I love writing articles like this, because artists who study other arts blink and trifle with a bit of an inner snarl. Tai Chi ain't so bad! What about my art!

And, of course, there is nothing wrong with other martial arts, it is just which art has more data, more information. Information, after all, is the heart of the art, it is like a lever to move the universe. Give me enough information and I'll topple the universe, and that's the first reason as to why Taiji is so ultimate.

The second reason Tai Chi works better than just about any other art, and this is a bit more mystical than just simple quantity of data, is that tai chi works backwards. Eh, maybe I should say it makes people learn things in reverse. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that the Ultimate Art enables people to absorb the motion of the universe backwards.

Look, when fisticuffs are about to start, people push, and people push back, and...you suddenly have a fight. In tai chi, somebody pushes, and somebody goes into reverse, and the pusher is face to face with his face on the pavement. Forgive me my chuckle, but that is just smarter.

The third and final reason Taiji is so grand an ultimate is that you can do it forever. I mean this in several senses, so let me elaborate. Let me tell you what forever means.

I met a boxer who had false teeth, cauliflower ears, a honker he had to shove sideways in the morning, and who had trouble figuring out a coherent sentence. This guy had been pummeled to a frothe, and it is fair to note that the less violent an art is the more long lasting it is. Now the art must remain combat ready, or it is no art at all, but the truth of the matter is that you can actually assess the depth of an art by how long its practitioners last.

And, beyond the basic short lived violence of some arts, there is the fact that--and I love this quote--you can't run out of nothing. When you do Tai Chi you are building energy, but not through the building of energy, rather by constructing space. The more space you have, the more energy can create and use, and the further your senses can expand, and the more ways you have to build ability, and so on and so on forever.

So, three mystical reasons why I am a Taji Quan fanatic: information, backwards, and emptiness. These three reasons can edify any art, but the artist must first be able to understand that perhaps his art can be improved. And the most difficult thing in the world, especially for people who don't know how to empty information backwards into their lives, is to establish and build upon these three things.