The Heart Treasure of Taijiquan [excerpt 1]

Excerpt from Master Ren Gang’s The Heart Treatise of Taijiquan

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 translated by Mattias Daly

The passage below comes from Ren Gang’s discussion of Wang Zongyue’s seminal Treatise on Taijiquan (《太極拳論》), written during the Qing dynasty. The bold text comes from Wang Zongyue’s original essay, while the plain text constitutes Master Ren’s explanations of Wang’s tersely-worded essay. The footnotes, written by the translator, record his in-person discussions with Master Ren, and Ren’s hand-to-hand demonstrations of taijiquan’s principles and applications.

Wang Zongyue’s Treatise on Taijiquan has been regarded as a classic by all practitioners of taijiquan for as long as it has existed. Wang Zongyue bestowed it upon Jiang Fa, who then passed it on to Chen Changxing and Chen Qingping. It was later found in Jiang Fa’s old rice store by Wu Yuxiang.

The teaching of taijiquan started with Zhang Sanfeng, who transmitted it to Wang Zongyue. Wang Zongyue transmitted taijiquan to Chen Changxing and Chen Qingping, who then passed it to the Yang and Wu families. The Yang and Wu lines constitute the earliest branches of taijiquan, which were then passed from the Wus to Hao Weizhen; Hao transmitted taijiquan to Sun Lutang, who created Sun style taijiquan. Wu Quanyou was a Manchu who studied martial arts with Yang Luchan and Yang Banhou. Later on his son, Wu Jianquan, gradually developed Wu family taijiquan in Shanghai.

In all, there are five main branches of taijiquan: Chen style, Yang style, Wu style, Wu style, and Sun style. The quintessential piece of writing for all of these styles is Wang Zongyue’s Treatise on Taijiquan. Wu Yuxiang and Li Yishe also produced numerous treatises later on, but their theories on martial arts were simply permutations of Wang Zongyue’s Treatise, and in many instances their essays were exegeses of Wang’s original piece of writing.

Students of taijiquan need to clearly recognize that Wang Zongyue’s Treatise on Taijiquan is the standard which determines whether you train correctly or not. If you conform to it, then you are training properly; if you are not in accord with it, then you’re training incorrectly. There is nothing to be confused about—everything is measured against the Treatise. In the beginning, this was the very first criterion that my teacher gave me.

“Taiji. It is born of wuji, it is the mother of yin and yang.”

This is the first sentence of the Treatise on Taijiquan. The first thing many people do when they read the Treatise is gloss over this sentence, because they think it is surely no more than meaningless boilerplate tacked onto the opening of the essay so that Wang would not appear unscholarly. Such assumptions are highly mistaken, and any martial artist who truly wishes to enter taiji’sgate needs to clearly understand what is being conveyed here.

Taijiquan theory comes from Daoist philosophy, which has two core principles: “the individual and all things merging as one” and “yin–yang-insubstantial-substantial.” The merging of an individual and all else in creation into oneness is called “wuji.” Wuji is synonymous with Qi, and therefore it implies the total scope of your perception and experience. If you do not enter the treatise’s teachings with this understanding, then you are ill-prepared for any general discussion of internal martial arts, and wholly unprepared for a discussion specific to taijiquan.

Daoists refer to “heaven and humanity becoming one”—the state in which one’s self, others, and all contained between heaven and earth become as though a single entity and merge with the Dao—as wuji. Some readers might feel compelled to retort, “But I am me, others are themselves, the sky is the sky, the ground is the ground, so how could they become a single entity?” The answer is that what is meant is that if the heavens, the earth, others, and yourself are within the scope of your awareness all at once, then effectively these things are all one. Conversely, when you do not have them all within the realm of your perception at once, then the sky is the sky, the ground is the ground, others are themselves, and you are you alone.

The biggest error we can see people making when they push hands is this: the moment two people cross hands, they instantaneously recognize one another as opponents. This state of mind is far removed from taiji. In taijiquan, the very moment you and another person come face-to-face and cross hands, you must immediately merge with him or her. You become as though one, so that you may perceive each and every movement coming from the other person’s body. You must allow every undulation of the other person’s shen and qi to fall within the scope of your knowing. The Treatise on Taijiquan alludes to this when it says, “Others cannot fathom me—I alone know others. All heroes without match started here, and then they arrived!”

The starting point for training that will take you to the point of being unmatched under heaven lies in perceiving one’s opponents in their entirety. It really is possible to achieve “others cannot fathom me—I alone know others.” If you have this skill, then in push hands, the instant you touch hands with another individual, that person will be unable to move his or her feet, let alone throw a punch. At the crucial moment when an opponent is on the cusp of lifting a foot or throwing a punch, you will already know what your opponent is trying to do, and deny him or her the opportunity. This is why Yang Luchan was able to place a bird on his palm and prevent it from taking flight. He most certainly did not have glue on his palm. Rather, when the bird tried to push down with its legs in order to take flight, Master Yang dissipated its downwards-pressing strength. Power of perception was the foundation of Yang Luchan’s exquisite ability to transform and dissolve strength.

“Listening to strength” is one of the most important concepts in taijiquan. This odd-sounding expression may elicit the question, “Why don’t they call it ‘feeling for strength?’” In actuality, the instruction is not to literally try and place your thoughts upon your sense of touch, as your sense of touch is clearly incapable of hearing. This somewhat abstruse taijiquan term is reminiscent of the instruction some Chan Buddhists give their students to “listen to the clouds.” Clouds are obviously something you can only see—why would a master tell a disciple to go and listen to them? The answer is that the real point of these instructions is to prevent practitioners from remaining stuck in old habits of perception. “Listen to the clouds” is an instruction to directly experience the actual state of the clouds instead of merely looking at their outward appearances. “Listening to strength” is the same.

In the practice of martial arts these are crucial concepts. If you are able to understand the concept of wuji, then you have already entered the proverbial door in your training. Even though their wording is abstract, I feel that these instructions have great practical value. Far too many practitioners do not start their training here.

 “When it moves it divides, when tranquil it merges.”

“When it moves it divides” refers to the division into yin and yang. “When tranquil it merges” refers to merger into wuji, the state of perceptive knowing, from which yin and yang emerge.

In the taiji symbol, we call the white area with a black spot yang, and we refer to the black area with a white spot as yin. Countless people have offered explanations of what taiji means, but in terms of describing what is needed to develop applicable martial skill, their explanations fail to satisfy me. My teacher, Dong Bin, once offered an explanation specifically from this standpoint, and he said that the ancients used the famous yin-yang symbol in order to give a very panoramic, sweeping view of taiji. In the white area with a black dot, the white color represents a space in which there are no things, while the black dot is your shen and your thinking, which must remain vigilant[1]. In the black area with a white dot, the black portion represents a place where there are objects which have substance, while the white dot is your shen and thoughts,[2] which are empty and insubstantial.

Master Dong said that the yin–yang symbol implies that when pushing hands with another person, one must maintain emptiness in one’s own body.[3] This will cause opponents to feel they have nothing to grasp ahold of. At the same time as one maintains internal emptiness, one’s shen and Qi must also fill the space outside of one’s body. Achieving this state is referred to as entering taiji. If a practitioner can succeed at doing so, a fight is already half won before any blows are thrown.

Doing authentic taiji means being able to make the space occupied by one’s physical body empty, while filling the space beyond the physical body that falls within the scope of one’s perception with one’s shen. One must do this in such a way that yang does not separate from yin and yin does not separate from yang. The two must exist simultaneously. This state is named taiji.

Laozi’s Daodejing describes this subjective state as “knowing the white and keeping watch on the black.” In this phrase, “keeping watch on the black” alludes to the requirement that one empty out the space occupied by one’s body. One cannot keep watch upon this space, because if one does so, then this space will become as though a substantial entity—in terms of taijiquan, it will turn into a solid target for an opponent to attack. Thus, one must “know” yin-yang symbol’s the white area, which represents to the space beyond the physical borders of one’s body. To Daoists, “knowing the black and keeping watch on the white” is the optimal condition for all objects and phenomena in the universe. For this reason, the criteria of taiji are also commonly applied to judge the merits of works of calligraphy and brush painting, and students of classical Chinese art are taught that “the place where ink settles must be empty and yet alive” and “the spaces the brush does not reach must brim with qi.”

It is worth pausing here and reflecting upon a question: How many of us live up to these standards when we practice taijiquan?

 “Not exceeding, not insufficient,

it follows that which curves and cleaves to that which straightens.”

“Not exceeding and not insufficient” means that when one crosses hands with another person, one must never let one’s hands exit the range of one’s perception. When many people push hands, it is as though their bodies retreat into the background while only their hands remain in the foreground. When somebody does that, their hands have essentially already extended beyond their scope of perception.

“It follows that which curves and cleaves to that which straightens” means that, when both people in combat merge into a single entity and become a single field of qi, when one’s opponent draws backwards, one’s own qi continuously enters and fills the space the opponent has just vacated. This taijiquan method is extraordinarily useful during combat because few practitioners of other martial arts can do the same, much less counteract such action. Most martial artists either let their bodies deflate[4] the moment they move their legs, or else let their legs deflate as soon as they try to move their bodies. When people with this habit move, their postures become imbalanced and they need to make small adjustments. If a person with a degree of skill in taijiquan spars with such a person, even if that person only needs to adjust for an instant, he or she will already have fallen behind the one who remains in the taiji state. It is extremely difficult for others to find the weak points of one who knows how to “follow that which curves and cleave to that which straightens.” Herein lies the eminently practical application of taijiquan’s philosophical concept of merging into a single entity!

“When others are hard and I am soft, this is called moving.

When I follow behind others, this is called sticking.”

This sentence means that when one who is in the taiji state senses an opponent’s strength, his or her body will respond to what has been perceived and correspondingly move to diffuse the opponent’s strength.[5] This requires letting one’s body move evenly to softly transform one’s opponent’s pressure. One must not block him or her by resisting or using raw strength. In the process of “moving,” one’s aim is also to repel one’s opponent by having him or her discharge force and consequently fall into a trap wherein he or she can do nothing but passively submit to an attack. Facing an onslaught of force, the opponent will be incapable of throwing off the taiji player, and indeed will be too overwhelmed to even try. When this happens, it appears as though he or she were glued in place.[6]

Readers must be aware that moving and sticking, despite being discussed separately, are actually intrinsic components of a single concept. One does not first move and then stick, nor first stick and then move. To move is to store force. Once one’s opponent falls into an empty space, naturally he or she will end up behind one’s force and become stuck. Those who experience these points firsthand can be said to have “cognized strength.”

“When movements are swift I swiftly respond;

when movements are slow, I slowly follow.”

What is described here is very easy to understand: when one’s opponent is fast, one too is fast; when one’s opponent is slow, one too is slow. Such accord is based upon skill in listening to strength.

If one’s opponent uses 1 kg of strength, one should use 1.1 kg, nor should one use 0.9 kg.[7] At the same time, one cannot try and guess how much force one’s opponent is using. The only way to respond accurately is through direct perception. If one tries to guess, thinking “the other person is using about 0.15 kg of strength, so I’ll use about 0.15 kg,” accuracy is lost. One who practices taijiquan must sense an opponent while one’s mind, qi, bones, and flesh are all merged in unity with him or her. Immediate and proportionate responses flow directly from sensing.

“Though there be myriad changes,

this principle is the one thing that threads through them all.”

By the time he arrives at this sentence, Wang Zongyue has already fully expressed the overarching theory of taijiquan. Now that he has told us how to practice, the subsequent content pertains only to methodology and analysis. The ideas introduced above in fewer than one hundred Chinese characters constitute the core principles of taijiquan. One could thus argue that taijiquan is not at all complicated, but scarce few people practice as Wang Zongyue prescribes. Unfortunately, instead of training in accordance with the Treatise on Taijiquan, most practitioners invent their own theories and practices.

Rumor has it that a few members of martial society wish to gather a handful of famous martial artists together and entreat each of them to write something poignant. The words of these luminaries will then be carved in stone and a “forest of steles” will be erected somewhere, with each of these teachers’ remarks emblazoned on monoliths that people can come and appreciate in perpetuity. I am adamantly opposed to this proposal, because I am convinced that no contemporary master could word things better than the ancients did, nor possess an understanding of the martial arts that surpasses the ancients. It is far more likely that this forest of steles would just be a maze of confusion, waylaying legions of future cultivators. That would be a tragic turn of events.

“Go from increasing familiarity to gradually cognizing strength. 

Go from understanding strength to arriving at wisdom, step by step.”

These two sentences tell us that once we understand the above theories, we then need to practice. If we fail to practice, we will end up complaining, “I understood the ideas and I studied the methods, but when it came time to apply them I still ended up fighting the same way I always have.” Training is required to remold what in China is called the “qi of habit.” Consider the following: if one goes from using a lamp that’s turned on by pulling a chain to one with an on-off switch, for quite some time whenever one goes to turn on the new lamp one will fumble to find the chain before remembering it is no longer there. “Qi of habit” is simply a term for the normal tendency of a person to repeatedly do whatever feels the most natural.

It is possible that one trains well, but in a real fight, what comes out is the wild flailing and swinging of a back alley dustup. In other words, even though one may have learned better techniques, what is most familiar is still what one falls back upon under duress. Training must be allowed to ripen over time in order to establish new habitual qi. Once training in a new way of doing things is mature, then the incorrect methods that previously felt familiar will gradually come to feel strange. The same process occurs with any form of self-cultivation.

If the guiding principles of one’s martial training are correct, then regardless of whether one is training alone or with a partner one is always learning to intuit strength.[8]  In partner training, two people use push hands to get a feel for how to keep yang from leaving yin and vice versawhile under a degree of stress. One must be careful not to think that the goal of push hands is to shove the other person away or to put his or her arms and legs into some sort of lock. People who train push hands with such goals in mind end up cultivating half-baked shoving and grappling skills that are utterly useless in real fights.

Here I need to bring up another important question: Given that taijiquan’s philosophical principles are not terribly hard to grasp, why is it that in spite of understanding them people still don’t practice well, and consequently fail to reach the levels of practitioners of days gone by?

One of the primary reasons is laziness! In the past, our predecessors, including my teacher, would always say: “Your martial arts form can only be considered mature if you’ve trained it 10,000 times!” Thus, if one’s dream is to complete one’s training in a year and a half, one would have to practice a taijiquan form more than twenty times a day. In reality, how many times do we really train our forms each day? When training intensely, three sessions in a single day already counts as pretty good. When not intensely focused, one realistically might do the form twice a day. It is extremely hard to reach the ancients’ level training like this. This is an area that demands martial artists to improve our self-knowledge and perform introspection.

Early on I discussed the problems of martial arts training with my teacher. He said that when we first start, we learn an entire form, and at minimum we need to train with it a thousand times in order to move beyond the stage of always wondering, “Should my hands be higher or lower? Should my legs be closer together or farther apart? When I move my hands in this direction should they make one circle or two?” After training the form a thousand times or so, these thoughts will lose their relevance because your musculature will have already developed deep-rooted habits. Only at this stage where the mind begins to quiet down does it become practical to go on to intuit strength, which means physically intuiting the concepts of wuji and taiji that we discussed earlier.

The process of intuiting or cognizing strength begins naturally once one has trained a taijiquan form approximately one thousand times. How this process unfolds is a key factor in determining whether or not you will enter the gate leading to the path of taijiquan. A degree of destined affinity is required for one to cognize strength.

Some people need only hear an excellent teacher offer a few instructions and make a demonstration in order to understand. I have encountered such people, and among my students exist such talents. However, people like this tend to be fairly lazy—thinking that taiji is easy to master with just a little study, they don’t apply themselves to strenuous training, and in the end they’re not even skilled enough to acquit themselves in a little shoving match between family members.

Some people are quite slow, and even after three or five years of practice it is an open question as to whether or not they will ever really understand taijiquan. I also have this sort of student. After practicing for several years and still not cognizing strength, one of them said to me, “Training with you is like playing cards. If I don’t come to class, then I’m afraid that maybe that will be the day I was going to be dealt a really good hand. But even if I do come I often go home dead broke. Frankly, I just don’t understand what you’re trying to teach us.” However, recently he has begun to feel he like finally has a few good cards in his hand, so he is developing confidence and the taijiquan teachings are beginning to play out in his own body. In short, while training is of paramount importance, because the ability to cognize strength is determined in part by intuition, it cannot be forced into existence.

There is another pass that needs to be traversed after one is able to intuit strength, that of ripening. Having intuitive epiphanies will allow one to clearly understand new principles and methods of applying strength, but how does one bring this understanding to maturity? At this stage, one must, at minimum, train one’s taijiquan form another 4,000 times, after which point it will be “ripe.” My teacher Dong Bin’s requirement was to train the form an additional 10,000 times after learning to intuit strength. I personally no longer have such a stringent requirement, as I realize that if I required people to train the form more than 10,000 times, all of my students would scatter to the wind. If I only require students to train the form 5,000 times, there might be a few people who will keep chipping away.

While I do require students to practice the form 5,000 times, I do not say to them that they must finish within a year and a half or two years. In my opinion, that is too difficult for people with modern lifestyles to accomplish. However, recently I suggested to a friend that if the opportunity arises we should take on some young students living in a remote area and set up a foundation to cover their monthly expenses, so that they can train rigorously while free of worries about making money. If they trained like this for five to eight years, their accomplishments would be incredible!

[1] Of this vigilance, in discussion Ren said to me, “One’s mind must be placed firmly upon what you are observing. Qi must be placed there. Pay full attention to what you are observing. Your mind must be right there.”

[2] “Shen and thoughts” here comes from a compound of two Chinese characters, 神 and 意. This compound has no direct translation, so I have broken it into its components, transliterating one and translating the other. However, in conversation Master Ren emphasized that to the high level practitioner of taijiquan they are ultimately one, emphasizing that an empty, receptive state must be maintained at all times in order for one to experience what is implied by these words.

[3] In discussion, Master Ren explained that with this type of emptiness, an opponent feels that you are both empty and impossible to grab ahold of—he or she finds no place on your body upon which to exert strength. In order to demonstrate this principle, he had me push his arm. First he resisted, giving me a place to push against. Then he went soft, allowing me to push him around. Both resistance and softening reflected common mistakes. Finally he entered the “empty” state, and no matter how I pushed him, he constantly was able to get out of the way. The feeling was (to borrow Ren’s words, which perfectly matched what I experienced) just like trying to push an object that is floating atop water. An object floating on water is constantly able to escape from your grasp and move elsewhere whenever you push against it.

[4]  The characters Ren uses here are “癟掉,” which I have translated here as “deflate.” In discussion he elaborated that this means to mistakenly relax in such a way that, should one’s opponent use speed and strength to attack, he or she will be able to easily enter into one’s own space. A person with taijiquan skill, therefore, avoids “deflation” and remains “full.” When “full,” as soon as the opponent uses speed or strength, the person skilled in taijiquan will automatically, spontaneously respond with equal speed and strength. Master Ren demonstrated this by having me try to make a sudden move against him; even though he was apparently standing in total relaxation, the moment my hand struck out at his neck, his hands struck out at my abdomen. Master Ren’s explanation is that his state is like that of a loaded and cocked crossbow. Although the crossbow appears still, it ready to release a bolt at any time. All it took was my own movement to pull the trigger.

[5] When questioned by a reader of an early draft about my use of the word “moving” to translate the character “走” (which can literally mean “to walk” or “to run”), I asked Master Ren to explain the character to me yet another time. He said that to “走” in the Treatise is akin to being in “a state of correspondence” (“相應的狀態”) with one’s opponent. Being in this “state of correspondence” naturally produces sticking, and leads one’s opponent to fear letting down his or her guard.

[6] When I asked in person about this point, Master Ren demonstrated how it is not a question of some sort of trick that literally sticks the opponent in place. Rather, by using his shen and qi, Ren made it so that I, in the role of his opponent, could not feel comfortable moving my body in any way. This discomfort stemmed from an uncanny and deeply unnerving sense of precarity.

[7] In discussion Master Ren explained to me that there is no mental work involved when this principle is enacted in push hands or combat. A skilled taijiquan practitioner intuitively knows the amount of strength to exert. The amount naturally matches what the opponent’s.

[8] In Wang Zongyue’s original text, what I translate as “cognizing strength” is “懂勁.” Here in the commentary, instead of the verb 懂, Ren uses a different verb, 悟. This verb arguably has no direct corollary in English, although it can be used to describe epiphanies, gnosis, insight, intuition, internalization, comprehension, and even enlightenment. In conversation I asked Master Ren to elaborate and he said the following: “This has to do with experience. A student needs to start with faith in taijiquan’s theories in order to be willing to train, but what a beginner has is no more than blind faith. However, once a student learns to apply the methods, then blind faith will turn into genuine faith. The process of proving the truth of the teachings to ourselves is the process of ‘intuiting.’ In China we often say that ‘intuiting’ must be done via the body. When rooted in bodily experience, intuition is not simply a matter of mental activity. In fact, it transcends mental activity.”

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