206. Genchitaofu Baguazhang's Tao - 艮氣道福八卦掌の道

Well, I did it again. I published another book in this fine month of August, two thousand and twenty. Three books in a row this month. The first book is called The Weiqi Art of War. The second book is called Suntzu's Art of War in Thirteen Acts. And now I present to you The Baguazhang Art of War. And all are available on Amazon.com. My latest book, The Baguazhang Art of War, is for people that want to get to know me better. And it is for people who want to better understand the martial art of baguazhang from a western science-based perspective. Now to be clear, in this book I attempt to bridge theoretical science with everyday practical examples that a practitioner can try out for themselves. So rather than be a dickhead about it, and dismiss everything that is not standard science as quackery, just remember this: A lot of scientists have been trained to think and do in a ridgitly confined system. And most of them are not Einsteins, Newton's or Teslas. They too need, from time to time, fresh blood to get them out of their rut. And if you're the type that needs everything told to you by a master to your face because you're doing the master-disciple relationship thing, then this book is not for you. Nor is it for you, if you enjoy over-verbosely 'I am smarter than you' treatises because this book is too small or short for you. Which leads on to my next point: I don't really want to tell you why it is called The Art of War... There are a lot of martially minded people out there who discover the Tao in very trying and violent situations. They know when they are on the Tao but cannot explain it to others. Why would they? Most people either won't believe them or their life is too different from others. And then you have the added problem that most things to do with the Tao is centred around spiritual enlightenment. Which isn't always the case. For example: I experience the Tao everytime I'm driving my car and there's nothing spiritual about it, even though I understand it better through physics. Essentially, when a car is in motion (and I'm in the car), I am by the human experience in the state of continuous motion and therefore to the stationary observer, I am at no fixed point. Even if the observer could point to me and say, "I am there", that would now be his past because I have moved on and I am somewhere else. And yet to me I am always in the present moment of now. No matter how accurately you try to pinpoint my location, so long as I keep moving, those measurements are at best guesstimates. This is what lies at the heart of trying to predict in Quantum Physics. If you can make sense of this example, then you'd start to understand (a little bit of) what my book The Baguazhang Art of War is about. The Tao is the road with the car in motion in it. It exists but cannot be accurately defined. But that does not matter. What matters is that you get enough of an insight that when the next time in which you find yourself in a car, you will finally be able to say, "I have Tao". For the baguazhang practitioner, the ring created when walking the circle is the symbolic essence of the Tao itself. And it goes to the very heart of what the baguazhang practitioner is doing. You are not just becoming one with the Tao but actively creating it too. That there, is your circle. Your Tao. It defines you and you define it. If you don't believe me, go and ask your Shifu. I bet that they have no idea of what I'm talking about. Nor do I care. Thank you very much. The Tao is the Tao. It's not something a Shifu can bestow on a student.