The Vital Force Archive

Justin Stone credits the worldwide spread of T'ai Chi Chih to the good it does rather than promotion, and praises Steve Ridley for teaching six teacher training courses in one year with much travel and little financial reward.

Justin Stone defines the spiritual as identification with the Real, using Yogi Vasistha's counsel to ignore the taster and the thing tasted and rest in the tasting only.

Justin Stone contrasts Zen's arduous mind-control and koan work with T'ai Chi Chih's easier route through the Chi, noting the health benefit he calls the great bonus.

Justin Stone's chapter "The Lotus Blossoms in the Mud" walks the cold stone path of a Kyoto temple at night, where streetcars and motorcycles on Karasuma Street blend into the solitude.

Judith Jones of Redmond recommends the Good Karma audio tape Justin Stone Speaks on T'ai Chi Chih, which on a recent listening finally made clear why concentration rests on the soles of the feet.

Justin Stone links the Zen master Zuigan's discovery that he was "completely dead to himself" with the T'ai Chi Chih saying that no one is doing T'ai Chi Chih, asking whether Zuigan lost or gained.

Justin Stone warns that popular Zen books are often written by scholars and translators who have realized nothing, and that their monastic "cases" were never meant for readers with jobs, children and spouses.

Justin Stone contrasts humanity's lasting cultural history with the fleeting record of aggression, and argues that circulating and balancing the Chi through T'ai Chi Chih speeds our slow spiritual evolution beyond egocentric thinking.

Excerpted from Climb the Joyous Mountain, Justin Stone describes the fasting mind that discards as it grows, calls meditation hard work with no material reward, and insists we cause our own suffering and must change ourselves.

Justin Stone lists the essentials of correct movement, from flowing effortlessly from the t'an t'ien to the heel-first side step and the 60-40 emphasis, with Steve Ridley adding notes on stance, alignment and closing without rushing.

Justin Stone argues that T'ai Chi Chih benefits accumulate only with regular practice, comparing lapsed practitioners to pianists who do finger exercises once a fortnight and citing the chi stored in the t'an t'ien.

Justin Stone argues that nothing needs to be learned or accumulated on the spiritual path, noting that letters about personal troubles nearly always begin with the word 'I'.

Justin Stone compares enlightenment in Zen and Indian thought and argues no one is truly unenlightened, since habit energies merely obscure the sun, and students who abandon practice never let the wind clear those clouds.

Justin Stone instructs teachers never to answer "yes" when asked whether T'ai Chi Chih will help arthritis, offering case histories instead of claims, and calling illness a spiritual purification.

Marking Good Karma's reissue of his long out-of-print Zen Meditation, Justin Stone questions Soto Zen's long cross-legged sitting, cites Hui Neng and Hakuin on realizing one's own nature, and links the chi's revulsion to enlightenment.

Justin Stone, in excerpts from earlier issues, insists teachers deserve good pay yet T'ai Chi Chih must never be run as a business, and urges sincere practice over quick surface results.

Justin Stone traces T'ai Chi Chih from two warm-up movements shown to him by Professor Huang through the 1975 Los Angeles radio interview that filled fifteen classes a week, the first Teachers' Training Courses, the founding of The Vital Force, naming Steve Ridley as head, and the development of Seijaku.

Justin Stone, quoted from T'ai Chi Chih! Joy Thru Movement, defines the Japanese word 'seijaku' as serenity in the midst of activity, achieved by holding an unchanging center during disturbance.

Justin Stone's 1984 letter to teachers, reprinted, welcoming the new journal, congratulating Corinn and Teen, warning against deviations in the Teaching, and describing chi as both prana and prajna.

Justin Stone, in four sentences reprinted from the Summer 1988 issue, calls life the uncovering of Joy and names manifesting who and what we really are as Love.

Justin Stone distinguishes genuine Satori from premature or merely conceptual understanding, citing Hakuin's many 'great joys' and Ramakrishna's prolonged absorption, and warns that anyone claiming enlightenment is far from it.

Justin Stone argues that neither the Vertical Absolute nor the Horizontal mundane suffices alone, citing the hundred foot pole, the Great Death, and Paul Reps' answer that he believed in nothing.

Justin Stone's six-line poem moves from "Seeing is not seeing" to innumerable worlds strung like pearls along a path of daisies, closing with an instruction to listen inwardly.

Justin Stone notes that visiting teachers from North Dakota, Washington and California all led his Tuesday morning sessions identically, and states plainly that he wants no new movements or long connected form added to T'ai Chi Chih.

Justin Stone argues against splitting life into hours of financial struggle and minutes of spiritual practice, urging students to rest in the Essence amid turmoil, and quoting his Zen teacher on a day of laughter.

Justin Stone traces anger to preoccupation with self, recommends sleeping on it before responding, and invokes ahimsa and karma alongside T'ai Chi Chih as softness in action, like bamboo bending without breaking.

Justin Stone contrasts Hinayana Buddhism's view of the world as a forest fire with Zen Master Yun-men's "Every Day's a Good Day," and Seigan's dying words praising the joy of life.

Justin Stone describes the pulsation of Chi felt in stillness after practice, and argues that regular, sincere T'ai Chi Chih changes the ground from which worry, resentment and addiction spring.

Justin Stone corrects two claims from a newspaper article sent to him, insisting T'ai Chi Chih is neither therapy nor thousands of years old, and naming the movements he himself created.

Justin Stone criticizes books that pair psychologists with self-styled swamis, misquote Patanjali, and sell commercialized spirituality, offering instead his own definition: Spirituality as Identification with the Real.