A Zen Moment
By Barbara (Bobbie) Purvis
Master Eric Sbarge of The Peaceful Dragon (left) and Sifu Wesley Adams of Columbia Tai Chi Center (right) during a moment of “Thanks and Appreciation” following Master Sbarge’s 2013 Tai Chi Mastery Workshop.
There may be those who fully understood the depth and scope of our lineage when they enrolled at the Columbia Tai Chi Center, but I was not one of them. In my mind, lineage was lineage: it was all of the intangible stuff people brought up in conversations about martial arts in an effort to impress others; like five-year-olds squabbling about whose father is bigger, faster or stronger.
Today, I have a much greater appreciation for lineage in general, and for our lineage in particular, after participating in the Tai Chi Mastery workshop led by Master Eric Sbarge. It was there that I discovered that–rather than a list of ancient ancestors, some gray haired, and others deceased–lineage is a living breathing entity. Our lineage is alive! It “lives” through its teachers and students; it “breathes” health and longevity and vitality into everyone who embraces it. It gathers energy based on the nurturing it receives; and indeed, if neglected or abused, it can lose energy, atrophy and die.
My newfound understanding came toward the end of the first session, and because I had yet to have this “revelation” about lineage when I registered, I was not attending the second one. (If you’re wondering what one thing has to do with the other, I’ll get to that in a moment). During the session on boosting health and vitality we discussed what it actually meant to have vitality and how we could attain it. We also reviewed the fundamentals– all of the things we think we know: like proper breathing, good alignment, and the concept of Wu Chi. We even performed Master Sbarge’s version of stance training and when it was over, if anyone else was like me, they mentally thanked Sifu for every stance training class we’d had, while realizing that a few more would have been even better.
At the conclusion of the session Master Sbarge brought everyone back into the classroom. He said he typically set aside at least 20 minutes to give everyone a chance to ask questions. After a number of questions had been asked and answered about training techniques, Taoist philosophy, Kung-fu tournaments and the like, one student posed this question: If you only had ten minutes a day to practice, what would be the best things to focus on to get the most from your practice?
“In only ten minutes a day?” Master Sbarge said. He thought for a moment, and then quietly said, “I’d spend those ten minutes focusing on my time management issues so that I could train a mini-mum of 30 minutes each day.” Although everyone chuckled, there was a collective awareness of the wisdom behind the words–a Zen moment to influence choices made in the coming days.
Was it a powerful workshop? It was decidedly so, and on many levels. Did he reveal a secret technique that would guarantee our success? Absolutely! And this “secret” is what takes me back full circle to the subject of lineage, and makes me wish I had registered for both sessions. That secret technique, that thing we’ve probably all known deep within all along, is “practice.” You see, each person in our lineage is there not because he was bigger, faster, or stronger, but because each one made a commitment, took the time, and put in the mental and physical work–in the form of practice.