow Boxing” uses and we begin to see the patterns of movement. We see the circles and as we allow them we rediscover natural movement, the fourth principle in Tai Chi.

The freedom within form - As we go deeper into this, the Form begins to disappear as a mechanical sequence and begins to emerge out of our experience. It becomes our Form. In the moment, without a historical mind, there is no form, only natural movement. It is here that the fourth principle manifests as our form, even though we are following a set sequence. This shift marks the beginning of freedom from the “have to” of life. As long as there is a “have to”, we are waiting for a time when we don’t have to and this causes a lot of tension and frustration. But to learn to make a “have to” yours, so it is not something you have to survive, is the secret of freedom: freedom where there appears to be none. This, too, is an aspect of the fourth Principle, the non action of the Tao.

By becoming present and letting go of history, by releasing tension and allowing our true shape, by becoming friends with life, we are finally free to express ourselves where ever we find ourselves, even in what appears to be an impossible situation.

One day an elderly student of RDTC in Llandrindod Wells was walking home at night. Earlier that evening in her class she had felt the power of standing up in a posture called 'Lifting Hands.' By accident, she felt her body become one sensation, not a frail one but one pulsing, rippling with aliveness. She felt strength and the wholesome unity of a hearted posture, a noble stance, her right to be here - the power and affirmation of her own authority here and now.

It was late and as she walked up the rise in the centre of town, the street lights offered that white pool of light in the darkness. In one pool she saw some youths kicking a bag of chips into the air. With each kick the chips cascaded over the pavement, first one bag and then the other as she approached. She felt outraged at the waste, the thoughtlessness, the mess and rather than cross to the other side of the street she found herself approaching them.

"Will you clear this up now?" she asked before she knew it.

They stopped and four pairs of adolescent rebellious eyes insolently appraised this elderly woman. "Who the …. are you to tell us what to do?" the big one hissed.

For a moment she regretted it and felt herself grow small, and then like a shower of grace she remembered the feeling in the posture, and instead of meekly turning and walking away, she took up the posture raising her arms, and stood before them feeling again its power, her power. She could feel the chi, like water filling an empty pipe, fill her out and give her back her shape. She said nothing.

They looked stunned as though struck, "Oh", said the big one at once frightened and off guard, "Oh, OK then," and they all bent down and began to pick up the mess. She lowered her arms and watched for a while and turned away.

Great things have happened in our world when the particular is the instrument of the universal. It is now in your hands: practice the four principles, become a pattern for the world, and the Tao will live inside you. The Form is not there to be mastered. It is there just as a greenhouse is there for the plants within it. The Form is a place to rediscover natural movement in you - the natural movement of your body, of your mind, of your heart and your spirit. The Form is there to be allowed to reflect these natural principles. When we control and take on the semblance of something, whilst that is OK for a while, it is not the real thing. When our concentration releases we return to our old ways. But when something is allowed, it becomes ours. It stays because it is not forced. It stays because it is us.

Note:- This is the fourth in a series of articles on the four fundamental principles upon which the Rising Dragon Tai Chi School is built. The three past articles can be view at the School’s webpage under the “Articles” tab.

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newsletters index page: Winter 2007