Taomeow

Dear bums, I am collecting "superstitions" from all over the world. If you ask me why I will explain, but regardless -- this is a request for submissions. If you know of a "superstition," a taboo, a good-luck/bad-luck omen, etc., please describe it. And if you know its source (a Finnish grandmother, a West Kongo tribe, etc.), please point it out too. Look forward to all returns!

I just saw an old guy (around 70) actively trying to pick a fight with a young (30s), taller, muscular opponent who kicked his dog. I watched the whole thing unfold. The dog (a rather mean-looking ill-tempered one) was tied on a leash outside a little shop where the older guy was busy shopping, and for some reason started growling and snapping (the dog, not the older guy) at this passer-by who may have provoked it somehow, I didn't see this part. The part I saw was, the younger guy kicked the dog, and the older guy ran out screaming, "try this with me, not my dog, just try this with me, I'll drop you!" He was in his face big time and all geared up for action, which made me wonder if his love for his dog came at a price of a few of his marbles. The younger guy was the bully redneck weightlifter type, and angry and aggressive and I think drunk too, and yet he backed off because the older guy exuded murder. Later he went back to shopping and explained, still seething, that he's not just an old man, he's also an old boxer. Aha! Taiji does something similar to someone with the skill I think. The higher the skill, the lower the fear in any confrontation (and not just physical). I fully agree with your philosophy, by the way.

Yup, dear Little1. We're on the same page here.

Um... qigong is not a fighting art, you can't learn how to fight unless you fight, and taijiquan (not qigong) teaches you how to fight (if your teacher isn't engaged in BS of course) even if you can't do ten push-ups or pack a punch. I can't do ten push-ups I don't think (never tried, what the heck for -- to damage the range of motion in my shoulders, elbows and wrists by stiffening up the muscles I might want to use to twist out of a lock or coil away from a punch?.. Thanks but no thanks. And for strong bones, which is what I want much more than stiff muscles, there's far, far better routines... qigong, e.g.. ) However, I can send a punching opponent twice my size and ten times my strength flying (no kidding, been there done that -- in a learning situation, not in a RL fight, but I don't expect to engage in many RL fights anytime soon, do you?.. and if, against expectations, I do, I'll use what I've learned in the learning situation in taiji). Even if he or she can do a hundred push-ups, or a thousand, but hasn't learned a soft MA, I still reasonably expect to do some damage using the force of his or her own punch which taiji has been teaching me to redirect. Have you tried real-life fighting with a high level taiji master? (NB -- I'm not one, I just know some.) You should, could be very illuminating.

Thanks! What's the "why" of this one? Why are you not supposed to step on cracks -- mom would get back pain, is it? Incidentally, there's a widespread superstition among licensed psychologists who believe that non-stepping on cracks is a sign of OCD. Go figure.

Yay, this is exactly why I'm looking for them. What's superstition to one time and place is science to another, and why drinking cold drinks is a lousy habit (and iced ones a horrible one), a widespread Chinese "superstition," is something I could explain from the POV of today's western science (constricts blood flow to inner organs, immobilizes lymphatic flow and disables immune responses from both humoral and cellular immune systems, inhibits digestive enzymes, damages some strains of beneficial bacilli in the gut, cranks up the inner thermostat to "cold environment" when this isn't the case, straining it and causing it to falter which causes a cascade of metabolic mistakes, in particular in the hypothalamus-pituitary-pineal axis, and on and on and on!) I know of hundreds of "superstitions" that aren't superstitions at all if you look a tad deeper -- and I need more! Please keep them coming!

P.S. Please don't hesitate to mention the ones you personally "don't believe in." Just if you know of someone who believes it (be it an individual or a whole culture), let me know.

I think it's more a case of "when a student is ready, the teacher appears," or rather its opposite -- "when a student appears who is not ready, the teacher might be wasted on him/her." With public teachings (something nontraditional and therefore as precarious as all things new), students might flock in who may or may not be ready, hence the difficulties later. (And with learning from other sources than a live and "charged" teacher, the practice is diluted very thinly and so are all its effects, auspicious and inauspicious. Probably applies to viprassana as much as to kunlun, or anything else.) Come to think of it, I have never learned from a teacher without having been invited. Now the invitation itself may have come about because I practiced and my practice got noticed at other levels, who knows. However, I never "appeared" to a master without the master extending an invitation first, so I never had any (knocking on wood) effects from any practice that I would want to take back. (Spitting thrice across the left shoulder.) As a protagonist of an old joke says, "I don't have a drinking problem -- I only have a problem when I can't get a drink." Bad things happen to me if I don't practice -- the entity I have to overcome, a most powerful one, is the mighty and evil demon of Why Bother. (I counteract its interference by invoking the great and benevolent spirit of Why Not.) So very true.

I think I was a cat in a past life. In situations of sudden danger (e.g. driving and reacting to an unexpected collision-course move by another driver) or sudden physical pain (e.g. banging an elbow) or any mishap (dropping something or having something dropped on me, etc.), I meow. This is a reaction I have no control over -- which gets rather embarrassing in some public (and some private) situations. I meow when pushed in push-hands, sometimes scaring the partner into surrender but more often causing everybody present to lose their concentration and laugh at me. In general, I seem to only have human emotional responses when I have a moment to think about what I'm feeling and how to react -- but whenever it's something unexpected and I react before I can check myself... meow it is, whether I like it or not.

self-edited for second thoughts

True! Compassion and integrity, absolutely no guru-type ego-trips, no self-aggrandizing, and a peculiar, not easy to appreciate for many I think, brand of humility rooted in power rather than in weakness that I think would be the single most important thing to comprehend and emulate for anyone aspiring to learn from a taoist of power. I see what you mean. Could be as cool as it gets, sure... Maybe you remember the third eye discussion here though? I recall asserting that modern people are conditioned to be very visual to the detriment of other senses, and that it was not the case with our "uncivilized" ancestors, and that a third eye is part of whoever one is here and now and will "see," should it open, in accordance with the way the whole person already is, i.e. visually in a visual individual -- but in a balanced-senses or other-sense-dominant one, it might "see" nonvisually... Mine opened a bunch of years ago but it was not visual, it was all-sensory (and unbearably overwhelming, which is why I eventually took care to close it). I discovered qi then though (even though I didn't even know the word, nor any theory whatsoever, and hadn't read a single taoist book by the date), but I didn't quite "see it with my eyes" -- I "perceived it with everything I am," more like. I did try to translate what I was perceiving into visual images -- for months I was drawing diagrams, striving to express... then I came across some taoist literature and it transpired that I was trying to invent qi, yin-yang, wuxing, bagua, ganying! I think it was one of the happiest moments of my life when I realized they have already been discovered, named, explored, are real, are not mine alone, and best of all, someone has already done the leg work and I don't have to do it all myself. So in qi reality's defense I might also say that I knew it before I knew what it was I knew, I had no agenda whatsoever... just a drive to express what I was perceiving -- to myself alone at that, not to "prove" anything to anybody. My qi discovery was pristinely without any ulterior motives...

It's very easy to see, but like you said, one would need to keep things simple... I see it but it's not fireworks and auras that I see. I see what it "does." At WL's Moscow seminar at one point all the lights in the large hall where it was taking place started going dim in waves -- light, dim, dimmer, still dimmer, still dimmer -- dark -- as WL was doing qi adjustment for all the participants. Simultaneously some people felt tremendous pressure and others, pain, and still others, bliss, and still others, nothing much. (As for me, I felt strong pleasant-bordering-on-scary waves of -- well, qi -- washing rhythmically over my kidneys. Whoosh! Whoosh! Like the ocean when it's pretty stormy and you go swimming and the waves keep coming at you -- as strong and palpable as that, only concentrated in a specific area, and inside the body more than on the surface, penetrating all the way to the core.) There was a physicist present, and someone later asked him about the lights -- what would a "western scientific explanation" be for the phenomenon?.. He said, um, none... absolutely no "western scientific way" to explain it. That's qi -- experience it, yes, explain it... well, no. If it's "life force," what the heck was it doing to the lights?.. I would say it certainly "includes" but is nowhere near limited to "life force." E.g., sha' qi is death force, a very real opposite of life force and still as qi as it gets...

Respectfully, why do you want to know?

Everything manifesting in Later Heaven (or taiji, or tao-in-motion -- as opposed to Earlier Heaven, or wuji, or tao-in-stillness) has qi as its medium and its message. Samsara, which is not part of this system, has some qi too, of course. Exactly as much of it as a mental construct of a culture that has no concept of qi requires for its transactions. In Samsara, one can say something "is" something else (the way you did in the above example), which is why unreality is its proper name. But in Later Heaven, every bit of which is as real as tao-in-motion that it is is real, everything "does" what it "does," and qi acts as the currency of exchange and the change itself between these "doings." That's why it's not possible to say what qi "is" -- can't define, can only describe. Like with all things taoist.

Yes, exactly! Qi is only present in a relationship -- is a link -- being established or broken -- is a change -- is a pattern of changes -- occurring among or between objects or processes or persons (who are, of course, also processes) engaged in actual or potential exchange. So is love of course. There's no qi in "nonduality," nor love. Which is why taoism is no advaita and a spade is no machine gun. Deep shit, no?

Ted Kaptchuk, OMD, the guy responsible for exposing the western world to acupuncture and TCM, the first Westerner to practice TCM in China, and currently a Harvard Medical School researcher, wrote (in a book that must be a must-read for an aspiring taoist, IMO, "The Web that Has No Weaver") that qi is "the deepest insight of Chinese civilization." Now "not believing in qi" means believing we modern western consumers are the only ones who are able to have insights about reality and perceptions thereof, and these can only happen on our terms and via our methods and are only allowed to bear names we choose for them. (So the drive to define qi via substituting something else and calling it something else -- breath, energy, prana, bioelectricity, etc. -- is a conditioned response along these very lines, a drive to not allow it to stand on its own, uncharted for us, foreign cognitive territory. A desire to drag it to the level we're at, wherever that may be. However, qi is neither one of these and the moment we drag it somewhere else to represent something else, it vanishes from our cognition and this "something else" usurps its place. Duh. Qi is qi, and a spade is a spade.) "Not believing in qi" means "not believing" in Chinese civilization (incidentally, the only one among the ancient ones that didn't go extinct to date) which has been based on this "deepest insight" for millennia. "Not believing" in general in things of strange foreign descent removed from our current common cognitive denominator by space or time or both, by language or culture or lifestyle -- aka xenophobia -- is alma mater of all fake knowledge and all true ignorance. You better believe it.

Something of that centipede who was asked about the exact technique he uses when walking and consequently became unable to walk in all of us. Thanks for the point ...but that different point I have in mind... OK, in a roundabout way, from a fantasy book I picked up by chance that opened to this line: "Sorcery is like a sword with no hilt: there's no safe way to grasp it." Someone or something in charge of our (and others') safety might just remove the sword methinks -- which is what happened to that kid the moment he realized it's a sword, while not realizing it has no hilt, eager to use it -- and to hurt or get hurt if he did, no doubt about it -- or one might touch it and immediately drop it after having cut oneself, like you know who and you know who else too and I don't know how many more -- so not many handle it, it has no safe handle, that's why...

A bit on a tangent but let me see if I can tie this in with the others' thoughts... A young guy (a friend's friend) spontaneously started having lucid dreams in his teens and had them for years, pretty much every night -- without knowing even the term, anything theoretical about the phenomenon, or being in any way spiritually inclined. All he knew was, he would be awake within a dream every night, aware of the dream being a dream, have free will to do whatever he pleased in it, and do it. Him being a standard-issue suburban kid, what pleased him was sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, and that's what he engaged in during his lucid dreaming. Fun and obligations-free and repercussions-free, and it never occurred to him that there was anything right or wrong with it, he just did it. Plenty of lucid-dream sex, mostly. Then this friend of his started getting into things weird and found out about lucid dreaming in many traditions and what this might entail, and told the dreamer guy, gee, you have this ability naturally, this is awesome, but did you know you can actually influence waking reality from inside a lucid dream? The dreamer didn't know that. The friend explained a few things, and the dreamer got thrilled and said, OK, now I'm going to try doing just that! Influence waking reality you say? I have an idea or two... ...and ideas they remained for all practical purposes, because after this conversation, he never, ever had a lucid dream ever again. The ability was removed. Completely and, from the looks of it, permanently. The point being... What's the point I wanted to make?.. Anyway... I told a true story, now I'll let someone else figure out what the point was!

You're welcome.

Wang Liping taught it at the seminar I attended. He mentioned an ancient taoist book, "The Treatise on Food," on which it is based. There's no one taoist diet though, rather there's a set of principles for a number of different types of diets a taoist might want to use at different points in cultivation. As a general guiding principle, however, mild undereating is a taoist dietary rule, and its extent is determined by your subjective hunger. I.e. if you divide your "entire hunger" into 10 points, 0 being absolute starvation and 10, complete satiation, a taoist is advised to eat at 6-7 points at every meal, not below (unless on a special-occasion fast) and never at 9-10 (over 10 wasn't even mentioned, though I'm sure many people eat more than their "entire hunger" on a fairly regular basis. Not for taoists, this.) There's lots more of course... but each specific dietary regimen goes with a specific practice and, moreover, a stage, place, phase within this practice. For instance, vegetarianism is not generally practiced during cultivation, but as certain things start happening to you, you are taught to take them as a sign to immediately stop eating not just meat but all "blood foods" (which include all fish, seafood, all dairy, eggs, and even a few uncommon vegetables) for a few days. Then you can resume eating those foods when the signs change and the stage in your cultivation moves on.

A most unpopular truth. Not just zen, Buddhism in general -- as well as some taoist sects that have been buddhicized historically -- but original non-buddhicized taoism is about relationships -- of yin and yang and the mysterious border between them, of the five phases and the eight directions -- wuxing and bagua -- and the I Ching's interacting hexagrams flowing into each other or opposing each other or transforming themselves into each other, heaven and earth, heavenly stems and earthly branches, shen qi and sha' qi, man and woman, human and tao, the triple realm and the ten thousand things, being and nonbeing, wuji and taiji, inner and outer, mother and child, tao and beings she nourishes, war and peace, health and illness, the pull of the stars and the push of the moon on our earthly tides... ad infinitum, it's all about relationships. Relationships are "attachments" by default. Nonattachment is something that can happen in the head of the believer in same, but not in the heart. Like it or not, the heart attaches to blood, blood to qi, qi to yin-yang, yin-yang to taiji, taiji to wuji, wuji to stillness, stillness to motion... and so it goes. Dynamic, beautiful, attached all the way through. No disconnection, no fragmentation, no "good lil' me" vs. "big bad non-me to dis-attach from." It's all "me" to a good non-lil' taoist, and all "my" relationships with all "aspects of me" are sacred. Sacred attachments of parts to the whole. Whenever someone speaks against attachments, the words attach to the ears of whoever hears them (or the eyes of whoever reads them) and through this attachment they can be heard, seen, known, and misunderstood -- there's no other way to shun attachments than by creating them!

It's pretty traditional and is only seen as "bad" in some cultures but not in others. In taoism, it is acceptable in some sects and forbidden in others. As for energy depletion, if it's part of shamanic initiation, energy depletion is a must, a shaman uses her own (in addition to that derived from the spirits) in healing, in killing, or in sex every time -- the difference between a shaman and a victim of possession being a) Control. Whether in healing, in killing, or in sex, the shaman controls the spirit situation rather than being controlled by it, which is THE crucial distinction between being a shaman and being possessed, and b ) Access to energy-restoration techniques. The shaman has it, so depletion is temporary and replenishment a must. A possession victim doesn't, depletion is progressive and permanent. The choice of "specialization," in the case of the shaman, involves a large degree of free will. Heal, kill, or self-perfect (e.g. via union, not necessarily sexual but occasionally so, with your perfect partner who may or may not be a mortal man/woman, a spirit, or a god/goddess -- this is a bedchamber art of taoism, incidentally, one of many) -- you have to decide what you want to do, one but not the other, both, all three. (If I choose, on the level of firm diamond-hard intent, to not communicate with spirits sexually, they know and make no advances. Even the deranged ones know where to stop if your intent is stronger than theirs. They might try but they can't succeed unless you leave it up to them. If you are positive it's up to you, it is.) However, being or not being a shaman is not up to the individual -- the spirit world decides and chooses, resistance is futile.

I've read somewhere that hunter-gatherers derived 85% of all their information from non-visual input (touch, vestibular sense, smell, taste, sound, vibrations, fine thermal discernment, magnetic sense, and much more -- what one researcher referred to as "the forgotten senses"), while our contemporaries get over 85% of everything they get from the world visually. I fear it really means that we the "civilized" live like a sensorily deformed species, with our visual system grossly overloaded and all others largely atrophied. Perhaps this explains why the third eye, an extension of who its owner is, "sees" visually just like the other two in a modern "seer" largely imprinted by TV/computer/book/blackboard/more TV etc. gazing and the rest of the relentless visual priming coupled with drastic other-sensory deprivation. What the third eye that sees non-visually might see is, among other things, the truth in Laozi's statement: "the five colors blind the eye."