History & styles
Taoism, Buddhism and the martial arts
T'ai chi grew up in a culture shaped by Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian ideas, and its vocabulary is full of them. Knowing where those ideas come from makes the art easier to understand. It does not mean that practice requires anyone to adopt them.
The taijitu and yin and yang
The art's name comes from taiji, and the best-known image connected with it is the taijitu. Wikipedia's article on the taijitu explains that the word means a diagram of the taiji, glossed as the "utmost extreme", and that the diagram was introduced by the Song dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhou Dunyi. The fuller diagram has several parts; the familiar black-and-white circle of interlocking halves, popularly called the yin-yang symbol, is only one of them, and it became known in English under that name relatively recently.
The idea behind it is simple and powerful. Opposites—dark and light, soft and hard, still and moving—are not enemies but partners, each containing the seed of the other and each turning into the other in turn. T'ai chi takes this literally. Every movement contains a change from full to empty, from rising to sinking, from yielding to issuing. Teachers speak of distinguishing the substantial from the insubstantial in the legs, and of never letting a movement become entirely one thing.
Taoism and the Wudang Mountains
Many of t'ai chi's stories are Taoist stories. Wikipedia's article on the Wudang Mountains describes a mountain range in Hubei that is home to a famous complex of Taoist temples and monasteries, one of the sacred mountains of Taoism and a place of pilgrimage, renowned for tai chi and Taoist martial arts and often described as the Taoist counterpart to the Buddhist Shaolin Monastery. Wikipedia's article on Zhang Sanfeng describes the legendary Taoist credited in tradition with inventing tai chi and associated with those monasteries.
Taoist ideas run through the art's teaching: softness overcoming hardness, water wearing away stone, acting without forcing, returning to stillness. They are expressed in the t'ai chi classics and in the way teachers talk about relaxation and naturalness.
Buddhism and Shaolin
The other great religious influence on Chinese martial arts is Buddhist. Wikipedia's article on the Shaolin Monastery describes a Buddhist monastic institution on Mount Song in Henan, recognised as the birthplace of Chan Buddhism and the cradle of Shaolin kung fu, and it records the legend that the Indian monk Bodhidharma arrived there and meditated in a cave for years, initiating the Chan tradition. The page on Shaolin and the internal and external arts looks at how Shaolin came to stand for one half of a famous distinction.
Chan, better known in the West by its Japanese name, Zen, emphasised meditation and direct experience over scripture. Its influence on the martial arts shows in the value placed on a calm, unhurried mind in the middle of action.
Confucian threads
A third influence is less often mentioned but everywhere in practice: the Confucian emphasis on ritual, respect and relationships. Bowing at the start of class, honouring one's teacher and the teacher's teacher, learning through patient imitation and the family-like structure of a traditional school all reflect it.
Do you have to believe anything?
No. People of every faith and of none practise t'ai chi. The philosophical ideas are best treated as a language for describing movement and attention, not as doctrine. When a teacher says "sink your chi", a student can take it as an instruction to relax the shoulders, lower the centre of gravity and breathe more slowly, without any view about what chi is.
A few practical guidelines help:
- Learn the vocabulary; it is part of the tradition and makes teaching clearer.
- Separate principles of movement, which can be tested on the practice floor, from metaphysical claims, which cannot.
- Be wary of any school that makes belief a condition of learning.
- Respect the religious traditions behind the art, whether or not you share them.
Legend, belief and history
Religious stories give the martial arts their colour, but they are not history. Zhang Sanfeng's creation of t'ai chi and Bodhidharma's arrival at Shaolin are traditions, and the history of t'ai chi separates them from what the documents show. Both kinds of story are worth knowing, as long as they are kept in their proper places.