Cover: Qi Magazine is published by the Tse Qigong Centre. Its aim is to bring you information not readily available in the West. Editor: Michael Tse Deputy Editor: Darryl Moy Design Assistant: David Drennan Assistants: Sarah Bloomfield John Hayes Martin Gale Subscription: Gill Harbach Legal Adviser: Tony Walsh Proof Reading: Yvonne Dixon Marketing/Distribution: Jessica Blackwell Sweden: Barbro Olsson Consultants (Listed in alphabetical order): Grandmaster Chan Chi Ho Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang Grandmaster Ip Chun Grandmaster Yang Meijun Columnists: Glenn Gossling J. Reynolds Nelson Dr. Shulan Tang Sihn Kei Adam Wallace Readers may contact any of our contributors c/o Qi Magazine. We encourage all our readers to contribute articles, letters or questions for possible inclusion in future issues of Qi Magazine. Articles appearing in Qi Magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editor. Adverts appearing in the magazine are not necessarily endorsed by it or the editor. Exercises appearing in Qi Magazine are for reference purposes only. Thus anyone wishing to study should seek qualified tuition. Michael Tse 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any way without the written permission of Michael Tse. Advertising: Qi Magazine has proved to be an effective way of reaching a wide variety of people. All enquiries welcome. For UK call: 0161 929 4485 For USA call: (808) 528 8501 Subscription: Costs per year: UK £20 inc p&p. USA $35 inc p&p Europe £25 (airmail) inc p&p. Worldwide £35 (airmail) inc p&p. For UK/Europe/Worldwide Please send payment in Pounds Sterling. Payment can be by Credit Card or Cheque, drawn on UK bank, payable to Qi Magazine: Qi Magazine PO Box 59 Altrincham, WA15 8FS, UK Tel:0161 929 4485 Fax: 0161 929 4489 email: [email protected]For USA/Canada Please send payment in US Dollars. Payment can be by Credit Card or Check payable to Qi Magazine: Tse Qigong Centre PO Box 15807, Honolulu HI 96830 Tel: (808) 528 8501 Fax:(928) 441 6578 email [email protected]http://www.qimagazine.com ISSN 1358-3778 Continued on page 7 Studying Qigong and martial arts, such as Wing Chun and Taijiquan is my life. Teaching them is my job. I did not think about that in the beginning when I began, though. When I first began my studies, I was just a teenager. I just wanted to learn martial arts and understand the philosophy behind it. If it was just fighting, then for me it had no meaning and made the martial arts cheap. Bruce Lee was my hero who brought me to be interested in all of that. Both his writing and talking were about martial arts related with philosophy. Both together is what makes it interesting and profound. To understand Chinese philosophy we need to understand the Yijing which is the classic book and the source of all the Chinese culture and people’s thinking. People call it The Book of Changing . It is a very difficult book to understand. Without a good teacher to teach you, you will not fully understand it. This book dates back over 3000 years, but the knowledge in it is over 5000 years old. Yijing is the source of the things such as Wuji, Yin and Yang, Five Elements and Bagua. All these names we should be familiar with if we are studying Chinese skills such as Taijiquan, Qigong, Daoism and Traditional Chinese Medicine, etc. In particular, if we want to understand about Chinese philosophy, then we must know some more about Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. They somehow connect with the Yijing because this is the source for all the Qigong and Chinese martial arts we study. I have been asked so many times about those philosophies. In trying to understand more about Chinese philosophies myself, there are some questions that always come to my mind. These are, “Why are we here? “, “What is the meaning of our lives?” and “Why is it that some people are in luck and some people are suffering?“. Thinking about these questions makes me realise that actually I like philosophy very much, not only just Qigong and martial arts. I want to know more about it and so I read and study history and philosophy a lot. Maybe when you are young, you will not bother with this and will just concentrate on the things you can see and that you can relate with. But when you get older, you might want to understand philosophy and life more. Understanding will also improve our Qigong, Wing Chun and Taijiquan more. If we want to study Daoism, then we must read the Dao De Jing which is the original book on this. Dao means The Way. De means Morality, Jing means Classic Book. So the Dao De Jing means that this is a book for the way of morality. What is the moral way? It is the way every- body likes and thinks it is right. For example, if your friend tells you his personal secret, then you should not tell anybody else, even if your friend did not ask you to do that. You know this because what he told you is his secret. He has treated you as his close friend by telling his secret to you. If you can keep the secret, then that is the moral way. But the whole idea of Dao is to be normal as air, as water. They bring benefit to everything; they exist but do not interrupt anything. The main principle of Dao is being normal. Lao Zi also said that there is no beauty, no height, and Qi Magazine Nov/Dec 2002 page 1
