Cheng Hsin Nijmegen school voor Zen, Tai Chi Chuan & Martial Arts

05/03/2025

Het nieuwe boek van Peter Ralston is uit! De titel spreekt voor zich... Tijdens het Holland Camp komende zomer is dit ook het onderwerp van een zesdaagse workshop! Zie link in eerste commentaar.

• Provides contemplative practices and exercises to help you recognize how you cause your own suffering • Explores the dynamics of the mind and how it sets the stage for distress • Explains how mental states of suffering are created and how to control your mind to stop those thought patterns.....

25/02/2025

09/02/2025

You’ve probably heard of, and have likely experienced, times when mind and action, intent and outcome, came together in a sublime way. Consider the baseball player at bat, who, in the middle of a swing knows that this one will be a home run—and this is confirmed as the bat cracks the ball with that perfect sound. Consider the boxer, who, against all odds, wills himself to beat an unbeatable opponent by doing all the right things in each moment throughout the fight. When a gymnast like Nadia Comăneci flies through a routine, bringing in the first perfect 10, there is no room for thought or doubt or anything but the immediate perfection of movement.

I’m sure you have experienced skill doing certain tasks, and know that when you are good at something there is a “feeling” you produce that is inherent in the action that will make it work out. Now, imagine that instead of finding this feeling through lots of repetition, you search for and create it through sensing what it is by applying concentration and insight. Also imagine you can create other feeling-states and impulses in relation to whatever is needed at the time. Clearly, controlling the mind and being wed to appropriate feeling-impulses are necessary for mastery to unfold.

- From The Art of Mastery

05/02/2025

This is not to suggest that merely willing something to come to pass will make it happen, or that positive thinking is in any way enough. It does, however, suggest that you can develop a new ability, generating a feeling-intent that serves to bring about your desired outcome. Such an ability requires a new kind of intelligence that is inclusive and insightful—founded on a great deal of experiential training and learning— where you can leap past pedestrian thought processes and instead sense what state or impulse needs to be created, without it being based on past patterns, the need to figure it out, or your personal concerns.

The idea of “willing” the outcome to come about as if by magic, albeit through committed action, is both unconventional and conventional. Its conventionality can be found in the idea that stubborn determination is enough to make something happen, or the idea that wishful thinking will bring something about, or the idea that some outcome is destined or deserved, and in other such notions. None of these are what I’m recommending nor are they useful. What’s being recommended is actually unconventional.

- From The Art of Mastery

25/01/2025

23/01/2025

There are many beliefs and systems of belief that appear as positive but which, in effect, are not beneficial to the human spirit they claim to serve. In our current open-minded culture, we are obliged to be tolerant, even deferential, toward all religions or spiritual practices on the grounds that each one ostensibly leads to the same universal truth. When reflecting on the millennia of evil done in the name of one religion or another, it’s hard to disagree with the underlying ideal of peaceful coexistence. At the same time, this theological magnanimity obscures a few crucial facts regarding the nature of belief itself, foremost, that a belief is not the truth.

Considering what we’ve discussed so far regarding belief and the Absolute, it should be apparent that no religion is expressing the Truth, or is even true. This statement may rankle some readers, even when it’s acknowledged that a fundamental principle common to virtually every religion is a call for faith. In fact “faith” is often used as another term for “religion.” And why is faith needed? Because the foundation of most religions is not Truth, but belief. This dynamic isn’t limited to formal religions; it occurs in all organized spiritual belief systems.

By definition, a belief is not a direct-experience or a consciousness of what’s true. It is an idea that something is true. Granted, it might be a genuinely heartfelt idea, and have a hopeful and altruistic basis; it may even point knowingly in the direction of the “Unknowable,” but a religion is still essentially a series of rites and customs organized around some claim or conclusion usually purported to be the “one truth.”

God has no religion.
—Mahatma Gandhi

In reality, the Truth remains unknown for almost everyone. Grasping that fact is merely to acknowledge what’s already so; holding onto it and abiding in a state of not-knowing is a useful starting point for any venture, be it spiritual, scientific, artistic, or otherwise. But religion in general holds that your capacity to become directly-conscious for yourself is invalid—not your beliefs, mind you, but your capability, and even your responsibility. It demands that you refrain from questioning and investigating, and be content to simply believe what you are told. Within the confines of religious dogma, when someone entertains doubts, it is not equated with “a state that precedes all insight” but is instead called something like a “crisis of faith.” To the detriment of consciousness work, religion obliges followers to turn away from the universal fact of humanity’s inherent ignorance regarding existence.

- From Pursuing Consciousness

22/01/2025

28/03/2024

Tai Chi Chuan in Nijmegen!

Als bewegingsleer helpt Tai Chi Chuan je met meer ontspanning, bewustzijn en effectiviteit door het leven te gaan. En als interne, 'zachte' vechtkunst is het gericht op het voelen, accepteren, volgen en moeiteloos overnemen van de kracht en intentie van een ander. Lijkt je dat wat?

Iedere vrijdagavond (20-21u) bieden we een Tai Chi Chuan les in Nijmegen Oost. En nog meer, zoals Pushing Hands/Art of Effortless Power, Boksen en Tai Chi Zwaard! Kom nu kennismaken in een GRATIS PROEFMAAND!

GRATIS PROEFMAAND!