The Rose of TCC Practice

In 2020, at the beginning of the Pandemic, I decided to enter the International Dancing Poetry Contest, held each year in the Bay Area of CA. I submitted my poem called “Blooming the Rose Within” which I wrote in 2009, while I was on a Silent Retreat at Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, CA. Every morning, I led the group in some T’ai Chi Chih moves, offered with soft, flowing music, before breakfast. Many experienced a connection with silence and tranquility, which was new for many participants.

When the Winners of the Poetry Contest were printed online in September 2020, I was thrilled to see that my poem was one of six First Place Winners. The poem reveals how those who practice TCC regularly will experience unexpected benefits. The benefits are truly transcendent! Teachers and students from all cultures who practice T’ai Chi Chih regularly will experience “an inner wellbeing,” and so much more! This poem is dedicated to Master Justin Stone, who devoted his life to helping countless individuals to be transformed by this wonderful spiritual practice.

Blooming the Rose Within

The foundation of all spiritual practices

is unfaltering repetition, meant to activate

the kinesthetic memory and unconscious psyche,

a device to help us move inward toward Oneness.

Meditation is an act of sincere devotion and constancy.

The very act of mindfully repeating a meditation brings you back

to the center of where you are, and who you are.

Transcending words and thoughts, we experience

that center as a dynamic fullness.

This universal meeting point within each of us

is easily recognizable when it happens, as if we knew it all along.

This place of self-cultivation is like a rose that needs continual

nourishment or the seeds of the practice will wither and fade away.

A regular meditation practice helps us stay in that center.

It induces, even seduces us into a natural state

of contemplation, a place of cosmic consciousness.

In this state, we can effortlessly forget the ego-self

and bloom the rose of lovingkindness,

the rose of deep compassion, the rose of peace.

Bloom the rose within yourself and find serenity.

Do the work of the “gardener,” nurturing and pruning

the form each day, and loving the practice,

until one day that interior garden will be truly magnificent.

— Linda Braga