doc benway

Very nice to have you here Lu! Welcome and I look forward to your contributions.

That's a lot of periods, rain! Welcome pacala! I hope you find what you are looking for.

I think I'm actually coming around to the ABBA love! This video has a brief but inspiring performance near the end. ApiPS6GAy_0&NR=1

Yes... My apologies I do mean well

There seems to be a tendency to end discussions with an inflexible statement of opinion. Could that be a sign of attachment? I have no intention of fanning a flame war, just trying to be helpful. 南 無 阿 彌 陀 佛

Well said Stig, there are an awful lot of PERIODs on this thread. What does it mean when we add the word Period to a statement? Is there something we can learn about ourselves from that? To me, this is worth investigating. It's much more interesting than watching someone do Qigong and (with all due respect Patrick) much better than listening to Abba.

I don't know the gentleman but I was not terribly impressed with his old frame video excerpts. Some people excel at scholarship, others excel at martial arts (including Qigong, Neigong, meditation), very few excel at both.

Some gurus are truly awake, others are simply opportunists. All of them remain human and imperfect and subject to weaknesses as dictated by their physiology and conditioning. The more awakened one is, the less conditioning affects behavior yet it is not completely absent until death. Gurus are good for showing you a door and pointing out your delusions. There is no need for them to be perfect to do that. You must open the door and live on the other side. You must let them go just like all of the other illusions. Attachment to a guru, ANY GURU, is missing the point entirely. It is just as bad as any other attachment or addiction. You must ultimately stand on your own two feet and be. The perfect person is a construction of the mind. The only perfect people are those who we read about in stories handed down for 2,000 years. Only corpses are perfect, the living have flaws.

Matter is a human description of one aspect of energy that is experienced by the human organsim through the sense of touch. Color and light is energy experienced through vision, sound through hearing, and so forth. Sort of like the 3 blind men describing an elephant but at a different level. If you deconstruct matter you ultimately are left with nothing but energetic subatomic particles. Even those particles are constantly being deconstructed to less and less "matter-like" representations. Our scientific model is getting closer to a pure energy description (eg Superstring theory, Quantum theory) which would be completely consistent with many Eastern descriptions of the universe (not to mention my own empiric experience through meditation). We get too hung up on words and concepts. Good advice Patrick - enjoying it is best. Patrick - nice discussion. We're told nothing travels faster than light but what about Bell's inequality and other similar results more recently regarding photon interaction? We certainly don't understand it all. Science will forever have limitations, namely - the limitation of rational human intellect.

Zhan Zhuang just refers to standing and can be any posture. Yi Quan incorporates many different postures. San Ti iSh is the primary standing posture used in Xing Yi Quan. The back foot is open ~ 45 - 60 degrees. The front toe points forward. The front hand index fingertip is directly in front of the nose and directly over the front large toe. The rear hand is palm down with the thumb pointing at dan tian. 70% of the weight is on the back foot and the both knees are bent. At least that's how I practice San Ti Shi. You start with maybe 5 minutes per day and work up to 30 minutes per side per day. It's most important to understand song and relax the shoulders without collapsing the arms. Here's a video I just stumbled on that looks pretty close to how I practice. BMlDi7h0viM&feature=related

With all due respect, matter is energy. That relationship is well established beyond conjecture.

I love Toots - he's great live and has been touring a lot in the last few years, definitely a show to catch! Here's someone that caught my ear, Bebe: rRuwd4dn4dw

AHA! I thought you knew Ramana It just shines right through! I'd love a copy, please.

One of the most illuminating books I've ever read was Osho's When The Shoe Fits, a discussion of several parables of Zhuangzi. He did a follow up called the Empty Boat which was nearly as good and his book on Liezi writings was quite good as well. I've heard this clip before - I like it.

RAOTFLMAO I love it! I wish I would have had the opportunity to make a Woops like that... brilliant! I guess his skill can be seen by the fact that you didn't mention any fractures...

I would distill the "goal" of Daoism down to two Chinese words: 無為 Wu Wei One succinct English translation might be - to not go against the natural course of things Just my view, many others have a different and equally valid opinion There's a nice discussion about Wu Wei on wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei

You're in good company - it's human nature. But is it conducive to really learning and really living? We have this tendency to compare everything new with the already known. That reduces the new to a preconceived and conditioned idea that makes it more managable. But what does that actually do for us? It's great when we encounter something threatening but how valuable is it when speaking of Qi? When it comes to Qi, an hour of meditation, Qigong, or Taiji practice is worth a year of scholarly research, IMO. This is why the Chinese speak of cultivating Qi rather than studying and understanding it. Qi is a skill to be cultivated, not a quantity to be hoarded or measured. It is a process, not a substance. Just my $.02.

You need to get your priorities straight, brother. Understanding the universe vs work...

I also find myself getting irritated by attempts to apply Western scientific terminology to a discussion of Qi. Rather than actually get attached to that whole discussion and identify with the feeling of irritation, I think this provides a very useful opportunity to look at myself. What is it about ourselves that makes us try to describe Qi in scientific terms? Is it our own discomfort with believing in something that does not lend itself to the scientific method? Are there other reasons? The Qi concept developed from an entirely different paradigm than the Western scientific method. The Western and Eastern paradigms really don't mix - are we afraid that one is right and the other wrong? Do they need to be mutually exclusive or consistent? Why should they? Why is it that I find it annoying that others like to use scientific terminology to discuss Qi? Is it a natural consequence of my conditioning? Is it that I have a lot invested in the scientific method as it relates to my profession? Perhaps I feel threatened by anything that compromises or misuses that method. Why should I feel threatened? What would it be like to be able to see through all that? I personally find this avenue of inquiry much more illuminating than a debate about whether Qi is electromagnetic energy, gravity, snake oil, or angel dust...

Check out the active thread on the topic if you haven't already. A number of us have described some of our ideas there and in similar previous threads in the past. If you are commited to developing an understanding of Qi, I'd strongly support your thought of trying Taiji. Qigong, Neigong, and Daoist meditation are also very good approaches. I don't think that anything written about Qi is of very much value. Your own experience of it is significant. Everything else is just intellectual indulgence, IMO. Not that intellectual stuff is necessarily bad, but it won't get you any closer to understanding or "cultivating" the real thing. If you start practicing in earnest, you'll see what I mean soon enough.

I don't know if these ideas come from your intellect or experience - threre is an important distinction there. Your post certainly sounds as if you've already seen through much of the illusion already, and yet you are still not quite certain. If you have understood the nature of labels and the real, why ask this question? Clearly Qi/Chi/energy are labels we put on something that is beyond labels... I don't mean to be preachy, but why not apply your earlier insight to the label Qi and the label Dao and all of the other labels. You already know the answers to your questions, I think. Taijiquan is a martial art that developed as a result of principles of mutual arising, yin/yang theory, and Daoist cultivation being applied to martial arts over the past few hundred years or so. Later on, simply practicing the form became popular as a moving meditation and a path toward mental and physical integration and cultivation. That's basically the story of Taijiquan as I see it. It's a wonderful discipline. Daoism is a religious, cultural, philosophical, mystical, and social tradition of extraordinairy complexity and variety that has it's roots in Chinese shamanism. It means many things to many different peoples. It's not easy to define or pin down. You clearly have a lot of insight into real truth. Methods like Kunlun, Taiji, and meditation will perhaps give some additional support to your insights. Some may be more exciting and others more subliminal. Beware getting attached to the path. It sounds as if you've come far through simple observation, awareness, and self inquiry. That is the true path. Everything else is gimmick and entertainment. Sooner or later you will return to the simple. Good luck in your search - you've already found what you're looking for, I think, but there's nothing more challenging than letting go of the quest... _/\_

I've seen good results with the following, very simple technique - it's probably a bit more effective when guided by a therapist or tape, but is worth trying on your own. Sit in a comfortable position, in a comfortable room with no distractions. No alarms, phone, animals... Feel yourself sitting there. Bring your attention first to your breath, in and out. Do not try to control, measure, or force it, just pay attention. How does your chest feel on inhalation? On exhalation? Feel your head, face, mouth, neck, and so on. Feel the air passing through your nose, mouth, throat... Feel the palms of your hands resting on your thighs or lap. Feel your bottom on the chair, your feet on the floor. Notice the smells around you, the sounds, the feel of the air on your skin. Pay very close attention to everything within reach of your awareness, really try to notice everything and the character of everything in great detail. It's amazing what one can notice when you take the time to be quiet and pay attention. See what happens... As you lose yourself in awareness, the anxiety may diminish. If not, turn that same quality of interested awareness on the bodily sensations that accompany or indicate the anxiety. Don't fight them, just be there and notice how it feels. Stay with it. Fighting or avoidance give those feelings strength. Acceptance shows you that it's nothing more than any other physical sensation. Intermittently, come back to the breath, the physical sensations and so on. Try this exercise once or twice a day for about 10-15 minutes. Good luck.

Buddy - as you know I'm a bit of a skeptic myself. I've recently been seeing a therapist who specializes in 'visceral manipulation' which is really an energy manipulation technique related to Reiki, somewhat. I haven't seen much improvement in my problem yet (ashtma, chronic cough, laryngitis and so forth) but I definitely feel some interesting stuff during the treatment...

What is the Truth of the scriptures which declare that if one sees the Self one sees God? How can one see one's Self? If, since one is a single being, one cannot see one's Self, how can one see God? So I think Ramana is challenging our use of language and imagery about "seeing" what we are, the Self or God. That is, how can one see oneself? How can the eyeball see itself (without a mirror, of course)? The nature of the Self is all-encompassing so that one cannot step outside of the Self to see it as a separate entity. It can only be experienced from within, somehow. That's how I interpret this part. Now the next bit: Only by becoming a prey to Him is very interesting. Is he saying that one must allow oneself to be completely 'gobbled up' by the self? Give oneself over to being absorbed into the Self and experience it from within? Something like that? Just my read on this - I'd love to hear from others... Mat? Mal? Lozen? White Tiger? We're getting there...

The author that has had the most profound impact on me is probably Jiddu Krishnamurti - To Be Human is a great starting point in exploring his ouvre. Another great book is Awareness by Fr. Anthony de Mello. There is nothing more profound and valuable than sitting but I also have a bit of an intellectual side that I like to indulge.