Thank you Vic

Dear Vic

About 50 years ago you were one of the first Chinese immigrants I met. You had come to Canada and got a job as an actuary at the local insurance company. I remember thinking that you must have a very stark black and white way of seeing things, because that is what statistics meant to me when I was young. You were about 10 years older than me, I think, but you have always been a timeless youth and have always said, “There is no time.” Over the years I have begun to understand.

I remember being a teenager and serving you breakfast every Saturday morning when I was the waitress at my family’s restaurant. You would sit reading intriguing, exotic books. When I asked you about Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, you offered to lend it to me the next week. You did. I had a week to read it so we could talk about it. This habit continued for a few years. I fell in love with the world that you introduced me to. I saw through the eyes of the main characters and learned new ways of thinking.

I really must read some of those books again, it will be like visiting an old friend, not just the characters, but that time when we were young. You were a stranger in a strange land. I thought you were very brave to leave family and friends, home and culture to settle down in Canada.

I valued the books, conversations and the joy of finding a friend who was my chosen family. We shared a bond that was different than blood. You helped me direct my growth, self acceptance and ideals. This influenced my choices that were often different than with what I was familiar. Thank you. I cannot imagine being who I am today without your friendship and spiritual guidance.

I am sorry that our friendship slipped over the years. I married, moved, divorced and only when I returned to help my ailing mom did our paths cross again. The warmth and comradery of those early years, had forged a bond, deeper than I had expected. Our friendship was instantly rekindled. You had trained as a master of Yang family Tai Chi Chuan and invited me to join your weekly practise sessions. Your classes were well frequented by kind people. Your command of English is excellent. You mastered humour, the most challenging aspect of any language, and made a great effort to spread laughter by sharing funny comics you had collected over the years.

With Covid, we met the challenges of technology. Zooming in led to an interesting evolution of our friendship, that continued thanks to the community that you had built. Once again, with your guidance, I entered into a world of imagination and imagery to find my personal best. You took the esoteric and abstract and made it real through tai chi.

I appreciate learning how to ignite my three burners, and the awareness of how to use the bubble well for buoyancy as I bridge the river that feeds the Dan tian field of elixir and sea of qi. I feel my fingers and hands tingling as my Ming men (heaven’s spirit in the body), work full time to move the three treasures. With each inhale, the flow of yin energy nourishes the heart of the child of heaven that is encoded pre-birth. With each exhale, the Shen or conscious awareness, moves with the Yang energy. In the soft exercises, yin and yang are tuned as the nine symphony, based on the bends of the bones of limbs and twist of the waist, that opens blocks so the three treasures can pass. The Jing, particles that make up the body, respond to the life force chi energy, and the Shen mind spirit consciousness. All are refined with Wu wei, non-thought and offered to the supreme emperor, of philosophy and cosmology.

I am not the first to attempt to translate the profound wisdom of tai chi, based on 'No mind', through Mathematics. Nothing, zero connects to All in mathematics. Naught can make everything equal and whole. Any number to the power of zero is one.

The Chaldean and Gnostic symbol of the gold standard, likely adopted the concept of zero as the seed that becomes the All, from the Indian Bindu or Chinese Dao concepts. The circumpunct, the symbol of a dot in the circle, is as old as humanity. The dot is the zero point, the still point in chaos, where pure potential creates order in dynamic fluctuations. Currently, superconductivity of electricity without energy loss occurs only at absolute zero temperatures.

I am not a mathematician. However, am drawn to the modern tai chi diagram with two golden sine curves around a circle within a circle. A perpendicular line tracing the top of a sine curve creates a circle, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q55T6LeTvsA. Tai chi and DaVinci understood how the Vitruvian man was part of the movement of the circle in the square and square in the circle. All sine waves extending from a point create the Witch of Agnesi curve, that has infinite nonzero strength, zero-point energy everywhere, and the mysterious effect of generating a multifractal energy. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/WitchofAgnesi.html. I am comforted that No thought holds an answer as powerful as a quartic equation, such as the infinity sign of the hourglass in the Devil's curve, based on a game of chance in juggling, and the Luroth quartic (where strangely, lu means spiritual being and roth means a wheel).

Vic, having you as a friend and mentor has been such an honour. I humbly bow in respect and gratitude for the time we have shared on this timeless path less traveled. It lets me trust in the power of Grace, that involves the capacity of humans to accept heaven's response, to a prayer.

Sincerely,

Your student.