Now it can be revealed!

In the past, I mean probably before the industrial revolution, knowledge relating to inner personal experience, like meditation or internal martial art, had been transmitted from master to disciples (口訣), together with some secret texts (祕笈) and object-of-authenticity (信物). In recent decades, we witness more and more masters openly teach their practice, publish their secret texts and do away with their object-of-authenticity!

Professionals of whatever specialties want to be successful, and the only way to be successful is through - Marketing their services! With everybody marketing their services, customers will ask: who is the best? who has nothing good to offer? The table has been turned around, and Masters have turned into marketers, and proudly so!

Recently I came across a previously secret text on Tai-chi. A book in Chinese called: 太極法說 (The inner structure of Tai-chi). This is a hand-written text based on the teaching of Wu-style founder Wu QuanYou (吳全佑), and has been passing along the male lineage line only! Now it has been revealed by the Wu family.

There is one interesting chapter called: The method of back-to-origin (固有分明法). Its entirety is as follows:

蓋人降生之初，目能視，耳能聼，鼻能聞，口能食。顏色，聲音，香臭五味皆自然知覺，固有之良。其手舞足蹈，於四肢之能，皆天然運動之良。思及此，是人熟無，因人性近習遠，失迷固有。要想還我固有，非乃武無以尋運動之根由，非乃文無以得知覺之本原，是乃運動而知覺也，夫運而知，動而知，不運不覺，不動不知。運極則為動，覺盛則為知，動知者易，運覺者難。先求自己知覺，運動得之於身，自能知人，要先求知人，恐失於自己，不可不知此理也，夫而後懂勁然也。

It touches many points and I shall translate the above some day. But the thing I'm going say now is that it said clearly that a practitioner must train himself to the original pre-puberty body structure whereby muscles-act-as-one. And the way to train is through zhan zhuang (standing meditation). Only after this training, should one go into the movement (the tai-chi form itself) And before doing pushing hand [know others], one must be trained to know oneself during doing a moving form - i.e. carry the zhan zhuang feel to the moving form.

Nowadays, most students will not waste training time through neglecting zhan zhuang training... perhaps as consumerism goes, those who don't have the patience to stand for 15 minutes, let them waste their time! The moral of this story: there is no excuse for any student not able to learn meditation or internal martial art workouts nowadays.