Once, in a conversation with William Chen, I tried to extract from him some solidarity with me in the matter of certain practices found in many T’ai Chi schools, practices that I felt were patently incorrect. I certainly had no desire to enlist him in any sort of crusade, only the satisfaction of agreement from a man I truly respect.

My efforts, however, were in vain. Everyone, said William, had the right to teach whatever they thought was correct, for whatever reason. What about the possibility that they are distorting and degrading the true T’ai Chi Ch’uan? It is not for any one of us, said William, to decide what the true T’ai Chi Ch’uan is; only history can determine that. But we can at least criticize, can we not? Speculate, make comparisons? Why bother? was William’s answer. We can only judge their methods in light of our own goals, which only history can validate. No one’s creative ideas, original approach, can exist without some goal. Only the results can say whose approach is better, or whose goal more correct, and those results will speak for themselves.

I am frankly in awe of these sentiments. They have to them the ring of incontrovertible and undeniable wisdom. In truth, I felt on this occasion deeply chastised, all the more so because, in spite of my willingness to accept their correctness, I could not bring myself to share them. I am sorely envious of William, in fact, if his actual condition truly reflects such a carefree attitude (and I make no suggestion here that it does not), if he can witness the obvious deterioration of the art that has resulted from its explosive growth in popularity over the last half century without tearing his hair out in frustration. I wish I could.

But I cannot. It is true that, in terms of action, William and I would be in almost total agreement. I consider T’ai Chi Ch’uan an art, and as such something that should never be forcefully regulated, or even regulated, for that matter, without force. I am the enemy of all T’ai Chi Ch’uan “Associations,” “certifying boards,” “officially recognized versions,” and all beaurocracies purporting to “regulate” or “standardize” the art in any way. I believe in the individual teacher, free to develop his art in his own way, without intimidation, and that this is the only condition under which any art flourishes, and without which it will inevitably stagnate and die. I have refused countless requests to sit on such boards, or to officiate at tournaments that, by their results, will automatically define the art in some “official” way or other, and I have openly insulted representatives of such organizations that have suggested that I need their permission to call what I do T’ai Chi Ch’uan and teach it. I feel very deeply about this position on things, and will never retreat from it.

But it is a pragmatic position, not an enlightened one. I have practiced T’ai Chi Ch’uan for forty-four years now, since the age of twenty-one. For ten years before that I practiced other martial arts, and I am very glad that I did, for many reasons, but one in particular. It is because my experience was wide enough and for long enough to see that T’ai chi Ch’uan is not just another martial art; it is something special. Unlike other martial arts, it is not something straightforward that can merely be learned, it must somehow be penetrated. It is not just a challenge, it is a mystery. The reason for this may be understood from the outset, but the mystery still remains.

It is because it is about the acquisition of internal habits, and the mystery arises from the fact that one is ignorant in terms of how these habits will ultimately manifest in external behavior. It cannot be simply deduced from watching the actions of experts, because their very qualification as experts means that the evidence of their journey, the connection between these habits and their ultimate behavior, is invisible, their behavior simply “natural,” and nothing more. Other martial artists can see the “pieces” of their art manifested in the performance of its experts, pieces that they are in fact currently attempting to master. It is just a matter of putting them all together. With T’ai Chi Ch’uan, the ingredients are noticeably absent, or should be. Nowhere can be found deliberately slow movement, the extreme and extended positions of the form, or any attempt to reproduce the restrictions of “fixed” hand pushing. Why the hell are we practicing all this stuff, if, in the final stage, we never do any of it?

Well, that’s part of the mystery. It is one that I have spent my entire life getting to the bottom of, and my conclusion is that it is a pearl of unimaginable price, a veritable miracle of unlikely creativity, a secret so hidden and a process so esoteric that it could have easily, by simply the laws of chance, waited another ten thousand years to be discovered. Not only that, but I feel that the people who actively contributed to its creation were geniuses, and found that the classical practices of the art, especially those of the Yang Family, constitute a complete method, and require the presumption of genius to attempt to improve.

I harbor no such presumption, and have made no such attempt. To those who would accuse me of “making it up as I go along,” I say that I am trying to understand it as I go along. As far as what I am doing, it is the distillation of the instruction of four very fine teachers, all stemming from the same teacher or grand-teacher, instruction that had few contradictions, and only enlightening ones, at that. I couldn’t “make anything up” that I didn’t already know how to do, just figure out how the process worked, and use that knowledge to make it work better. I have devoted myself to the Classics of the art, and to the principle that they cannot be taken out of context, but appreciated only as an integrated whole, that, as one succinctly states, all of them are important, and “not a word is wasted,” and, lastly and perhaps more importantly, that they are all about boxing, and amount to practical instruction, not idealizations or philosophy.

Because of all of the above, I am quite passionate about this art, and also quite certain that I have earned every right to speak about it. Those who have read my writings on T’ai Chi Ch’uan I am sure will not quarrel with my own assessment of myself as a totally bigoted snob, endlessly wailing over the unhappy state of present-day T’ai Chi Ch’uan, bitching and carping over the travesty of t’ui-shou tournaments, cavalierly listing endless misconceptions and misunderstandings that I am certain that everybody is guilty of, except me and my unbelievably fortunate students, of course. It has all the innocent charm, I would say, of a horse shitting in your garden.

All right. Guilty. I can’t help it. I’m not William. I think that there is a kind of ultimate Platonic form of T’ai Chi Ch’uan and, insomuch as I have managed to penetrate it, it is painful to me that others might miss the beauty that I have discovered. I identify everything that stood in the way of this understanding as a mistake, an incidentally patronizing position, I realize, since many of these things are thought by others to be the correct technique. But how could I be otherwise? It is the world as I see it, and you are free, God knows, to take it or leave it. It is simply my sincerest effort.

In spite of all this uncontrollable passion and verbosity, however, I try to keep my efforts at intimidation in the abstract. I do not single out individuals who are innocently pursuing, with equal passion, a course that differs from my own and say to them “YOU! You are committing unforgivable sin. You are naively destroying the work of giants. You are offending generations of ancestors. You are teaching incorrect technique. You are thinking incorrectly. You are not doing everything EXACTLY LIKE ME!”

At least, I haven’t done that yet. But I have wanted to, oh yes, I have to confess, I have wanted to. And this is why I can understand the passion with which my student, Vlasta Pechova, has been repeatedly lashed following the publication of her book on the fundamentals of T’ai Chi Ch’uan (see her book “Tai Chi”), fundamentals that she learned from me. I can only say to those who were the authors of such reprimands and “friendly” advice to keep her mouth shut until she was wise enough to enter their august company, I am one of you, boys (if it was only boys). We are soul brothers. I think T’ai Chi Ch’uan is being destroyed by idiots; you think T’ai Chi Ch’uan is being destroyed by idiots. I think everybody else’s T’ai Chi Ch’uan is impractical for fighting; so do you. Tempting, isn’t it? We could just meet and have a big fight. That would settle everything. Except we all know that it wouldn’t settle shit. That fights are only the measure of the people fighting, not of the ideas that they imagine they represent. And that ideas can’t be defeated by beating the shit out of the people who created them, or hold them, anyway.

So all the more reason to be frustrated. I also am frustrated by this inability of the martial arts to produce real conclusions except of the most serious nature.

But tell me. There are lots of T’ai Chi websites, and oodles of books on the subject. Do you go out of your way to give such friendly advice to a lot of them, or just the good looking chicks? Well, that’s not quite fair, is it? If I were picking people to give good advice to, I’d pick the good looking chicks first, myself.

But I wouldn’t pick on them, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t say, for instance, that a woman who is as cultured, talented, well-bred, and beautiful as Vlasta Pechova obviously is should be told that she has nothing of interest or even passing accuracy to say about the martial arts because she probably hasn’t been in any “real” fights. Just how many “real” fights are a woman like this supposed to be getting into anyway? For that matter, how many “real” fights should any of us be getting into? Do the martial arts turn us into such assholes that people are constantly attacking us? Or do we, in our quest for perfection, just single innocents out for destruction and write it off to collateral damage? Is it possible that the martial arts are just a sham, that they don’t train us for anything, that nobody “really” knows anything about them except professional assassins, gold shipment bodyguards, and Jack Bauer?

Come on, guys. I got into my share of “real” fights when I was young, in Hawaii, where everybody did martial arts, but the serious sparring I have done with experts, especially when it got a little out of hand, was a hell of a lot more dangerous, and a hell of a lot more instructive. I hired myself out as a bouncer, once, where I was already working as a bartender, but that turned out to be more about avoiding violence than practicing it, whenever possible. I didn’t get into the martial arts to get into fights. I hate fighting, the emotional component that makes it “real,” for whatever reason. One of my primary reasons for studying it was so I could stop worrying about it as a child. I measure success in the martial arts not by some arbitrary standard of power or toughness, or whether one has acquired, as a result, some enlightened philosophy, but measured by only one thing: if and when you are actually attacked, when the situation is truly “real,” for whatever reason, does your spirit go up, or down?

There are two ways of winning fights. One is to make your opponent’s spirit go down; the other is to make your own go up. I vastly prefer the latter, and it has an additional bonus. It also works even when with people you don’t want to kill. Sometimes, the best times, it even raises everybody’s spirit enough so that nobody wants to kill anybody. This is a good technique, a good result. I recommend it. Especially with Vlasta. If your communication has any purpose other than the venting of self-righteous professional indignation (with which, as I said, I can happily empathize), I can assure you that this is the shortest route to its fulfillment.

Remember, she is only working from what I have taught her, and she has every reason to be as confident of her knowledge as you do of yours. I have paid my dues, gentlemen, and Vlasta is in the process of paying hers. I think that this is all we can reasonably demand from each other, a courtesy that, if extended, I am more than willing to reciprocate.