In August 1996 the Dalai Lama
visited South Africa. I was twenty-two years old at the time, studying for my
honours in physics. When I heard that he would be speaking at a local
university – then called the University of Durban-Westville – I knew I couldn’t
miss it. Buddhism had intrigued me since the age of 14, and I felt compelled to
hear him speak first hand. It was, as it turned out, an opportunity of a
lifetime; one that has never happened again.
The lecture hall was packed to
the rafters. He entered, dressed in maroon and yellow robes, accompanied by a
small entourage of monks and organisers. He looked healthy, his skin shone, and
when he spoke we were all captivated. He was very pragmatic in his speech, and
nothing he spoke of seemed far-fetched or esoteric. His magnetism was
undeniable; one could sense his clarity and essential good-heartedness. He
laughed easily and possessed a cheerful disposition.
Earlier, the master of ceremonies
– a monk – had asked the audience to write down any questions they may have for
the Dalai Lama. These would be collected, and some would be selected for the
Dalai Lama to answer. I had a burning question; one that I had been
contemplating for a relatively long time in my short life. It was a simple
question, but I did not know the answer. I wrote it down and sent it along with
all the others. The question was,
“What is the role of ritual in religion?”
When the question-and-answer
session arrived I listened closely, hoping that my question would be fished out
of the lot somewhere along the way, but it was not to be. The question was
never asked, and my 21 year younger self didn’t enjoy the good fortune of
having his burning question answered by a luminary whose opinion could be trusted
and respected.
Yet, all these years later, I am
coming to an understanding of what the answer to my years-old question is. And
it has surprised me, as it seems the answer was there all along. I just didn’t
have the lived experience to discern it. The answer, it appears, lies in understanding
the nature of practice. It is an ironic discovery, as it is in my nature to
take to disciplined practice with relish. When I enjoy something, and get drawn
into it, practice comes without much effort. When I establish a routine it
generally sticks. I may waver from it occasionally, but I inevitably return to
it.
I have practiced martial arts
since I was a child. I’ve always loved it. I enjoy the movement, the
strengthening of spirit, and the clarity of mind I acquire through practicing
martial arts. I’ve changed what and how I practice, moving from Karate in my
early years, to full contact Kung Fu for the majority of my teens and early
twenties, to boxing, to Tai Chi and Chi Gung in my later years.
About twelve years ago I began
running long distances. I was never a good long distance runner, but after I
began to understand it better I became hooked. I still run, and
although I vary the distances I run, I still run pretty regularly. Between 2005
and 2010 I threw myself into Tai Chi and Chi Gung training, but I have to admit
that I found it very challenging. I had to undo a lot of the external martial
arts training that I had worked so hard over the years to programme into my
neural system and psychology.
Tai Chi, in particular, required
a sensitivity that just did not exist in the hard martial arts realm in which I
had been trained. It went against all my previous training; in Tai Chi one had
to engage in push-hands without trying to win ... suspending that will to win
proved very difficult for me. I had been trained to think that the psychology
of winning was critical for victory in the martial arts. Now I was being asked
to let go of that and it proved very difficult for me to get my head around.
To add to this, I discovered,
while studying Tai Chi, that despite my ability to generate powerful and speedy
strikes, with both my hands and legs – both of which I thought required
extremely good balance – that my understanding of balance and movement in Tai
Chi was that of a novice. I felt hopelessly ill-equipped; and I could tell that
my master could sense how much I was straining to find the movements and
perform them effortlessly, so that they flowed from me.
I fared better at Chi Gung, and I
could feel that I took to it more naturally. I had not had any previous
experience of being trained at meditation, so I embraced it without any
preconceptions. As a result, my Chi Gung training proceeded a lot better than
my Tai Chi training. I felt the benefits of both, although I have to admit that
I felt a bit inadequate in my Tai Chi training; as though I would never really
understand it properly.
After five years of training I
quit classes to focus on completing my PhD studies. I continued with my Chi
Gung meditations at home, but my Tai Chi training was on and off. I would train
every now and again, usually over holidays, to remind myself of the Tai Chi
short form, and would abandon it for long periods. Nonetheless, I would return
to it occasionally; something about the practice of it had made it a part of
me.
My master was – and is – an
exceptional individual. He is the only true martial arts master (i.e. in all
senses of the word) that I have had the pleasure of training under. He would
tell us not to worry about how good or bad we were; but just to keep training.
One day, if we were lucky, all the training would sink in. One day if we trained
hard enough the “chi” would “come”. It can take 10 or 15 years, he would tell
us. He was asking us to put our faith in practice; that mastering Tai Chi was a
matter of doing, not of thinking or understanding.
My uncle is a jazz musician.
Since I was young he would compare my martial arts training to that of a
musician’s. “You have to practice your chops,” he would say. You learn one move
– or chord – then you learn another, you practice them over and over, then you
string them together – practice that over and over – and what emerges is a
song. Harmony is not just a matter of chance; it is a matter of practice.
My grandfather turned 90 recently.
He has been a South Indian classical musician since he was a teenager. His
instrument is the clarinet. About a decade ago I bumped into him by chance at
an airport. He had just returned from a trip to Australia to visit my uncle. We
had an amazing conversation. He told me that after many decades of playing the
clarinet his playing had gone to a new level. I cannot do justice to what he
was describing; but he was essentially saying that he could now move fluidly
between the masculine and the feminine; that there was a continuity and harmony
between the voices he played – alto and soprano – that he had now mastered
after many years of playing.
This conversation with my
grandfather gave me the strength to continue writing; at the time I was writing
a lot but I was struggling to break through a find my own voice as a writer.
This chat with my grandfather was, in retrospect, an early indication of the
value of practice. That devoting oneself to practice is the key to unlocking
one’s own voice.
It is only recently however, that
I’ve come to a new understanding of the value of practice, and how intimately
tied practice is to ritual. Indeed, practice – in order to be regular – becomes
ritualised to some degree. Whether I think of long-distance running, martial
arts, music, art or writing, regular practice becomes ritualistic in nature.
Ritualising an activity makes its practice more entrenched, a part of everyday
life; you begin to live with your practice instead of trying to figure it out.
In June last year I suffered a
terrible shock. A long-term work relationship that I had thought was beyond
question became very questionable very quickly, and it became very clear to me
that I was not valued in the manner I thought I was. Accepting this was
difficult. Letting go was even harder. My anxieties arose and I automatically
began to train Tai Chi every morning. It helped a great deal. It lifted my
spirits and gave me a sense of clarity. It strengthened my spirit. I needed no
further justification to engage in regular practice; every morning I awoke and
after a cup of tea or coffee, I would immerse myself in the Tai Chi short form.
My Tai Chi practice became a
ritual. The more I practiced the more I reaped its benefits. For the first time
in my training I began to feel rooted and my movements became effortless. Each
movement emerged of its own accord. There was no forcing it. One movement
flowed into the next without effort. There was a natural line of movement that
the body takes through the form that I had not been able to find for years. Now
– seemingly all of a sudden – I had found that line and it made all the
difference. No matter how I felt before training, after thirty minutes of
training I would begin to feel the natural flow of the movements of the form.
After training my body felt released from all the middle-aged aches and pains
it carries, my body felt light and my mind was calm but focused.
The act of ritualising my Tai Chi
practice transferred into my other daily activities. Everything from the way I
cooked, to the way I worked and drove around the city changed. Daily practice
of this kind allowed for an awareness to emerge; one that enabled me to
navigate the anxiety and uncertainty of change in a manner that I had been
unable to before. Whenever I felt the walls closing in or my thoughts running
astray I immersed myself in the ritual of Tai Chi practice and emerged level
headed, released from reliving the senseless chatter of the mind.
So I’m finally beginning to understand why so
many religions embrace ritual. I wasn’t able to understand it before because I
was focused on the symbolic acts of ritual and their meaning, and not what
their practice entailed. I thought ritual was just mind-numbing, symbolic
devotional routine. I failed to understand that ritual entrenches practice. It is
about doing; embedding oneself in practice
and not philosophising about it. Ritualising activities takes one deeper into practice
and yields a deeper awareness. This enables meaning to emerge from practice;
meaning that goes far beyond the symbolism of ritual. Rather, meaning emerges
from devotion to practice, taking the form of a new awareness; a way of being
in and with the world that is not a product of the agitated mental gymnastics of
philosophical introspection but a product of letting go of thought and immersing
oneself in doing.
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