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I had last Monday off and couldn’t wait to trek down to the beach to get some sun and relaxation in. Given that it wasn’t a national holiday, I was excited to get to the beach when it was relatively empty (although it is tourist season here in SD.) I found parking in PB, tossed my beach bag on my back, and walked down the Law St. ramp to the beach. Not too crowded, but not too empty. I’d have to walk north to the cliffs to find a little more privacy.

There were mostly tourists out, with some locals, but you can tell the tourists at a glance. In particular, the tourists like to leave their trash all over the beach. I had a backpack full of discarded water bottles before I even reached the cliffs at Tourmaline.

Even that far north, there were still some families camped out on the sand, so I kept going until the closest people were a pair of girls about a hundred yards away, and I was somewhat invisible to the rest of the beach due to the portions of the cliffs that jutted out.

Today was to be entirely a Ba Gua Zhang day; circle walking in the sand. I find the sand to be and excellent partner for circle walking, as it starts relatively smooth and level, leaves a record of your footwork, and as you move to progressively complicated guas, your spinning and torquing change the topography, making it turbid and uneven, thereby requiring even better footwork. I didn’t mind if people watched, but I didn’t want to be bothered, nor did I want to be the center of attention. And, I haven’t done the Yang guas in a while.

After an hour or two, my chest was starting to get a bit sunburned and I was sweating too much to re-apply sunscreen, so I go for a quick dip in the ocean to cool down. As I emerge, I see those two girls walking the stretch from their outpost to meet me at the edge of the water. I can see they’re going to ask me about what I was doing; I’d say most people haven’t seen Ba Gua before, which looks fairly distinctive with its proliferation of twisting and coiling.

The blond is merely curious, asking me what the name of the art is. She has a noticeable accent, perhaps German, so I write out “Ba Gua” and “Pa Kua” in the in sand. Her friend, not simply curious, is excited: “So you’re working with energy, right?”

“Um, yeah – all the Taoist internal arts place import on energy movement over physical movement.” I see the question forming on her face. “The three pillars of Taoist internal arts are Ba Gua, Hsing-I, and Taiji. Have you ever seen a bunch of people moving really slow in unison at a park? That’s Taiji. So, this is kind of like that, but different.”

“Oh, right, okay. Cool. How did you learn, did you download instruction off the internet or something?”

It’s hard to suppress a chuckle, but I do. “No, you really need to find qualified instructor.” Motioning to a folder that’s open on my backpack, I explain, “These are just notes from class.”

“Well, I do this too.” I’m thinking, learn Taoist internal arts from the internet? “See, I don’t have any training or anything, but I come out here at night and dance around, when no one can see me, and I feel the energy come out my head. There’s a big triangle,” illustrating with her hands, “of energy out of my forehead, or sometimes it’s square,” again, illustrating with hands, “and sometimes, a circle.”

“That’s, ah, that’s great.” I really don’t know what to say at this point. How much of an instant gratification culture do we live in where martial arts and/or spiritual elevation can be downloaded off the internet? Where tradition and form is so brazenly discarded, or not even looked to in the first place? Okay, so you may be able to mimic some physical movement if you download a video, but do you really have the nei gung/samadhi/whatever? Is whatever hand waving and dancing you make up just as good as the practices that were codified by those that devoted every hour of their entire lives to the subject, which then evolved by centuries of disciples with the same level of dedication? Is this just gulp-and-go personal development? Now, this may have been this girls recreation time, which is fine – but what about these people that genuinely think making up some random movements will “sculpt energy” to “purge their bad luck” or “bring them success at work”? As my instructor would say, they’re just “stirring soup” – there’s no mindful practice of internal workings going on.

I’ll be the first one to admit that following tradition blindly is not wise, but in cases such as this – internal energy development – until we have the understanding that our precursors obtained, we may want to think twice about going off on our own. Today, we simply don’t have the time available to devote to these studies that our ancestors had. So, with few exceptions, we’re just not as good at it. Let’s pay attention (whatever the art) to the system they codified in order to preserve that they perceived the important practices.

At this point in my training, around ten years in total, I believe I have just a little bit of internal energy; I can generate small amounts of internal power. But it’s like an ant compared to elephant in terms of what is possible, so I’m not going to abandon my teachings yet, or look to the internet for instructions. If I thought that’d work, I’d do it.

It’d be a whole lot easier.