When you launch a business or a school or simply an event, you require a meaningful name or title. It should also be catchy but without losing sight of the serious underlying purpose of the business/school/event.
So why West Coast Wuji, apart from the obvious fact that I live and practice on the west coast of Scotland?
Doesn’t wuji mean ‘nothing?’ Why would I want to do or practise or become nothing?
Etymology!
Wuji (pinyin) or Wu Chi (Wade-Giles) actually refers to the unmanifest aspect of Dao (pinyin) or Tao (Wade-Giles): It is Dao-in-stillness. It is the undifferentiated timelessness which, in the Taijitu Shuo(a traditional Taoist diagram) is represented by an empty circle.
According to Daoism, Wuji refers to a state of non-distinction prior to the differentiation into the Yin and Yang. This is followed by the ba gua, the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching and finally the ten-thousand-things – all the phenomena of the manifest world that we concern ourselves with and worry about.
Wuji can therefore be seen as a point of potential for movement, which is taiji (pinyin) or tai chi (Wade-Giles). Hence, before we begin our taiji or qigong exercises, we adopt wuji stance.
In most workshops, we begin with 10 minutes sitting or standing meditation for this very reason. Our workshops give you time to do something which will be of real benefit. In order to achieve this, you need to be able to concentrate on the job in hand and not be constantly worrying about the birthday card you have to buy or the iron you might have left switched on. All these things are dealt with (not ignored) leaving you free to make the most of the session.
To practise Daoism, or to follow the Dao, – not that we are necessarily doing this during the workshops – I mention it as an explanation of the choice of word – one takes the “path of return” on which one leaves behind the material possessions and concerns of the world and returns to wuji. (Many of the world’s religions and belief systems follow a similar philosophy but using different language.)
Peace and Harmony
Daoism recognises that things are not fixed but constantly changing so it talks about the constant cycling between Dao-in-stillness and Dao-in-movement: between the unmanifest Wuji and the manifest Taiji, with its flow between yin and yang. Polarised phenomena (yin and yang) come from Wuji and then return to it, via taiji.
The qigong and taiji exercises that we practise are simply part of this search for peace and harmony at every level.
