Taomeow

It's not suicidal, it's homicidal.

Yes, the Five Shens are responsible for different tasks, which are thought of as "virtues," and unbalanced ones lose these virtues or even generate "vices." Yi is the closest to "thought," "consciousness," and I've seen it translated as "consciousness of potentials," which I like very much. It is the spirit that assesses situations and decides what is likely, what is possible, it evaluates reality and forms opinions about it. It facilitates creative motivation and helps new manifestations come into being. The main virtue that flows from this spirit is sincerity (xin) and traits resulting from it -- reliability, loyalty, faithfulness. Hun, when it is healthy, spontaneously produces acts of kindness toward self and others. Kindness (ren) is its main virtue. Damaged or disturbed Hun causes people to be unkind to themselves and/or others, producing envy, jealousy, and hatred not justified by any harm incurred (classical taoism doesn't view justified negative feelings as abnormal, by the way.) Hun is connected to one's ability to feel and endure pain and suffering, and in a healthy scenario, to learn compassion from the experience. Without this ability to feel suffering in oneself and/or in others and relate deeply to one's own and other people's humanity, the person is thought of as bu ren -- numb. Transforming suffering into unfeeling numbness and indifference is a sign of compromised Hun. (As an aside, whole religious and social systems run on this fuel, on compromising people's Hun ideologically and causing them to lose their deep, authentic humanity.) From a healthy Hun's perspective, pain and suffering are not there to escape, but to realize one's true human nature and transform suffering into compassion and kindness. Heart Shen is the most visible of the Five, and is in charge of connecting with other people, communicating with them and being able to harmonize one's interactions with others, facilitate interactions and (sic) form attachments to real people and real places (an unhealthy Heart Shen will try to severe all "attachments" to real things and instead latch onto something or someone imaginary, not immediately here in one's life, like some Father in Heaven or other, a Land of Supreme Purity, a non-dual Source, a doctrine of non-attachment, and the like.) Heart Shen is in charge of what the Chinese call "face" -- it calculates appropriateness of one's behaviors and reactions, proper demeanor and style, in general "manners." It is the spirit that enables one to look other people in the eye and answer questions in a manner that makes sense. If Heart Shen is troubled or damaged, it results in social awkwardness, ranging from being shy or clumsy in one's interactions to being autistic or delusional. Po is sometimes translated as the "animal soul" -- it is the emotional soul, the most immediate one in its reactions, it is the one that "lives in the present" and responds with plain knee-jerk reactions to whatever is going on in the "now." Its virtue is justice (yi, another character, not the same as yi the shen). It is fair and spontaneously truthful and just. Reactions of a healthy Po are appropriate and timely. When it is troubled, they are not -- one can be emotionless or, alternatively, hysterical, a haughty stiff-upper-lip or a drama queen, take your pick. Another virtue of Po is bao -- "preciousness." It is the spirit that captures and appreciates the perfection of a single moment or a short time period, and this moment may lie in the past, not just the present -- like a great work of art perceived and "grokked," or a whole magnificent civilization gone, not existing anymore -- Po can appreciate its perfection and "get it" in a flash of inspiration. If Po is not working properly, "fluidity" of interactions is lost, one can get stuck in feelings that never get resolved, and have difficulty appreciating any new developments and reacting accordingly.

"Cerebral vortex!" What a great image for the first line -- the whole poem spins around it like a cup of tea gently stirred once.

Thank you... likewise. ...but how?... I deleted it... do you decipher keystrokes on top of your other talents?..

Well, I am not going to argue any further, it took me several years to research but that counts for nothing because the starting point is not that. The starting point is to lose a belief system. Until this happens, no evidence of one's own eyes looking at tic-tac-toe grids in the sky, or confessions of pilots who did it, or scientists who developed it, or politicians who came up with reasons to implement it (all of which is available information) will ever penetrate the fortress, much else cause its mighty walls to crumble. Sigh. It was so nice and safe living in the fortress of socially engineered beliefs when I had one too. I'm almost as nostalgic for that as I am for the grid-free skies of my childhood, which I remember so well, with such longing...

I am talking only local conditions, only in southern CA (typically very low humidity, stable San Diego North County Coastal climate -- the weather doesn't change much even seasonally, let alone from day to day... our weather men/women report the weather with a yawn... "did you like it yesterday? did you like it today? well, then you're gonna like it tomorrow... and the day after tomorrow... and the next one... 'cause it's gonna be exactly the same.") I'm talking about what I observe, not what I theorize about. Two planes. One leaves a trail, the other one leaves a trail. I'm watching both simultaneously. One trail dissipates within minutes. The other one lingers for hours. It's not something someone told me. It's what I see. Every week, and sometimes every day. Not to mention that I read labels on produce, cosmetics, baby formula, pet food, drug store vitamins, everything... If you know what they put in the food, water, shampoo, moisturizers, products for children and animals, I mean, if you really know what it is and what it does in the body, you would be hard pressed to believe nothing is added to the air. It would simply make no sense to include one hundred thousand new chemicals every year into what we eat, drink and put on our skin (I am not kidding, the figure is a bit obsolete though, one hundred thousand was ten years ago, I don't know what it is now, but I can find out) and not do anything about the air. Corexit anyone?..

Can you please specify your sources -- who exactly did you hear "all the arguments" from?

A precise definition of value would crash the stock market.

This should help: http://drugs.healthdiaries.com/ambien-side-effects.html

I don't think it would create a sociopath. Consciousness doesn't do that, lack of consciousness does that. I know that I can consciously apply a socially sanctioned behavioral rule without an inner conflict long as I have a clear understanding as to why I choose to comply. If I comply without choosing, just because I've internalized a pattern of obedience, that's no better than if I don't comply without choosing, just because I've internalized a pattern of disobedience. In either case we're dealing with emotional maturity of a 2-year-old. Which too many people retain into their retirement age and beyond regardless of whether they are patterned on obedience or on rebellion. Most, of course, are patterned on obedience, so one doesn't expect this behavior to be viewed as pathological. But any animal psychologist knows that there's two ways to drive an animal psychotic -- either abuse it till it sees all interactions as abuse and becomes violent and doesn't accept any rules whatsoever... or abuse it till it sees all interactions as threat of abuse and prevents its unleashing by becoming perfectly obedient and accepting any and all rules. Both patterns are sick, but people just don't interact with anything wild anymore unless they can make it sick with fear first. If it has no fear, it goes extinct... so the "obedience psychosis" is the accepted norm, while the "disobedience psychosis" is being constantly eradicated. But they are fundamentally exactly the same.

As for health benefits, I've seen research somewhere (here?..) showing that merely believing you are either very good OR very evil is a reliable health booster. Apparently the unhealthy way is the middle way... the fence you sit on must be pressing into the where-it-counts or something... :D People who "don't believe in good and evil" don't seem to be able to mobilize their immune systems for a good fight. By the way, Max, at one of the seminars, said something that coincides precisely with my observations: that cancer is a disease of indecision... the mind and the cells alike lose their ability to differentiate, they aren't all that determined to be something specific, they can go this way, but then they can go that way too... Healthy cells make a definite decision -- "I am a stomach lining cell, I am a brain cell, I am a liver cell" -- and stick with it. Apparently healthy minds do the same thing -- "I am good" or "I am evil" being the two basic choices. If they don't, they might wind up being a little bit of this and a little bit of that -- which is what a cancer cell is like too, "de-differentiated," non-discriminating... not convinced that there's good and evil moves to make in its personal life, not convinced it must choose... it's, like, "anything goes." And "anything goes" winds up going where it doesn't belong and interfering with organs trying to do their job -- that of a stomach lining, or a brain, or a liver... So it's not a very healthy attitude, looks like... not for self and not for others...

Good question! Storing yin zhi is like drawing a bow, activating yang zhi is like releasing an arrow. There's no conflict between the bow and the arrow if the archer is skillful at handling both and is acting harmoniously. If she isn't, the arrow will never reach the true mark no matter how sturdy or how sharp it is. Also, not relying on yin zhi, using yang zhi only, is like throwing arrows by hand... not very efficient. So it is a unit, zhi is, but a two-fold unit, one needs to know and master the unified action of the bow and arrow in order to utilize zhi successfully.

Pietro, my friend, that was excellent and clear, thank you again. I guess "rumors" will pester anyone at a certain level, comes with the territory, so to speak. Maybe it's jealousy, professional or human, maybe it's merely love of gossip, or maybe it's one of the tests a teacher must pass -- "loss of face" is a very difficult test to pass without folding but you are not supposed to fold if you know you stand by your truth ("a mountain will crumble before him and he won't bat an eyelid" -- Zhuangzi). Reminds me of something David Icke says in his interviews -- he lived through a time when he was the laughing stock of all of England, people pointing a finger and cracking up in his face in the street, in the press, everywhere he turned he was the national clown. Twenty years down the road, the same people pack lecture halls where he speaks like so many sardines. So he says, after living through a whole country ridiculing me, by the million, what's there left in the world for me to be afraid of?.. I don't know if I know any immortals. I only know someone who I suspect is, but he won't claim it, instead he teaches his students to think of themselves in terms of a 160-year-long lifespan, and considers himself a teenager in his 60s. But I don't think his method is a pure "water method" -- though it isn't a "fire method" either -- I'm too early in the game to understand all the dynamics involved, but a later stage was foreshadowed where it becomes clear that there's no "pure" wuxing phases left, they get intermixed...

BKF's teacher was not a hermit. He lived in Beijing and headed a taoist sect. Taoist sects do not initiate members or students without confirming the fact. Of course someone can get taught by someone unorthodox or even mysterious (this I know full well...) but this is different from asserting you are an heir to a lineage. People who name teachers who refuse to recognize them as legitimate transmitters may be great teachers in their own right, but... traditionally, they are different from teachers who are recognized by their teachers as legitimate transmitters. There's lots of fine distinctions involved. E.g., you can change a lineage if you are a blood relative of the teacher, you truly inherit it to do as you please with it. But if you are not a blood relative, even if you are named as a transmitter, you can only transmit, you can't change it, this would lose you much "face" and insult the family. There's all kinds of considerations involved... Suppose I want to learn XYZ from Bob the transmitter... I want to make sure that I'm learning XYZ rather than X-Bob-Y-Phil-Z-from-a-video. If I want the latter, I won't ask for proof of lineage. But if I want XYZ and am bent on that, on getting a traditional art transmitted rather than a creative innovation, I will. The worry about a piece of paper is not the worry about a piece of paper. It is a worry about a teacher's (any teacher's, not this one specifically) integrity. A lineage is a serious thing, traditionally. As serious as a will, only instead of material wealth, you get spiritual wealth "willed" to you if you are found worthy. "Hermits" may or may not be great teachers. Mostly they aren't, because, well, if they wanted to teach, they wouldn't be hermits. In any event, if accusations are false, I think it's a good idea to strike them down and put them to rest rather than not. Is Obama a citizen of the USA or of Kenya?.. Who knows?.. Wouldn't it be easier to just produce the damn birth certificate?.. Not that I care, I believe he is a cloned Egyptian pharaoh anyway... but if I cared, I'd want to see that piece of paper, just for shits and giggles.

Thank you, Pietro. No, I wasn't aware of them, I don't have this book. I guess the next question would have to be, has anyone examined these for authenticity? And if yes, why the rumors? And if no, why not? Or am I asking too much?

Well, take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SU3R21gDqw I saw another one very similar to this one today, in Encinitas, also over the ocean. Not as big, but also very unusual. I was driving, so I couldn't take a picture. It looked exactly like this one where you see it against the sunset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UUi1gdmTk I watch the sky every day and to me it looks like a chemtrail gone berserk. They weren't spraying here at all for at least four months, after years of weekly and sometimes daily heavy spraying, I thought maybe the economy is in such a bad shape that they couldn't afford it anymore. But about ten days ago they started spraying again. Today there were the usual tic-tac-toe chemtrail grids by the ocean, but this one was right over the ocean, smack against the sunset, something I don't remember seeing before. Usually they don't spray into the sunset, it's more like morning through late afternoon. They spray close to the coastline and the chemtrails trail inland with the wind turning into "clouds" as they go. I don't mistake contrails for chemtrails, they behave very differently. Contrails dissipate within minutes. Chemtrails linger for hours and transform, slowly, into what looks "natural." Only they don't start out this way.

I've seen a description of the "correct" way one is sitting observing one's thoughts in meditation likened to the way a cat is sitting watching a mouse hole -- your awareness being the cat and the thoughts the mice. If the mice know about the cat, how many mice will dare emerge from the hole?.. I believe it's a good meditation. If you observe "nothing" when you observe your thoughts, it means you are in charge, rather than thrown this way and that way by thoughts scurrying around. What do you want to accomplish when you're in charge? What's the goal of your meditation? I view meditation as a "tool," not a destination (what shamans call a "horse" to get you somewhere). Where do you want to go? Getting your thoughts to disappear is step one, and "watching" them serves only this purpose and no other. What's the next step? To notice what, or who, emerges when your thoughts disappear. Have you noticed?

I take all names and symbols seriously. In a ritualistic society, one has to read signs to understand what the ritual is actually trying to accomplish. The downside of this attention to the symbolic values of names and signs being that I spent four months trying to name a kitten of mine, and every time a name would just fall off as unfitting. Finally the kitten grew enough to reveal a unique personality, his true nature, so a name I tried then did stick because a match was successfully found, after several preceding failures. The cat is Haomao now... the Chinese for "a good cat" or "a cat who brings luck" or "cat luck" or "cat goodness," something like that. He looks somewhat Chinese, has a yin-yang symbol on his nose, and is really a kind, affectionate, well-behaved (unlike his mother), good cat... so the first time I tentatively called him Haomao, he came running... bingo!

The reason Catholic church required celibacy from the priests has to do with money. If a priest died who was married, his estate went to the wife and children. If a priest died who was celibate, his estate went to the Catholic church. That's the real, and only, reason behind the requirement. The Catholic church has wealth no one would be able to wrap one's mind around without losing it, and the celibacy bit contributed every penny of the trillions earned by priests presiding over a currently 1,3 billion strong flock worldwide. Times two thousand years... get the picture. The institutionalized taoism's celibacy requirement is of exactly the same origins, contrary to all the hoopla.

Later in life, Mao is said to have believed that he was a reincarnation of the First Emperor, the book-burning scholar-burying guy, but boasted that "the First Emperor buried 480 scholars and I buried 48,000 -- I surpassed him a hundred times." (Source: Adeline Yen Mah, "A Thousand Pieces of Gold.") It means that while his previous incarnation only had to wait some 2,000 years to reincarnate, the next one will have to wait at least a hundred times longer -- a minimum of 200,000 years -- biding his time as a gui before his next chance to redeem himself as a decent human being. Obviously he needs a helluva lot of reading material to do something with his time. Only he won't have access to what he burned -- a gui is always hungry, and lacks exactly as much as he has taken away from others while alive. So Mao will crave knowledge, among many other things, with insatiable longing for 200,000 years, without getting a single crumb. Serves him right. Zhi is one of the Five Lesser Shens that together comprise the Greater Shen. (Hun, Po, Heart Shen, Yi, Zhi.) Zhi is a co-creator of the Kidneys. In Western terms, it has much to do with the pineal-hypothalamus-pituitary axis, and psychologically with "willpower," "timing," time-sensitive decision-making, light-darkness interactions, configuration of the stars and all things astrological (you could say that it has access to the akasha without being "it" -- it "reads" what's written in the stars). Basically it is the Lesser Shen in charge of one's overall destiny in this life, so its position toward other Lesser Shens is to give focus and direction to the whole, to the Greater Shen and to the physical body and their co-creative antics in this-here life and beyond. Like I said, zhi is twofold -- the yang zhi resides closer to the surface, the yin zhi is hidden. The yang part is the driving engine behind conscious destiny-affecting decisions one makes in life, plans conceived and goals set and worked toward (using "willpower," "determination," "planning and scheduling" and the like). The yin part is the driving engine behind unconscious destiny-affecting decisions already made in the larger context, in "reality itself" -- "written in the stars," inherited from ancestors, guided by gods, and so on. Yin zhi has access to the past and the future, and drives one's "willpower" toward particular moves in one's life whose meaning only becomes clear "in hind sight" -- as something that was "meant to be," destiny. That's the common situation, but a taoist who looks deeper into these things might want to read yin zhi (and the records it is in touch with at all times) "preventively," so to speak, and even figure out if anything there can or should be re-written (that's where cultivation comes into the picture). So anyone who engages conscious processes where they would typically, in an untrained human, run on autopilot, unifies the yin-yang components of zhi so that conscious choices and unconscious drives become one, gaining more control over one's destiny. Processes that affect zhi are usually esoteric practices -- taoist magic (including but not limited to internal alchemy), astrology, feng shui, devotional practices (austerities, prayer, service to others, veneration of deities and ancestral spirits, noble causes, etc.). Some lifestyle and even dietary choices can be useful too, but by themselves, without access to yin zhi, these are more likely to affect yang zhi only, and therefore are prone to be mismatched with what isn't known -- including one's true lifestyle and dietary needs the knowledge of which yin zhi possesses and yang zhi (let alone the upper crust of the left brain hemisphere) doesn't. (This explains all those smoking, drinking, and otherwise non-PC top level masters and shamans who baffle lay folks or provoke condescending attitudes and are mistaken for lacking in willpower or responsibility or information. Nope... they just know what their yin zhi knows, which vastly differs from what the FDA might assert.)

It's not just the Chinese, it's everybody outside the anglosphere. Veneration of ancestors is what all humans did in all cultures at all times before the onset of the current conditions. In West Africa they refer to this "collective entity," one's ancestry, as "mboga," and it is indeed thought of as lack of respect for yourself if you are not respectful to your mboga. If you neglect your ancestors, the composite entity that is the cause for you, it means you don't much care for the effect -- yourself. Sending goods to the afterlife was also pretty universal. The Chinese, being pragmatic and, in the current generation at least, very taken with innovations, will obviously send the spiritual component of the modern, contemporary material goods to the afterlife rather than something obsolete. Burning a paper model releases the pure "idea" of a thing, its spirit that is, into the subtle realms. Books in particular, all the books that have been burned throughout history, are not gone -- I find this thought very comforting. Any act, thought, or written word is immortal. Any paper model of an air conditioner, ditto. It's intent which makes it so by giving it context, and context is something you can't ever remove from reality, because context is reality itself. What you contribute to reality's context by shaping it in a particular way with your intent is part of its "forever" structure. Intent is a complex interaction between yi and zhi, and its zhi component originates in the Kidneys as a subtler effect of jing. Jing, as well as all its effects, is immortal. Zhi is yin-yang twofold, and while your yang zhi guides your intent consciously, your yin zhi guides your destiny through the invisible realms, unconsciously. Yin zhi is "half in half out" vis a vis dimensionality, it is the part of your spirit that easily crosses over and communicates with your ancestral spirits or is accessed by them below the level of your conscious perceptions. So whether you do it consciously or not, you are in touch with your "extended self," your ancestry, at all times. But doing it consciously has the same benefits as any other form of cultivation of consciousness. It's no different from cultivating awareness in any other respect which you don't have until/unless you practice. There were times (hundreds of thousands of years) when everybody knew that...

Precisely. "Until the lion has his historian, the hunter will always be the hero."

I read BKF's books and loved them, early in the day. Then, within the taijiquan community, I came across a lot of negative opinions about, not the practice, but the master himself. Some were coming from people whose opinion meant, to me, that the exact opposite must be true. But there were some, um, accusations coming from people I respected, although I don't know if they were talking about first-hand encounters or repeating some untoward statements uncritically. So if there's a way to clarify some of it, I would be very interested. If the accusations are false, why not put them to rest and shame the slanderers?.. The accusations I wish to see addressed were of the following nature: 1. The lineage is forged, or the lineage is legit but BKF has made up his position as its legitimate heir, or both. Therefore, my question would be, What documentation do you have to prove the legitimacy of your lineage and your position as its heir and transmitter? E.g., my taiji teacher has a written, signed statement from his teacher explicitly instructing him to transmit the art. My Longmen master has given me a signed certificate clearly stating the extent of what I have been taught by him and my consequent qualifications. What does BKF have to this effect? 2. The master has a scary temper bordering on "crazy," can't control his impulses, and has hurt students. Therefore, my question would be, Are you aware of any instances that may have given rise to the rumors of emotionally or physically hurting your students, and if yes, how would you explain them from your own perspective?

The Qin emperor referenced in the article who defeated the Mozi army and globalized... um, unified... China into a mega-empire is known as "fen shu keng ru" -- "burning books and burying scholars." I believe we have to be very careful when citing "no evidence" to examine WHY there is no evidence, HOW this lack of evidence was brought about. In most cases, it will lead to an episode of "fen shu keng ru" in history, and another, and another, and another! The great library at Alexandria also referenced in the article was also burned, and scholars were also buried -- either physically killed or went into hiding to escape persecution. This has been a fairly consistent pattern throughout our history: the rulers who want empires must first burn the books, bury the scholars, thus get rid of all "evidence" of truth and substitute their own version. E.g., all current college curricula use textbooks published by publishers who get Rockefeller funding (the shy label will say "non-profit" but where this "non-profit" comes from is traceable, and quite educational, even though the kind of "evidence" it presents is "circumstantial.") What the people who put "science" into these books leave out (while of course writing themselves out too, as though they aren't really there at all) must therefore be viewed as "planted evidence," much like what a corrupt cop will do who will plant false evidence on the scene and remove all true evidence when following orders from the higher-ups to incriminate the innocent or to absolve the guilty.