This film accomplished the multi-cultural fusion of East and West by being true to both culture and language.

As I sat there, reading the English subtitle and hearing the Chinese dialogue. It was like watching a special effect 3 D movie with BI-color glass. For example, in the film, the desert bandit’s name in the subtitle was called, Dark Cloud while the Chinese called him, Cloud in the Afternoon Sun—Bei Yut Won. Dark Cloud gave a concise direct feel to the character while Cloud in the Afternoon Sound expressed the feeling of the people toward him. Right there, I realized the two divergence of seeing reality—West is individuality while East is in the Collective Consciousness. It is the difference between the Landscape painting of Mona Lisa and the Tang Landscape. If you watch very carefully, the portrait of Mona Lisa by De Vinci's background there is mountain and tree but they are very small as compare to the Tang Landscape of huge blue mountains with little dots of people in the mountain foot path.

Initially, I kept hearing the two voices, the subtitle and the Chinese. And then somewhere in the middle of the film, I realized that I was hearing the actors speaking directly to me.

" oh, daddy, you know, the actors sometime they would speak in English." My daughter told me afterward.

For me personally, being a transmitter of the Tao and its practice of Alchemy of transformation is to live in this multi-dimensional East and West.

In the beginning of 15 years of as my master’s teaching assistance and translator, I strive to translate from the Chinese in to English and vice versa. By the end, I just spoke and I no longer noticed whether I was speaking Chinese or English.

This is language of the heart.

Taoist practice is this voice of the heart both being rooted in Chinese soil and reaching toward the universal.

The Taoist Practice of Qigong and Taiji Quan rooted in the richness of nature. All of the movement have their soul from the expression of natural phenomenon, Tumbling Brook, White Crane Cools its wings…when the Communist Chinese Government tried to cut out this ' old feudalistic links of Qigong and Taiji Quan to the past—for Communism is a scientific socially advance practice . They replaced many of the name of the form with descriptive terms, Single Arm Lift and Forward Single Leg Stretch. But the Communist failed and the people rejected such white washing of the Taoist practice.

For the name of the movement, Tumbling Brook, indicates the inner state of flow of nature. It points to the language of the heart. and not the mere physical forward bending of the waist.

Taoist practice then is the language of nature bubbling outward through movement, through sounds , our body, mind and spirit. When one practices with such utter complete immersion, deep change occurs at the core of our beliefs and disrupted the erosive effect of degeneration and sickness.

So when you watch our fellow Taoist practitioner sharing their journey. Don't just see the Qigong as " Forward Bending Single leg stretch" but hear the heart of nature speaking through the movement—the rolling gurgling water of a mountain stream.
 
 

By Sat Hon

Sunday, February 04, 2001