It was in a park in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, that I met Master Tangkok Lee.
He was watching some of his students practicing « pushing hands, » an exercise from Taijiquan where pairs push against each other, trying to gain an advantage.
There is no technique, Master Lee says; you must practice, and that’s how you learn.
It’s already getting quite hot that morning as the sun prepares to bake the vast heart of beautiful Kuala Lumpur.
The park is pleasant. A few rare strollers. A bit of tranquility amidst the city’s relentless hustle.
Master Lee speaks openly and at length. He does not play the shaman.
Only his eyes are silent, and they see you.
He seems taller than he actually is. This is due to his thinness. He is slender and calm. Fragile in appearance but strong within.
This is how we should be.
We should leap outside of ourselves, unafraid to contrast our fragility against the world’s harshness.
Master Lee makes no mystery of his teachings; he does not pose, he walks, laughs a lot, and gives great advice to his sweating students who also laugh at their efforts in what will soon become a sauna.
I watch from afar the modesty of this practice. I see, thousands of miles from where destiny has placed me, men trying to understand their own darkness by practicing the art of combat.
I have long done the same thing.
I have reached into the mouth of shadow.
I have felt the energy swirling within.
It is fear at first, Master Lee tells me. That is what you must combat. That is what you must understand. Practice enables you to do this.
This man is friendly and benevolent.
I sense he perceives, through the strange foreigner I am to him, someone who listens and who has, in his own way, also used combat with others to avoid his own destruction.
I would like to capture the essence of your movement, I say to Master Lee.
What to capture? My Taijiquan has no form.
Then let’s film what is formless. I will do my best.
Why not?
The students push and sweat, struggle and dodge, experience and fail.
The other remains unyielding. It’s a closed door. We do not have the key. Arm locks won’t work. Raw strength builds a wall, both inside and outside the head.
The other is the key, of course, but how do we unlock it?
He has come.
We are at the Ramli Hassan studio, high up in Bukit Tunku, which is run with elegance and firmness by its owner, Sabera.
He wears a simple and silky Taijiquan outfit. As usual, he is calm but a bit uncomfortable with the camera’s presence.
This man does not like to be watched or trapped in any damned box.
He consents out of empathy and perhaps a certain curiosity about how I will manage what could quickly become a misstep.
I film him, first standing in the slanting light of the large window where the grand mosque can be seen through the foliage and the fog created by the demonic pollution.
He sketches a few movements. I can only see his elongated silhouette as if it sprang from the hands of some tropical Giacometti.
He seems a bit absent, unsure of what to offer to the camera’s blind, greedy gaze.
What he puts in motion is no longer tangible. Everything happens inside
a man who has walked the path to become the way itself.
His light and serious body is a question. Nothing else is perceptible.
I find myself filming the question.
I am used to it.
Is he disoriented? As if deprived of his own presence, his body gracefully traces in space the essence of a form. It is precise and vague at the same time. A bit elsewhere, it nevertheless demands the presence of the other effortlessly.
I suggest he sits.
For what purpose, he asks.
The same thing.
You are an excellent fighter, he tells me with half a smile.
I film.
I see nothing. I only feel the quiet silence of the few people watching the shoot.
Something important happens in the almost nothing of this dignified man’s gestures, sitting upright in the chair.
We finish. He rises, visibly relieved. I sense that this was not for him, and I almost feel guilty for putting him in a situation that does not suit him.
He smiles nonetheless.
The problem is always fear, he tells me.
I am a bit taken aback. He seems to recall our recent conversation in the park.
Being filmed was a non-event for him.
You must not guard against anything. To be on guard already shows fear. One must calmly remain on one’s axis and observe the opponent exhaust themselves in their own rage.
I agree. He is right. We ultimately understand that there is no other meaning to combat than that of its necessary surrender while retaining the vertical built in adversity.
But why does he insist so much on this point?
He politely departs. I remain a bit perplexed. I have a feeling I am missing something important.
I rationalize. The master is probably tired. I should not have insisted on filming him.
That evening, while reviewing the footage, I understand.
As I find the music that, in my opinion, reveals what the simplicity of the gestures conceals, I perceive the lesson that was given to me while I busied myself trying to grasp the ineffable.
A man was addressing me insistently and had not ceased to do so. He saw me and signaled me.
Hidden behind my camera, I was not listening.
Yet, he was showing me the unfinished thing, that which one does not achieve but the gesture that remains, to the stripped form, to the essence, that which one aspires to and sometimes dedicates one’s life to.
He was showing me a whole man and only him, master and gardener of a splendid blossoming of gestures like simple flowers constantly blooming in quivering hands.
Yes, it is fear we must combat, and before death, we must stand tall, unguarded, and sing our song of gestures.
There is no before, there is no initial intention. There is something that moves and desires.
We must be alive, right now, in the Open.
We must also see and hear, listen. Not be fooled by our busyness.
I wrote to Master Lee to thank him for his availability. Wishing me good luck, he sent me a text from Chuang Tzu, the wandering master of ecstatic journeys.
It speaks of a man on a boat in the middle of a lake. The title is “The Empty Boat.”
This is how the true man is, an empty boat in the vast emptiness of the Tao.
I think back to Master Lee and his formless Taijiquan.
Those who take the unfortunate idea of opposing him will surely be disappointed.
They strangely remind me of those clients pushing the door of a saloon in a distant Wild West. The door swings to let them through, offering no resistance but pivoting quietly on its hinges. Each enters the bar and finds what they came for. Some forget it, others seek the illusory companionship of the pretty barmaid, many bring the violence they carry within, and others still, their sadness that is impossible to drown. Few possess enough wisdom to encounter what is still possible to find with a bit of luck and discernment: faith, love,
hope, and even friendship.
By smoothly pivoting in response to my frontal request, Tangkok Lee, a simple resident of Petaling Jaya, master of Taijiquan and wise reader of the great Chuang Tzu, allowed me to lighten my boat a little, but also to understand that, to sail on the lake and then cross the great river of the world,
one must first set one’s own sail and then dare to hand it to the wind.

Heddy Maalem – Kuala Lumpur, June 2023