Taomeow

Great, thank you. I would like to start with Ba Shen, Yi Ma, and Kong ( I'm pretty fluent with the rest of the Qimen "tools").

Yes, I am. Tell me more, please.

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Ah, good taste, Marble! That's my grandmaster.

I did mention that word first, but only because it has acquired a life of its own. T... doesn't have to come into the picture when it is mentioned -- he merely sent it into the world, but then it soared on its own powerful wings. Yesterday someone left a garbled voice message on my phone, which was immediately referred to as covfefe. Today my cat asked for it for breakfast.

Which is why taiji sword is not taught to beginners (at least my teacher told me not to teach it to beginners). You have to have the foundation down pat before doing the fast stuff in taiji -- and with the sword, it's impossible to slow it down enough for the student to get it. The getting it must come first.

I have first hand/first foot experience with both too, and for me it's vice versa: I still like to use the taekwondo warm-up before doing taiji. The master maintained the discipline and willful disregard for the student's pain and suffering he learned when being trained in TKD since age 6, and then in the Korean army. If you complained, he would wistfully recall how they had to, e.g., practice the correct ways to fall on the ground hundreds of times while climbing up a steep mountain slope strewn with rocks. They don't do it with taiji in this country, i.e. they don't prime the body before attempting to give it control of qi, but priming the body like that (provided it's done correctly) does open up possibilities. My TKD master definitely had a lot of internal power, and crrrrazy fajin. (And lack of control thereof -- that's where his lack of taiji showed...) I don't know if he'd ever learned any taiji or just managed to incorporate some principles into his own art, but it is very clear to me in hind sight that he was not oblivious. I think I simply got lucky with him, because many people who come to taiji from hard MA are, in all honesty, worse off than people who come with nothing. But master Ho managed to give me extra flexibility instead of the staple rigidity and slow reflexes a typical hard stylist picks up from overdeveloping the external at the expense of the internal. Oh, and if you think taiji can't be strenuous as hell, you should try Pao Chui (Cannon Fist), the second routine of the traditional "old Chen." Or playing push-hands with a 300 lb opponent of superior taiji skill. (Been there done that... yikes.)

I'm also learning lots of new words here. On my old timeline it's always been Neonlogisms Я Us.

To clarify a bit: the Khitan people, who used a para-Mongolic language, were nomads from Northeast Asia, who from the 4th century inhabited an area corresponding to parts of modern Mongolia, Northeast China and the Russian Far East. The other pronunciation of the word "Khitan"-- Khitai -- is the Russian for "China" to this day (Kitay). "Mongolia" came to be, courtesy of Genghis Khan, as an empire, and empires are always ethnically complex, uniting peoples (voluntarily or against their will) of very different origins. The "Siberian Caucasians" were the indigenous Finno-Ugric groups among the peoples of Siberia -- until the Russian conquest in the 16th and 17th centuries, and thence, mostly Russians (only 10% of Siberia's current population is indigenous). Not sure any of it has anything to do with taiji though...

Cats are creatures of habit. I have been drinking my coffee a particular way for a long time -- I take it with TDB. Which occasionally turns it into covfefe. But that's all right. Seriously though, a lot of preliminary work (much of it invisible, behind-the-scenes work) went into gradually creating and supporting the atmosphere you have noticed and liked today. Battles were fought and the good guys/gals won. Mostly. And some of the former bad guys/gals went good. Mostly. And some of the good guys/gals keep the best of what they have to themselves, and get to feel naughty this way. Welcome!

Ah, yes, we can. It's taoists who invented gunpowder, remember? They proceeded to develop the grenade, 300 years before the West learned about the invention. They (taoist inventors) tested it, ascertained its efficiency, and advised the emperor to refrain from adopting this technology for warriors on the grounds that "this is the cowardly weapon of demons, which human beings must not infect themselves with." China changed its stance on gunpowder only after Europeans promptly embraced it and put to military use on first exposure. Yes, we can judge an ancient martial art on human terms. Demonic weapons are in a different category altogether. An entity with a firearm might use it successfully against a taiji master's skill, but not before it has lost its human nature (and quite possibly a helluva lot more.)

Silently in peace three snails eat green lettuce leaves. Ancestral movement.

Yeah... And I was reminded of this Indiana Jones episode:

Exactly! Key word "commitment." Nice metaphor. Reminded me of the story the great master Hong Junsheng told about encountering, and bowing to, "the great master Watermelon." He was just walking home late at night, in a dark alley, and this being China, he should have, but didn't, expect to step on a slippery watermelon rind in the dark. He was "committed" to stepping on solid ground. What "attacked" him and caused him to fall was this commitment. This moment of expectation in the opponent is what good taiji detects faster than the opponent knows he's going to want to do "that," and turns into the moment of overwhelmingly "owning" him because it removes (with perfect timing at that) whatever the opponent has committed to confronting. The opponent is invested, committed to overpowering "that" -- and you don't give him "that," that which he has mounted his offense against. So it doesn't matter how powerful his attack is, he won't be able to bring it into contact with anything it is ready for. Just like the simple removal of the chair from under the expectant butt causes the latter to land on the ground. The chair didn't kick him in the butt, nor did the floor. He did it to himself.

To recognize on exposure is not the same as to recreate in one's inner senses. The recognition of voices does not require being able to imagine them when they are silent. I have learned much about the difference between the two when learning to do my main taiji form in my mind. I could do it only a few years after I could do it in the physical world. That was a breakthrough for me, since it actually means now I'm free to practice whenever and wherever I want -- regardless of the outer circumstances. For me the visual part of visualization was the learned skill, but the rest of the sensorium has always been super acute -- in fact, the practical problem for me is more along the lines of, "how do I stop imagining this so acutely and vividly." I can get a buzz from drinking imaginary wine, satisfy hunger by eating imaginary food, smell imaginary flowers and listen to imaginary music of sublime beauty -- it's much harder for me to shut down my senses than to let them do what they fancy.

Timing is everything.

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Thank you for sharing your story and your thoughts. Far as I'm concerned, the mutt is not a bad thing at all unless he or she proclaims muttdom to be the only true religion. Too many newagers not only do but are fundamentalists in this -- they actually consider muttdom superior to traditionalism (which they have developed a party line to condescendingly berate), and themselves to lineage followers and to people who tend to stick it out rather than smorgasbord it and then move on to something new. It all depends. Also, I tend to think that it's age related (spiritual age, not necessarily biological.) The young and inexperienced need to experience stuff for themselves -- in fact it is often counterproductive to jump to conclusions about what you're going to be cultivating too soon. I've heard more than once from people who started out like that, "took me thirty years to find the teacher/practice/the real thing I've been looking for." The danger here is to gradually and inescapably turn this eclecticism into the perennial dabbler's "Jack of all trades, master of none" outcome. The remedy, from my perspective, is the taoist approach -- whatever you undertake as a pursuit on the side, you don't mean to dabble in. You mean to match or surpass those for whom it is the main thing. Or as an accidental "side guru" of mine says, "Take very good care of what you care for, and get rid of the rest."

Well, yes, that's what I meant -- "Reply to this topic" area (not button). It was there at the get-go, then earlier today it disappeared for me -- and now it's back. Weird but true. I hope it stays put now.

Oh, OK, so it quotes no matter what, but I can remove the quote if I want a cleaner page. That's legit. Computer, Apple, Firefox.

Ah, cookie jar monsters! Figures. Thanks, the "thank you" and the notification seem to be back, but still no "reply" option.

The "thank you" button and the "reply" button have disappeared for me. I only see the "quote" option under people's posts. The "notification" I just saw from Dawei refused to open first, and disappeared altogether next. Meow?

Spotless, to add to the orchids theme, I got a pot of gorgeous tiger orchids for my birthday last week. I did some rearrangements in the living-room prior to that and was puzzling over decorating a particular spot, and it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to put some orchids there. Telepathy strikes again. The pot and the orchids are exactly the colors I needed there.

Today I was trying to remember if I still had any of that Dr. Christopher's ointment I wanted to use on a burn. Didn't even check upon thinking about it because I realized I hadn't seen that jar in years, so I must have run out a long time ago. Used something else. However, buying something completely unrelated (a book and a T-shirt) on Amazon an hour or so later, I saw a suggestion among those they like to make "based on your purchases," and there it was, Dr. Christopher's ointment. I never bought it on Amazon, I never mentioned to anyone that I was thinking "do I still have it?" It all happened in my mind, and Amazon read my mind. Disturbing.

Perfect!