senseless virtue

I know nothing and have no personal experience but Daoist arts seem to make a big deal out of energy varieties. Odd stuff.

I forgot address this earlier. The demonstration speed is for the sake of learning. If he moved slower, it would be bad for establishing muscle memory. Maybe I recall this wrong, but Sifu Terry has also stated that the FP energy can move advanced practitioners a bit faster and still impart same effects. If you had reached a very high level in any internal art, then you would certainly experience that bliss ceases intoxicating you after enough karmic purity is reached. Therefore a master wouldn't react to bliss like a beginner would.

So how did you practice then for two years if you didn't progress much? I assume that you are speaking from your own experience. This is very ironic considering the next quoted paragraph which has a flavor of malcontent criticism. You basically admit that Sifu Terry is providing an excellent pedagogical approach to learning the Flying Phoenix and other White Tiger internal arts. Any good qigong or martial arts teacher will emphasize the importance of learning the correct form first. Sifu Terry's DVDs are for beginners, hence they need to focus on correct form to get the optimal energy cultivation to start with. There would be no need to make a point about wuwei and letting the energy take the lead at this stage because it would just complicate learning and possibly create misleading impressions how to practice in the beginning. You may already well know that many people, especially the Westerners, like to take shortcuts and cut around corners. Teaching it like Sifu Terry has done is pedagogically sound because keeping it simple keeps discipline easy. As for the Taijiquan flavor of FP forms, I think you are reading too much into this. Round and smooth movement is not the exclusive property of Taijiquan, but it certainly makes it easier to learn and practice the external forms. So correct me if I am wrong here. You condemn Sifu Terry's fascination and high-spirited elaboration of Western mystical traditions as occultism, which by definition means secret doctrines and teachings, but on the other keep on insisting that GMDW has been with-holding secrets from his former students that are now going to be spilled out for everyone with enough ca$h by your new mystical infatuation, the supposed Kriyayoga master Ausar. Occultism here and there. Is this not glaring hypocrisy? I have met many people who can actually see energy and have had this ability since birth. Are you sure you are not here projecting your own prejudices about medical clairvoyants? Complete hyperbole without any evidence, and there is actually proof for the opposite. As you have followed the FPCK thread for years, you should be well aware that Sifu Terry, for example, is an initiated Daoist Priest and a skilled master in the Tao Tan Pai tradition long before learning from GMDW. Master Share K. Lew, the late head of Tao Tan Pai, was also in very good terms with GMDW and hence there has been no mistake nor misjudgement about the high qualification and attainment Sifu Terry already had before learning from GMDW. So if you can't have, then no one else may have either? Excellent work, my young padawan. Such honorable conduct as yours will surely cherish and enrich any self-respecting family and their inherited arts. There has been no drama other than your persistent self-aggrandizing confusion and persecution complex. I think no one has anything against you, even though your manners have been very poor. Let me get this straight. Are you accusing that Sifu Terry is or has been trying to force GMDW to present inauthentic certifications and lie to Youtube watchers? Would you like to talk more about your feelings and your opinion of the proper place of everyone? This is the wisest and a genuinely useful bit in your recent writings. Maybe you should read it again and examine throughout how it relates to your own conduct and discipline? This is not universally true. I know for certain that there are Buddhist tantras and dzogchen meditation that have very low demands on physical capacity or health. Very profound, you are on the trace. The last line especially is crucially important. Sifus always look to reach dedicated and enthusiastic students who are trustworthy, loyal, and morally cultivated people. Such students will cherish and conserve all the teachings without complaint and will not ask when and what to receive because such is the love for their Sifu and the tradition. You know the best.

I see your point, but completely disagree that Ausar is either established or having a good reputation after claiming false lineage. You are right though that we could use tighter criteria. My next proposition: Sifu Terry has been active on TDB for years. I would suppose that something along three years would be a good time to examine whether a teacher is interested in staying around with extended editing privileges, has an established community to serve, and doesn't generate controversy over personal conduct and business practices.

I offer my apologies for ranting, but the nature of spiritual transgressions here are very concerning and needed further address. If you don't know for sure and are confused, then at least don't act confused and stir the pot more. This is basic Daoist, and also non-Daoist, morals how to be a great human being through non-action. Further, don't dare to think that acting confused and aiding evil causes is to your benefit or that you can squirm away from responsibility without real repentance. This not any moralization, but a reminder that karma is real and so are its consequences. "Ausar" is obviously a scam to cull the purses of the gullible. They throw in some currently hyped spiritual words in a semi-coherent style and try to lure in people who are mystified with unfamiliar methods of traditional kungfu. COMMON SENSE ALERT: Enlightenment and Light Body cannot be sold, but require intense spiritual practice with any proper yogic method and high-level teachers' guide. There is no spiritual by-passing. There may be few items that help to cleanse karma, but this is not nearly the same as being sold "enlightenment." How utterly ridiculous! No honest teacher will ever sell you anything with the explicit claim that it will enlighten you. https://ausar.org/2018/04/12/blue-buddha-ascending-to-heaven-legendary-spiritual-system-of-fire-samadhi/ The "price explaining video" referred to in the above infomercial link is creatively clipped (and most certainly without permission) from GMDW's Chi Materialization tape. This art has nothing to do with the any "enlightenment," but it's a high level kungfu and martial healing skill. I would like to point out that GMDW tapes are copyrighted and kept out of public circulation for a good reason. His family arts are very demanding and generally unsafe for public learning without a master's supervision. If anyone gets messed up because of misconduct concerning their unwise and immoral distribution, it's a heavy karma. I thought Jim Lacy had abused GMDW's generosity grievously by teaching wrong methods that caused internal injuries to unsuspecting people and by claiming falsehoods about GMDW's death etc., but this new abuse takes it to another level. Now he is cast as a collaborating mystical master in an attempt to cash-in with counterfeit Buddha Dharma. Unbelievable disrespect. Slandering and abusing the holy Dharma is a serious sin that can actually take you to hell. Why would anyone act as an auxiliary to such a cause? Sifu Terry gave a stern warning already in his previous post, but apparently his experience and sagely advice about spiritual darkness was echoed on empty ears. My heart advice is that some of you people should clearly differentiate between the light and the dark, the clear and the obscure. Now I don't wish to have anymore replies about this subject unless it's Sifu Terry making another statement with GMDW. Discussing Flyng Phoenix and its benefits is simply much more rewarding.

Hello. Don't worry about the accuracy. The more you do it, the more familiar you will become with your own body and its breathing capacity. Sifu Terry has provided some scheduling suggestion for beginners. You can follow that or move forward on your own when you feel good. Flying Phoenix practice has cumulative benefits: the more you do in one session, the better. Separating exercises throughout the day lessens this cumulative effect a bit, but it shouldn't matter. Enjoy! Doing the entire 1st DVD in one go would be superb. Doing three different Monk Serves Wine meditations in one sitting would be another great idea. Please enjoy your practice.

Hello Sulo Eno. Any energetic practice, or even getting better health through other means, will sooner or later produce phosphenes. Even if you prayed to God fervently, it would happen. This is due to your optical nerves being stimulated and cleansed by energy. Whether or not this will be regular depends on your condition, and the strength and nature of your chosen practice. All genuine spiritual traditions will tell you to dismiss these as unnecessary and possibly distracting phenomena. Just do your practice and enjoy the good health and wellbeing. In my humble opinion all energetic training at least borders on metaphysical. It's a matter of your conscience and carefully informed choice whether you agree any such training is for you. If you are looking for very beneficial practices with no conscious energy cultivation that are instead based on materialistic Western science, then you could try looking into David Berceli's TRE (Tension, Stress & Trauma Release Exercise). It works really well. Seeing blue light internally is an advanced mark of Flying Phoenix practice. Visible blue aura would be even more so. I have read that Flying Phoenix energy is particularly slow to dissipate, but blue light shouldn't appear spontaneously if you didn't practice.

Does anyone of the Flying Phoenix practitioners around here have experience with David Berceli's Tension & Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), or some other type of exercises that activate spontaneous shaking and tremors? Any seasoned FP practitioner knows how the FP energy releases tension and causes spontaneous shaking. It would be sensible synergy if releasing tensions through other means enhanced the FP healing mechanism. I started a routine of first having many standing FP exercises in row, followed by 20 minutes of TRE, and then supine Monk Holding Pearl for rest for at least 10 minutes. It seems to me that the TRE's deep release of tension is amplifying the benefits of FP healing energy and I feel abundant vitality after practice. Can anyone confirm or invalidate this hypothesis through their own experience?

I didn't imply any exclusivity. Chinese IMA was an excellent reference point in this context because of its history and wide spread, and this latter especially lends to the fact that budō inherited a lot from the Chinese fighting tradition and the Chinese cultural transmission of Tang dynasty, including Chan Buddhism. To add relevance, my teacher can see people's bhumi accomplishments directly through photographs. It kind of helps that many past Chinese masters have had themselves photographed in their old age at the peak of their spiritual development. I find this a very romantic view. Such romanticism was also what I was criticizing about. If you wished to train directly the non-dual mind, then why would you compromise it by going through another gate first? Cooking can be a gate, gardening (tree gong) can be a gate, and carpentry can be a gate. Even martial arts can be a gate, but is there anything inherently superior in that in comparison to the former three suggestions? Or you can go directly to the non-dual and forget about needless gates and their side paths. It's cost effective to turn everything outside of direct cultivation to support the cultivation project, but it's still the most cost effective approach to do direct cultivation instead of framing it into another context. Nothing else comes even close. My comments and inquiries about the two non-dualities were very specific and certainly not trivial. To give an example, in mind's non-duality even dzogchen masters have difficulty separating between alaya-consciousness and the actual open awareness, which is where most get stuck. It's okay if you don't want to discuss these advanced topics and then dismiss my line of thought with a silly non-sequitur and ad hominem combination, but this could have been a place to start mapping the actual science of awakening(s) and why IMA are supposed to be either good or bad at them. It could have been interesting to have that conversation.

Wow, an actual list. You must be very eager to give due credit. How have you verified these awakenings for a fact? What is an awakening to you anyway? My current Buddhist teacher has plenty of experience in budō and its different styles. He was very direct in telling me that even in those circles which traditionally emphasize awareness and meditative aspects of training a real awakening is very rare. After the first awakening, further spiritual development in terms of opening bhumis towards the original nature of mind is virtually nil. I am not sure how this generalizes to Chinese internal martial arts context because their training philosophy focuses more on energy development than plain awareness. Some of my previous IMA masters have spoken of "no mind", but their conception and application of it was a travesty of what I later discovered in Vajrayana Buddhist practice. It's a pivotal question to ask how well do the IMA masters compare to the standards of Vajrayana and dzogchen masters in awareness training. My teacher has practiced Yiquan, and based on our discussion I think he has some real insight on the Chinese IMA scene and implied that he was not at all impressed with it. It should be clear that he is very serious about Enlightenment and attaining it and that his standards are really high. This is a bit of side subject to the topic, but I wish to ask nevertheless: Is it possible that all martial arts are poorly fitted to developing non-duality of mind and gaining awakenings (satoris and kenshos), but instead may serve well in reaching for the non-duality of energy? The dzogchen tradition separates these two developments in their own phases because mind's non-duality deals with the transparency of bodymind and cleansing its extra-ordinary diamond channels, while the energetic non-duality involves the bodymind's luminosity and transforming its ordinary channels. Apparently it's a wise and efficient design to do separate these and focus on either at a time. Martial arts are firstly about power (yang), but the wisest traditions understand that emptiness (yin) cannot be neglected without affecting the other. If there is no power as a result, then what was the purpose of training for confrontations? "Know thyself" is a virtuous adage and hints that awareness too provides some indirect power because it brings stability. Still it cannot be mistaken that all things martial relate to power first and foremost. Speaking generally from what I have seen and experienced, it seems that training power and energy distracts from training pure and open awareness. Energetic training may give you uncommon abilities like remote sensing and healing, but it's not the genuine non-duality of mind or reduced self-grasping that is attained. A genuine humility is good and may get your feet back to the ground, but it's not a proper substitute for the non-self of awareness and cutting through all delusions. Same goes to discovering bliss and unconditional love through the usual energy body unfoldings such as all the chakras opening and kundalini awakening: close, but no cigar. It's still impermanent and illusory. Like a fist in your face or a foot in your groin. I still respect and love IMA, but I guess I have become very cynical about their limitations.

Hi awarenessrules. It's great to hear about your good results. Keep it up and practice steadily. The general guideline is to end each meditation with the three deep breaths, even if you intend to do another soon after. I think it's also recommended to have a gap of 2-5 minutes before starting another meditation to have your energy settle first. Doing so would get you better results.

The Chinese title for Flying Phoenix Heavenly Healing Chi Meditations is given as Fei Feng San Gung. I believe that San Gung is a dialectal variant of the better known term Shen Gong which translates as work with mind/spirit.

I would like to give my early impressions about the Flying Phoenix system which I started learning through a Skype lesson with Sifu Terry in the beginning of December. Since then I have learned DVDs 1 & 2 completely and 7 partially, and already got the rest of the series for advancing soon into more advanced standing meditations. It had caught my eye on this thread that there seemed to be something quite exotic and fascinating about the Flying Phoenix. There were mentions of divine origin, blue energy and aura, spontaneous jumping of healing energy for others held in positive regard, naturally achieving dhyana-samadhi, moving in very slow motion, nerves and brains getting cleansed, cumulative benefits for continuous practice, virtually no requirements for focus or thinking while practicing, breath sequencing, and not fitting into any model of energy channels. These unfamiliar aspects made me a bit cautious about the system and its supposed effects, but I'm glad that I persisted in my curiosity. The user feedback was also clear that it only brought benign healing effects and bliss like a great art is supposed to do, and then Sifu Terry had given a good impression of being a caring and capable keeper and organizer. It's certainly not trivial to produce a high-grade internal arts program for public consumption. Very few traditional internal arts masters engage their community in a casual manner on a forum like Sifu Terry does. There was no difficulty learning the meditations and they worked directly out of the box, which is remarkable as most arts have a threshold for getting into the mind training aspects first, altough some could say that this is substituted with learning the breath sequencing method. My first impression when trying the system was that the exercises really have a flavor of authentic meditation and not mere strange calisthenics and stretchings to manipulate energy. Being able to take time and relax into the smooth slowness is definitely the way I like it. If I tried that with ordinary types of qigong, it would just aggravate feelings of sickness because slowing down would uncomfortably condense and hinder the ordinary energy flow. The uniqueness and gentleness of FP energy was already perceptible on the first session when Sifu Terry taught me three meditations. To give an example, Monk Holding Pearl makes the familiar Wu Ji posture much more fun than any typical jing training in Taijiquan because the jing is so coarse and heavy in comparison. Getting an oversaturation of that type of energy is not pleasant at all, so it's amazing that FP energy only saturates in cool bliss and refreshing vitality. Later on it became clear that habitually training FP begins restoring a sense of physical strength that I haven't experienced in a long time. For long and often I have stuggled with pain and nervous agitation that is related to an unfortunate energy sickness, but how the FP energy works is miraculous in that it soothes the neurological conditions, takes out the pain, and really disregards any possible energetic blockages. It's as if none of those existed, but instead I feel increasing bliss and well-being. It's strange and wonderful how the experience of energy in body follows the movement of hands in the vertical plane, which is a complete departure from other types of gigong I have learned and couldn't benefit much from. This is why I have now learned to recognize its complete dismissal of energy circuits and how energy is supposed to flow as the most important and distinguishing feature of the Flying Phoenix system. It makes the art innately safe and applicable to recovery without a master's supervision. I can also offer some critical views on the system, although all these are well known already. Some other systems are more lenient on how they should be practiced, but there generally are trade-offs between different arts. Everything takes its own time, effort, and right circumstances. My personal beef is mostly that it takes a bit time to get into meditations because of breath sequencing, safety requirements during the practice itself are stern, and there is a lack of freedom and playfulness because adherence to the form and slow speed is mandatory for this specific energy. Timing can also be an issue because the nature of cumulative energy really rewards long sessions. Overall these are small issues really. Sifu, I would like to ask you about the internal mechanism of the other GMDW arts that you preserve: Red Lotus Flying Phoenix, Advanced Flying Phoenix, 10 000 Buddhas, and Eight Sections of Energy Combined. Does any of these arts work similarly outside of energetic circuits and channels like the basic Flying Phoenix, or do they or some of their parts fit the more ordinary models of how energy mainly follows specific channels and structures? I have asked a bit and looked around and found that the same feature may not entirely apply for all of the other GMDW arts such as Sunn Yee Gung which according to Sifu Garry's labels on his Youtube videos is a spiritual alchemy (neidan) practice with many applications. I would suspect the same is true for most kungfu systems because their basic training focuses on the physical body and activating its natural pathways, although their advanced training might go well beyond these. Thank you Sifu for your time and expertise and making the Flying Phoenix system available!

I recall these two instances. Please enjoy!

This is just my conversational style: "Let US make the terms clear" in which we all should be actively considering whether these premises are any good. It's an open invitation for anyone to challenge the perspective provided and not an inviolable imperial decree. Usually I put a bit more polish and tact in, but sometimes there are simple slips. It's really unfortunate that it's instantly viewed as arrogance and generalizations on the behalf of others.

I agree it was poor way of bringing it up as it really needed a necessary caveat that it reflects my own understanding how karma and merit relate, and not any exact wording from an established source. Since this type of feedback is not isolated, I think I am going to desist from writing any more on the public fora. My deficiencies as a person should not be the one and only reason to prompt a sarcastic reply. If there is a disagreement with the proposed definitions, then these should be discussed instead of issuing boring ad hominems.

Whether we have the capability to forgive leads to the questions what is or should be forgiven. Is it our or their selfing habit that is forgiven, or the unfortunate circumstance of someone being hurt? Even the Enlightened beings still experience pain and uncomfortable emotions and can even make mistakes such as losing balance while walking. They just don't abide in them and create selfing habits out of the circumstances. Forgiveness never was about eliminating karma, but precisely about consciously substituting bad with good in a world in which favorable conditions wax and wane often very unpredictably and fast. Neither mercy and compassion are directly dissolving karma, but who could deny that they are Buddhist teachings? Let's make the terms clear. Merit relates to doing good without self-grasping, while karma relates to self-grasping. Karma was the deepest teaching of the Gautama Buddha, but not the only one. We all have the capability to react with either positive or negative way in merit, and selfish or selfless way in karma. These two moods are orthogonally complementing each other. Being greedy for merit is good despite the fact that we in samsara naturally engage in subtle forms of self-grasping along with it. Thus merit remains incomplete and it's not enough to accumulate merit, but it is what we need to do along the way for the continuity of favorable conditions and will naturally persist in doing after realizing the complete non-duality of mind. Karma can be finished and done with, merit not. Ownership of karma is an interesting topic. The initiative for renouncing self-grasping must begin with each of us, and then the Buddhas can in fact help reduce the karmic ownership. This is why there exists tantric Buddhism where Enlightened beings are called to intervene and help us with our karma. First we must volunteer to dissolve it.

Could a Buddha ever refuse to forgive someone? Of course a Buddha wouldn't need forgiveness for personal benefit, but it would remain the right thing to do. The same deal for thankfulness and other benevolent and self-sacrificing moral dispositions. There is always merit in doing the right thing. When an Enlightened person does so, the good action's benefits overflow and rain upon all the sentient beings because a Buddha is already pure of such attachments. To me it reads a bit foolish to downplay the importance of right morality and doing good in the work and teachings of Buddhas. If a Buddha doesn't forgive everone and be merciful to everybody, then who does these acts of complete selflessness and non-judgementality? A samsaric being?

"To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to purify one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas" (Dhammapada 183). Is forgiveness avoiding evil? Yes. Is forgiveness cultivating good? Yes. Is it purification of one's mind? No, if we understand that term in the pure non-dual sense. Yet forgiveness does facilitate precepts and necessary conditions for training leading to mind purification happening at all. I think we need to make a difference between relative vision and absolute vision. Buddha's teaching, the Dhamma, promotes right discernment for relative experiences which we continue to constantly live through in our reincarnate state. The Enlightenment is not about dismissing basic moral tenets or becoming detached from them, but embodying them and using their merits to the fullest to the benefit of all. Isn't this just essential bodhichitta?

Good timing because I was thinking of creating a similar topic a while ago. Which type of pranayama exercises are you referring to? I would love to learn more. Sifu Terry has written following: This got me wondering how does the mind training aspect work in other breath sequence systems. Are they completely permissible like the description above or do most systems require some specific focus? Leif shared that in Sunn Yee Gung its training requires developing listening skills which implies purposeful mindfulness or awareness development. There are different things referred to as the awakening in spiritual context. Speaking from the Buddhist perspective of awakening, it requires the development of insight. I am not sure if the Flying Phoenix or samadhic meditations are conductive for that as stand alone practices.

Hindu art in the general sense is preserved all around the world. Did you know that the Indo-Europeans kept much of the same techniques and styles of bright coloring as you would expect from their Indian cousins? The Greeks later passed the skills on to Orthodox Christian iconography. http://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/more-colorful-ancient-greece-pigment-proves-classical-statues-were-once-021409

Yes, this was a good example of the long road to the natural state of mind. No, I am not experimentally familiar with this approach. I have received the webcast transmission from Namkhai Norbu and tried to do atiyoga the way he taught it, but it wasn't to my liking. Apparently only very few have gained much development from this type of atiyoga teaching, and the reason for that might be that it would need to have additional zhine practice to make it stable and deep. I only got a clear and powerful experience of the natural state once I tried guruyoga and because of this success there is no reason now to look elsewhere.

Thank you phil. I saw it best to start a new topic where this discussion should carry on.

Highly cultivated beings are keenly following the rule of respecting free will, so generally these direct introductions require prior consent, hence following some instructions and agreeing to the procedure is required. It also depends on what you require as "instructions". Some of them require more initial dedication and "effort" to realize the original state, but some just prepare the student for a passive part. If you don't relax and allow, then how could you attain a pure state where blockages dissolve? In Flying Phoenix Qigong the tradition says its founder Fung Dou Dak received the art through a spontaneous vision from a goddess. People receiving unasked for mystical visitations and visions have a long recorded history. Shaktipats and blessings, if these qualify as catalysts for "deeper states of being", can also happen whether wanted or unwanted, but there are karmic conditions and merit required in all these.

Hello everyone. The Flying Phoenix system seems very unique in that you don't have to keep mental silence while practicing it. Instead you get the same benefit regardless whether your mind kept thinking or resting. Honestly, I wouldn't have guessed that such a wonderful method could exist. Does aynone know whether there are other Qigong, Neigong, or meditation systems out there, perhaps in GM Doo Wai's tradition, that have this same feature? I tried searching, but there was no direct confirmation besides of some other GMDW arts using breath percentages.