Cosmic Rhythm (November 2010)

I’ll call this informal talk “Cosmic Rhythm,” a term I had never heard of or thought of until some weeks back. It is interesting how the term Cosmic Rhythm came about. Carmen [Brocklehurst] and I were called to KNME, the PBS television station in Albuquerque, to talk about doing a new T’ai Chi Chih show. (The show had great success the first time around.) We met with the program director and the head of the station. The program director, who I think had studied with Carmen and was very compatible with Carmen’s ideas, was very easy to talk to, but the head of the station didn’t seem to have any understanding of T’ai Chi Chih, which made it difficult to discuss ramifications. We were not starting with a new idea; they had already aired the first T’ai Chi Chih show and bankrolled the show, and distributed it all over the country. Despite getting surprisingly good ratings, it was all new to him. During our talks and much to my own surprise, I suddenly heard myself talking about Cosmic Rhythm and thought, “I’d better listen.” [Laughter.] We’ve heard “Cosmic Principle” and “Cosmic Order” but Cosmic Rhythm was a different thing.

If you’ll think about it, take a quiz show on television where somebody wins. What does he or she start doing right away – dancing and moving in rhythm. This seems to be very natural, and those of you who have pets know that when you’re doing T’ai Chi Chih, the pets are very much attracted by the rhythm. I had a squirrel that wanted to jump on my shoulder all the time. This should not be surprising because everything in the universe has a rhythm, and that rhythm has to do with cycles. It’s circular as is T’ai Chi Chih. But it is interesting that people unconsciously express their joy (not their unhappiness) in dance, in rhythmic movement. All you have to do is look around the universe. We can predict what time the sun comes up in the morning, how the tides will flow, when we will see the full moon and so forth. This is all part of Cosmic Rhythm. The seasons are among the most marvelous in this respect. In Japan in February, when there is snow on the ground, the plum blossoms begin to push through the snow and show themselves. This is an insane thing. There is nothing to tell them that Spring is coming. Because February is very often the coldest month, snow is on the ground and then suddenly people see this. It’s a sign of renewed life. The arrival of plum blossoms is a very great symbol to Japanese people. Am I right, Suni [McHenry]?

Wherever we look, circularity and the cyclical are representative of what is real. Those of you who are sinking deeply into T’ai Chi Chih (not on the surface but those who, over a period of time, sink deeply into it) begin to get the feeling of the circularity and of the cyclical. This is very encouraging because if you don’t grab the brass ring the first time around, you will come around again; you’ll get a second chance. With almost everything… I could go on with this particular idea in great detail. In a sense what we’re seeing is expansion and contraction, destruction and construction. There is no construction without destruction, and there is no destruction unless there’s been construction.

We could say there is always a transformation from the expanding to the contracting. We expand in Summer with long days and the kind of weather. And then in Winter, things quiet down. There is a feeling of meditation beneath the snow. But then Spring will come again. In Indian cosmology, we have vast periods of time called kalpas that are divided into four yugas. And it’s hard to predict the cycle because the time is so long. Nobody knows how long a kalpa is – maybe billions of years. But the teaching is that at the end of the kalpa everything retreats into latency. Everything retreats. There are no things.

We constantly see and take for granted that night follows day, that Spring follows Winter, that tides go out and come in. And yet this is expressive of something far beyond our ordinary comprehension. It is expressive of the reality that we don’t often take the time to think about or to see. If we do T’ai Chi Chih regularly, not only once or twice a week, but if we do it regularly, we will begin to fit into that rhythm. And what I’m talking about will become easily comprehensible. The great mystics and sages have, after awhile, looked at everything and then suddenly a bud appears on a tree, and they look at this with wonder. We take it for granted, but is it something to be taken for granted? Everybody has had the feeling, at one time or another, that there is Cosmic Rhythm. You can call it the Tao; you can call it whatever you want. And if we could just push the right button, we would be one with Cosmic Rhythm and everything would flow smoothly. That only happens to a few, but people who do T’ai Chi Chih regularly (and particularly those who teach it) are in a position where they can live it, not think it, but they can live it.