Trunk

This is a neo-western, not an enlightened movie … (hmmm… maybe I should change the title or tag/s of this thread) … anyway, ”Hell or High Water” movie 2016, Jeff Bridges, Netflix. Watching it for the 3rd or 4th time now. It keeps revealing itself. No clip does this movie justice. The trailer ruins it, portrays it totally wrong. The superficial plot is common: brothers go on a crime spree. The clips on youtube are over-actionalized ... HOWEVER, omg! This is a slow painting of a poor region of modern Texas; it’s a regional essay that reveals itself, colors, step by step. The dialog comes off as natural, but is beautifully and thoughtfully written. Every seemingly casual incident adds, The characters have depth, the character arcs vary, are of interest, and reveal themselves slowly. (vs, say, “Thor”, where we know the full character from the poster). The relationships are meaningful in themselves as well as figures to inhabit, colorize … maybe the main character, that local culture and time. The craft of this whole movie… just really wow well done.

~~~ admin statement ~~~ Staff sprinkling some groovy vibes and general rules reminder. - Trunk ~~~ chill out ~~~~~~~~

Kaihe, Welcome to TheDaoBums! - Trunk

ladies and gentlemen, Tom Waits!

Politics, "Current Events", provides a huge whole additional topic area to get into intense conflict about. (Sometimes it's smooth sailing, other times not.) Staff decided to make the whole area invisible to members by default, so members can focus on what this site is about: internal arts cultivation. If it were "read only" then all the political posts would still show up in everyone's "unread content" list. This way is much cleaner.

Yup. That, exactly; it's been done before. Sure, no problem. Just let me know for how long, whenever you decide.

Welcome to TheDaoBums! There are a number of good systems/teachers around these days ... More than one person can keep track of, but Two of the teachers of high quality that I'm aware of: Sifu Chris Matsu of Dragon Gate Sanctuary Damo Mitchell of the Internal Arts Academy cheers, Trunk

Nefarious activity is not welcome. Impossible to name all the variations…

It's fine for people to promote their ideas and products, here. (Sharing pirated material is discouraged.) This whole site is about discussing various such stuff, so you're good here. Activities NOT considered spam: all cool, quite welcome here - Having a thread about a product/method (yours' or someone else's, all good) - occasionally mentioning/discussing same in various threads - discussing same as a out-right torrent in your own Personal Practice Section What *IS* considered spam?: (basically: really going overboard) - constantly posting your product/school in Welcoming Section "hello" threads (occasionally, appropriately, is fine) - constantly posting same in every frickin' thread all over the board! - Trunk admin, TheDaoBums

I can tell you that I don’t want to consider another case right now. Consider us pooped for a while, please.

Welcome back @ChiDragon!

Oh, *yikes*. My personal pt of view has always been the opposite: nei gong = fundamentally a spiritual development, that is incidentally used in the asian martial arts. I'm not super clear on which schools are Daoist, and which aren't, but ... Just sort of this cultural linguistic stream: anywhere you see the term "nei gong" it's likely that an integral martial art is somewhere in that system. That does NOT mean that nei gong is inherently martial, and you can (and most modern people *do*) practice these (xing yi, bagua, tai chi) without martial emphasis, often with no martial application at all... maybe push-hands among friends, if you're lucky. THIS: There is really specific, effective body-changing in the daoist internal martial arts that is *very* helpful towards integrating transpersonal energies & awareness (spiritual stuff). A lot of consciousness junkies (meant in a good way, with a wink) get into this area for this reason exclusively. Trunk

Similarly, the martial part of all this does not interest me, either, however … You’ll find that in many internal arts traditions there is: - a medical~health aspect (hinduism: ayurvedic medicine, Daoism: Chinese medicine, etc) - body-wisdom-discipline (yoga, martial arts) - spiritual (meditation, etc) In the Daoist internal arts, often all three (martial, health~medical, spiritual) of the above are embodied in their ‘martial’ arts, specifically: - tai chi - xing yi - bagua Personally, I really have no interest in the martial aspects of any of those, but I’ve found the practice of them for other purposes to be very very rich. I think that’s a pretty common interest and experience of them, these days. So, when you look up neigong, that’s why you’ll find it very interwoven with the Daoist martial arts but - probably most of the time - people are learning & teaching those arts for the body-changing and conscious integration that is part of the spiritual path. cheers, Trunk

Concise (artsy, free) internal arts primer blog I wrote. Couple of pages especially pertinent: Hands stuff https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/2017/08/11/qi-sphere-beginning/ Pearl stuff https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/enso-emptiness-and-the-deep-centers/ You might look at "common fundamentals", also, to get super concise generic overview, could be applied to any system. https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/

The dual-concept of Forward & Reverse I find pertinent to this conversation... This thread started in January, and I posted a little essay about Forward & Reverse in March. ... and I blab on about it some more w/in that short essay. And there's a phrase from one of the Thomas Cleary books, Practical Taoism maybe? That phrase stuck with me. What do we do with our natural self expressions? I'd suggest that considered balance is ... the healthy middle way.

8 oz is hefty. Hopefully opens the door for KY residents who grow/buy locally to be less of a target. Here in the LA area I occasionally see someone burning down a joint right on the sidewalk. Vaping is, of course, more common. *REALLY* glad about the probable federal re-classification, and about the federal pardoning of previous offenders.

It varies a lot. I've done it for short meditations but, honestly, usually my kuji sessions are pretty short. Shortest: 2-3 breaths per hand position. It's surprisingly effective as a start-up, opening & getting things running. Like if the time I have for practice is running from my bed to bathroom to brush my teeth? That kind of tempo? Kuji-in is great. Tea-cups are great. And I've tried Kuji for a variety of more meditative lengths, but haven't explored that as much as I think I 'should'. I really get a lot out of short - moderate sessions with these

I do *just* the hand positions. Call me a dilettante, but I'm not interested in all of the tomfoolery around these mudras. The mudras themselves do so much. (And I have no experience with the other parts of kuji-in, so I am *not* speaking authoratively here - it all could be great and I just don't know it yet). from a little essay I wrote about kuji-in (online and has a pdf visual reference of the hand positions to assist in learning, at the bottom of the essay): cheers, Trunk

Welcome Bleys! Very nice of you to join. Take a look around. (There might be a rules section in here somewhere.) - Trunk

Pardon me for not reading all previous posts in thread, (I used to read & post on this topic incessantly years ago) just throwing in 2 cents, hopefully relevant. & cautions re: HT 'healing love' presentations/interpretations.

Stephen Chow at IMDb Actor - 72 movies Writer - 13 Producer - 13 Director - 11 ... he's been busy.

I recently bought some dvds I’ve been wanting for a while - Baskets - all 4 seasons. None of the clips on youtube do it justice. Zach G. called it “slapstick tragedy”, and that’s apt. There’s really great writing, real tragedy, relationships, and every one of those actors is so charmingly unusual. - Christopher Guest movies - best in show, a mighty wind, waiting for guffman. I was just watching Stephen Chow’s “Journey to the West” .. and I’m appreciating his movies again, in retrospect: kung fu hustle god of cookery … I think there must be a dozen or more that I don’t know about. There’s always a lot of real depth in Chow’s movies, mixed with the comedy.

@Nungali, Picture an over-weight Captain Obvious, and you’d be getting closer. I’d prefer just a badge, but tradition is tradition. - Trunk