senseless virtue

Finally 100% happy and accepting. Totally okay with everything. Totally okay.

This following info came from a https://taichi18.com/ newsletter (I have made few edits): Properties of Qi One of the very first scientific experiments that investigated the properties of qi was conducted in 1977 in Shanghai, China. An instrument was placed 1 meter away from Professor Lin Hou-Sheng in an attempt to measure the amount of infrared radiation emitted from his qi. In just a few minutes, the equipment was able to detect some infrared radiation coming out from Professor Lin’s palms. The intensity of the radiation gradually increased as he continued to release his qi. That experiment revealed the first property of qi – a low frequency infrared wave. In the past few years, a lot of research has been performed to measure qi in terms of infrasonic waves. Infrasonic waves are sound waves that have a frequency below 20 Hertz (Hz). The vibrations of these waves are too slow to be heard by the human ear. Every living person emits these waves from the palms of their hands. The average person emits waves ranging from 8 to 12.5 Hz at an intensity of 40 to 50 decibels (dB) The intensity of infrasonic waves emitted from the palms of qi gong practitioners and non-qigong practitioners was compared in one research study. 29 Americans, with no prior qigong training, were chosen for the study. The average intensity of the group was 47dB. Qi gong techniques were then taught and prescribed to the group. After one week of learning and practicing, the average intensity of the group rose to 54dB. This is an increase of 7 decibels. This may not seem like a lot but remember the difference in decibels between the two is defined to be 10 log (P2/P1) dB where the log is to base 10. In other words, the energy emitted by group members was five times that of their energy emission before their initial training. The Qigong master teaching the techniques to this group had generated waves of 78db, which was 1000 times greater than the average person. Qi emission involves more than just infrasonic waves and infrared radiation. Other scientific experiments have revealed the magnetic and penetrating powers of qi. In fact, qi is so powerful that it can penetrate through concrete walls. As technology advances, I am sure we will be able to discover more properties of qi. Meridians - Channels of Qi What about the meridians, the channels of qi, are they real? In 1972, Professor Zhu Zong-Xiang led the acupuncture meridian research team of the Institute of Biophysics under the Chinese Academy of Science to prove the existence of the meridians. In the 1980s, the researchers successfully showed the 14 meridians in human body through two biophysical experiments, which are surprisingly identical to that recorded in the ancient classical meridian graph. The first experiment uses a small pointy mallet to knock on the body and the sound it generated is measured through a device similar to the stethoscope. When the mallet knocks on any points along the meridians, the sound it generated is louder and has a higher tone than when it knocks on any other points of the body. It sounds like it is hitting a hollow tube whenever it knocks on the meridians. More than tens of thousands of individuals had participated in this experiment and all have the same result. The second experiment proved that our meridians have lower electrical resistance than any other parts of our body. Again, more than tens of thousands had participated in this experiment and all have the same result. Below is a short video clip of the two experiments mentioned above:

If you are not getting the results nor enjoying the traditional esoteric explanations of energetics in your current meditation and qigong enthusiasm, then you could perhaps find more satisfying practices to engage. While you may want serious talk, it's often more important to have fun practice that you can truly connect with. There are materially tangible oriental philosophies like Confucianism that emphasize purifying your own conduct and having spirit nourishing hobbies like calligraphy, gardening, and poetry. Confucian ethics and its scholar-warrior pursuits are materially verifiable, as are their results: either you grow as a human being and sacrifice enough of your ego to eventually enjoy a spotless conscience, or not. You become your own measure.

@dwai I see your point, but I have to disagree with it. It feels too much like contrived splitting hairs and compartmentalization in contrast to the traditional and liberal meaning of Qi as "energy" and such.

I am very confused by what you wrote because it completely contradicts what I have been taught by my teachers and sources I have read. Jin or internal force is an expression of Qi. If Jin is issued, then it's Qi emitting out as a matter of fact. It's a different matter whether Qi is "spent" on emission and skillful people instantly replenish whatever they might have lost.

Good question. What if the problem isn't simply about cosmic identification, but mishandling and neglect of the existent bodily karma that continues its presence and function right here on the surface of planet Earth? There seems to be certain nihilism and disillusionment with certain spiritual types that they wish to abandon the world and its grief instead of spending that newly-discovered loving awareness in helping others and making people around them happier. What is love without decisive action and compassionate motivation? Navel gazing and absorptive exaltation of spiritual bliss can satisfy us only so far until we face that we are interdependent with everyone else in order to bring real meaning into our lives.

The context of tantra doesn't deviate from the proper Buddhist outset for me in any way. My motivation is to uncover the real me behind all this confusion and stop being a fake. Tantra, in my experience, provides an invaluable support in terms of energy and mind's clarity for realizing open awareness, non-self, compassion, and all these relevant doctrinal tangents that the Buddhist practice and its end-point are supposed to embody. The Buddhahood of perfect awareness, as far as I understand, is getting to know reality and ourselves as we spontaneously and truly are without any fetters mistaken for personal identity. My own condition, and I am not the only one with these types of struggles, when starting Buddhist training has been to deal with illness and distress, which has undermined tuning into proper relaxation and sensitivity. Teachers themselves have often proved to be a liability, not because of lack of skill necessarily, but because shared time is limited and in-depth student-teacher relationships would take more than week long mass seminars to properly allow for personal issues to be probed. (Admittedly, my commitment and uncertainty about who to take as a long-term teacher have been obstacles here.) I also have struggled a lot with having the confidence and certainty when assessing my own success with gaining insight and dzogchen style meditations, in contrast to which tantric methods have always felt assuring and simply easy. Tantra and the help directly given by Buddhas allows an instant peek into what life beyond these personal limitations could offer.

@C T Thank you for your friendly greeting and taking time to explain. I seem to have much less technical and more experiential definition of tantra in comparison, which can be summarized as follows: Tantra is a very neat manner of getting to know ourselves without the "hassle"(*) of relaxing into the non-grasping wisdom exactly right from the get-go and let all the energetic and karmic knots unfold from this abiding spontaneously. This is something I need to keep in mind when I see others writing about tantra and not presume there is perfect harmony. (*) Certainly so for many contemporary people.

What do you conceptualize as tantra? For me it's simply anything that skillfully accesses blessings of the enlightened mind-stream(s) and arouses the practitioner's body-mind to facilitate particular functions pertaining to awareness development. In this view all praying to Buddhas, visualization of Buddhas and their Pure Lands, related mantras, chanting names of the Buddhas, and so forth are indivorceably tantric practices even before the helpful attunements given by possible empowerments.

Dwai, you ask a very broad natured question. Are you looking for martial applications or what?

Disclaimer: I practice Flying Phoenix qigong and think it's really awesome. It always works well and feels really good. Sifu Terry has quoted many times this from Mencius: Just my very personal experience: If I don't get results I want, then I always look reasons first and foremost in myself and not in external circumstances. No qigong form is any substitute for proper inner work of purifying conduct and dealing with emotional clutter. Sometimes this discipline is painfully difficult and it's more tempting to look outside for fun distractions and easier options. No amount of qigong will automatically push anyone over the mental dispositions that are actually holding them back from letting go and embracing full awareness into their own true being. Qigong training never is a magical push-a-button machine for instant gratification in my experience. It's a matter of free will, and not formal qigong, if we want to understand how we relate ourselves to the world we experience. I sure as hell haven't been promised anything specific as for results by any teacher, but always encouragement to work hard. Especially, to look hard into myself. Hopefully you don't mind me asking, but I got curious enough to present you some questions. You can consider them rhetorical if you may; there is no need for you to prove anything to me. What if you were most importantly investing money into your own discipline and investigating that in order to learn something important about yourself? What do you expect from qigong training in the first place? What results were you directly promised? What is supposed to be easier and more effective in the training? How do you determine what is the fair and just price for learning qigong?

It's true, but I suspect his admonishment mostly relates to particular types of meditation that are dangerous to learn from books. For example, many of the Microcosmic Orbit and Lower Dantian practices are chiefly problematic and need wise instruction and adjustment which a book can't give. Sorry, but I have rescinded my earlier favorable opinion.

Classically it's said that practicing outdoors by gently flowing water is excellent when not too windy. Also, temples and holy sites are often selected for their favorable locations and are by their utility loaded with good energy that is particularly clarifying for the mind, but these locations might not always make good practice environments. Mostly, optimizing the positive aspects are not so important for a practitioner; it's much more vital to avoid negative circumstances of practice. Almost any clean natural environment is good, but a smelly landfill is never desirable. If you are still trying to get a hold of the tranquility of your heart-mind, then it's good to avoid stimuli that provoke fearful or rejecting responses such as decrepit houses, prisons, hospitals and graveyards. When you are doing calmness meditation and many types of Qigong, it interacts with the environment in a manner that can introduce the flow of this qi into you, which can make you ill. Tantric Indo-Tibetan traditions and Buddhist meditations are different and their teachers can even recommend to practice in graveyards and haunted locations where one might feel really unnerved. Shuigong teaches that sleeping direction matters for good sleep hygiene. Fragrant Qigong is one style that has particularly strict set of conditions that the practitioner must avoid, including lunar and solar eclipses. Somehow this style is so deeply ingrained into the harmony of global and cosmic energy flows that many environmental perturbations can upset it.

Some of the comments on Youtube are pretty funny:

Thank you for your sincere consideration. Original sources are better than no sources at all because some of us can understand Chinese. I will later post something good and informative on Feng Shui from a well-known Chinese master, in English.

There are too many problems in your claims to warrant case by case correction. However, the most important thing to remember about classic Chinese (and other) spiritual practices is that they are always holistic. You cannot make Feng Shui work through such simplistic reductions as birthday astrology. It would be better if you quoted the original sources verbatim instead of making misleading abbreviations and guessing.

So it seems that you have taken almost an entire month to muster enough wit and courage for a reply, but only to express how you started the day on the wrong side of the bed. This forum doesn't enforce participation for the users. If you don't have anything constructive to say than to resort in insincere platitudes, then why bother to write? There's nothing wrong in not responding if you think the matter is settled and actually care not to discuss.

@silent thunder You seem to be spinning a convoluted story out of a need to explain good and bad in less anthropocentric terms. Patently false. Selflessness and altruism exist universally. Just recall all those stories about mother dogs letting kittens to suckle and so forth. Well, isn't it fabulous that at least one Bum has truly realized the Dao and knows certainly what is the undistorted reality?

You should instead be sorry for acting passive-aggressive and falsely implying that I endorse ethnic discrimination. You haven't showcased much learning from any classics at all, I am afraid. Having no wisdom nor learning, you shouldn't (yet) make attempts to make interpretations then. It's a severe demerit to disseminate spiritual disinformation. What makes you think I'm a Westerner?

Your pseudo-scholarly proclivity again betrays your fundamental lack of understanding. De is de exactly like wisdom is the same universal wisdom in all spirituality. De is universal although we may see highlights of it in filiality and other relations that may usually be thought as being governed by morality. In that case morality is just the conventional expression of de and not a separate instance of it. If a self-ascribed Confucian was acting outwardly moral but without de, then that would just be plain hypocrisy. There is no separate de in Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity. Behold, the Christ instructed: It really is the same principle that I have been describing about not being self-conscious about ethics.

You are speaking of morality, not ethics. Now that we have dusted off the edgy concept of ethical relativism (only morals are relative), let's be more discerning henceforth. Good is what helps generating merit (altruism, benevolence, charity, etc.) and/or releasing karmic bindings. Bad is squandering merit and/or accumulating karma of selfishness and self grasping. Thus good and bad are objectively measurable even if we experience the world as subjectively created and interdependent. It's entirely another matter whether we are able to be fully aware of the extent of our actions' merits and karmic tethers. No, it's not that simple because the essence of ethics is pre-critical. De in the classical sense is doing the right thing without having care for the consequences, i.e. while being free and spontaneous in abiding to one's pure spirit. The sage is called virtuous because he acts perfectly normal so without any self-consciousness about it and not because he fancies acting like good. For further study here is a link to the chapter 18 of Dao De Jing with many translations.

Okay, so we have a fire elemental, a black dragon, a qigong thunder god, and a galore of other types of mystical kungfu warriors like John Chang for example. To me this sounds like the true success formula for an ongoing Mortal Kombat live action show. The improvised script is of course B-movie bad so that it becomes entertaining by its ridiculously bad taste and kitsch.

I only wanted to point out the uncanny similarity of language.

Dao is the universal function and sentient beings have relationships that engender de. Morality is conventional, but we must look beyond it if we want to get to know ourselves. The real exercise of discerning wisdom is to find the optimally altruistic solution in any situation: good is context depended and mostly unique to any instance, so one must remain sharp and wise. Ethics is neither rejected nor affirmed, but it must come spontaneously (not impulsively!) and without fear or care for consequences. Otherwise it's hypocrisy and degrees of selfishness manifesting. You have a very shallow understanding of Confucianism. Like all great traditions, Confucius's message was practical, not intellectual. Taking it as a hobby of the literati and as a mere indoctrination tool is roughly the same case as if you said the Christ or the Buddha only taught philosophical religion and nothing else. I would recommend you and everyone else to read Liu Yousheng's Let the Radiant Yang Shine Forth to get a real perspective just how effective and practical Confucian healing can be.

Nazis ‘were only a blip in Germany’s glorious past,’ says AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland Do you remember this statement that shocked in Europe?