Osho – T’ai chi chuan is a war method, a defense method. When you use t’ai chi in fighting, then it is called chuan. But the moment you are getting ready to fight, you have missed the whole thing. Then you cannot be really relaxed. The very idea of defence, of fight, is ugly, non-meditative. So we simply use t’ai chi. It is not to defend, it is not to attack. It has nothing to do with the war methodology.
It is just a process of going inwards – and a tremendously significant process. So join t’ai chi, and forget chuan – completely forget chuan. Mm? because that is how the whole thing was destroyed. These things are not to be used in the ordinary way. But it happened in japan and china…. Both the countries tried to transform even meditation into war methods. Man is so mad that even if you give him meditation, he will change it into a war method.
Meditation is meant to give you peace, silence – but even that, in the hands of the politicians, will be turned into a war method, into violence. That’s how in Japan meditation disappeared completely, because it went into wrong hands… just as it is happening in the modern world. Physicists invented the atomic energy. It could have been a blessing but it fell into the hands of the warmongers. And Einstein was very sorry….
Just two days before he was dying, somebody asked him,’Would you like to become a scientist again if you are given another chance, another life?’ He said,’Never! One mistake is enough! I would like rather to be a plumber – at least I will not harm anybody.’
Einstein himself, not knowing at all what would happen, wrote the letter that introduced roosevelt to atomic energy. He was thinking that the atomic energy would be used for peaceful purposes, creative purposes, but it was used for destruction. The same has happened with meditation.
T’ai chi is a beautiful meditative process. It fell into the hands of the politicians; they used it – because tai chi can make you so still, so silent, so disciplined, that you can be very dangerous. And you can be in tremendous control of your energies. The same happened with zen methods – they were reduced into certain technologies which can be used in war: archery, wrestling. And then all sorts of things were reduced.
Source: from Osho Book “The Buddha Disease”