Taomeow

Nice beginning. Not crazy about the chosen book. Let me start with a negative review. Maybe I'll be convincing enough to change the book of choice to something else. If not, then I'll just wait another month and offer something else. I read it a few years ago, and found without merit. The only thing it convinced me of wast that "new age" is really ages old -- for this is a prime example of "pseudo-taoist new ageism" -- i.e. "creative" application of a genuine ancient system to the immediate agenda and bias of the user utilizing any snippets thereof he or she cares to cut off the whole in order to prop his or her personal worldview; filtering a complete and genuine system through his or her personal bias, and re-interpreting it to fit in with same; neatly packaging it in some for-sale version, and presenting the resulting "purified" product (as in, bathwater "purified" of the baby that's been thrown out of it) as the real thing. Well... I wouldn't practice from this book under penalty of law. It is alchemically unrealistic because it rests on a foundation of dozens if not hundreds of false premises. E.g.: that yang is a positive force in the sense "good, better, superior to yin"; that the "original cavity" is in the brain; that "lead and mercury" stand for "vitality and spirit"; that among the Five Phases (translated as "elements" again... grrr) Earth stands in the center; and so on, it could go on and on, it's on every page. He creates "credibility" by juggling genuine taoist concepts and peppering his musings with descriptions of genuine practices, but that's the way all new-agey systems are designed -- be it a MA "purified" of qi, "philosophical taoism" "purified" of practice, or "alchemical taoism" purified of Hou Tian, tao-in-motion, the world of manifestations, wuji without taiji, spirit without body, body without merit. The latter, a buddhist addition to the original taoist thought, is the source of "new agey taoism" that seems to have existed for centuries, overshadowing the real thing just the way all new-agey commercializations of authentic (and therefore poorly fit for sale, for mass consumption in the form of "products") systems have been overshadowing the real thing -- just the way the bank of Vatican is far more influential than Jesus Christ, and George Bush has far more power to determine what the Constitution is or isn't supposed to mean than George Washington.

Another idea: quit being racist, quit being white-supremacy driven, quit being a cultural colonialist. Out of over a billion Chinese, there's not so many who "don't believe in qi." There weren't that many (if any) throughout thousands of years of prior history of this oldest and greatest civilization on the planet, so quit thinking of yourself as smarter than all of them, as superior to all of them. Quit thinking of yourself as better educated, equipped with better judgment, or a better human being than all those "gullible suckers" who "believe in qi." You aren't and they aren't. I only know of one noteworthy Chinese who didn't believe in qi: Mao Zedong. I read his biography written by his personal physician, someone who knew him more intimately than perhaps anyone else in the world. Being insensitive to qi comes complete with a whole host of interesting personality traits. Cruelty, lack of connection with own body (Mao's was a mess, although he thought of himself as a great athlete), lack of interest in other human beings aside from their "usability" for own purposes, stuff like that. No qi, no humanity. Whole cultures are like that, are based on that, so you can't really blame an individual product of such a culture for having had his or her sensitivities psychosomatically amputated -- often as early as in infancy. Taoist cultivation is all about remedying this affliction. All it really does is gives one back his or her lost connection with oneself and fellow humans, animals, natural phenomena, the cosmos, reality itself. That's what qi really is. Not an "energy" but an ability to form meaningful connections with oneself and others. When one's cultivation is successful, that's what happens. Not a buzzing here and there, not a set of "special sensations" or "special abilities" but only one very special ability: to be real.

My teacher is Chinese, and you can't walk into his home without taking your street shoes off. If someone did, he would be upset, even though he could swat the offender with as much ease as Wayfarer's Buddhas swat mosquitoes. He would show it too I'm guessing, the fact that he's upset -- he's spontaneous, and wears his feelings on his sleeve. Now someone walks into my thread, into my mind, into my idea of what level of contamination this forum normally tolerates wearing, not street shoes but shit-wading boots covered with all the glory of this particular Path, splattering it all over, leaving a smelly mess behind. Nevermind that I could swat him too, easily -- but who would want their participation in an online discussion to lead to a need to spend their time swatting THIS substance? Boring, dirty, and a theft of my time. Why would I bother stepping into something like this again if it was seen as business as usual, and became so?.. In the meantime, the mess is there. I humbly submit it needs to be cleaned up. I would patiently do it myself if I had the mop, just like my teacher would mop the floor if someone violated his rules of hospitality. But I don't own a mop on this forum. So I'm hoping whoever does might see my point. Just hoping...

That's not how I understood what Pietro said, but in any event, those "pages eariler" are more malicious than anything I've ever seen online, and I've been around the block and seldom controversy-free, I'm sorry to confess. I hate the idea of PM complaints as a way out, so I'm just hoping and waiting for someone more sensible than eager to please "everybody" to remove that pile of abuse from the face of the forum. Like I said, it is not energetically sound to practice anything anywhere where there's sha' qi deliberately released. I would regret losing a good practice (even if "only" a keyboard practice) site -- but the I Ching tells me, "in dealing with weeds, firm resolve is necessary," and I believe her.

Pietro, that's the problem with getting entangled with Mutilators -- for it is a fine example of exactly how they work: they deliberately distort what is being said by mutilating other people's words, and make it all fuzzy in the readers' minds. Either she had something stolen from her, or she stole something from somebody, but since I didn't quite get what happened, I will think of her as a thief, just in case. This kind of fuzzy. Reread what you're talking about, please. You're going on the Mutilator's quote that was put together out of mutilated snippets of what I really said responding to him after he introduced the idea of cancer, ascribing to me the desire to give it to him, a desire I never had and never expressed. What I really said was I don't want my posts mutilated. Is all. I am fully capable of standing by my words, but if a professional Mutilator/Abuser is tolerated and creates the situation like the one he concocted once again and no one does anything about it, I won't be a member for much longer, whether respected or otherwise.

Obstacles removed from your mind, your kitchen sink overflows with them

Yeah but how do you get people to ask "how can I experience qi" if they start out with the premise that "qi doesn't exist" or "qi is the same as prana" or " Eskimos are primitive people" --- i.e. with a cultural or personal (seldom personal in the sense experiential, usually conditioned, taken on faith) bias that stands in the way of the experience? To grasp that a language that has a hundred words for snow is the language of a highly advanced people (no, not technologically advanced -- humanly advanced) would be a prerequisite for understanding this language -- ever, regardless of the amount of experience -- if experience is filtered through a faulty premise, it can't teach a thing. To experience Wood qi, one needs to somehow be open to the idea that a cucumber is a sentient being -- I kid you not, that's how I learned, a cucumber taught me. I planted some cucumbers in the backyard, and then watched their behavior all summer long. Just a few minutes a day -- every day -- and you find out, for starters, that they have senses and are capable of decision-making. A plant would start moving a spiraling tendril towards the fence, creeping closer each day, then one day it will throw the tendril over the fence like a lasso, then wrap itself around it several times, then pull a little young cucumber up, then cover it up with a leaf to camouflage it... Again, I write and realize that it will be meaningless to anyone who "doesn't believe it means anything," so I won't even get into "Rainbows of Thoughts and Feelings" I saw just because I was looking from beyond conditioning... A fern, too. I saw a broken leaf on a fern being supported, tenderly, by another leaf, from a neighboring fern, as though the latter was lending a helping hand, in a gesture entirely, visibly compassionate. I separated them and in a few hours looked again -- the "helping hand" was there again, holding the damaged friend's weight. Now if I were to tell a member of my culture that Wood qi is "expanding benevolence," "live feelings," "structural flexibility," "a force of dispersion in opposition to entropy, i.e. expanding organization rather than randomness," and so on -- would I be laughed at? I would. "If he doesn't laugh, it isn't the tao." I don't think there's a good recipe for un-conditioning a whole culture that is comfortable with the idea that the only live, real, meaningful, evolved, sentient, admirable thing in the world is "me, because I can watch TV." People don't perceive reality for a damn good reason... I mean, a damn bad one. Not through words, not through experiences... nada. We are qi-depleted globally, that's the source of difficulty in perceiving qi... not a terminological vs. experiential defect but a flaw in our reality.

A bluebird, a worm captured by the master's brush in bold Bamboo Stroke

Who would stop the spring if it wasn't for Monsanto, Lilly, Carlyle, Shell?..

It neither increases nor decreases the upward flow by itself -- if that's what you're after, you have to direct it with yi. In female alchemical practices, e.g., you can direct it upward to circle the breasts, then downward to the uterus, then all the way up to the pituitary and hypothalamus. I'm not familiar first hand with male practices, obviously, but I've a hunch they can also direct it where they choose to. If you "do nothing," wuwei style, it tends to circle around and through you, in my experience, and come in concentric waves from the periphery, and do all kinds of other interesting things. I wouldn't call it "energy" though, more like "a sense of direction of creation," if that means anything. Hard to express... easy to not need to. It affects the body the same way as being a fetus in the womb affects the body, and replicates this particular position for this particular purpose.

Good question. 1. What are the possible advantages and disadvantages of studying and practicing one style in depth all your life vs. "collecting styles?" 2. Elaborate on the yao? 3. What practice is conductive to developing muscles over the kidneys? 4. Elaborate on the "whole body is a hand?" (Technical details please.) 5. Why do they keep saying that Chinese MA are for self-defense, not for attack, while the central taoist classic on the Art of War, Sun Tzu, has nothing to say about defense and is completely and utterly offense- and attack-oriented?

You are a Zhuangzi incarnation, right? 'cause that's what he reportedly told Confucius to his question about why tao is impossible to teach: "you can get the tao transmitted but as there is no center, it won't stay."

Not six, quite a bit more... lemme whip out those "labels": Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal; North, Northeast, East, Southeast, South, Southwest, Northwest, West; these are the 13 basic ones (that's the ones taiji classics talk about), but then you have their combinations (Metal of the West, e.g.) and then you have their yin-yang versions (yin Metal of the West, yang Metal of the West, e.g.) -- so... who's good at arithmetics, how many is that? But the important thing is not to count or name them -- the thing is to understand and discern them and practice perceiving them. They are everywhere -- practice noticing! Water qi descends, Wood qi expands, Fire ascends, Earth rotates, Metal contracts. Yin Water qi descends from a kitchen tap, from a mountain stream, from a brook... yang Water descends from the Niagara Falls, from hurricane Catherine, from a fountain in the city square. Qi is not only "mystical," it's also mundane. "The Way of Heaven is easy, and the Way of Earth is simple. By combining the easy and the simple, tao accomplishes everything." Qi is such "easy and simple" building blocks of everything, and learning to see how things are assembled, simple to complex, out of these is the foundation of all taoist arts. How does a good TCM practitioner know that the qi of parsley enters the Kidney and Bladder meridians? He or she doesn't have X-ray vision to "see" it -- but it is clearly seen by other means, it's in full view for those with the habit of studying the behavior of qi in the universe, parsley to Pole Star.

Not the same, people. Not just terminologically not the same -- experientially not the same. I am talking from pranayama experience vs. qigong/alchemy experience. Not the same. To refer to Freeform's example of love, it's like the difference between love of chocolate and love of justice. Different experiences. As for conceptual difference... not the same either. Prana, an Indo-European concept that, like all of them, comes complete with the idea of creator vs. "createe," is set up to "vitalize" something otherwise intert. Where there's prana, there's duality (all advaita declarations notwithstanding). Where there's prana, there's separation into a transforming force and a "subject" of transformation. Qi, on the other hand, is something present before, during, and after duality. Qi is the transformation, the ability to transform, the potential for transformation, and the outcome of such transformation all in one. In the case of qi the map IS the territory.

Dissolving the self in my ginseng-oxtail soup, rock salt becomes me.

Rain, I see your beaty too! and get a kick out of your puns LOL! By the way, practicing some of the authentic taoist virtues does include beauty as a mere "side effect" of cultivating the Triple Treasure of Perfection, Nondecay, Immortality. So a taoist cultivator is held to a higher standard in this respect than someone who would be judged (but shouldn't be, of course) on the basis of some general, non-taoist values. My taiji teacher, e.g., proudly related an episode from his career where a woman came to him seeking instruction, who was the daughter and student of one of the foremost masters in East Asia. Upon her arrival, she "reviewed" all the top taiji teachers in the area of her reach and turned them all down, so my teacher asked her, "why me?" She explained that his wrists were shaped correctly. I didn't get it when he first told the story, I got it a year later. If someone handles qi the right way, the bones will be rounded, not flattened, and very finely defined, not 'approximate' but exceptionally detailed, chiseled. Very beautiful, but like I said, it's a "side effect" -- though a telltale sign to a sharp eye. Castaneda's Don Juan used to call this kind of teacher a "petty tyrant" and indeed thought such a person valuable in one's life. Kind of like a training course before dealing with the "great tyrant" -- reality itself. I have a Yaqui Indian friend though, a grandson of a bruja, who asserts Castaneda had a very vivid imagination...

No, ain't got no cable, boohoo! This could be a separate thread: Lyrics You Misheard. I have a whole collection, English being my third language 'n all. An all-time favorite, misheard on first exposure to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds: a girl with colitis goes by...

Closing Time Ah we're drinking and we're dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high And my very sweet companion she's the Angel of Compassion she's rubbing half the world against her thigh And every drinker every dancer lifts a happy face to thank her the fiddler fiddles something so sublime all the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots and it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops: it's CLOSING TIME Yeah the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots and it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops: it's CLOSING TIME Ah we're lonely, we're romantic and the cider's laced with acid and the Holy Spirit's crying, "Where's the beef?" And the moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief So we struggle and we stagger down the snakes and up the ladder to the tower where the blessed hours chime and I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss the Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since but CLOSING TIME I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss the Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since CLOSING TIME I loved you for your beauty but that doesn't make a fool of me: you were in it for your beauty too and I loved you for your body there's a voice that sounds like God to me declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you And I loved you when our love was blessed and I love you now there's nothing left but sorrow and a sense of overtime and I missed you since the place got wrecked And I just don't care what happens next looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between I guess it's CLOSING TIME Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked By the winds of change and the weeds of sex looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between I guess it's CLOSING TIME Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing but there's nothing really happening and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night And my very close companion gets me fumbling gets me laughing she's a hundred but she's wearing something tight and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth except to say it isn't worth a dime And the whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME The whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME Leonard Cohen, 1992

True about trolls, but only if whoever holds the finger on the forum membership demolition button can differentiate between a troll and an abuser. Trolls disrupt forum discussions; while abusers disrupt -- or at least try very hard to -- disrupt real live people, not some online abstractions. If the chosen target is sensitive enough, which is always a possibility, they can get what they're after regardless of whether you ignore them or not. Moreover, everybody who witnesses such an episode and "ignores" it strikes me as less than wise -- more like cowardly. It doesn't take much guts to hide one's head in the sand when witnessing someone else being hurt, methinks. I am sure a few of our resident Buddha-natures are sturdy and confident enough to withstand such an attack with no scratches to their "ego," but I'm also sure that sweeping all self-esteem and dignity anyone might expect to retain among fellow humans under the blanket definition of "ego" and treating "it" as an irrelevance is hypocritical and in most cases works best when the "ego" under destruction is someone else's. Not to suggest a course of action or anything, but to share my own experience as a forum admin: something like that can be happening where I hold the finger on the demolition button for only as long as it takes me to reach the button. No questions asked, no hard feelings exchanged. Gone with the wind. Which is why no one ever abuses anyone there, and buddhahood is not a prerequisite for participation.

Believe it or not, it would be counterproductive if you could. The first rule of a good practice is, don't practice where there's sha' qi present. (Especially if it is deliberately released with malicious intent.) Everything else may be stylistic nuances of greater or lesser importance, but this one is a fundamental.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ860P4iTaM

Thanks for noticing, Eric, you've got a sharp eye... artist, right? I'm still giggling

That's right, I can't, I wouldn't be able to give meaning to your life even in the form of cancer. Sorry.

See -- the Wheel of Shadows is already working... ghosts and demons going around and around in your ear, whispering words, forcing you to repeat them -- words of contempt for other people which you think will establish your superiority, while in fact all they accomplish is make people stay away from you... and zombies, draw near, sensing one of their own. I was kidding though about installing it -- no need for me to bother, it was successfully installed a long time ago and fully operational all your life.

Wayfarer, (purr ) I agree about Cleary -- although I haven't read his Buddhist texts but the fact he's a Buddhist comes through loud and clear in his taoist ones. Still, it is quite, quite possible to get under his idiosyncratic bias and "get it" -- and his is no worse than any other translator's. Wilhelm, whose translation of the I Ching is considered the best, substitutes "man" for "person" of the original pretty much everywhere -- talk about bias! Changes the whole dynamics of the whole thing! Even translators who translate their own work can't escape being biased. (Nabokov did this, and since I can read both versions, I know that they are, too, worlds apart!) I used to make a living as a technical translator, many moons ago, and in order to produce a text that would make sense to specialists, I would ask professionals (engineers) for lectures in the field I was tackling. I absolutely needed to understand what it is that the original means by "pigging" (e.g.) -- just translating the word was not an option, I had to know about hydrates in natural gas and what they do in a pipeline and what can be done about it, and that's where "pigging" would come into the picture. With taoist texts, it is much the same -- they are technical (surprise surprise), specialized, non-generic... one needs to know the field to understand the term properly.