Guan Yin

This is the area that Bataan set up in the front of the practice area at taiji camp. The statue is of Guan Yin (often spelled Kwan Yin) with a dragon. Sometimes when I looked toward the statue, it seemed like the dragon was expanding outward into the room, flitting amongst all of us taiji players. Interpret that how you will :-). Guan Yin is variously considered a goddess, a Boddhisvatta, and a Taoist Immortal. The last two are often considred equivalent, and they are how I tend to think of her. The closest western equivalent would be a Saint. Legend has it that she was all set to enter Nirvana when she turned around and vowed not to do so until all beings on Earth could enter with her. The wikipedia link in the title is rather dry, so here is a more interesting one.

The characters in the picture stand for heaven, earth, and man. Heaven (Tian) I recognize. It is the one with a sort of 'A' figure with a line on top. Man is the bottom figure, something like the Greek letter 'nu'. The middle one I have probably seen before, but don't remember. By process of elimination, though, it must be earth. In taiji, earth stands for our rootedness, our ability to disperse force into the ground. Heaven stands for our straightness. We try to keep a perfectly straight spine, suspended from the headtop. One of my favorite images combines these two: we are like plants, about to break the surface of the soil and come into the light; our legs are like our roots, extending into the earth; our head is the tip of the plant, reaching for the surface. So what is the role of 'man' in all this? (Oh, Bataan made a point of translating it as 'human') Well, in terms of Chinese thought, Earth is below, Heaven is above, and Man stands between. Anything above the surface of the earth is 'heaven', btw. In terms of the body, the lower Dan Tian (an energy center in the lower abdomen) is the 'in between'. So our legs are earth, our spine (and arms, to a lesser degree) are heaven, and the waist is man.

I have to wonder how much beyond the earth's atmosphere this idea of 'heaven' technically extends. If it extends to the edge of the universe, the picture seems unbalanced to me. My suspicion is that it doesn't extend much beyond the atmosphere, but does include our perception of things beyond the atmosphere. So it would include the starlight that we see but not the star itself. Hmmm... Unless I extend it to the orbit of the earth, it would include sunlight but not the sun. I have no idea if that might be a problem, or if it is anywhere near what the ancient Chinese had in mind. :-D