Taomeow

I know Yang people do it --- my teacher jokes that it's because they only have one form and eventually get bored repeating it, so they reverse it to have something new to do with it. While Chensters have so many (laojia yi lu, laojia er lu, xinjia yi lu, xinjia er lu...) that it will take us decades to run out of new things Chen to learn. However, he did get us to reverse the form (laojia yi lu) in class yesterday, to get the feel for what it's like. It was very educational... I wonder if anyone here has done it and has anything to share about the methods used?

Thanks for all the valuable input, taijibums. I have a sense that with practice taiji becomes like your handwriting -- only you "write" with your whole body (and more, eventually ) -- a unique idiosyncratic pattern of motion that is, however, recognizable as a particular "language", with a limited set of "letters" to use yet an unlimited number of "words" you can "write" -- any which way you please long as what you "write" still makes sense. I don't think it's mere coincidence that traditional taoist schooling focused so much on calligraphy! It can be used as a martial skill in miniature... At one point I wanted to learn to write with my left (nondominant) hand as well as I can write with my right one, and after some experimenting one day I discovered that my left hand already has it -- its own writing style, not the helpless, awkward childish handwriting that you get if you "learn it" but an entirely confident, rapid and relaxed style of its own. And totally unlike that of my right hand! Somehow my bodymind translated the right-hand skill for the left hand, and the left hand got it as a "transmission" -- not step by step, not element by element, but all at once in its entirety. Moreover, turned out it can use the skill better than the right hand -- it has no trouble writing in mirror letters without me having to think about it, left to right or right to left doesn't matter, in circles and spirals as well as in a straight line, and so on. I have a distinct feeling that such a "transmission of skill" from one side of the body to the other must be possible in taiji -- in which case one would be able to do a mirror form OR a backward (end to beginning) form effortlessly, without having to learn the individual moves. My level of skill is nowhere near there yet, alas. But I can tell it's possible... was wondering if anyone ever "got it" this way?

From what I've learned, this sounds quite plausible, I mean the karmic effects of the ancestor's deeds, because in many senses (especially if we go back to the concepts of time and jing), your ancestors and you are one entity. One can see oneself as an unbroken composite space-time creature who has its long ancestral "tail" in the past, "body" in the ever-changing present (quite illusory compared to the more definite, "realized," "really-happened" past), and "head" -- well, wherever it is "headed" into the future. Can the choice of a different direction of the "head" change the direction in which the whole entity is going? That's possible, and that's alchemy at its best, because alchemy is all about changing some "mechanical" impulses, some directions where one would get "dragged" if one were to just go with the flow. Anyone who believes in "just going with the flow" should keep in mind that the flow, for all practical personal purposes, is the impulse from the ancestral "tail" he or she is being propelled by. And I suspect there's more people in this world today whose ancestral "tail" is highly problematic than the other way around. How many can be sure their ancestors weren't among conquistadors who wiped out whole continents, killed for sport, tortured for entertainment, or were simply dumb as doorknobs and knew not what they were doing?.. So to "accumulate points" might be a way to turn the head of the entity in a different direction from wherever its tail would otherwise propel it? Trouble is, with a heavy tail whose directional impulse is very strong, the entity that is supposed to know good from bad seldom does... There used to be a taoist nun at one of the forums who had a story to tell. She quit helping people after she witnessed a young guy whose leg she saved from amputation a couple of years earlier use this very leg to kick a helpless old man. She swore to never do any "good deeds" anymore because what is good was something she didn't feel qualified to determine anymore.

Interesting... So you think they "lack power?" Their real power is hidden, you know... The Bank of Vatican is the wealthiest institution on Earth, and has been for a looong time. But this kind of power doesn't get advertised... and what it is used for doesn't get reported on the ten o'clock news. Yet it is there, and it is used. But how. You're all over my old stomping ground! I wound up finding out that it's not just philosophy but science, technology, "our" civilization itself -- all of it happened via borrowings, acquisitions, plagiarism, pillage and plunder, or (occasionally) straightforward learning (e.g., all of Greek philosophy, the Greek Miracle that gave birth to Western civilization -- all those guys without a single exception studied at the university of Alexandria where taoists, of all people, taught philosophy!) -- and that there's hardly anything out there at all (even today!) that doesn't have its roots in taoism (ice cream to gunpowder to plastics to binary math this computer uses to antibiotics, vaccines, paper...) -- and that the most interesting (to me) things in taoism have their roots in Siberian shamanism. That's how I made a full circle around the world and returned to my very own source... Happy Holidays to you too! What do you mean by "merits" -- "virtues of tao?" If that's what you have in mind, the best source I know of is Ta Chuan.

Where I come from we used to celebrate the New Year rather than Christmas, on account of the country being officially atheistic for seven decades. So I would have to ask Christians who celebrate Christmas: what do you do with your non-Christian friends come Christmas? Do you invite them? If no, why not? If yes, do they accept? If no, why not? The New Year's celebration I was acculturated to never presented this problem. It was my favorite holiday. Free of any and all agendas, not political, not religious, not exclusive of any group on the basis of creed or affiliation or denomination. We did have the decorated fir tree, only we called it the New Year's Fir Tree, not Christmas Tree. The custom of giving presents extended only to kids -- who didn't have to "be good" and "behave" in order to qualify, just small enough. Basically, it was very child-centered as holidays go (though of course adults weren't excluded -- like I said, nobody was.) Only the child wasn't Baby Jesus -- every other kid but him. So here and now I don't really know what to do with Christmas other than wish it was more like the New Year's I remember. What about you?

"In matters of style, go with the flow. In matters of principle, stand like a rock." -- Thomas Jefferson

Thank you, Little1! Mysterious Mother, LOL! Nietzsche asserted that every woman is a mystery whose only revelation is pregnancy. He used the line as a put-down though -- but then, he must've had a lousy mother (most philosophers did), unlike Laozi whose wisdom is traditionally attributed to the fact that he spent two years in the womb (obviously reluctant to leave a nice place and "move on" -- and uninterested in "progress" ever since he did move on only to find that it wasn't worth it ). Maybe that's why he understands "the great mother" so well: he spent more time with her than everybody else, and remembers better.

so below

Tingly skin -- and the rest of the symptoms -- sounds like chlorine poisoning to me. Hot water will cause it to penetrate more actively and will evaporate it in larger amounts, so you both breathe it in and get it absorbed through the skin at a higher-than-normal rate. If you're sensitive to chlorine (as I am), it may happen. However, if the symptoms ever occur under some other conditions, get a check-up, OK? (I'm hoping they won't. If you still want to take hot baths, install a filter! )

Taiji IS qigong, absolutely. Toilet paper without the cardboard roll still does the job, but I've heard some orthodox Moslems despise toilet paper users because it's such an "impure" method, with or without the cardboard roll, and prefer a jar of water for washing instead. So... taiji is toilet paper, qigong is the cardboard roll, neigoing is a jar of water. My teacher has a separate qigong class, but people who take his taiji classes seldom take it -- and vice versa. I tried taking both, but discovered that I just happen to find taiji much more gratifying. Qigong is a tad too yin for my personal taste, I feel the need to keep my yang in good repair... maybe because I come from a short but sweet taekwondo background and still miss the excitement, the jump-start of all the joy-of-movement energies in me that almost took me back to childhood, feeling more mischievous than solemn, you know... So I guess it's inidvidual -- whoever needs "more yin," will do well with qigong, but if "too yin" is a problem, I'd say taiji is it to offer a great balance. And if you want "pure yang," hard arts are great for that, let's not underestimate their usefulness for certain purposes! It all depends... In a taiji class, my teacher likes to start the practice with a brief qigong warm-up and finish with a brief qigong close-down. He links qigong moves to certain corresponding moves in the taiji form and explains how the latter is the development and continuation of the former. He introduces elements of neigong then and again explains the connections between the outer move and the inner movement. It's really easy to get the qigong-taiji transition whether you study one or the other or both. But that jar of water... That's something quite different. Not easy at all. When an external move "makes internal sense" to my internal senses, however, it's such a thrill! Doesn't happen every day though... not yet.

However... Two weeks before the bombing, my husband, who was looking for a new job at the time, got two offers. The more attractive one in the WTC, on one of the top floors. The slightly less attractive one altogether elsewhere. He couldn't decide which one to take, there were pros and cons for both choices. I checked the feng shui auspiciousness of both places at that particular time. The WTC looked horrible. I placed a strong FS remedy in a strategic spot to deflect that energy. People who wanted my husband for the WTC job so badly that for a few days they called two or three times a day urging him to take it suddenly stopped calling, stopped showing any interest -- just disappeared. He was puzzled and decided they gave up on him for lack of enthusiasm on his part, and took the second offer. He went to work at the new place a week before the bombing at the WTC. He would have been there if I wasn't prepared. How's that for "wherever you go, you can go elsewhere?" or as that Zeppelin oldie-but-goodie put it, "there's still time to change the road you're on."

Agreed on repeating movement. "The way of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return." "A couple" aspects -- depends on how much we want to simplify the picture. Down to yin-yang? then, yes. Prenatal jing coming with the frisky spermatozoon from dad is yang, the one residing in mom's ovum sitting there waiting is yin -- by the way this process is what one of the steps of internal alchemy is trying to replicate: yang below, yin above! -- a very "reversed" situation, an Earlier Heaven situation... It will be repeated at birth (I mean natural human birth where a woman squats, not modern hospital birth where she's forced to lie on her back): the baby comes head first, yang descending! That's another situation some steps of internal alchemy recapitulate. As for pregnancy... I have twins, a boy and a girl, and would probably have trouble explaining it even to another woman, one who had a solo baby, let alone to a man -- though in the early days, many moons ago, I tried -- I simply couldn't stop talking because I felt the need to share and to explain -- yes, to guys too! Silly me! There's no vocabulary for this... If the sensation of things still small swimming back and forth could be named, it has to be something like "inherent freedom" and "the thrill of aliveness." Then they start running out of space and practicing martial arts. Then they tell you to eat five pounds of shrimp. Then they make you weep with guilt for catching a cold. Then they explain to you what time is, what waiting is, what danger is, what the unknown is, what love is, what need is, what natural is, what life is. Then they tell you to eat a chocolate cake and chase it with a jarful of pickles. Stuff like that.

It's not nonsense, it's the core of authentic taoism -- internal alchemy, a quest for the Triple Treasure of Perfection, Nondecay, Immortality. Modern research into stem cells is trying to accomplish the same, and towards the same goal. I have much higher expectations for the ancient alchemical methods though.

Little1, I don't know what you know! -- if I were to assume that you want something "from scratch," not that I'm assuming it mind you, , I would recommend meditating a bit (or better a lot) on Hetu, Luoshu, the circular I Ching, and studying a couple of good versions of the linear I Ching and Ta Chuan and the Ten Wings for a foundation in taoist cosmology. If you want something that pertains to jing specifically -- The Yellow Emperor's Classic is a good starting point. If you want a good intro to alchemical literature, I suggest The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu. If you want more... of course there's lots more. But a good start would be, imo, to just look and look and look at the circular I Ching -- till you see how tao procreates. Till you "see" jing. Maybe it's not the best method but that's how I "got it" -- I mean the part that I got from printed visual aids. There's other ways to "get it" of course. To me, jing is one of the absolutely greatest fascinations in the whole taoist deal. Everything is connected to it... the "immortal fetus" is a manifestation, the lotus pose is a tool... the shape of the miao tao, the mysterious border between yin and yang, is a signature. (Mona Lisa has this line between her lips, hence the mystery of her smile... The pagoda roofs follow this line, and the sea horses, one of the few food sources for replenishing jing, ditto... ) "Time" is different for practitioners and non-practitioners. For non-practitioners, it is pretty straightforward. For practitioners... well, it depends on the practice. Alchemists of some schools reverse the sequence and go back, shen to qi to jing -- and this is only possible with a measure of control of time. The "changes" of the I Ching, the word itself -- it's originally a picture of a chameleon (not lizard, as modern sources usually assert). A chameleon is a good metaphor for the kind of changes jing is the root of: unlimited modifications of the outward manifestations which do not change anything about the essence except its outermost, most visible yet least "essential" layer. It is actually mind-blowing... jing is nearly everything you are plus absolutely everything you were before you were born -- how can anyone control it without controlling "everything?" A master of jing is a master who "roams the root of Heaven and Earth." Look and look at the Circular I Ching, see if you see what I mean... Seadog, thanks for your balanced take, I felt a bit uneasy about my own wording -- I sounded harsher and more categorical than I intended, sorry. My take is as in the "chameleon" above -- postnatal jing is the "color-changing" layer of the whole jing enchilada, the yang, most visible, least essential part. Jing, as we know (we do, right? ), is yin compared to qi and (of course) shen, but as there's "some yang within yin" always, that's what postnatal jing is -- know the yin-yang symbol, that little black dot on white, little white dot on black, the eye of the fish? -- so postnatal jing is that yang eye of the yin fish, it's there, but it's not what the fish (no wait, enchilada? I'm running my metaphors head on, looks like) is all about. So, yes, you can "modify" the color of the chameleon with multiple environmental influences, but that's as far as the change will go. If you want to change the chameleon itself into a different species... will diet and exercise do it d'you reckon? You can overfeed it or starve it, it may grow fat or skinny... but this won't cause it to grow backward in time, nor turn into a tiger. You want to change a chameleon into a tiger, you need a different approach than just painting stripes on it... So, OK, prenatal jing is something that is very difficult to change into a younger chameleon or a tiger or even a frog for that matter. Postnatal jing -- this you can play with, but it's a minor game. The major game is Xian Tian jing. I mean, theoretically, people can be Olympic champions, but how many do qualify in actuality?.. With Xian Tian jing, the game is Olympic level at the very least...

A friend of mine quit watching TV when her kid was born -- even the remote idea of violence in any shape or form proved too much next to the real-life vulnerability of a child. Unfortunately, head-in-the-sand strategies are efficient only when the horrors are guaranteed to be make-believe.

Um... per my training, this is a horrible mabu. Flexible he isn't -- his kua is closed, and so he has to completely misalign his knees and ankles in order to stand this wide and low. His knees buckle inward! -- there's no stability to this stance, I could knock him down with a feather. Practicing this way -- going for "impressive" low stances before one is able to open the kua and the yao -- will destroy the knees (which is the reason 85% of all people who start MA incorrectly are forced to quit, according to Wong Kiew Kit.)

Far as "beliefs" go, I go only as far as my signature below. Far as "information" goes, I have much more reservations. I "believe" that we are "dis- and mis-informed" from so many sources that to tell who's pulling who's leg for what reason -- ego, money, stupidity, paranoya, or real hidden esoteric knowledge -- is only possible via Homer Simpson's approach -- "a little from column A and a little from column B." I do think we (the generic "we," not necessarily "me personally" or "you")) have no clue what's really going on in the cosmos, all our technological advances notwithstanding. I do believe we (the generic "we") have no clue who our real government is, and what they're up to. I don't know whether they are reptilians, annunaki, alien bloodlines or just mean old cannibals -- but I do know that between their 3% fraction of the Earth's population they own 97% of Earth's resources and it just doesn't seem right to me. I don't know if the banking system we all think we know but really don't is less disastrous in the long run than a "planet of the crossing," or more so. I do think the rumors about the microchip are true. I do notice that they put more and more things on food labels almost every day that I know for a fact can only disseminate illness and dumbness. I do know sodium fluoride in our water supply is a CNS suppressor breeding a meek, compliant population. I do know that between cell phones and vaccines, one doesn't have to look too far for the reason why teachers say they've never seen, in all of their prior careers, kids as unable to learn as who they're getting today. I know chemical messages of death sprayed on every crop every day are being read by life on Earth -- and understood. How she will act on being given this message by our species I don't know, but to me it doesn't look like she's going to be ignoring it for much longer. Cat -- I can only think of "try to prepare," and I guess "how" depends on what people believe the danger is (if any) -- e.g., a very skeptical friend of mine who doesn't believe in anything metaphysical, including a benign government that's up to something good, bought some land in the mountains (he has more money than most of us, sigh) and is going to be "prepared for anything" there. Not a feasible scenario for most. Personally, I try to be prepared "metaphysically," I practice taoist arts because I don't trust much else, but of course my level of proficiency ain't no "guarantee" against something as major as a global showdown or even as minor as a personal mishap... still, that's how I "try to prepare." And also -- well, I like collecting skills the way some people collect material objects, coins or shoes or whatever -- I collect non-technological skills. My "ideals" are pretty much "prehistoric" to begin with, so I like to think that if I were to survive being stripped to prehistory, I'd know what to do. Which wild plants are edible. How to make a shelter in the snow and a fire in the rain. Stuff like that... Not because it's "practical and prudent" but because... I dunno, why do people like art? I like the art of survival...

Well... trimming quotes just so that they fit the argument of one's choice is a method whereby anyone can prove anything. However, Kaptchuk, in the same paragraph you trim-quoted, asserts that "Postnatal Essence allows for modification of Prenatal Essence." He never asserts that it "replenishes" Prenatal Essence anywhere in the book. That's because "modify" and "replenish" are not the same thing at all! The page you've been looking at continues with a famous quote from the Nei Jing, by the way, which links jing to the one and only real player in its "amount": time. Check it out, see if it has anything to say about "maintaing a certain diet and exercise." (Aside from The Web/No Weaver, the other two quotes are unfortunate profanations -- or else poor translations.) I submit that jing can't be understood without understanding taoist cosmology, and taoist cosmology can't be understood without understanding time, timing, timeliness... There's no non-classical book that "got it right" that I'm aware of. And the classical ones assert exactly what I said...

If your question is whether I agree with your take on efficiency of jing use making or breaking a life -- my answer is, yes. The best thing to do is to get plenty from mom and dad to begin with. One reason jing is so difficult to control is that it's not YOUR doing, the amount and quality you have. It's the hand you've been dealt. But then, one can play a good hand poorly, and by the same token, one can play a poor hand well... how we play our jing matters. Pretty much everything we do from the moment we're born dips into jing, but some things burn it like there's no tomorrow while others conserve it and a rare few replenish it. (No, not food-water-air, these replenish postnatal jing known as qi, here's another potential confusion point... postnatal, Later Heaven jing, is qi. Jing proper is prenatal, Earlier Heaven jing. You can replenish your postnatal jing, aka qi, with food-water-air-light-darkness-pracitce-freedom-purpose-love. However, you can only replenish your prenatal jing with some concoctions that communicate with it -- talking straight to your DNA -- and internal-alchemical practices.) Freeform, no matter where I lived, I've almost always lived close to a train station, for some reason. Perhaps a "train of thought" is something one learns from a train -- linear thought, step-by-step thought? -- 'cause mine are not "naturally" like that, so a train might be a learning tool that some railway spirit sends our way when that's what we need to learn?... just a thought on a train... no wait, there's also a song I like, by Phish: home on a train, why'd you send my monkey on a train? The day that you've arrived my sleeping monkey is revived but you sent him home on a train! I don't know where this train is going, so I better stop...

But what about Nibiru?.. Nibiru ain't no Y2K. When she comes, she delivers. And they say 2012 is interesting in that... well... that's when... but youtube it yourselves, just avoid all those me-too videos with hideous music and assorted cheese balls floating in space. Might as well start here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-3RLx_4Y5Y

Mu. According to Suzuki, the student who was presented with this koan grabbed a stick, whacked the master on the head -- and instantly became enlightened, while the master was nursing his head filled with the loudest booming of the bell that wasn't ringing.

Of course there's no confusion if one cultivates jing, qi and shen. How could I confuse jing with jin when I know my jing and know that I have only one jing, the one and only... but many, many different jins and many ways to fajin. You can fajin as a "squirt," by the way -- if you're packed with qi under pressure like a water balloon, anyone just pokes you and your jin squirts out spontaneously -- indeed, you don't have to use your shen, nor even your yi, for this to happen. Or you can use a deliberate there-and-back jin -- lightning fast, as though touching a red hot iron. Or you can suddenly release a coiled spring. And so on. Many jins, one jing. Rule of thumb so as to avoid confusion: jin, power, is derived from qi; whereas jing, essence (or, to use a better translation, vitality), is what qi is derived from.

Right. Koan: Make me hear the sound of a distant bell that isn't ringing.

The one that observed these events from Amitaba's Land of Pure Bliss and laughed its head off. Koan: Three Tibetan monks woke up early in the morning, walked outside, and saw that while they were sleeping, someone had raised an American flag on a pole in front of the monastery. The three monks looked at the flag in silence for a long time. Then one of them said, pensively, "The flag is moving." The second monk shook his head and said, "The wind is moving." What did the third monk say?

What you're describing as this ideal is not an admin but a computer virus.