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.

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.

This article about a Pune One group is a stub. To add information or share a story, contact a wiki editor here.