Taomeow

Oh, and on the subject proper. Master Wang Liping's routine is great, but requires really strong legs, otherwise it's pretty difficult. I keep promising myself to start standing ZZ again before resuming, otherwise I get too distracted by the burning in my thighs. It's a superb routine actually, coordinating everything with everything -- left-right, up-down, breathing-dantiens, and then all of it with all of it of the tree. I think someone recently posted an approximate (automatic and therefore very hard to understand) translation of the write-up of the routine somewhere on the forum, the original at some Chinese language Longmen site. Lao Tzu, Chi Dragon, everybody proficient in Chinese, if you wanted to make yourselves really sublimely useful and earn much gratitude from the forum's participants, you could perhaps offer a good translation? How does that sound?

Nothing... I just gave up, like I did on a lot of things in and around that house, which is, as I know now, a feng shui disaster. Alas, I didn't know any feng shui when we bought it. Now would be a horrible time to sell it or I would. When the time was great to sell it, I couldn't. (A feng shui disaster permeates everything about the property, including the timing of its market value vis a vis the owners' circumstances. The nature of the beast.) And as Zerostao mentioned the birds who get to his cherries faster than he does, so should I mention my squirrels. I also have a couple of fruitful (non-cheater ) apple trees in the back yard, generously covered with apples every year. But while we wait for the apples to ripen properly, so do the squirrels. I take a bite and think, two or three more days. They take a bite and think the same thing. Then one hot summer morning ALL the apples are gone all at once. That's the day of their prime, peak qi -- the apples, and the squirrels too, who obviously get up for this harvest earlier than I do, beat me to it every time. Last summer, however, two neighbors' girls came and asked if they could pick our apples, still unripe -- I think they were trying to get some exposure to some natural ways or whatever, I couldn't think of a reason why they wanted the unripe apples but said OK just to piss off the squirrels. The girls did a very good job. The squirrels are still pissed.

Believe it or not, they exist. I have a huge old cherry tree growing in my front yard (on the East Coast). When we bought the house, I thought, wow, am I going to have cherries? Then in spring it was all in bloom, like a pink cloud, magnificent, there wasn't an inch not covered by the blooms. Then wind and rain came and the petals were all over the neighborhood and plastered all over my car, I drove a flowering "hippie car" for a week or so. Then... no cherries. Not one. Year after year, it's the same. Cheater cherry tree. All looks and no vitamins.

Thank you for your cooperation. You know, it's a great idea to protect people who have asked for protection, not so great when you try to patronize practitioners with (sometimes) years or even decades of practice experience. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? E.g., I have learned from taoist masters who are most decisively not "cheaters," have benefited from practicing what they taught me, keep practicing, and keep gaining experience that makes it absolutely redundant to ask someone else who is not practicing this what they think of what they don't have any exposure to. My teachers are most decisively not cheaters, as I told you before, and I don't particularly care for empty accusations. If someone -- a master you can name -- cheated you, please describe how exactly. (No, charging money for instruction does not qualify, unless you were given a fraudulent price and then charged something that was not stipulated in advance.) In fact, why don't you ASK instead of TELLING when we're dealing with subjects others are directly familiar with and you only "think" something about them without any exposure? This could benefit both parties. You stand a chance to find out what else people might be getting from certain teachers and practices besides confirmations of their gullibility, inability do form adequate judgments, and the rest of what you think the rest of us are about. While those of us who have something tangible to talk about will be grateful for a chance to share some of the knowledge of the subjects we love, which is always a pleasure. THEN you can doubt what we have to say, ask questions, express concerns, cite your sources, ask more questions... in other words, communicate. How's that for a new and improved plan of your participation?

--- Moderator's Warning --- Yes, we all know what you think by now, but you do need to stop posting one-sentence inflammatory snides of no substance which have been your main contribution to date. This forum has a no-trolling policy. Please abide by our rules or earn yourself a suspension. Do not attempt to have another argument with me over this, just abide by our guidelines. Last warning.

IMO, it's the similarity between "pearls" and "pearl barley" -- i.e. limited to some spiritual homophones. I happen to believe that giving other cultures the benefit of fine discernment is the first step away from the lumping-it-all-together stance of our colonial legacy. For themselves Westerners retain the right to see as meaningful, if not "major" or at least "significant," the differences between Catholicism, Protestantism, Presbyterianism, Greek Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, etc. etc.., and generally don't feel that one can be a "the same as the other" substitute for any purposes -- having waged many, many wars to prove it. But doctrines of the rest of the world seem to be viewed as freely interchangeable -- it boils down to "not like us = all the same." Well, yeah, on some level everything is the same... We all have about the same number of heads, as a species. One could argue that any which way we use these heads is the same. E.g., none of us have retractable noses or ears...

Taoists are masters of ridicule. About alphabet writing (like English, Spanish, Russian et al), they say that it is as beautiful as the traces left on a dusty tabletop by scurrying cockroaches. About Buddhists, they say they are as agile and determined in their climbing up toward higher realms as bedbugs climbing up a trousers leg. About Christians, they say that exhibiting and worshiping images of a god who is dead, naked, and pinned to a piece of wood is exceedingly kinky. When I was in China, we were seeing a taoist TCM practitioner, and at one point I came in with a cold. The doctor asked me with exaggerated concern, "where do you have the cold?" "I got my feet wet in the pouring rain, and then started sneezing." "Oh... you got a dog disease," he said gravely, while his eyes twinkled with mischief. "What?.." "You know, humans get a cold in the head... dogs get cold in the nose."

Doesn't sound taoist to me, this koan of his. He (or someone else before him) must have reinterpreted a zen koan or something, since the routine whereby the master says something and the student becomes "enlightened" is quite un-taoist. Taoists are not in the habit of being "enlightened" at all, much less by words. Here's a taoist koan with a taoist moral to compare: ~ The Useless Tree ~ Hui Tzu said to Chuang, "I have a big tree, the kind they call a "stinktree." The trunk is so distorted, so full of knots, no one can get a straight plank out of it. The branches are so crooked you cannot cut them up in any way that makes sense. There it stands beside the road. No carpenter will even look at it. Such is your teaching - big and useless." Chuang Tzu replied, "Have you ever watched the wildcat crouching, watching his prey. The prey leaps this way, and that way, high and low, and at last lands in the trap. And have you seen the Yak? Great as a thundercloud, he stands in his might. Big? Sure, but he can't catch mice!" "So for your big tree, no use? Then plant it in the wasteland, in emptiness. Walk idly around it, rest under its shadow. No axe or bill prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down." "Useless? You should worry!"

There's deities who are universal, but there's also local ones. A god or goddess patron(ess) local to a town or even village used to be common in China. Quan Yin is not particularly nationalistic, but there's Chinese deities who don't like foreigners. Usually the military ones in charge of defending settlements from invaders. Dona Rosita Arvigo who studied herbal and sasang healing from the last Mayan expert asserts that the teacher made her learn the local dialect in order to talk to the local plants and spirits, "because they still didn't bother to learn any English or Spanish." In my own experience, ayahuasca, who speaks all languages of the universe and most definitely knows English, chose to communicate with me in Spanish, "when in Rome" was her rationale. (She made me learn Spanish instantly, I didn't know it before.) What I'm driving at is, deities can choose to use a particular aspect of their overall (much larger) being to communicate with particular individuals or groups. They do that. Doesn't mean they are not/cannot do more, but their "clients" might have difficulty embracing "it all," so deities give them as much as they can absorb. Quan Yin can communicate with a buddhist and not make a peep about her taoist or universal aspects, and vice versa. Am I making sense?

Wasn't even supposed to -- there's a whole year till December 21 2012. I did a Four Pillars reading for this date, for the 11th hour when the Mayan calendar ends. It is a double dragon double rat Water-dominated moment in the year of the black (Water) dragon, and rat being another Water sign, we're looking at the moment of the most powerful Water in centuries. So, if the world ends, it is the fire-metal world that will end. And I for one will be happy to wave it goodbye from the deck of my ark. What, you haven't started building yours yet?.. Get busy! Happy New Year!

You did -- and not only in this thread but in all threads you've started so far -- the following (here's the online Urban Dictionary with many definitions of trolls and trolling for you to consider -- please educate yourself, you do like to read, right?): http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling

Because trolling goes against this forum's policy. If you want to talk qigong masters, either you know some and can give information to the forum members, or you don't know any and can ask for information from the forum members who do. What you can't do is pretend that you're asking for information and then proceed to strike down any and all sincere responses with disdainful one-liners ("they are not masters, they are cheaters") rather than with anything of any substance, because this is the textbook definition of trolling and trolling is against this forum's policy. Please stop.

And I think you need to stop trolling.

Not my experience. Top masters in China charge top money, adjusted for the overall standard-of-living there vs. here. And the highest-level ones may not be available to the general public at any buying price at all for any purposes, since the rich and powerful may (and do) keep them to serve them exclusively. The ones who practice for free in the parks, etc., are of course enthusiasts, but hardly masters. Masters of a high level simply have no time, incentive, interest in doing beginners favors in the park on a regular ongoing basis, year in and year out. They are, typically, exceptionally busy individuals. So, those who charge to teach, gotta make a living this way, if they didn't charge to teach, they'd charge to fix your sink or something, masters have to eat and feed their families and sometimes teachers. (I know two, in China, who supported their elderly teachers for as long as the latter lived. One of them still does. The other one started practicing TCM specifically to earn money to take care of his very old teacher who had no family. ) I too catch myself idealizing the good old charitable Asian ways from time to time... as though such a thing ever existed in any pristine purity... China has been civilized for thousands of years longer than the West, and no one in Asia is a stranger to money. However, I would agree that it is much more widespread there than here for a bunch of enthusiasts to just get together for free and practice whatever they love without anybody charging anybody anything. Here, I had to give up on the Kunlun "meetup," e.g., because all of a sudden it's a paid service! "Kunlun lessons!" Started out as just a bunch of practitioners getting together in the park, lasted without fiscal implications for, like, a month... Americans tend to charge for everything that moves whenever they can, and most won't lift a finger for free. Asian masters here aren't gonna be the only ones left out in the cold in this climate, are they? Why should they be stupider -- and poorer -- than the average Joe? I always HATE paying for every trifle that normal human interactions should be providing free of charge (if there was such a thing still left), but I do not begrudge any master I ever paid for teachings even a dime. They worked hard all their lives to earn my money -- since age 6!!! And if I didn't pay, chances are I wouldn't practice, I'm a slacker deep inside and need all the nudges I can get to get things done... including this one.

A counterpoint I'm ready to make: a systemic approach to reality rooted in the core insights of Chinese civilization -- hetu, luoshu, xiantian, houtian, qi, yin-yang, wuxing, bagua, ganying, xuan kong, I Ching -- is taoism. Anyone who takes this approach to reality and all its aspects -- cosmology, psychology, biology, sociology, any other -ology, as well as to practices and empirical applications -- taiji, qigong, neigong, feng shui, TCM, art, relationships, sexual expression, divination, spiritual attitudes and personal interactions with spirits and energies of the world, magic, emotional and psychological and moral values and their expression in one's actual life, intellectual pursuits and paradigms resulting from reliance on the above concepts as primary tools of cognitive investigation -- is a taoist. Confusion starts when folks jump on the bandwagon of "taoism" (or off it as promptly, failing to find a footing) from any which random place instead of boarding it at the station, i.e. starting from its birthright legacy. It's like trying to understand, e.g., a black woman by failing to notice, for starters, that she was not born a white man, has never been a little boy, will never grow a beard, can pass for a local in Burkina Faso but not in Iceland, has never peed standing up and has nothing to wear a condom on, but plenty to wear a bra on, and so on. You have to know what you're dealing with from the start -- or who -- because if you don't, you will find it all very confusing. Not just taoism. Anything and anyone. I mean a generic "you," not you personally.

The image of Quan Yin that comes to me most readily whenever someone mentions her is from "Journey to the West" -- the episode where she got all worked up over the latest abominable display of force by Monkey who in his great but poorly handled power was striking down the right and the wrong left and right, and leaning over from heaven, hurled her precious vase of compassion at his head with all her might, knocking his lights out and thus getting the upper hand in a battle. This image resonates with my understanding of taoist rather than buddhist values, of which spontaneity, flexible emotional responsiveness is one, while having a pre-selected "prescribed" response to all situations that might arise is not. So, even though she embraced buddhism, she never renounced her taoism, which is why taoists even of the non-buddhist-flavored kind (like me) have no problem seeing her as their own. I keep her statuette on my taoist altar, because there's issues she's very good at addressing, particularly female/family/children related, and dedicate a ritual to her when the occasion calls for it. No problem. She's cool. I know she has a temper, but it's much like my own -- it doesn't need to be artificially controlled because it can be trusted to run its course commensurately with the occasion instead of using an occasion to release disproportionate amounts of pent-up stuff and spin out of control. (I fear nothing more than chronic serenity... it's scary to think what size the demons require this kind of restraint.)

Well, yeah, maybe it's not "extreme," but I distinctly remember the derisive/holier-than-thou overtones in addressing meat eaters and the gems of junk science sparkling here and there in support of the premise... also, I may have read it when I was extremely sensitized to this agenda -- to wit, after a year on a strict, organic, supposedly superhealthy vegetarian diet, which started with a bang and ended with a whimper... a learning experience that left me with an involuntary "oh please" response to vegetarian propaganda for the rest of my life .

Oh, I must have given an unclear recipe -- you cover it with boiling water (pretty much like tea ) and then wrap the pot in a blanket, so it's low slow steeping heat that does the cooking. When I was a kid, I was on occasion exposed to the ancient traditional cooking methods of the countryside -- the so-called Russian oven, which is identical to the Chinese one, this huge thing where you can cook inside of it and sleep on top of it. It is usually made expertly to retain the heat for the longest time -- clay, bricks, very thick walls, an oven with a heavy cast iron door on the bottom, a platform bed on top. The village house where I was a guest at the time had a huge one, I remember sleeping on that platform with two other girls and a whole lot of cats, seven or eight, and a tray of dried black cherries providing a midnight snack (there was something always drying on top, some fruit to preserve in this fashion). Anyway, the oven itself was used for all cooking, soups to homemade bread, and everything pretty much cooked itself -- the pots were shoved in and forgotten for the day. I don't think I ever experienced a better diet than in that Ukrainian village home. So, wrapping a hot pot in a blanket is the closest one might come to this under "ordinary modern" circumstances. (I have tried and discarded a crock-pot -- electricity ain't no way to cook, everything winds up tasting the same and uninteresting. And they rag on the unhealthy modifications to the molecular isomers and demolished enzymes and what not, some nutritionists do, and I believe them.)

Yeah, but sometimes (like in this case) they just make me think, sheesh, another dragging-down-the-level-of-discussion effort in full swing? Why are certain Tundra Eskimos always teaching West Congo dwellers how to stay cool on a hot summer day? Why do certain sons insist on teaching their father how to make babies? Why do certain bicycle salesmen insist on selling bicycles to fish? Why do certain hammer owners strive to turn everybody into their obliging nail?

One caveat: the author is a vegetarian fundamentalist and presents his views of food in an accordingly (and extremely) biased fashion, which renders his ideas of good and bad nutrition/diets rather ridiculous. The noteworthy part of the book, however, describing properties of food items in energetic and qi terms, i.e. parts which he compiled from authentic sources rather than authored, is indeed great. If I remember correctly (correct me if I'm wrong), it mentions not only the thermal nature of foods (warming, cooling, neutral) but also which meridians their qi enters, right? This is absolutely crucial to master IMO. There's often talk about "feeling qi" on this forum, well, the right place to start with this kind of sensitivity is by being able to tell where the qi of the foods you eat goes, and learning to "move" and "manipulate" your qi on this level. With practice, it becomes second nature -- besides being great fun and adding a whole new dimension to the process of eating.

It self-cooks. The tasty varieties are pre-roasted, so they won't sprout. Clay works best because it retains the heat best, evenly and for the longest time. Asian markets usually have at least a few to choose from, high heat resistant so they can be used for stovetop cooking, not just in the oven.

The 100% soba is super tender (no gluten = no glue to hold it together) and indeed difficult to prepare, I suspect it's one of those Japanese trick foods (like sushi) that seem deceptively simple to make from the looks of it but require ten to twelve years of training under a lineage chef to get right. Ordinary buckwheat groats are much more forgiving. Here's the basic recipe: 1 cup buckwheat 1 1/2 cup water pinch of salt Bring water to a boil, preferably in your heaviest pot, add salt, add buckwheat, stir from the bottom, reduce heat to simmer, cover, give it 15 minutes, ready. Don't remove the lid yet, let it sit and absorb all the water for another 10 minutes. Season with tons of butter or ghee. You can also use it in soups, as a side dish, etc.. I like mine in hot soy milk as a milk soup, with butter, sugar or honey and berries, as a breakfast dish of my invention. It's very versatile and can go with meat or with sweet. Here's another recipe, for raw food aficionados: same proportions, but instead of cooking, place it all in a clay pot (or any heavy pot you have) in the evening, wrap the pot in an old blanket, and leave overnight. In the morning, it will be interesting.

I wouldn't worry about it. Quinoa has nowhere near as much oxalates as, e.g., spinach. A diet low in oxalates is useful for someone who already has kidney stones and poor dietary calcium intake and/or absorption due to poor digestion. (The real bummer is commercial bread to which they add phosphates and calcium propionate for shelf life and illusion of freshness, which do leech calcium out of your bones and send its insoluble compounds into your bloodstream whence they get to the kidneys. Another bummer food in this respect is homogenized pasteurized diary, especially fat-free and low-fat varieties.) For someone with a normally functioning digestive tract and a sensible diet, including oxalates-rich foods is beneficial, since they are selectively destructive to cancer cells (induce apoptosis) and useful for prevention of cancer and in some naturopathic traditions, also for treatment (e.g. with raw beet juice, one of the foods highest in oxalates). Another way to assure there's no damage from oxalate-containing foods is to consume them with some fat. I used to cook quinoa at least every week (we are a gluten free household, so all non-gluten-containing grains have been explored thoroughly). Haven't noticed any special effects except that I like buckwheat more.

Some people who get online are so extreme (there ARE extreme people in the world, you know) that projection or any such is out of the question. E.g., I used to have an online friend who was so intense that he crashed my computer every time he got on to talk to me via the messenger. (Granted, it was a PC, now I have a Mac which is a bit sturdier, better qi.) When he sent me an email in the middle of the night (insomniac down South, different time zone), I woke up every time (sic) and knew what woke me up -- a message from "R." I had to put a ban on the messenger and specify a time frame for emails to protect my computer and my sleep. So, that's an extreme case of unwittingly projecting "vibes" into online communications, but I pretty much feel what the "behind the words" people are like always. Sometimes strongly, sometimes slightly, but always. (Of course when in doubt I can always ask the I Ching -- in assessing the effects of other people on me the oracle is correct in 100% of cases, so it's a matter of listening -- I can only go wrong if I don't.)