温知会

The calligraphy society that I belong to is known as 温知会 (On-chi-kai). It comes from the Chinese idiom, 温故知新, which means to revise what you already know in order to learn something new.

I think this concept is really important. We need to constantly reviewed what we know, because as we grow in knowledge and experience, we may gain new understanding. We will look at things in different ways and thus even the same event that happened before, will mean something different to us now. This applies not just to calligraphy or taiji, but to all learning processes.

The moment we stop reviewing our past knowledge, we have shut off an invaluable teacher, ourselves.