Devotion

Devotion is not intensity. It is duration — the consistent, unglamorous return to the practice, whether or not it is going well, whether or not anyone is watching, whether or not this particular morning feels like it counts.

A teaching from Ten Bears

My teacher, Bart Anderson — “Ten Bears” — used to say that devotion contains duration.

I did not understand this for a long time. I heard “devotion” and thought of intensity. Passion. The bold energetic commitment other people would notice. When I first met my teacher I was drawn to parts of practice that felt more exciting — the ceremonies, the openings, the visible steps forward.

It took years of sitting with him for me to get it. What Ten Bears was pointing at was the opposite of intensity. Devotion is duration. The consistent, quiet, unglamorous return to the practice — whether or not it is going well, whether or not anyone is watching, whether or not this particular morning feels like it counts.

I have done Tai Chi for nearly forty years. Most mornings, honestly, are unremarkable. The same form, the same yard, the same sky. What I have come to see is that the unremarkable mornings ARE the practice. The dramatic ones are just weather.

Devotion is what walks the distance the vision alone cannot walk.

Devotion is what Duty becomes when it is repeated long enough to become a rhythm. In time, it matures into what the Architect carries as Conviction.