Taomeow

Regret by Yuan Chi (A.D. 201-263) When I was young I learnt fencing And was better at it than Crooked Castle. My spirit was high as the rolling clouds And my fame resounded beyond the World. I took my sword to the desert sands, I watered my horse at the Nine Moors. My flags and banners flapped in the wind, And nothing was heard but the song of my drums. War and its travels have made me sad, And a fierce anger burns within me: It's thinking of how I've wasted my time That makes this fury tear my heart.

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I was still there in '95 when Rudy proposed it as I recall. Same gang, Bloomberg, whatever, faces change, agendas just get pushed further by each new... um... facehole. I started out in New York under Koch. That's the last face I can remember.

As pioneered by Rudy Giuliani, the relentless cigar smoker, recipient of the Cigar Rights of America Award and lifetime membership. Quod licet Iovi, so to speak.

I would translate "you Westerners" in this context as "people who think that, just because they've become aware of the existence of something, they have to grab it, have it, do something with it..." Or: "this is the point you engage when you're ready -- it's part of pretty advanced routines, beginners shouldn't tamper with it." However, since you're not one of those cocky "Westerners" (LOL -- there's quite a few Chinese in this category as well, it's been demonstrated many times, including on this forum), here's the secret of what to do with huiyin when you're ready: yes, pull it up, by all means -- from the crown of the head. Not locally, and not by using muscles. (There was a member of this forum who gave herself a "crown chakra" orgasm at one point which blew her mind -- she originally joined specifically to find out what that was all about. No one knew. I didn't know then, I think I know now. I'm pretty sure she got this "side effect" by inadvertently pulling her huiyin up with the crown in the course of her experiments -- but since it was an accident, she could never replicate the feat.)

Great picture! What did you buy? Do they allow the use of a weapon in a public place in New York, or are you just taking your chances and watching out for the cops?

You're definitely onto something.

Of course people who don't have a sense of loyalty as a simple human instinct (which should be activated by healthy rather than neurotic or psychotic parenting early on, and is often turned off precisely by the latter) are also known as traitors. Under normal natural conditions we are loyal by design, because no other creature on earth is born as helpless as the human baby and remains as dependent on the parents for as long. We survive only if someone is loyal to us, and from there we proceed as social creatures who could never survive if this loyalty didn't extend to the larger group (but no larger than 7 to love simultaneously and no larger than 120 to know personally in a lifetime -- beyond that we start malfunctioning, a fact of human psychology.) A natural born (or should I say made, at a very early developmental stage) traitor will later rationalize the uselessness of loyalty every which way, but ultimately it boils down to some gaping holes in the soul. I notice that the vacuum in that hole is what sucks in the suckers who would trust the traitors. Traitors are often charismatic. You can't betray if you don't attract first. But thank god our interactions in the world are not limited to those with people who act out their being damaged by damaging other people. Traitors are not whole, loyal people are -- under normal human conditions. Of course when the conditions lose their normal human nature and quality, one has to engage the mind to sort out who or what to be loyal to. But under natural conditions it was the heart's decision, a no-brainer.

Well, the subtitles go too fast and I don't want to dedicate any more time to this, but no, he's not grabbing the ground with his toes, he specifically shows how not to point the tailbone forward at 1:29, he most definitely is not pulling the buttocks in and up, he tells the student not to lower his eyes, and so on and so forth. I guess the only point of dispute, which is not worth disputing however, could be the name -- the term ZZ doubles up as the generic one which can apply to many standing meditations, besides referring specifically to the wuji pillar. I thought we were talking about the latter and had the same pose in mind -- if not, well, I'm still talking fundamentals, for which there's multiple applications, and I still believe they are pretty much the same for all applications. As for assorted applications -- e.g., a Longmen Pai instructor in Beijing taught me a harder version of this one (for which I couldn't find a pic, nor anyone in the US who's ever seen it):

Excellent. Yes, commitments we've made, either explicitly or implicitly. Of course if you made a commitment to one person and he or she proves to be someone very different from who you promised your loyalty to, i.e. he or she obtained your commitment by lying to you or misleading you, I consider such commitment cancelled. This holds true not just for interpersonal but person-community, person-institution, person-society relationships IMO. If you pledge allegiance to a democracy because that's what you believe a political arrangement you're committing to is, only to find that it's really a kleptocracy, a corporatocracy, a fascist totalitarian regime in sheep's skin, an idiocracy, and so on -- do you remain loyal? To WHAT? To what you were supposed to be loyal to when you committed. If the thing you made a commitment to proves to be something else, loyalty means still being true to what you committed to, right? The opposite is called conformism, loyalty that shifts with the shifts of the power structure, always committed to whoever and whatever has the power at the moment. Most people are, socially, conformists. They remain loyal to the thing that is not what they started out being loyal to, but since this new thing has the power, they pretend it's the same thing they pledged allegiance to to begin with. With absolutely disastrous consequences I should add -- for "others" at first, the ones trampled upon, but sooner or later, for the conformists themselves too.

Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi

I'd say "useful" rather than necessary. This is pretty hard for beginners. Was widely practiced by hardcore masters of old though -- I've read in taiji books that they used to stand in Single Whip, for an hour or so, under the table! Imagine that! What's necessary is to do the form extremely slowly from time to time.

No, I'm saying this is not done in any position -- you only settle in a position of "settled." There's lots and lots of them, but they are all different from all the "move" positions, the tailbone being your most reliable guide but every other point also having a move-settle range to choose from, and when you settle, you choose from the "settle" options for each point, you settle "everything at once." There's a move-settle move-settle rhythmic flow of body use in taiji. There's a move-move move-move move-move, move-this-part, move-that-part, move-move, etc., pattern of body use in hard MA. You are looking to apply this latter pattern to ZZ, but it is not designed to follow it. It follows the settle phase of the move-settle cycle. A settled position can be anything from your many options in the settle phase of the flow -- ZZ is the simplest of them all but it does not make it simple. Every settled position is different from every moving position, and you don't want to settle in any moving position, and you don't want to settle any parts of the body in any moving position, because, like I said, they are unstable, and ZZ is an exercise in stability. My teacher would demonstrate it (as he did many times) by pushing you very slightly in the position you assume -- if you are in an unsettled position, you lose balance, if you're in a settled position, you root and remain glued to your place, push come to shove.

Well, according to my taiji teacher, you can stop and meditate in any settled, yin position in taiji forms -- but you don't stop in any of the unsettled, yang positions. How do you meditate while executing the tornado kick? -- or the double jump kick? -- these are explicit examples but each and every other yang move is similar in that it is a transitional, and therefore unstable state. Internal movement never stops in taiji -- a settled outer position lasts for as long as the inner movement completes itself, but you actually never stop even if you appear stopped externally -- unless you decide that you are going to stop doing the form and meditate instead at a particular point. This can be made extremely hard -- and believe me, the hard way to do yin is way harder than the hard way to do yang, if the goal is to challenge yourself for the purpose of building up strength. The Chen Tigers in particular like to torture students during workshops by suddenly freezing the whole scene for half an hour (I've heard horror stories about an hour of that too from taiji classmates) in a random position -- occasionally a very difficult one to maintain, forcing you to stand not just like a tree but like this tree:

LOL, "displaying ignorance" is Laozi 101 -- he claimed to have been a master of ignorance (his only direct claim to fame as I recall. "Everybody is so bright, I alone am dumb as a doorknob, thick as a brick," or something to that effect.) Taoism is huge, someone is bound to know something you (and me) don't no matter how much you (or me) know. No shame in that. I can only wonder how much nonsense I might say before I find out that it's nonsense, but I view this as a learning curve. And I think in that cheesy enough but somewhat addictive show, the best find was this novel way to say "I love you" -- "you know nothing, John Snow." With this in mind -- here's point by point: "grip the ground with your toes" -- no, all manner of tense stances are a legacy of hard MA. Clawing the ground, in addition to creating and maintaining tension, closes off the Bubbling Well point at the sole, which it is very important to keep open in ZZ. You "stand like a tree" because you actually sprout "roots" into the ground, the average tree really stands like a mirror image of itself, tripled in size or more, if you could see the underground part. That's what you're trying to accomplish, and those points open the line of communication between the visible upper and invisible lower part of the tree, help you grow roots. Also, bringing these points into awareness is the best way to find the correct position for the knees, which is point next. "flex the knees (knees should not be further forward than the toes)" -- for the horse stance, but in ZZ the knees are kept unlocked but not flexed. This is subtle enough -- to just stand with knees unlocked without "doing" anything with them or to them -- but an even subtler adjustment is to let the natural spiral shape of the leg bones (and they are spirals -- the tibia and the fibula -- just like the rest) extend this outward-spiraling vector to the kneecaps... say if your kneecaps had eyes, the left one would be looking to the left but without turning the "face," so to speak, and the right one, to the right. So, unlocked, and slightly "looking" away from each other. "bring the buttocks in and up" -- no, this is muscle tension again, which is the opposite of what you're after -- and this will lock the qua. You want to keep it unlocked. "chest is brought in" -- just relaxed, not in. In is for motion. "shoulders relax and a bit forward" -- not forward, down, dropped. I was told that the position of the shoulders is found by imagining that you hold little, round, very hot buns under your armpits -- not too loosely, not too tightly. If you bring the shoulders forward, they will fall out. If you don't drop the shoulders, you'll burn yourself. "chin down" -- like you said, it's all done rather slightly, but still, the position of the chin is "in" -- slightly - the word is "tucked" I believe -- toward the body, not toward the ground. pointing up the crown of the head -- this is correct. I would also point out that no tension or intention is involved in this pointing, I like the image "suspended from the crown on a string from heaven" for the head. Oh, and you don't want to lower your eyes. And you don't want to do anything with your lower dantien. ZZ is a wuwei type meditation, you just do nothing at all.

I don't mean "real" to stand for "superior," and "influenced by other modalities" to mean "inferior." That's a matter of personal taste, opportunities of exposure, and personal instincts. What I mean is, classical taoism "as is," indigenous and basic, taoism that, among other things, does not view "animal" as inferior to "human" (this view is a late acquisition). In other words, taoism as it existed when it flowed smoothly out of shamanism but before it was incorporated into the overall "Chinese religion and culture" comprised of folk, taoist, Confucian and Buddhist. Taoism within this tradition of the overall "Chinese religion and culture" has its noble enough place, and in fact I have been taught within a Buddhist influenced taoist school (not the most heavily influenced though). But its teacher teaches just so that you naturally focus on the "structurally taoist" parts -- he does not negate or deny the rest, he just happens to de-emphasize the "coats of paint" on top of the structure, so to speak. This doesn't mean I hate every color painted on top, only that I don't choose my engine by the prettiness of the paint on its surface. You can be exposed to real taoism under a coat of Buddhist or Confucian or whatever paint and still get the real deal -- provided you focus on other things than this coat of paint on top. Hope I'm making sense.

When I used to stand ZZ, I found the correct dynamics by doing a funky exercise on the side -- you can safely try this at home. Take a raw egg and stand it on end. Don't use the glue. You have to find the subtle balance -- it will be looking for it via those very tiny motions in its "tailbone" SC is talking about -- but that's stage one. Stage two -- perfect balance -- is what stops the external motions completely, however subtle -- and that's when the internal motion kicks in.

Animals trained for circus have different postures from animals in the wild. The idea that humans ought to be trained like circus animals for the purpose of being controllable by the bosses and not, god forbid, free is as old as civilization. You can tell what's real taoism and what is the ruling overlords' agenda by the former always asking for the opposite of the latter. In taoism, you are taught to control yourself from the inside. In most other modalities, you are taught to be controllable from the outside. Believe it or not, posture that is drilled in has everything to do with which route the mind will choose. In Ken Cohen's book on qigong, there's a picture comparing the posture of ZZ to the posture of a soldier in the army, and there's a very good explanation of the differences. Both involve discipline and control, but the body is arranged and used in completely different, opposite ways, because ZZ trains your self-control toward your internally set goals, while the army pose closes you to yourself and opens you to external control.

Taoist fundamentals. The underlying theory and the practical applications and implications. The beauty of taoist arts and sciences is that nothing contradicts anything else -- it's a unified system. If what you (the generic you, not you personally) do for MA contradicts what you do for qigong, it means the fundamental premises of taoism are being ignored -- or, in a more typical case, just not known to the teacher. This non-knowledge is transmitted to the student, in the form of incorrect use of the body. Hence so many contradicting instructions flying around the noosphere, of which 95% follow The Great Law of the Internet -- "95% of everything on the internet is shit." So, what I said about the tailbone is not "for martial arts" because it is based on the fundamental taoist principle of yin-yang which is built into the human body and its kinesthetics. Yin and yang are stillness and motion, containing, to boot, stillness within movement and movement within stillness, accordingly ("the eye of the fish" in the taiji diagram, which is not called The Great Ultimate for nothing -- it expresses everything, not qigong or martial arts but being and nonbeing in all their possible manifestations.) The human body "opens and closes" like tao. ZZ is a "closed" externally, "open" internally posture. To accomplish its goal, i.e. the opening of the inner realms, you use the yin principle on the level of "subtle energetics" and this is accomplished by providing the correct yin structure at the level of gross anatomy. The major regulator of the opening-closing of "subtle energetics" is the mingmen, at the back and center of the human body. Anatomically, it is the area of the spine with major nerves connecting to all major internal organs of the body. Now, the somatic awareness of this opening-closing master gate, known as The Gate of Life, is generally impossible to acquire unless the area is first brought into awareness as capable of opening and closing. THIS is accomplished with the aid and guidance of the tailbone. The moving of the tailbone forward opens the mingmen, the pointing down keeps it in a position that can be likened to the "mysterious border" separating yin and yang, ready to go either way without committing; and pointing it slightly back closes the mingmen. In MA, this is used to return and store the qi before the next move. (Also in correct walking, when the tailbone is subtly back-forward mobile at every step, like a fish tail.) In ZZ, pointing it slightly back closes the whole yin structure, closes the mingmen so there's no leaking of qi and it can start accumulating and moving inside. If it's kept open, i.e. with the tailbone pointing forward, it will leak. In fact, it leaks continuously from that point because Westerners sleep on soft surfaces -- but that's for another discussion... the point being that this is part of the fundamentals and applicable to everything -- MA, qigong, walking, sleeping, sitting, or as the sage put it, "to be human, you need to master four things -- stand like a human, walk like a human, sit like a human, lie down like a human."

I too don't feel like contradicting too much too directly, which is why I wrote and then deleted my post in response to HE's paradigm. (Harmonious Emptiness, if you are reading this -- in that deleted post I objected to every single point of your instructions with the exception of "the waist is relaxed." Sorry... I'll make it up to you, I agree with you more often than not on most occasions. ) So, now, still not wanting to contradict, SC, didn't you when you said you didn't want to? -- now that I've learned from you how this is done... What you say about the knees is spot on, but the tailbone... No it doesn't point forward when you're static. This is for movement. And this is one of the great secrets of the great masters (of which I'm not one, but I learned this from one) I've just made public. I wonder how many will ignore it because I wasn't breathing fire on youtube while revealing it.

This is a very good idea. The answer is yes and no -- let me dispose of the "no" part quickly and get to the good part. "No" to chakras -- they are part of a different system, we use the interactions/superimpositions of the five phases (wuxing) and the eight directions (bagua) instead -- and if color and sound are to be expressed, in taoism they are expressed via this system. Yes to associations of trigrams (not individual lines, unless you want to go for black-and-white or their arbitrarily colored versions) with colors and sounds. You have a trigram, you have a direction of the bagua. This direction is associated with a color of the wuxing and substances thought of as expressing them -- e.g. Metal of the West, Fire of the South, and so on. The sound system is also derived from the "substances," usually translated as "elements" and in reality phases of qi -- e.g. Wood (green) "shouts," and when it is the sound produced by the organ associated with Wood, the Liver, the sound it makes is Chui (vocalized "shew"); the sound of Water (black or blue) is Xu ("chwee"); so, say you take the eighth trigram, Wood in the Northeast, and you can color it black-green or blue-green, and combine this with the sound effect of shew-chwee -- then on the level of the hexagram, you combine this with another trigram, similarly expressed, and you have an accurate representation rather than an arbitrary one. Quite a task though!

In classical taoism, interactions of yin and yang are never thought of as "corruption of yang." You may want to consider Ritsema-Sabbadini's paradigm (The Eranos I Ching) that uses the terms "energy and space" to describe their interactions, yang being thought of as energy and yin, as space. (Shantena Sabbadini worked as a theoretical physicist at the University of Milan, Italy, and the University of California. He was involved in research on the foundations of quantum physics and in the first identification of a black hole.) "Time" is always intimately connected with "energy" in all equations of modern physics (so physicists tell me); with "space," not necessarily. "Temporal" is more an attribute of yang, and "eternal," of yin. The "mystery sequence" with yin moving and yang being static dovetails nicely with the taoist alchemical arts of the bedchamber. The idea is to have each increase its opposite, "donate" what's excessive and gain what's deficient. This is known as "yang embracing yin," and what's usually missing from the diagrams is this emotional (and sensory) interpretation of their interactions. "Embracing" means "loving and protecting" rather than "being corrupted." The real corrupt yang is the kind that does not use its energy in this manner toward yin. So we are dealing with corrupt yang every time we deal in any and all ideas of "pure yang" -- one might say "pure yang" is the masturbating yang, the self-satisfying yang, the kind that does not love, protect, or create -- as opposed to The Creative, the traditional word for "yang, heaven, male principle" and so on.

The situation, even without details, might need to be understood better by whoever assesses it before suggesting remedies. "Control" is the name of the game. "Out of control" gives me some idea of the nature of the problem, but I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions without knowing more.

Been reminded of this...