Dear all,
I aplogise for the lateness of this newsletter - almost two weeks overdue, this was due to a family bereavement. I also apologise to Gary, as the 9th Annual Taichido/Wheelswithinwheels Social event is now only a few days away, so we haven't left you much notice! Anyway, two other 'news' bits for you this month: on the website, two new articles have been added. One is an updated re-write on the Taoist Philosophy that I know you will find interesting, and the other, in the same section concerns the Tao Te Ching. Secondly, We have had a large number of requests for the Taichido interactive multimedia instruction CD-ROMs - in DVD format. It seems that many of you would prefer to learn in your living room using the television instead of a computer. Fair enough, and we are starting to put into development a DVD version of the CD-ROMs. As the whole lot has to be virtually rebuilt from the ground up (the DVD format is a completely different media from CD-ROM), this is going to take a while, but we'll keep you posted. The DVD formats will include PAL and NTSC in DVD-R and DVD+R, and if you would like us to notify you by email when they are ready, you can register an interest at www.taichidoshop.com.

As well as the live event, Gary this month talks about the whole idea of a 'virtual dojo' on the internet and doing it for real in the home dojo - and when the two blur together.

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www.taichido.com and sister site wheelswithinwheels.net
LIVE WEBCAM EVENT- 1530hrs-1830hrs GMT
- with great pleasure we invite you to -
The 9th Annual taichido/wheelswithinwheels 'social'
held in conjunction with -
The 2nd Annual Southampton Shin Sangha Eza

Sunday 29th February 2004
3.30pm - 6.30pm (1530hrs-1830hrs GMT)

Celebrations!

I would like to begin this months Newsletter by inviting you to taichido's home dojo for the final event in a series of celebrations that began here on Chinese New Year with a complete 'house clearing and energy sweep' ritual performed on Jan 22nd. This was followed by celebration of the Lantern Festival on the first full moon of the year, and then a complete redecoration (including lifting, renovation and replacing of the floor!) in the dojo since. In the wake of all of this, our celebrations are set reach their conclusion on Sunday 29th February with a rather intense burst of activities here in the bricks and mortar of my home, the top floor of which is 'myhomedojo' - and YOU ARE ALL INVITED to visit via a live webcam broadcast!

Details of this 'eclectic' event are as follows:

3.00 for 3.30 ...
Start
Webcast - the dojo goes live online @www.wheelswithinwheels.net

3.30 - 4.00
1
The 2nd Annual Southampton Shin Sangha Eza
Buddha Service and Chanting

4.00 - 4.30
2
Two Short Talks
a) Jim Pym (Author of "You don't have to Sit on the Floor and editor of Pure Land Notes - Journal of the Pure Land Buddhist Fellowship. Click here for PLNonline.
b) Gary

4.30 - 5.30
3
The 9th Annual taichido/wheelswithinwheels 'social'
Tea and cakes (open house/party). Webcast pause. Plenty of time to send a greeting by E-mail us here @ gary@wheelswithinwheels.net.

5.45 - 6.15
4
Concert 'live in the dojo'. Instrumental guitar duet of an original composition "The Yang Long Form Parts One Two and Three - The Musical" performed by Gary and Tai Chi student Russell..

6.30pm latest ...
Finish

Readers of this Newsletter and regular visitors to Taichido and its associated or sister sites will be already well aware that this time of year is also celebrated here in the dojo for various other reasons, not least to mark the anniversary of the forming of our first dojo as 'a place set aside' for training and practice on 14th February (Valentines Day/day of the Lantern Festival) 1995.

Every year at about this time of year we/I have staged or facilitated one type of event or another, if only to provide ourselves with an excuse for a social or a party. The first of these was a Zen style silent sitting and working (cleaning stuff) 'retreat' style meditation weekend.
The next year I gave a talk about 'nothing' or 'emptiness', or 'the void'. The observation that I made in this talk was that whilst we may think that when we (in 'zazen' - silent sitting meditation) may think that we are meditating upon 'nothing'; what we are actually doing is meditating upon 'the concept of nothing'. Not Nothing.

Over the next few years the emphasis of these events became far more Tai Chi/Chi Kung and martial art inclined, reflecting a similar shift in the activities that took place in the dojo which had, in the same period, expanded outwards from a carpeted room used first for zazen and then Tai Chi and Chi Kung into an adjoining much larger wooden floored hall. In these times we held annual Budo's or training days ... ... ... followed by a social and a party!

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Doing What?

Two of the oldest pieces of mine on the website are Standing, Sitting Breathing 1: The Foreign 'traditions' and Standing, Sitting, Breathing 2: notes on the Chi Kung lesson. These two are a reformat of my lesson plan notes for one of these 'special' or Budo days. For many more 'older' or 'for the record' personal muses on 'the karma' or history and traditions of "the dojo" please do visit dojo notes @ my home dojo which may also be found as a link from wheelswithinwheels.net. sister site of taichido.com. - and please then click on anything under the heading >to do with taichido< .

Upon my own review and reread of all of these titles, I was struck particularly with "Doing It", for between the lines in this piece I can detect the forming of thoughts of a 'virtual dojo'. "Doing It" is reproduced below:

Doing It - Together

... Do we come here to 'do' these things or do we come here to do them 'together'? Would we continue to do these things if were not able to do them together; or is it that when we are together doing it, the whole is somehow greater than the sum of the parts?

Question?: Does any body need to come here to do Tai Chi? Honest answer?: No!

If we wanted to build a building together we would need to agree on where we were going to build it and then commit to meet there as often as necessary and do that; build it together. But we don't want to be doing that do we ?
Question?: What do we want to be doing, and do we really need to be doing it together - physically?
Answer: Doing Tai Chi together is nice; but so is walking, and talking, and eating, and drinking.

Sometimes it is nice to do these things together, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes they are a pleasure; and that's nice, but the pleasure is at least in part derived from whom you do it with, rather than what it is that that you are doing.

So ... at The house of taichido we meet together to do Tai Chi (or whatever) because it is nice to do it together from time to time. We do it all of the time anyway (indoors more often than out) because it is good for us, and the best reason that I can think of for doing it together is because it is nice to share.

Even if or when we put aside these spiritual or philosophical justifications for this perceived development of taichido and website, it still must be said that its continued (as perceive) existence has come about through practical and prudent adaptation and meeting the needs of those that have perceive it as helpful or just 'nice'.

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Traditions continued - because its just nice

As the virtual-ness and the not there-ness of 'the dojo' increased in tandem with my chosen method of teaching 'personally' to individuals or pairs only, these annual socials became more important as the one day of the year when the many individuals involved in one way or another in the eclectic activities of the dojo might meet face to face and enjoy each others company.

So, is it not just fitting that in celebration of continued open and innovative communication that this traditions be continued with a live webcast from myhomedojo - to which YOU ARE ALL INVITED !!!

So it seems that once again, with creatve use of the Internet, web and IT. Technology we are able able to virtually meet and via this encounter become just a little better acquainted and celebrate both the diversity in the fellowship of a tao that need not "be spoken of".

This and That

Last years gathering was the most formal to date. The special guest invited to take part with us in a Buddha Service with Chanting was Prof. Rev Sato of the Three Wheels Japanese Shin Buddhist Temple in London. Aside from being part of that years annual social, this event was also called "the First Annual Southampton Shin Sangha Eza". The majority of attendee's that year were either Tai Chi friends who were "open minded and interested in the spiritual side of things" or confirmed Buddhist.

The social the year before that was completely informal with just a tea and cakes party and later a tune or two on the guitar from myself and a Tai Chi friend. All of the attendee's were Tai Chi friends, or the family of Tai Chi friends, whilst some of the former, are quite incidentally, also Buddhists.

I make these identifications of Tai Chi and Buddhist only to recognise that I am aware that borders are quite intentionally blurred on these 'special' days and my intention is to celebrate differences as "Harmony Within Diversity". These two groups are therefor so catagorised only because they constitute 'groups' that meet here in the dojo. However may I please insist here and now that it is not 'groups' that characterise this dojo, it is individuals - and all 'ways' are embraced. The vast majority of those that come to the dojo for Tai Chi are not Buddhist. People that come to the dojo are people. People who don't come to the dojo ... are people. People are people.

To illustrate this 'openness' further I might just mention the social the year before those two mentioned above, this being the last in our previous dojo. This time in this place, that being a hall big enough to hold a hundred people we put on a Tai Chi demonstration and a bit of a show - with lights, music and a dry ice smoke machine! The evening ended with banging trance music - and tea and cakes!

Perhaps one of the problems with these events hinted at above is that "you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time".
To accommodate this, and notwithstanding the fact that end of the day all I really want to happen is for different people to meet different people, I decided this year we will have a go at both activities on the same afternoon, and there will at first be a Buddhist Eza with Chanting followed by a Dharma Talk by Jim Pym (Author of "You don't have to Sit on the Floor and editor of Pure Land Notes - Journal of the Pure Land Buddhist Fellowship. Click here for PLNonline.)
There will then follow ... tea and cakes ... and this is where and when one 'group' may meet the other or overlap, because the second half of the afternoon is given over to the Taichido/wheelswithin social. If this fist event of the day was 'for the Buddhist', the last is for The Tai Chi people.

Between these two main events,as buns are being consumed downstairs, the dojo will be rearranged for a guitar music concert by myself and Tai Chi friend Russell. I have been working on this tune now for over three years and indeed, what has now become the second part of this just completed three part piece was first played live with a didgery-do at one of earlier socials mentioned above - the one with lights and a smoke machine.

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Website Update

Readers of this newsletter who have been with from its commencement over two years ago will know that I was at first a little embarrassed to be confessing that it actually contained very little real 'news'. That all seems to have changed in recent times and this monthly communication has served very well to keep you subscribers informed in general as to ongoing projects here at Taichido and to give you the inside track on updates to the website/s. I conclude here now with another of those updates and look forwards in the meantime to our next encounter - live online perhaps!

As a further consequence of ongoing review and rewrite of the oldest pieces on the site, another discrete yet significant update has been made in "Taoism" @Taichido.com. The seventh link item on that index is "The Taoist Philosophy". Whist this title remains the same its contents have, following comprehensive research and link making, been completely rewritten. Further to this rewrite, the Taoism section now includes a new piece on "The Tao Te Ching" which was written as a spin-off from the former because I felt that one (Taoism) could not be discussed without direct reference to the other (the Tao Teh Ching). This new linked page is shown immediately beneath "The Taoist Philosophy" on the "Taoism" index page.

The final update to the website that deserves mention here now is the inclusion of an archive of all previous newsletters on the main Taichido index. Like the newsletter itself, the compiling of this archive was Mark's idea and I should now express my appreciation of his diligent work for without him this interesting record of the development of Taichido would all have been lost because; I don't know about you, but I didn't save a single one of them!

Gassho, Gary