Writings

Tao Te Ching · Chapter VIII

Water as teacher

"The highest good is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand beings and does not contend. It dwells in the places people disdain; that is why it is close to the Tao."

We chose water as the image of this new digital home because it sums up the attitude we cultivate in practice: not to force, not to contend, and yet to reach everywhere. In Lao Chi Kung we seek exactly that — for strength and softness, tension and relaxation, to play to a rhythm intimately tied to our being.

Taoist School

Tao Te Ching · Chapter XI

The usefulness of emptiness

"We make a vessel from a lump of clay: it is the inner space that gives it its usefulness."

This quote has accompanied the school since its beginnings. The vessel teaches that what is unseen — space, silence, the pause — is what makes the visible useful. That is why our classes hold spaces of stillness: the static posture of zhan zhuang, the silence of nocturnal meditation. There, in the apparent emptiness, the Tao works.

Taoist School

Chuang Tze

The fish and the water

"The fish forgets the water where it swims. Man forgets the Tao in which he lives."

We forget what sustains us precisely because it always sustains us. Practice adds nothing new: it reminds us of the water in which we already swim. Each class, each retreat, each meditation is a way of feeling again the current that never stopped carrying us.

Taoist School

The spirit of the school

Not-knowing is a friend

There is one particular state of consciousness when one asks in search of an answer, and a very different one when one asks and remains open.

Our interpretation of ancient Taoism starts from a conviction: philosophy is charged with asking questions and taking care that they are the right ones, not with handing out absolute answers. That uncomfortable and fertile place where "I don't know" is an ally we call the state of learning — the opposite of the know-it-all state that today seems to be in fashion.

That is why the school's offering is long-term and asks for an inner commitment to the truth experienced by each practitioner: not to explain reality, but to allow reality to explain to us how and who we are.

Adapted from the writings of Gabriel Nieto

Lao Tze

Searching in the depths

"In cultivating your mind you must know how to search in the depths."

Night Work is born from this instruction. There are parts of the being that do not let themselves be seen in full light: the subconscious, instinct, intuition. Like the fish of deep waters, they appear only when we learn to descend with patience and without violence. Life itself, taken as a master, gradually shows us the way down.

Taoist School