sean

damn you bums! surely someone here just ordered the $1.95 used paperback copy i was briefly waffling on. i just snagged the $3 one though, thanks for the recommendation. i've also been enjoying jenny's spontaneous adjustment qigong. sean

thanks for sharing. i wonder if this is a cheaper paperback version: http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Break-Refresh-Unleash-Creativity/dp/0717127745/ also, have you read this one? http://www.amazon.com/Shaking-Medicine-Healing-Ecstatic-Movement/dp/1594771499/ sean

yes, it's a bit esoteric. far top right dropdown > my settings > profile > change profile information > profile information > member title. sean

I'm bummed my post got killed on the HT forum. I didn't even get a chance to read Keith's last reply. Basically I asked if the Lower Cauldron can be thought of as the space enclosed by the The Little Orbit whereas the Lower Tan Tien is more a locus of energy within that space that can be at varying locations. ie: Sean

i'm always struck by how similar this is to the kabbalistic tree diagram. sean

please stay (loosely) on topic. i've moved the off-topic arguing to the pit. sean

THE BEST RESOURCES TO LEARN CHINESE Last updated: 2010-12-18 CHINESE DICTIONARIES: nciku http://www.nciku.com/ Chinese dictionary with many features. Chinese handwriting recognition (lookup characters by drawing them with your mouse). zdic.net http://www.zdic.net/ Chinese dictionary. The English is terse but useful. What's amazing is the Chinese part. It basically collapses all the major dictionaries of the ages [first one was compiled around 500 BC] into one giant dictionary. (thanks Owl) Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Lindict/ Chinese dictionary that covers classical Chinese terms (thanks exorcist_1699) LEARN CHINESE ONLINE: Skritter http://www.skritter.com/ Learn Chinese characters. Practice writing characters, stroke order. Grades you. italki http://www.italki.com Learn Chinese online by connecting with other students and teachers on this social network. ActiveChinese http://www.activechinese.com/index.jsp Hello! Mandarin http://www.hellomandarin.com ChinesePod http://chinesepod.com CHINESE LANGUAGE TOOLS: Pleco http://www.pleco.com Learn Chinese with this amazing iPhone app. (thanks Todd) Dictionary, Flashcards, plus lookup Chinese characters in real time with your camera. Check this out: Pinyin Sogou Cloud http://pinyin.sogou.com/cloud This is a browser extension that lets you type pinyin into any text field and it looks up matching Chinese characters for you on the fly. Zhonwen https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kkmlkkjojmombglmlpbpapmhcaljjkde Translate Chinese characters instantly in your Chrome browser with this instant Chinese-English popover Chrome extension. CHINESE LANGUAGE ARTICLES: How to Learn Fluent Mandarin Chinese http://thelinguafranca.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/how-to-learn-fluent-mandarin-chinese/ Good article on learning Mandarin Chinese with lot's of other resources mentioned. Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html In case you want to see if you can be talked out of this treacherous path of learning the Chinese language. Please reply and add your favorite Chinese language learning resources. Barring a sudden attack of complete laziness (which I am prone to) I will continue to edit and organize this first post here with the best resources for learning Chinese. What are some of your favorite books, courses, tools for learning Chinese? Best, Sean

I've decided to dip the tip of my right big toe in the giant ocean that is the Chinese language. I'm still not sure what exactly I am getting myself into, especially after reading Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard BUT -- I'm going to brave it. At least for the next 3-6 months I'm going to play with Mandarin Chinese at home and if I fall in love then sometime in the next few years I will plan to move to Taiwan for a year or two and do a full immersion. In the meantime, I'd like to start organizing resources for learning Chinese. Please post your favorite Chinese language learning resources and I'll add the best ones to the list above. Sean

for what it's worth, just got an email from folks over at energy arts. looks like they're opening up the "bagua mastery program" again to sell the last few copies, or until monday, whichever happens first. then it will close down for a year. http://www.energyarts.com/offer/bagua-mastery-program-launch $50 off coupon: taobums88 sean

well, there is also the internal environment that is inherited, e.g., genetics, prenatal imprints energetic structures, ancestral qi, etc. and then zooming out a little further, my hunch is that if we were to conduct a study somehow, where we took a statistical sample of the behavior of the inhabitants of any city at the level of zoom where it can be said that, ok, all of these people in this community here have close to exactly the same circumstances, i personally think the results of that study would show a (potentially shocking) uniformity of mindsets, beliefs, behaviors. imo it's just very rare that individuals behave with any significant level of distinction to their surroundings, and especially their peer groups. i think this is even wired into our biology to some degree. humans are social creatures, we literally need relationships, to go against our tribe meant ostracization and near certain death at best. one of my mentors says, "you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with". more than often an entirely undistinguished average of these five people's beliefs, attitudes, interests, diet, weight, income, etc. that is why this is so striking: in context, it's a nearly incomprehensible statistical aberration. i feel this is why many traditions strongly emphasize sangha, spiritual friends, taking refuge. yes. and fwiw i've been personally burned at least a few times along the way by failing to recognize this. the importance of the sometimes difficult work to bring Clarity (which is always present, obvious, beneficial and requires nothing) into my actual structures, allowing full penetration into manifestation, my bones, my blood, my words, my actions, my choices. hell yeah! sean

by environment i meant not just external environment but also gross internal environment, e.g., connectomes, brain chemistry, energetic structures/health, etc. "mindset and belief structures", i think that is a bit deeper (grosser) than what i meant, i would say that these do have an impact. what i see as more negligible are people's conscious reports on what they claim to believe about the world. i think a far better indicator of someone's health is to look at their environment and particularly the impact they have on their environment, e.g., their body, their home, their relationships. yeah, i think i mostly agree with you here. but take a more average scenario. take a boy that is raised in a crime-ridden slum, fed terrible nutrition developmentally, inundated with corrupt institutions, repeatedly let down by parents, authority figures, physically abused and exposed to regular trauma, sudden violence, etc. he did not create the environment he was born into it. and this is going to have an enormous impact on the range of beneficial perspectives that spontaneously arise in his awareness. telling him that it's his beliefs that are creating his reality, that he consider his internal orientation to preferences, or something abstract, i think that is really low-leverage. higher leverage, imo, is to get him out of that neighborhood, better apartment, job at a cool video store, membership to a boxing gym with grounded instructors that have a bit of wisdom, etc. "god can only appear to a starving man as bread". this seems like an empowering view. i dig it. sean

welcome Jenny, great to see you here. i am still meditating on the koan of 忙. sean

a path with a heart by jack kornfield the power of focusing by ann weiser cornell the great stillness: tao meditation volume 2 by bruce frantzis lao-tzu's taoteching translated by red pine meditating with the body by reginald ray sean

fantastic post, otis. i think the (understandable) concern with this "its all ok, just start by accepting what is" view is that these concepts can be latched on to and used to justify immorality. imo though, the deeper problem is not that a "wrong" idea of how to behave is believed and should be replaced with a better one. i think the root imbalance in so-called immoral behavior is mostly environmental and has stunningly little to do with our consciously articulated conceptual viewpoints. the "i" that thinks it is making rational decisions and controlling our behavior is often severely deluded about it's actual power to control anything whatsoever. in fact this could be the most primitive fear of "i", just how absurdly little control it has to stop us from carrying out a destiny, the characteristics of which are already rather frightenly in full motion regardless of our conceptual preferences. the sense of "i" is just one tiny stream in an extremely wide, complex parallel processor, co-arising along with all the variables of an internal environment (brain, cns, body, senses, etc) and an external environment (sights, sound, air quality, feng shui, etc) and ultimately extending outward into the entire manifest universe. imo, immoral behavior is much much more a product of the health of this environment than the conceptual stories a co-arising self tells itself about why it is doing something. the sense of self doesn't even really know why it's doing anything anyway, it just tells stories often after the fact. the idea that the primary causal factor in some human act of atrocity could be that this person's conscious mind latched on to a concept like "its all ok, preferences are natural" and used it to rationalize something has very little basis in reality imo. it reminds me of this richard dawkins documentary where he is asking this priest why is it necessary to believe in god. the priest says, well without a belief in god and the guidelines of morality people would just rape and kill each other with abandon. dawkins responded, but i have no desire to rape and kill people! do you? is your belief that a god forbids these acts really the only reason you don't do these things? the very compulsion to engage in attachment to justification for extreme behavior preceded the attachment and the behavior. the entire mess co-arose in an already pre-existing toxic environment. with or without the conceptual justifications, in a toxic environment imbalance manifests. for me, i think it's from this understanding that a more driven sense of engaged unconditional love emerges. i am not separate from this world and there are innumerable beings suffering and more or less trapped in viscious cycles of imbalanced behavior inside toxic environements they have very little hope of pulling themselves out of on their own. this is also the deeper meaning of "cultivation" to me. literally rearrange the structures of our environment as if we were gardening ourselves. i can't force a plant to grow, but i can create the proper conditions for a "happy accident". the most important conditions are nonconceptual: environmental, nutritious soil, sunlight, water, etc. anyway, just another perspective. this is all so so conceptual, haha, i don't even see how it even matters very much. i would say eating healthy nutrition food and meditating daily has hundreds of times more impact on a persons behavior than whether they agree with me on any of this. additionally, to argue directly against my own point briefly, if you are familiar with spiral dynamics, i actually think it may be possible that for humans developmentally operating below orange vmeme, they just may need and benefit from a set of decent commandments! imho by regularly resting in clarity beyond concepts and being receptive to allowing nonconceptual clarity to penetrate and potentially alter one's entire environment and sense of self. imho same answer as above, as this strengthens our own internal resonance with what is natural, which in turn near-automatically creates the space in our movements to set a beneficial example for others and resolve conflicts creatively as they arise. great post stig. sean

yes! i agree with your disagreement. hah. really this is just what i was thinking when i wrote "this is an incredible question, i should just stop here". it's may be more useful to just keep sincerely asking "how could a limited human form express the unlimited?" and see where that goes. all of this stuff just endlessly folds on itself. pops. folds on itself. pops. it's fun to play conceptual tao bums hacky sack with kindred spirits on the way. i just learned a new word. awesome. thank you. yes, can see this. i think what i meant is that the source of intention is Tao, not that Tao itself has intention, e.g., in a similar way that the source of manifestation is Tao and yet Tao is empty and unborn. yes, this is what i was pointing to with "is it really ALL ok?". i don't like to talk about this too much because it seems to freak a lot of people out. too much space. space without boundaries. i think the (understandable) fear is, "without defined boundaries i might do something really bad". and maybe that is true for some, i don't know. [edit - yes, this concern is already manifesting in this topic] beautiful. terrifyingly beautiful. well said. sean

thanks, i think i would like to own a horse someday. this one is from when i lived in costa rica. tremendous creatures. terrestrial dragons. i can relate. here is a bigger picture. your horses are beautiful. looking forward to spending time with you one day.

this topic is turning into a multi-layered koan sandwich, i love it. here is a view to explore. the absolute source of pure intention and complete inclusion is non-human and transpersonal (Tao). and yet through complete inclusion, Tao is also expressed as human. in a relative sense, human is inherently limited from expressing truly inclusive acts. how could a limited human form express the unlimited? that's actually an incredible incredible question, oh man, i should just stop here. but just to stick with the relative logic here to make a pointless point, a human form can't really express complete inclusiveness. a human chooses oolong to sip and excludes the pu-erh. a human sits in one chair and excludes the others. a human listens to one person speak and excludes the rest. a human makes choices that lead to a certain kind of life and excludes other options. humans can't help but express in extraordinarily exclusive forms. this is our lot. and then also human is not in the slightest way separate from Tao. there is a deep "connection". connection is too limiting really. it brings to mind an umbilical cord when a better image is the relationship all matter has with the space between atoms. there is no separation. so this fact is already there and it's only being ignored to varying degrees. (and this ignorance itself is actually another strange koan, because really it can't be ignored at all, we only sort of think it can, which is just plain weird.) anyway, it doesn't even care, it doesn't force anything. and if this mystery moves through us, through this connection, well i'll just say personally, for me it feels like a kind of dance between resting as Tao that truly is beyond preference and absolutely inclusive, and then on the other hand returning as the appearance of a comically flawed and entirely silly human being that will never get it right, ever, period, but also can't get it fundamentally wrong either. in this way i see no paradox between expressing myself as a human through my naturally arising preferences while simultaneously retaining a core recognition that Tao does not share my preferences in an absolute sense. fwiw, i will also say i think the latter recognition is important and naturally gives rise to holding preferences with more lightness. otherwise problems around preferences surely do occur because now they are not just naturally arising, like, hell yeah i fucking love sushi, let's go here! instead there is a kind of fixated contraction around a view, e.g., speaking personally i find myself feeling stuck, defensive, thinking my preference must have some kind of intrinsic validity. bleh, bad trip. sean

hah, thank you marblehead. i did hesitate on that last line but i kept it because, well, what is a forum without controversy? i like what you wrote and i think i can feel where you are coming from. yes, the Way does not really fail, as failure itself does not really fail. failure itself does not really fail because failure is simply being what it is. how could failure itself fail? really only by not-failing and abandoning it's nature. which would arguably not be a failure at all. but in another sense, the Way does fail, as the Way is not separate even from so-called failure. does this digest better? sean ps - i'm not just totally making all this up as i go along (only mostly) Whispered words are natural a gale doesn't last all morning a squall doesn't last all day who else could make these only Heaven and Earth if Heaven and Earth can't make things last what about Man thus in whatever we do let those on the Way be one with the Way let those who succeed be one with success let those who fail be one with failure be one with success for the Way succeeds too be one with failure for the Way fails too Taoteching, verse 23, translated by Red Pine

this looks familiar somehow. there is a sense in which i feel even indulging the impulse to take seriously an endeavor to differentiate between what is an is not in accordance with tao ends up stirring more occlusions to recognition of TAO then simply letting that whole trip settle untouched. simply move spontaneously and course-correct. or better, see this as what is happening regardless, even if i want it to be otherwise. spontaneous movement occurs. course-correction occurs. on and on. regardless of any personal preferences i might strive for, such as to be without preference, it appears my body will always have preferences. a healthy hand moves involuntarily away from a fire. should it be another way? still there is tao that encompasses both preference and not-preference and without preference. is it really ALL ok? i can't imagine anything greater and more humble than Tao, which is precisely what is always already happening, even when i think i can't see it. the felt-sense that my personal suffering must clearly mean something is wrong spins a story that Tao has left the building. it sure feels like that. but is that story true? i don't know. "be one with failure, for the Way fails too". sean

fantastic. thanks! Sean

Thanks, I'm actually thinking of moving to Asheville, NC soon-ish, so that would not be far at all. Is there a website or contact info for this group? Sean

Prince, great post. Thanks for the insights. Happy to keep hearing confirmation that Bruce and Yang Yusen are decent teachers, and that I am connecting with valid sources. Between Bruce's home study course and the gao bagua material I feel like I'm getting access to some solid fundamentals. But I definitely want to expose myself to a good live training as soon as I can. Even just to have fun practicing this stuff with others! Sean