sillybearhappyhoneyeater

I used to try to use all kinds of qi gong and meditation methods to control bad emotions (suffering from crazy culture shock when I first moved to Shanghai), but when I told my teacher, he said "personally, if I am angry, I just let it happen. I prefer to stay natural." I asked him if he controls himself when he is angry and arguing and he said "yes, I force myself not to move. I sit in a chair to stop myself from walking around and wasting energy."

my god! what a horrible thread. We start with the statement that there is no houtian training in neidan - which in and of itself is not a ridiculous place to start. I think we can say that neidan, or dazuo or whatever you want to call it, should de-emphasize houtian practice, but obviously every practitioner will start from houtian and gradually move deeper into xiantian. in terms of xiudao, which is a much bigger topic, certainly there is houtian practice. laozi even said 何謂貴大患若身？吾所以有大患者，為吾有身，及吾無身，吾有何患？ obviously while we are alive we have to pay attention to our bodies or else we will die. Any Daoguan you go to in China or Taiwan will have people who practice some kind of external cultivation method, this is part of daoism whether people like it or not. if we talk only about neidan, then the statement is basically correct - there can be no emphasis on the physical movement of the body during this practice. on the other hand, principles such as wen huo wu huo, if controlled by the conscious mind, are in and of themselves houtian, not xiantian. It is important to understand that the active use of the mind in meditation is part of houtian practice and that xiantian can only be achieved after entering shen ming, hun luan, or xuan men. the practice will only be completely xiantian after entering xuan men. This is my current understanding and it is backed up by my teachers, and other friends who learn from other people. It is also backed up by almost every meditation classic I've read. This kind of thread, where people talk trash on each other to establish some archaic point about whether or not to lift the pinky finger during tea drinking is very destructive to self cultivation. Better to not cast stones at each other's glass houses.

lsd and dmt don't show up on army drug tests

lots of ex hippies on this forum lol. practically speaking, because I like practical things more than far out hard to grasp things, fangui gen, or return to the root can simply mean that you bring the attention back to the root of the body/mind/spirit. to really return to the root, I think that is something you can only know for yourself. good luck!

translating zhuangzi is not a big problem since he does things in story format and everything is parable based. ddj is impossible to translate accurately because of meaning variation in characters, but this can be helped because there are many different styles of translation available on the market- so if you just pick up any random ten copies of ddj you can get the basic idea of how the thing works. once you get into neidan works like xingming guizhi, no chance. too complicated. I've been reading the first chapter of dao de jing chan wei for almost a year now. if you want it, you really have to be willing to put in some effort.

I have been all the way to the end of the path you are talking about, probably due to different causes though (wink). I have an article coming out in In Recovery magazine this winter on using meditation to help deal with ptsd symptoms. if you have serious anxiety, you ought to take a look at the article. here are my 2c in a very short sense. if you are dealing with anxiety, ptsd, depression, addiction, panic attacks, or just feeling extremely crappy for whatever reason, you need to be doing a few things first: if you eat sugar and drink coffee, or eat lots of chocolate, or drink too much alcohol, slow down for a while. you need to cut sugar right out until you basically feel good every day, caffeine too. alcohol is also pretty much a no go for anxiety sufferers (there are just so many good resaons for this). all of these drugs have a very serious effect on the brain and central nervous system. when i was suffering the most, i was also frequently taking coffee with lots of sugar in order to get myself high enough to avoid the onset of the crazies. the problem was that the drop after the high brought the crazies on even worse. all that stuff needs to be cut out for a while. secondly: don't meditate using fire practices. you need to be focusing on achieving the rest state. this means that when you breathe to the dantian you ought ot be focusing on "breathing like a child." make your breath as soft and natural as possible. don't try to take it anywhere. just stay there breathing. you can also try excercises where you let the gravity feeling pull you down into a more relaxed posture. best to start with the dantian and move outward to the extremities. thirdly: you need to cut down stimulation a bit. no tv, chill on the internet a bit too. don't read too much of what other people have to say, especially on message boards (so you can stop looking at my post now lol). avoid angry people is what I'm trying to say. if you have any particularly extreme habits, start ot try to reign them in a bit. when you are dealing with your family, remember that you are only strong enough to take any problems that may emerge in small doses. you need to know how to bail out of bad situations if need be. I can't go into exact detail about what happened to me, it would take too much time, but here is the jist of the thing: from 20-26 years old I was crazy messed up, was boarderline schizo, and totally had a lot of psychic trauma due to an accident when i was 19. I started training qigong and gongfu when i was twenty and by the time I was 27 I was well on my way to living a happy, pain free life. at that time i quit taking meds, started travelling in asia, and really developing. I'm now 32 and completely emotionally healthy except when i have to deal with the culture shock of my Chinese fiance (LOL here). It probably took at least ten years from start to finish to get through the trauama, but with a lot of work and serious caring for myself and others, I was able to pull through. you will too. treating yourself with compassion is the first step to treating others so.

excessive wilk drinking will calcify your pineal gland? WTH, sometimes this forum really blows me away.

i like that post very much. consider that the personality which you start out (or at least the one you have by the time you are university age) can simply be built on by knowing things. if you are super nice and always look out for others, than your university education should just make you moreso that way. if you are a meanie and do bad things to cats for fun, then likely you will study how to be meaner and nastier in university. I think in one way, when laozi says that discarding study will benefit the masses, what he means is that it is very easy to miseducate people. the traditional chracter for study 學 (xue3) has a picture of a child (the bottom part) with three x going into its head. it looks like there are two arms there, pulling in the information. it appears to be that the child is directly shoving information into their noggin. consider how laozi might have viewed a king shoving information into the people. it could be that the daodejing was a very early text suggesting that kings not brainwash their people. it sure looks like that most of the time. laozi thought that if the common people are giving to much information, whether real or false, it would cause social dischord. he didn't tell the king not to learn things though. he told the king not to investigate 察 (cha3). this could mean that he ought not to try to figure out what bad things the people are doing against him and rather to rule according to his own good. or more succinctly, investigate himself. I think laozi and zhaungzi were very aware of social classes, and although later writers in daoism directed their works toward the masses, laozi most certainly was writing to members of a royalty about how they should comport themselves.

I'm in Henan for a while and have time to travel a little. Was at the Kaifeng dao guan yesterday, but it was mostly just full of local farmer types and about zero real monks. I was thinking of popping up to zhengzhou and hiting up Dengfang, which is home to both Shaolin and Zhongyue guan. I think I'll give Shaolin a miss this time, as I doubt I can meet anyone very interesting there. Zhongyue seems like a cool place though and I just wonder if anyone has ever been and has any comment on the place?

if you like daoist meditation, you really ought to learn classical chinese and read the classics. getting the spirit of the thing in english is quite difficult unless you are either a total genius or have an awesome teacher.

I don't think that being educated is contrary to Daoism. Consider that the study of Neidan is at least 60% reading for the first several years. consider your study as giving yourself opportunity to make progress en route to discovering the way of the world. also remember that what you are learning isn't the final truth, but more of an icepick that you can use to chip away at the mystery of reality. if you feel too rich, go live as a hermit for a while. There are lots of temples and churches scatttered around all over the place which have cells dedicated to people who wish to live the hermit life and expand themselves spiritually. if you really feel too rich, visit the countryside in china or india and hang out with the peasents for a while. keep trying to improve yourself and you will have a happy life.

then again, just to be a contrarion (because I like doing that), imagine if these female employees were to work on the assumption that their opportunities were less than the men in their work (which is often true because of workplace discrimination). Imagine then that they put in a huge amount of overtly obvious effort, always did the correct thing and went above and beyond expectations, leaving all of her male coworkers in the dust. She would have what she wanted in no time and there would be no need to ejudicate. One of the great sicknesses of the twentieth and twenty first centuries is to feel entitled. There used to be such a thing as the merit of your work being the reason for your success. the entitled opinion that because "I deserve it," then I should be able to excell is just wrong and terrble. So in a sense, yes, the karma aint right. Her bosses karma is probably even less right, but whose counting (other than a media that would like to use stories like this to hide the real nature of the corporate power structure)>

the world has always been like this. Something good is developed to help the poor (of spirit) become wealthy and happy (in spirit), and it is abused by the rich (of material wealth) in order to delude people into believing that they must give up their limited assets (material and spiritual) to carry on in the way we have always been carrying on (which although often not the worst, is certainly not the best way of doing things). For once, I'm not going to quote laozi or any other books and just put it plainly in my own words; the fact that everyone here knows this already means that everyone here has the opportunity to change it. you are all rich enough in spirit that you can help others to improve their situation. they are right, if everyone focuses on positivity, the situation will improve, they just haven't mastered being positive yet. If you are a little further down the road than they, you should go out and help them roll those wheels toward their destiny

don't chase after sensations too hard, just let it be what it is. having said that- you will eventually find that you are able at least to some extent to control the energy field when you practice. so you ought to be able to focus your mind to make it larger or smaller depending on what you need. the way you hold the mind in qigong is very important- and what you need from day to day will differ depeneding on your level of awakeness, how full of food you are, how good or bad you feel etc... don't always chase after the same feeling, let the practice be natural... in the morning I: sit up in bed, dangle my feet over the side and make contact with the floor- then sink my mind through my body into my legs and feet. i let the mind rest in the feet a while until all the blood has settled into my body and left my head. then i get up and softly creep to the washroom to shower and the like. this kind of practice is very wonderful and can give you a sense of early morning vitality- it also helps make morning practice more effective, since you don't have to battle with a sleepy head.

he had twenty wives because it took him till he was 180 years old to find the right girl.... all kidding aside- stories are lovely if you treat them as stories- chinese people love a good story- and if a guy lives to be really old, expect to add at least another twenty years on top of it to improve the taste of the story a bit.

oh, i walked in on a blood feud!! I saw a great sign in shanghai once, where there was a picture of individual calligraphic strokes making up the entirety of the character for tiger, or alternately for elephant - each successive stroke had a bigger patch of red ink, symbolizing blood- and then as the sign progressed- they started going into the character "ren," for human, finally ending in the ren we are talking about in this thread (sorry, chinese input not on this computer). so basically, the sign was about wildlife protection - with tiger, elephant, and then man - finally with "benevolance" or "correct action" or however people want to incorrectly translate three thousand year old characters into english - so basically the sign's meaning was "first it is tigers, then elephants, then people? is that moral?" Chinese is a wondefully ingenious language!!!

it is important to note that words like 仁 ren: morality/correct action and 慈 ci: fraternity/kindness are not bad words in Daoism - in fact, they are frequently used in positive ways. phrases like 天地不仁，以萬物為芻狗 heaven and earth are not moral, because all things are like grass dogs (or however you want to translate it), and 六親不和，有孝慈 six family members out of harmony is when fraternal love occurs (or however you want to translate it... seems like i like to say that recently lol) although looking negatively on false compassion and love (also 仁's modern meaning is basically compassion), it does not mean that compassion and love are bad things, have a look at 絕仁棄義，民復孝慈 discard morality and abandon observances, the people will return to fraternal love these things occur in chapters 18 and 19 - so you can see how the characters 孝慈 change so much in colour in a short time. benevolance and love are huge concepts in Daoism - but much like Jesus said in the sermon on the mount and Buddha said to his disciples in the diamond sutra - if you don't do it honestly and from your heart, in the end it has no positive effect. I think that is what Laozi and Zhuangzi were getting at.

would be very interesting to take a poll here to see how many left handers we have. I am also southerly inclined - I mean, i like women, but I write with the wrong hand... Anyway, really interested to see how many lefties - because lefties may be more inclined toward Daoist thinking- being all abtruse and prefering to follow a different course.

my teacher also disagrees with my idea here, sighting the main emphasis of the text as being about cultivating certain feelings and attitudes. the daodejing really has a tonne of meaning- so sometimes when I come across things like this, it makes me wonder. I agree with your points about grammar- I couldn't make the xi make sense with the context- i had wondered if it were inserted into the text as a very cryptic code - that could be pluasable especially if it were inlaid by later generation. because Henan is such an important geographical area, being on the yellow river delta and so central to everything else - it is worthy of consideration how people may have used various texts to insert military information about the area. I suspect I'm grasping at straws though .

every person has a different physiology - and no two people experience exactly the same results from meditation. Laozi said 虛其心，實其腹，弱其志，強其骨 quiet the heart fill the belly soften the resolve make the bones strong the first step is really the most important one. whatever activity you undertake, you should try to use the meditative mind to assist you in some way. Keep the focus soft and general - you could tiring yourself out with all that emotional effort. Have you ever practiced Baguazhang or Chen style taiji? either of those are very vigerous internal arts which could help you get your body and mind ready before you sit for long periods of time. sometimes i'll cut a meditation short if I feel like I need to sleep. just get my mind back down to my dantian, from wherever it is, go to a comfortable place, and have a nap. Meditation is all about letting the body tell you what it needs you to know.

I think we ought to have multiple understandings of each phrase. Wuwei could be characterized as without action , but could also be "without motive," it could also be "without provocation." Wei has picked up quite a number of different meanings throughout Chinese history, here is what my current dictionary says do, act serve as act as become be, mean(ing) in the interest of, for because of for the purpose of towards stand for (support) they are all closely related in meaning, but then again, 同出而異名，同謂之玄。玄之又玄，衆妙之門。

I also feel that DDJ is very situation dependent - so the way one looks at it today and tomorrow may, actually, should be different. My tea teacher said one day "reading laozi is a life practice- the way you understand it in your twenties, thirties, forties, and until you get old will always keep changing." What a lovely way to understand the classics!!!

I agree, quick post- no time to interpret well 三十輻，共一轂，當其無，有車之用 san shi fu: thirty spokes gong yi gu: total one hub dang qi wu: because of its emptiness you che zhi yong: a cart may be used anything beyond that is personal interpretation.

my awareness aint on today though - my spelling is atrocious!

to be less terse and more uself: I met some lovely people the other day who told me about their teacher Thich Nach Hanh, he is a Viatnamese Zen master and he lives every day in Zen contemplatoin. The gentleman I met said that Master Thich treats all matters as a time for consciousness - whether he is meditating seated, or moving his little toe- he is aware of each sensation in his body. Apperantly Oprah interviewed him and asked if he still practiced meditation, his answer "every moment of every day!" a real practice is based around constant awareness - not just the time you spend seated on the pillow.