T'ai Chi (group)

T'ai Chi was a Pune One meditation group led by Mallika. It was offered in two modes, a one-hour-per-day drop-in and a three-hours-per-day intensive.

Maneesha writes about it in the Darshan Diary Get Out of Your Own Way!, 14 Apr 1976:

The T'ai Chi group, consisting of fourteen sannyasins, was at darshan tonight.

Mallika, who studied T’ai Chi in London for three years prior to coming to Poona, describes T'ai Chi: "T'ai Chi Ch'uan means the great ultimate fistic art. It is an ancient Chinese method of meditation, self-defence and healing therapy. It is based on the principles of yin and yang, on polarity, balance and harmony. It develops inner awareness with outer alertness".

After they had finished the demonstration, the group returned to Bhagwan. Bhagwan asked Mallika, the teacher, how many classes she was taking.

Mallika: "This is the intensive group, which meets for three hours each day -- two hours in the morning and one hour in the evening. Then I've been doing a group in the afternoon for people to just come any time they want and try it.

"We meet every day except during the camp".

[Osho:] "Very good ... that will be very helpful for meditation".

Mallika says that now that she is doing T'ai Chi most of the time her energy oscillates between being really chaotic and open, and feeling blank and dull. Osho explains:

It is something that is very complicated... and the complication is that T'ai Chi, or methods like that, are Taoist. And the whole Tao attitude is that the mind has to be dropped. One has to become as mindless as an idiot. So dullness in fact is not bad on the path of Tao. The problem is arising because the very word dull is condemnatory in the western mind.

In Tao, to be dull is perfectly good! Lao Tzu says that everybody is so intelligent; he is so muddle-headed. "Everybody seems to be so clever and I am just a stupid man".

I could see that you have the capacity ... you can become as dull as Lao Tzu (chuckling). But your western upbringing is contrary. To be clever is a talent in the West. To be clever on the path of Tao is foolishness. To be intelligent, bright, sharp, is a sacred value in the western world.

Lao Tzu will laugh. He says, "Just be like an idiot!" The values are so different that when a western mind starts doing T'ai Chi or things like that, this trouble arises.

Whenever your energy is flowing, a certain dullness is bound to come; the sharpness is bound to be lost. You will look idiotic, but your upbringing comes into it. You are tom apart between two things.

So drop the western mind completely. Be dull, and be happily dull. The whole effort is to drop the mind so completely that you exist like trees, like clouds, like rocks, and you have no mind of your own; that's the whole effort. That's why the movements are so slow, because the mind is in such a hurry. These movements are against the mind. The mind wants speed. That's why the western world has invented more and more speedy vehicles. All these movements are so slow that the mind cannot cope with them. By and by it gets fed up and drops -- "This is foolish. I cannot work with [you]!"

You are going so slowly and the mind says, "Be in a hurry! Run fast!" If a Taoist competition is to be made, the one who can walk the slowest will be the first. That's what Jesus means when he says, "In my kingdom of God the last will be first, and the first will be last". The idiots will be the geniuses and the talented will prove dull.

But the mind is speed, because the mind is afraid of death -- and the fear of death creates speed. The mind says, "Time is short and you have to do so many things -- do them fast! Run! Death is coming!"

Mallika above calls her practice "T'ai Chi Ch'uan". In the mainstream culture, "T'ai Chi" is understood to be a shorthand of this longer form. On several occasions elsewhere, Osho makes a distinction between what he calls "T'ai Chi" and "T'ai Chi Ch'uan", calling only the latter a martial art -- "fistic" and "self-defence" in Mallika's words -- and "T'ai Chi" the gentle meditative movement / centering exercise which can be observed in the streets and parks of Chinese cities.

Maneesha writes at length about the T'ai Chi group's darshan demonstration in Dance Your Way to God:

As bhagwan finished talking, the group -- the five men and women, plus mallika, the instructor -- rose from their places and made their way towards the centre of the outdoor auditorium, now ablaze with coloured lights. Mallika took her place in the circle they had formed, spoke a brief and quiet few words, and then closed her eyes, standing with the rest of the group, absolutely still and silent for a few moments.

After a moment or two, one or two people began very very slowly to move -- to bend slowly down to the ground, to stretch out their arms, others to roll their head, or take a step forward -- all with infinite care and grace, as if they were just awakening from a hundred-year-long sleep, or were rosebuds opening to welcome the sun. One by one, the group began to unfold and then slowly slowly to move away from each other in sedate and flowing motions.

It was rather like watching a film in slow motion, or somnambulists feeling their way into each gesture, each movement loaded with significance -- both a sense of total awareness preceding each movement and, simultaneously, a sense of deep relaxation and let-go. Watching the figures move, one could almost imagine that they were people, spirits from another dimension, their eyes unblinking, unseeing, glazed, as if in trance. Even to watch was a meditation. One began to fall into one’s own depth, to contact a level of silence and stillness similar to that which the participants were experiencing. One felt soothed, serene, quieted.

After ten minutes or so, on a few quietly spoken words from mallika, the members of the group began to move slowly towards a partner, men moving towards women, until each was in partnership. Facing each other, slightly distanced from their partner, they began to perform a kind of energy dance -- still in very very slow motion, each regarding the other with an unflickering gaze and moving in accord with the other’s energy. It was like watching some very beautiful psychic courtship. One felt a depth of communication far deeper than that of ordinary dance, as partners moved, wordlessly, looking into and beyond each other’s eyes, as if penetrating each other to the very core.

After ten minutes or so, the group moved into a linear formation and performed the nineteen movements of the particular form that they are learning. While there are several different interpretations of the form, one could allow one’s own imagination to play with each gesture, each subtle turn of head, each fine shade of expression. Each movement, while complete in itself, a work of art in itself, seemed to flow effortlessly and naturally out of the preceding one, seemingly without any forethought on the part of the meditator.

The movements seemed to be flowing from the group as if on their own accord, rather than as a result of their doing. Each person, eyes unmoving, face expressionless, looked somehow possessed by something greater, bigger than himself... as if they were all but instruments through which some god somewhere was singing some strange and moving song or incantation.

The T'ai Chi group shows up in The Sound of Running Water's groups chart as starting in Apr 1976 and offered all the way through till Mar 1978. It continued beyond that time, possibly until Jun 1981, when Osho left for the States, but the period after Mar 1978 was not covered by TSORW.

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