World Yong Nian Tai Chi Federation’s Deontology Codeaims to establish the directives of acting and duties of their members, having as purpose to promote the good development and evolution of their Yang Tai Chi Chuan practice and professional performance. Furthermore, it promotes the enrichment of the intrapersonal relations, as well of the relationships with other people, which should be supported on basis of a moral-ethical conduct that is outlined accordingly with the following principles:
• Yang Family’s Action Path
• Fu Zhong Wen’s Six Happiness Principles
• Fu Sheng Yuan’s Four Principles
Yang Family’s Action Path establishes that to improve the practice of Yang Tai Chi Chuan, we must develop:
• Zhin (Diligence)
The intense, hard and strenuous work is a requisite to develop and improve the practice skill. The daily and assiduous practice will bring as reward good results.
• Hen (Perseverance)
It is important to develop the practice of Tai Chi in order to cultivate a continuous, stable and permanent feeling with that purpose. This feeling and intention, conjugated with a regular practice, will allow us to achieve this point.
• Li (Respect)
To respect the Master, the Teacher and the Companions, is of primordial importance. Be connected with others having in consideration their past, as well as their expectations. The mutual respect serves to emphasize a feeling of community and solidarity in a society, in which the individuals should respect each other, mutually.
• Zhen (Sincerity)
A sincere attitude is one of the requisites for the apprenticeship of Tai Chi Chuan. In way to reach a good practice, we need to show a genuine determination for getting this purpose. While dealing with others, do it with sincerity, if you wish others correspond you likewise. So, we all should maintain sincerity as first attitude to have with others, consequently, we will get a gentle and harmonious flow in our relationships.
Great Master Fu Zhong Wen, who was Fu Sheng Yuan’s father, has also established some directives to promote the good relationship with others, as well as the salutary development of the Tai Chi practice, which are known as “Fu Zhong Wen’s Six Happiness Principles”. Those rules of acting consist in promoting the following behaviors:
• To Help Others
The cooperation and the help that is suitable to others provide a feeling of well-being and happiness.
• To Promote Kindness
To practice good actions, maintaining in all attitudes a pure Mind and Heart.
• To be Tolerant
To develop the capacity of accepting the difference, even when they contradict customs and social habits in force in a given society, that will reflect an attitude of understanding and respect for other individuals and cultures.
• To be Grateful in the Present Time
The feeling of gratitude provides an emotional sensation of well-being in the intrapersonal level that is reflected straightly or indirectly in the relations we develop with others; therefore, it is important to develop this feeling in each present moment.
• To Develop Self – Esteem
The self-esteem represents the subjective evaluation that each person does from herself, which can be positive or negative. So, it is important that individuals with a decreased self-esteem strengthen this aspect. In other words, to do a positive evaluation of oneself, means to accept and to like oneself such as each one is.
• To Practice Tai Chi as a Life Philosophy
There are countless methods to evolve as a human being, among which Tai Chi presents itself as one of the techniques that can provide the progress in the personal development, being a way of reaching Happiness.
Recently, Great Master Fu Sheng Yuan in the context of what, naturally, he always has promoted along his life experience, presented four new principles with the intention of complementing the Yang Family’s conduct rules, as well as those previously established by his father, Fu Zhong Wen. Those new principles are, respectively: Loyalty, Friendship, Rectitude and Humanity.
• Zong (Loyalty)
Loyalty is a quality or attribute of an individual who in a determined relation expresses himself as being loyal and reliable in what concerns the relationship bond, thus meaning that he preserves the original characteristics of the model had as reference. So, the concept of loyalty is applied in a context of a relation between two individuals, but also, in the relation individual / object.
In this case, the relation Master / Disciple (or student) and the relation that each individual (Master, disciple or student) establishes with the object involved, namely, the transmitted or received knowledge, which is inherent to Tai Chi, yet, maintaining its original essence, as dictated by the Master.
So, to be loyal to the Master and / or to the knowledge received from him, it presupposes to respect and to accept that knowledge. Loyalty does not occur by auto-imposition or by others imposition, since if such it should not be lasting. Consequently, the relation should be established in the context of a mutual confidence and affinity, thus, the quality loyalty, naturally, appears when it is substantiated and supported on a true feeling.
To trust the Master teachings induces the acceptance of his directives, which turns in a conduct of personal respect to him, even when just facing other people, which is expressed in the unconditional support to the Master.
• Ye (Friendship)
Great Master Fu Sheng Yuan defines that it is essential to promote friendship in the relations that we establish with others.
The friendship concept can have several connotations according to the type of human relationships that may be established between two individuals. In this extent, there must be understood how an interpersonal relation settled upon companionship that is strengthened by the genuineness in sharing mutual interests and upon a helpful spirit that outcomes. Nevertheless, the friendship does not always presuppose the affinity of interests, being an affection that appears naturally for empathy with the other.
The ideal friendship should integrate a form of being, in which the following should be reflected:
• To nourish and show sympathy and empathy for another person.
• Loyalty.
· Confidence.
· Honesty and Truth.
• To wish the best to the other.
• To accept the other such as he is and do not exacerbate his defects.
• To share the good moments and the bad ones.
• To respect each one individual space, thus friendship should not be suffocating. A friend knows when it is opportune to be present.
• True friendship is settled on genuine love relationship; we love our friends such as they are and not because what they have.
• De (Rectitude)
Rectitude is a characteristic of human character in the context of the moral and ethical acting, in what it concerns the adopted behaviours in relationships that an individual establishes; it has implicit the qualities of loyalty and honesty, as well as an irreproachable conduct, in other words, that one that will never intentionally damage another person, may it be by words or acts.
• Ren (Humanity)
The virtue, humanity, consists in a set of strengths that tend to promote the behaviour or attitude of wanting or acting in order to aid other people. So, humanity is associated with three concepts: love, kindness, and social intelligence. Consequently, to humanity is also implicit the feeling of altruism towards others.
