Taomeow

A red bullfinch globe in a snow-covered tree branch. Thoughts of my homeland. -- by Masahiro Shibata, original written in Russian, translation mine

I guess both are true -- indeed, in many cases the living preferred to avoid the dead, except for professionals, usually taoist or buddhist, who handled them as needed. As someone who squats habitually and with ease (a lifelong habit), I doubt that "sit on the floor with one's legs spread apart and stretched out" equals "squatting." Methinks it's two different poses. Many Asians routinely perform various chores in the squatting position which is comfortable and stable if you're used to it, without meaning disrespect to anyone. and even

Didn't find your interpretation in the link posted either though, and was mighty surprised to read it. Far as I know, the Chinese custom "the westerners have no clue about" is not to scare a loved one's ghost away but, on the contrary, to guide it home should the person die away from the native abode. There was (and still exists in some parts, at least, to my knowledge, in Taiwan) a whole profession of ghost guides tasked with going to, e.g., battle grounds after the war, collecting all the ghosts of the fallen soldiers, lining them up and marching them home. A couple of my Chinese friends witnessed such processions in their early years (and, being young, were somewhat freaked out, while older people actually paid the ghost guide to perform the task.) There was also a really superb 1999 Chinese movie, The Road Home (incidentally the first role of Zhang Ziyi of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) where, when the protagonist dies in his old age, his wife insists that the coffin be carried to their native remote village on foot all the way (long and difficult) in order for her beloved husband's ghost to remember the road home and get there safely. What you probably mean is that there is indeed a tradition of chasing unwanted ghosts (gui) away by various means, including making loud noises, but it's a different situation. Far as I've been able to discern, Zhuangzi is indeed waxing philosophical in this episode rather than trying to shoo his wife's ghost away.

Not going there in this thread.

Thanks for the link, interesting article. The exact date they pinpointed -- March 5, 1953 B.C. -- looked somehow familiar... then I realized that March 5, 1953 A.D. was the day Joseph Stalin died. For those who know what his immediate plans were which got cancelled as the result, the repercussions were staggering. This one death saved millions of lives.

Depends on the animal. In many cases two of the same kind don't get along when they meet, the Dragon being one such animal -- he (and this year's Dragon is a he -- yang) might compete and even fight with one's own Dragon of the year, month, day, and/or hour of birth. But that's just one aspect, and it doesn't by itself mean any major adversities unless there's other adverse factors within the year that chime in. However, some feng shui practitioners advise wearing a protective talisman -- in this case, a Rooster is supposed to work. The image has to be 3D, a small pendant in the shape of a Rooster. That's because Dragon and Rooster are friends and when he sees a Rooster, this might distract him from fighting with the other Dragon and soften his disposition. (In feng shui, Rooster is thought of as a bird closer to the Phoenix in its nature than to the domestic chicken, and the Dragon-Phoenix combo is a taoist alchemical classic.)

Sometimes there's indirect indicators, none of them definitive, but sort of pointers. E.g., a very intensely developed "gut feeling" (I call those feelings "warning and promises") that you routinely use to guide your decisions (and regret not listening to whenever you chose to ignore them or are forced to ignore them); having carried a pregnancy to term; a history of dantien-developing practices and "internal" arts -- neigong, neidan, neijia; somewhat frisky metabolism; a tendency to bounce back from setbacks instead of going deeper into the mire when they do occur; etc. This is one of those things where imagination, visualization, "assuming" you have it are helpful toward actually developing it. (Not in the case of pregnancy of course.) Unlike with your fancy restaurant example, where no amount of imagining more money in your wallet than it actually contains will materialize extra dollar bills, undertaking a good traditional dantien-developing practice and going about it "as if" you already have a dantien does help it form and function. That's how children start learning -- by imitating a function they can't yet competently perform -- but this play activity does facilitate the emergence of the actual ability. It's somewhat similar.

2024 -- Yang Wood in the Heavenly Stem, on top of Earth in the Earthly Branch. This is a conquering/defeating relationship -- "Wood conquers Earth." The two phases ("elements") are in the destructive cycle. This means a year of more conflict and less harmony than one would wish for. Now the uncanny part is, both Trump and Biden have Earth in the Day-master pillar of their bazi charts, both in the stem and the branch! So by the disposition of the heavenly-earthly qi, both are set up for defeat, though the kind of defeat it is may or may not entail winning or losing the presidency. In this situation, a rather detailed analysis of the rest of the chart is needed in order to make a realistic prediction. I would look into that if I saw the point... But the completely identical Day-master pillars of the two candidates coupled with real-life observations tell me enough to not even bother. Tell me once again that the Native American chief was right who said, "Right wing, left wing -- they are wings of the same bird."

I don't have "my" theory, it's a well-studied area of cognitive neuroscience that I was referring to as an analogy (not "equivalency") to the development of the dantien. For a brief intro, check out, e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8923642/ https://www.scilearn.com/the-reading-brain/#:~:text=The angular and supramarginal gyrus,we can then read aloud. Briefly, the acquisition of language, which is contingent on exposure, practice, and timing, results in the creation of anatomical changes in the brain that tantamount to the creation of a new organ within it. Specialized areas with specialized connections that together get to work like any other specialized organ of the body tasked with a particular function. The difference being, you are not born with this organ, the co-creation between the innate potential and you and your environment and effort has to bring it into being. It can also be likened somewhat to how the orchestra conductor gets numerous various instruments to play together in a coherent interconnected and interdependent manner to create the sound of a symphony. It's not that each instrument didn't exist before they were assembled into an orchestra-- but the orchestra didn't exist, it is a product of co-creation. It is of course infinitely simpler than the orchestration of the brain for language inception and expert discernment and usage. But as an analogy, either process can be a good illustration of how a dantien is created from the potential to create it. Yes, qi abounds, with or without being organized, structured and directed/conducted in a particular coherent meaningful manner -- but it is this directed, conducted, structured, organized, meaningful usage of it that develops an anatomical foothold in the human body out of the potential present at birth. And this is the function of the dantien. You have to organize and harmonize the flow a certain specific way before it can assume certain functions for which you are born with a potential to create them but not the function itself nor the organ. I see. The numerous ways in which I disagree, for some other time. Unless it entails throwing the baby out with bathwater. "Lifeforce," "awareness/consciousness" used axiomatically as something "everybody knows" is an example of the kind of lowest-common-denominator reductionist approach that can hamper the emergence of comprehension -- forever. (I believe that to a large extent the world is the way it is due to a multitude of such reductionist labels habitually used instead of... but that, again, is for some other time, should it come.) Within discussing dantiens qi is in its rightful place, but when my point is "dantien is co-creation between potential and actualization/exposure/practice" and you substitute the word "qi" for the word "dantien" and argue that "it just IS" the conversation is rendered meaningless, alas. In case my take asks for further clarification: yes, qi "just is" (though it isn't limited to "lifeforce" by any stretch of taoist imagination) but a dantien is something you may or may not develop to the extent it becomes a "quasi-organ," a locus-system-function engaged in meaningful orchestration of qi toward a particular modus operandi.

I don't think you're getting my drift. If you were to look into how language is acquired (as I did, cognitive neuroscience used to be a huge hobby) you would hold off with that "false" label. And it's not an equivalence, it's an analogy. Also, I was talking about dantiens, not "lifeforce," whatever that means to you. What does "lifeforce" mean to you? To me it means to bring a taoist conversation to the lowest common denominator. Again, we are talking about the dantiens, a particular and specific way the system can process qi if it is fully operational. Not about qi. And certainly not about "lifeforce." Just dantiens.

What about your native tongue? When you are born, does it already exist in you or is it created in you? A dantien, as a very knowledgeable practitioner explained to me (then a beginner) a long time ago, is a product of co-creation between your innate potential and your exposures and practices. In that sense it is no different from being able to acquire a native tongue -- I don't speak yours and you don't speak mine, but we were each both born with the ability to develop either one of them, it's exposures and practices that made it happen -- and being different, they resulted in different languages. "They already exist" -- well, as a potential. But exposures and practices is what turns them on. Or not. Does everybody (barring any kind of damage that might interfere) have machinery to acquire language? Yes. Is everybody born speaking it? Nope. And if you're raised by animals from an early enough age and miss the window of opportunity that is open only up to a certain age, you will never speak -- real-life stories of this nature are well known. Real-life stories of inactive dantiens are not as obvious, but then, neither are stories of active ones. It's subtle phenomena, but they are phenomena of co-creation, like many other things about us humans.

Regular cleaning of everybody's teeth is essential. As for qi-infused instruments, those do exist but are usually in the possession of masters who engage said tools in their cultivation. There's many legends about swords, calligraphy brushes, acupuncture needles and of course talismans charged with qi by highly skillled practitioners. An ordinary practitioner won't accomplish any such feats. What is available to a regular practitioner though is his or her own qi to the extent it has been cultivated. Or The principles, habits and skills learned in (e.g.) a good taiji practice can often be successfully applied to any other. I found that they efficiently improve swimming, tennis, household chores, food preparation and what not. (I neither own nor need a garlic press, e.g., because I fajin a clove with the flat side of a cleaver in such a way that it simultaneously peels and pulverizes itself. A whole bulb is turned into mashed garlic within seconds this way.)

That Greek cat would have fared a lot better if he did indeed go to Egypt. Even though, judging by these illustrations, some of the cat-worshipping Egyptians were getting tired of waiting on them hand and foot and were fantasizing about cats being put to work instead.

That's how I read a lot of classics -- but that was cramming for tests/exams. At the university we had a Foreign Literature course that was so unrealistically massive (pretty much all of the classics from all of the periods from all of the countries) that, per someone's calculations, in order to finish it all in the allocated 5 years, we would have to read for about 32 hours every day. Since there's only 24 hours in a day, one had to pick and choose what to actually read and when to resort to the 35 minutes per 1000 pages method. One of my teachers was aware of it and opposed to it. She wasn't satisfied with the student narrating the plot and naming the main protagonists -- she wanted proof that they did actually read whatever books were assigned. So at the oral exams she would hit you with most cruel questions. What was the name of Madame Bovary's cat? What happened to the cat from The Batrachomyomachia? And yet at a critical moment I managed to turn her attention away from the book I never read to the movie neither of us had ever seen and get the highest grade. That's because the books I did read taught me how to cast a spell.

Happy New Year bums. May it live up to everyone's best expectations. I remember making great plans for 2020. That taught me about the truth of the adage, "Do you want to make god laugh? Make a plan." I'm nobody's comedian. Whoever wants to laugh at my expense won't be helped along by my New Year's resolutions. I read it in high school -- it was included in our literature program, so I skipped chapters, like schoolchildren are wont to do when dealing with something this monumental. The chapters I skipped were about war. Nowadays those are the ones I would re-read (edit: "read") if I saw the point. Maybe next year. A lot more fun was to be had recently from a novel titled "T," by Viktor Pelevin -- it's about a fictitious version of Count Tolstoy the martial artist. I was about to suggest it but apparently it still hasn't been translated...

This was posted elsewhere by TDB's MythMaker, I'm just a messenger.

Or, by another name, the "yellow sprouts court." What's the dantien for? It's like any other potential that you can develop and use for whatever you're aiming to accomplish. In this sense it's no different from the ability to acquire language, to read and write, to ride a bicycle, to juggle a dozen tennis balls, to form an emotional relationship with a human or animal or even a device. (Song in the background: "I'm In Love With My Car.") You are born with the potential; you may learn to use this potential spontaneously upon exposure to whatever tools help it actualize, or (more often) via a particular set of practices that develop it. What do we develop the dantien for? It's like asking what our writing ability is for. Once you got it, how you refine and use it is your choice. Become Shakespeare or get into arguments with strangers online. Or both.

Thank you. "Facing the darkness within" sounds a bit ominous... but the body is not transparent to light so everybody has darkness within, complete darkness. That's the great still yin, with the yang motion within it. Facing it is what meditators do -- is that what you meant?

I messed up my solstice yesterday. 7:27 pm in our parts (says google). I started out right -- in the afternoon, I put two heavy cast iron skillets with a layer of coarse salt on the bottom on high heat and commanded all the things I wanted gone to be cleansed and burn away. The salt crackled for a long time and gradually turned grey. Once the loud explosions signifying the most malevolent energies being dismantled finally stopped, I flushed the salt down the toilet. The ritual part done, I decided to re-season the skillets (those cast iron savvy know what I'm talking about) and then got carried away, applying three layers (that's four hours of making a mess in the ambient atmosphere) and polishing my copper pots and pans while at it. Cinderella solstice. Once I was done I forgot all about meditation and just went to bed.