The Vital Force Archive

Justin Stone retells the Buddha's instruction to a grieving mother to collect rice from any household untouched by death, arguing that accepting impermanence frees us from constant striving.

Justin Stone strings together five short notes: Nobutada on quietness and emptiness, the Buddha's answer "I am awake," the Ryoanji garden sign about protection from oneself, modern gods of phone and computer, and Takuan on enlightenment as unity.

Justin Stone dismisses debating students over questions like why the right hand leads or how a movement got its name, saying the benefits come from doing T'ai Chi Chih, not talking about it.

Justin Stone offers casual notes on the fullness of emptiness, gratitude as joy apart from satisfied desire, Confucius on human-heartedness and Teh, and why teaching must fit each person's Karma.

Justin Stone recaps his summer Teachers' Conference talk on the two Sanskrit requisites for Enlightenment, ahimsa and vairagya, and warns how habit energies harden into tendencies that lead us by the nose.

Justin Stone argues that words inevitably create concepts that cannot carry a genuine realization, citing Hakuin Zenji and Krishnamurti, and explains why he sometimes refuses to answer conceptual questions.

Justin Stone defines karma as action and its fruit rather than blind destiny, and argues that circulating and balancing the chi through TCC fades habit energies, burning the karmic seeds.

Justin Stone tells teachers to correct how a student moves rather than what they move, after seeing teachers at the Summer Conference stand rigidly with feet anchored instead of yinning and yanging through legs, hips and waist.

Justin Stone, writing in 1988, describes balancing the yin and yang aspects of chi as one of life's great secrets, drawing on Hua Yen Buddhism, Indian prana and acupuncture to argue that all healing is self-healing.

Justin Stone offers a short koan-like statement that trying is not the Way and not trying is not the Way, neither nor, closing with the soul in the breath and the breath as fire.

Justin Stone questions whether anything is unholy, citing Krishnamurti and Bodhidharma's "vast emptiness," then offers brief verses on evanescence, rebirth and walking through snow without destination.

Justin Stone names three steps on the Way: accord with Impermanence, discover who and what we are beyond it, then return to the Marketplace to work with people.

Justin Stone recommends Paul Reps' ten minutes of quiet 'receiving', known in Japan as shikan taza, praises Steve Ridley's poems, and recalls a walk when everything sang Creation's glory.

Justin Stone recounts a Zen priest's charge to "be the Big hermit," the phrase that sent him down from the Himalayan foothills, and links impermanence, emptiness and the Lotus Sutra to gratitude.

Justin Stone argues that people cling to habitual thinking even when it makes them unhappy, so reformers and missionaries waste their effort, while T'ai Chi Chih and meditation, offered when asked, let habits change as people evolve.

Justin Stone argues the body is not solid but a swirl of shifting yin and yang energies, describes Mind and Chi as mutually conditioning, and places T'ai Chi Chih as action taken before illness.

Justin Stone lists the seven books he most often carries and rereads, among them John Wu's The Golden Age of Zen, Krishnamurti's Notebook and Chang Chung Yuan's Creativity and Taoism.

Justin Stone argues that enlightenment is manifestation rather than intellect, drawing on D. T. Suzuki's term MYO, the swordsman and the improvising jazz pianist, to explain "Sink into the Essence".

Justin Stone contrasts those who glimpse the Vertical and turn to lectures, books and argument with those whose complete experience of oneness leaves daily life tasteless, and describes integration back into the Marketplace.

Justin Stone asks teachers not to recommend unprepared candidates after one entered a course without being ready, praises the Albuquerque course, and previews a maximum Chi program at the Seijaku Course.

Four aphorisms from Justin Stone, including "Every Blade of Grass a Guru" and his claim that all practices come down to knowing who and what you are.

Justin Stone offers two brief teacher-and-pupil dialogues, one in which admitting ignorance proves a student ready to learn, the other conceding honesty about preferring good, beauty and wealth.

Justin Stone's 1966 preface to Wen-shan Huang's Fundamentals of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, paraphrased to suit T'ai Chi Chih, calls the practice a Chinese yoga and a walking meditation rather than exercise.

Justin Stone announces "The Reflective Eye," his new piano recording on tape, the first he has been pleased with for both sound and playing, available from Good Karma Publishers.

Justin Stone describes how every mood and thought carries a matching prana, from the roughness of angry breathing to the near-stopped breath of deep samadhi, concluding that mastering body masters mind.

Justin Stone asks T'ai Chi Chih teachers to write to The Vital Force about ordinary classroom experience, noting that accounts need not be spectacular and that sharing is the T'ai Chi way.

Justin Stone reminds teachers that T'ai Chi Chih is first a spiritual discipline, urging them to pursue their own self-cultivation so that students will be drawn to them in growing numbers.

Justin Stone's short poem on meeting visitors at whatever level they bring, answering Emptiness with Emptiness and gold with gems, or banal talk if the guest lingers in dust.

Justin Stone traces Zen from Bodhidharma and Hui Neng to his own 3:30 a.m. Zazen at Eiheiji, where monks manned cash registers, and argues Zen demands attenuation of the pleasure principle.

Justin Stone recommends Gopi Krishna's "Higher Consciousness" as describing prana or shakti, synonyms for chi, and previews his talk on it at the August 10th Teachers Conference.