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My Thoughts on The Tao Of My Thoughts...(Chee Soo)

 I walked into a second-hand bookshop and browsed through the shelves. I love these shops because they are an Aladdin's Cave...there's no Magic Lamp to rub but there is the possibility of striking gold. And I did.

Just some background. I was in a second-hand bookshop and just looking through the thousands of books just stacked up to the ceiling-a pot luck opportunity. I often walk into these shops with no intention to buy but, knowing that I probably would.

I had been practicing Tai Chi for some eight years with teachers schooled into the Lee Family Style which was prevalent around my location at the time, Coventry, in England. The man they named their Sensai was Chee Soo.

My eyes stopped at the purple spine of a book with gold letters: 'The Tao of My Thoughts' by Chee Soo. 

The #1 Gold
I snatched the book from the shelf and felt the texture of a hardback book by Chee Soo in my hands. I opened it not knowing what would be inside. That's when I struck the first nugget of gold. This card fell out with a picture of Chee Soo and Marilyn, his wife, titled Marilyn and Chee in Hong Kong.

The #2 Gold
Chee introduces the Tao, with the interpretation of the Way which Taoists follow.                                     THE SUPREME AND ABSOLUTE 
In the very beginning of time, and long before time began, and long before there was even a universe. In fact, long before there was nothing, there was the non-existence of nothing, and, before that, there was the void, and it was, and still is, the home of the Supreme and Absolute Force...Supreme Spirit that controls everything within and without, the whole universe.

The Gold #3
I read the book and put it aside for a year or two and now I've decided to come back to it as explore the words again.

#1. There is only one beginning, but many endings, let us pray for the time when both are joined together, and the beginning has finished, and the ending has begun, then our life will be in constant harmony with the TAO.

Thoughts:
Only one beginning? But when is that beginning? Is it at birth and the first breath? Is it when the first cell is formed or the moment the sperm enters the egg? Is it at the sex act between my mother and father or their mother and father...or???

Many endings? I know that people talk of the many lives they have lived so, what constitutes the end?
Is it the moment we stop breathing (I've heard it said that the brain lives on for three minutes.) Is it when the 'spirit leaves the body' and rigor mortis sets in? Is in when the body cremated or buried.

Pray for the time when both are joined together? I never had a concept of when both are joined together. And, I'm not sure now. But, these are my thoughts and so my words. 

The beginning has finished and the ending has begun? Through my short time in Tai Chi, I have come to believe that the practice of the form embraces this. I focus on this move as my body has learned the form by repetition and mentoring. I have let the last move go,  the focus is on this move so that my body is prepared for the move to come. But that move hasn't arrived, yet.

Life in constant harmony with the TAO? In harmony with the TAO? I still do not know and maybe I never will. I didn't come to tai chi until my late fifties and the teachers had decades of experience. But, I do know that I feel a harmony more now than when I began twenty years ago.

Is this the TAO? 





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