NotVoid

Taomeow, I hear what you are saying, but I have participated in that kind of demo directly as well, and in my experience it does work as I described. I am not doubting Chen Zhonghua's skill in the slightest and he actually apears to be very skilled, but I was just pointing out that particular demo is more of a gimmick. IMO, it would likely be much more impressive for each indivudual student to push hands with the teacher a bit to experience directly what someone with higher skills in tai chi can do.

These sort of demos that some tai chi or other style martial arts teachers do where they have a line of people pushing them, with each person in the line pushing on the back of the person in front of them is not really 'fake', but it is kind of a gimmick. Sure, the person being pushed by the line of people has to have a good stable and correct stance and know how to direct force into the ground without collapsing their structure, so they have to have some degree of real skills in tai chi, but the whole thing of having a line of people pushing on someone like that to give the impression that one person is resisting the force of all those people combined is where the gimmick part is. Each person in the line has someone pushing on their back, except for the last person in the line, so each person in the line has to direct some counterforce back at the person who is pushing on their back to try to maintain their own balance and positioning in the line. The result is that much of the force in the line from person to person is not all combined together, but actually broken up and dissipated a fair bit from person to person in the line. The person being pushed by the line may be receiving somewhat more force than they would get from one person pushing them, but not really a whole lot more force than one person alone could deliver. For this reason I always tend to cringe a bit when I see a tai chi teacher doing that particular demo as it is more of an illusion to impress people than a demonstration of real skill. Some people who do 'hard style' brick breaking also have a trick that you can often spot if you watch for it, where they hold the brick or stone with one hand against a cement slab or rock surface and strike with the other hand, and they tilt the brick or stone being broken up on one end slightly just before they strike with their other hand, and this allows the brick or rock to be smacked against the hard surface a bit when they strike it, which makes it somewhat easier to break the brick or rock. It is still not that easy to break the brick or rock even doing it this way, but it is still a bit of a trick. I have seen some people break bricks and rocks laying on a flat hard surface without doing this trick, but that takes more power and skill. Regarding peng, my understanding is similar to what Chen Zhonghua said, that peng is something that is maintained in all movements of tai chi but it is not a 'hard' type of structure or force. Peng is a type of 'energy' or skill which develops more and more over many years of practice. Peng relates to the whole body being connected into a whole, so no matter how you push on a person the person being pushed does not collapse their overall structure or lose their center of gravity or stability. It is always like the whole body has this sort of expansive outward force no matter where you push on a person, but again this takes many years of practice to develop to higher levels like most anything in tai chi. Song is keeping the body relaxed and loose as much as you can with no unnecessary tension and still maintaining the correct form and structure and full body connection. So Chen Zhonghua's explanation seems in line to me with what many tai chi teachers say, but his way of expressing this is a bit different. Some tai chi teachers have indicated that true song is something that also must be developed over many years of practice, and when most of us who are not masters yet think we are relaxing there are actually much deeper levels of relaxation in tai chi to be discovered.

In regards to the video I posted above of the test where some people at the Rhine Research Center used some sensitive lab grade measurement equipment to measure photon emissions from a qigong practitioner, here is a link to the Rhine Research Center in case anyone is interested. http://www.rhine.org They are located in Durham, NC. Finding ways to demonstrate qi in a tangible way is generally not so easy, so this photon emission measurement test looks potentially quite promising.

It's all interesting stuff for sure. When scientists speak about light and measuring biophotons, they are typically talking about light in the range of infrared to ultraviolet. When a qigong practitioner talks about perceiving qi as light, we should understand that they are talking about their internal perception of qi as light or color, and this does not at all necessarily translate directly to actual measurable light in the range of infrared to ultraviolet. It is more likely that what is perceived as different colors of light in regards to qi in the mind's eye does not have a direct correspondence to actual measurable light in the infrared to ultraviolet range, although there could be a connection of some sort there. According to the studies mentioned in the article, the body apparently does emit very weak photons of light in various ways, but this is very low level emissions and would not seem to correspond directly to qi, which in an accomplished qigong practitioner can be very highly energetic. It does seem that when a person is emitting qi that there are various measurable physical effects that can happen such as increased photon emission, or emission of energetic particles and apparently other measurable physical effects as well, but what qi actually is itself appears to be something beyond the various individual physical effects that can occur or be measured with instruments. In other words, qi can apparently cause various measurable or observable physical effects, but what qi is itself seems to be as yet not understood.

I guess it goes without saying that we should be cautious of articles in new agey/popular type e-magazines which take bits and pieces from different 'scientific studies' of unknown quality, where they mix and match these bits and pieces and layer on their own interpretations on top of various excerpts. For example, the bit in the title of the article about the human body being 'made of light' has no basis at all in any of the referenced studies that I can see. Also, what is being discussed is ultra-weak biophoton emissions, which should help to put things in perspective. Many or even most of the studies may be sound, but you would really have to look into each individual study in detail and have some expertise in the subject being discussed to really be able to evaluate each individual study and really understand what those studies are discussing in a meaningful way. All that aside, it is interesting. Not all that much different from the concept that our bodies also have weak electrical and electromagnetic activity going on as well due to chemical/nervous activity in the body. Here is a video on a test that was done on a chi kung practitioner of some type attempting to emit higher than normal levels of biophotons into some lab test equipment designed for measuring photon emission. I think we should be careful to differentiate between what is said by the people who were actually conducting the test from the person who participated in the test, although the participant's comments are interesting as well to get her perspective on what was happening compared to the test results. The reason being that even though it might often be unintentional, people very often do tend to misinterpret things they do not fully understand, and sometimes people consciously or unconsciously 'reinterpret' things for their own purposes as well. In my opinion, even though this was just one test, this test is pretty interesting if you listen to what those who conducted the test had to say about the results. To put the results more into perspective however, it would be helpful to know how much biophoton emission varies depending on body temperature and temperature of the hands. For example, a person who can use intention to increase the temperature of their hands at will to some extent might increase biophoton emission from their hands to some degree or other, but it wouldn't necessarily have to do with chi. All that aside, I sometimes do 'see' little bursts of light coming from parts of my body especially when I am doing stillness qigong or meditation, and it is interesting that these bursts of light that I sometimes 'see' might possibly be detectable as photon emissions by very sensitive equipment.

We all have our own point of view and opinions and beliefs and ways of looking at things and doing things. Some things we may believe to be true, and other things we may believe to be false. The tao te ching can be interpreted in numerous ways, but since the tao te ching is supposed to have been very influential in the formation of later forms of 'taosim', the tao te ching should then provide us some hints as to what 'taoism', at least in part, really is about or supposed to be about. The following is just based my own interpretations and views, but anyway there may be some common ground amongst others in the following. The tao te ching seems to draw attention to an ultimate truth or ultimate reality which is inconceivable and unnameable; i.e., this ultimate truth or ultimate reality is beyond the reaches of the conceptual mind. The 'world' of our senses and conceptualizations is therefore not the 'ultimate reality'. Although the unnameable is beyond the reaches of the conceptual mind, all things arise from or are an 'expression' of this unnameable or 'tao'. Although this tao is beyond our conceptualization, the tao expresses 'itself' in all things with direction and purpose. This direction and purpose implies that there are clear and definite 'ways' within the enfolding of all things. Go against these ways in the phenomenological world and you go against 'tao', and this will likely bring undesirable results. Align with these natural ways and you and everyone else will reap benefit. Therefore the more we can identify and align our self with these natural ways, the more we benefit and the more we become 'in tune' with tao. The more we go against or interfere with these natural ways, the more we are 'out of sync' with tao and the results will be undesirable. That which brings us more in sync with tao or 'closer' to tao is beneficial, and that which puts us less in sync is not beneficial. So whether it be observation, philosophy, religion, ritual, prayer, physical or mental practices, geomancy, divination, yoga, meditation, etc., etc., if it brings you more in tune with the ways of tao or gives you some degree of direct experience with tao, it is beneficial, and if it brings you further from the ways of tao it is not beneficial. Also, another concept in the tao te ching would seem to indicate that the unnameable or inconceivable can apparently become to be directly experienced to some degree or other by turning one's attention completely away from the outward phenomenological world and 'holding to the one', i.e., putting the conceptual mind to rest and holding the attention 'inward'. There are passages here and there within the tao te ching that seem to possibly give hints or tips toward this purpose. Another interesting concept in the tao te ching is the notion that the sages of old existed well before Lao Tzu's time, and were possibly more prominent in those earlier times, or at least that this tradition existed long before Lao Tzu's time. This seems to imply that what Lao Tzu wrote about was actually a long standing tradition which had seemingly decayed to some extent by the time of Lao Tzu. So how does this all fit into the current popular views and classifications of 'taoism'?

I was considering this a little further. The number 9, being considered complete or of completion, also may hold the deeper meaning of being complete as in containing all things or containing all pemutations. When considering this, I also just noticed the following: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 45, and 4 + 5 = 9 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 x 9 = 362880, and 3 + 6 + 2 + 8 + 8 + 0 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9 Again, it would seem that this is indicating something of significance. I have the sense that this may potentially be pointing towards something much deeper, if we can only recognize it and grasp it ... Needs much more meditation practice...

As ChiDragon said, but also I think 9 is considered to be a number of completion or of being complete. Also 36 and 108 are considered special numbers in taoism as well. I am not sure of the full significance beyond these numbers adding up to 9. It would seem there is something of deeper significance with these two numbers. Also, something interesting I have noticed, is the following. I am not sure what exactly to make of it, but it is interesting. It conjures the image for me of structure within structure. 1 x 9 = 9 2 x 9 = 18, and 1 + 8 = 9 3 x 9 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9 4 x 9 = 36, and 3 + 6 = 9 5 x 9 = 45, and 4 + 5 = 9 6 x 9 = 54, and 5 + 4 = 9 7 x 9 = 63, and 6 + 3 = 9 8 x 9 = 72, and 7 + 2 = 9 9 x 9 = 81, and 8 + 1 = 9 10 x 9 = 90, and 9 + 0 = 9 11 x 9 = 99, and 9 + 9 = 18, and 1 + 8 = 9 12 x 9 = 108, and 1 + 0 + 8 = 9 13 x 9 = 117, and 1 + 1 + 7 = 9 14 x 9 = 126, and 1 + 2 + 6 = 9 15 x 9 = 135, and 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 16 x 9 = 144, and 1 + 4 + 4 = 9 17 x 9 = 153, and 1 + 5 + 3 = 9 18 x 9 = 162, and 1 + 6 + 2 = 9 19 x 9 = 171, and 1 + 7 + 1 = 9 20 x 9 = 180, and 1 + 8 + 0 = 9 There are other patterns in the above sequences, if you look up and down vertically. This same sort of patterning continues on and on, for example: 75683 x 9 = 681147, and 6 + 8 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 7 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9 34578502 x 9 = 311206518, and 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 6 + 5 + 1 + 8 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9 What may appear as random or chaotic in this world can and probably does have a hidden structure to it. We just need to recognize what that structure is. Taoists were people who knew more than just how to wear funny hats. This message was brought to you by the number 9, and the letters t, a, and o.

Very interesting about Faulkner. I should check him out, but my attention span for reading seems to be pretty poor these days.

I don't think so, unless he used to write for Mad magazine. I am not terribly well read, but I have read a few issues of Mad magazine years ago.

Sure, as long as I am wearing my funny hat. There was no limit given on sentence length, so I took adavantage of that. The tao te ching was originally written as one long continuous string of characters with no punctuation and no paragraph or verse breaks at all. Lao Tzu apparently thought it was ok. Who am I to think otherwise?

A taoist is a person who cultivates at least one of body, life energy, or spirit for the purposes of self improvement by trying to better understand and align themself with and abide by and make use of natural law as much as possible, and/or who follows and practices any of various belief systems and traditions of taoism, and who may also sometimes wear funny hats, and who doesn't ever take things written in internet forums seriously. Naw, that just sounds like your everyday addict and escapist and pleasure seeker and hedonist and tao bum, or maybe Jackie Chan's martial arts teacher.

HI Marblehead, we all have our own way of approaching and viewing things, and who is to say which is better or which is more correct? We all take our own approach and hopefully learn something or gain some useful insight every once in a blue moon along the way.

Hi Marblehead. The same misconceptions keep recurring time and time again. For example, if one mentions spiritual aspects of daosim, then it seems it is often assumed that one must necessarily be talking about religion. This is not necessarily the case at all however. There are aspects to daosim that can very well be described as religion and religious as we all are probably aware, but at the same time there are also aspects of daosim that can be described as spiritual practices, but these practices and corresponding views are not necessarily religious at all. I think this may be very hard for many Westerners to wrap their head around as the way of thinking and the way of viewing things in the West and in the East can be quite different. I have struggled with these exact same sort of issues for years. The gap between Eastern and Western ways of viewing and doing things can be quite wide. My experience is that it is not uncommon for Eastern traditions such as daosim to mix many different views and approaches and practices and not see any major conflict at all, whereas Westerners who view things much differently can immediately get hung up on what appears to them to be various sorts of contradictions or incongruous aspects. It is natural for people to want to ignore or discard or downplay aspects of things which do not make sense to them or which seem incongruous to them, or which do not align well with their own personal views. Suffice it to say that there are long standing spiritual traditions in daosim that have little to do with religion as we think of it in the West. I view this aspect of daosim as fitting into the nature exploration and cultivation side of daoism. These spiritual practices are approached in much the same way that daoists traditionally learned about the universe and nature and natural laws; through direct practice and personal experience and observation and the consequent understanding gained rather than through faith or book or school learning. There is an important distinction in there that may often get overlooked by people who view daoism with the simplistic view of divisions of religious daoism and philosophical daosim. It is really much, much more than that, IMO, and I think there really are not any such clear distinctions. Where it can get even more confusing is that such practices can be mixed with traditional religious type practices as well.

Hi Marblehead. My point was I don't think this documentary was really a very balanced general introduction to daoism as it bypassed a whole wide and important aspect of daoism with the seeming implication that this other aspect was some sort of unimportant or maybe distorted offshoot of daoism. I personally think this was probably done deliberately by the makers of the documentary to shape the view of daoism in the way that they themself and many Westerners may prefer to see it. Again, just my own opinion on the matter. I think that at least some people may be interested in a wider view of daoism as a whole, so that is why I mentioned it. By the way, I do think there are aspects of daoism that do at least fall into quite questionable territory, and there are certainly practices out there that are referred to as daoism that I personally wouldn't want anything to do with. It is always advisable to use our best discretion in all things in this world.

Personally I think this documentary actually presents a fairly narrow, typical Western-centric view of daoism. It mainly discusses only the aspect of daoism concerned with understanding and aligning with nature, but gives only a brief mention of the spiritual side of daoism, with the seeming implication that religious or spiritual and other daoist practices are some sort of divergence or distortion of 'pure daoism'. As I have mentioned elsewhere, in my view this is a very common and typical misconception of daoism held in the West. The spiritual aspect of daoism appears to have long been an intrinsic part of daoism, that is not some offshoot or distortion of daosim, throughout most, if not all, of its known history anyway. There is also no mention of the deeper aspects of some daoist cultivation practices which are concerned with experiencing and aligning with the mysterious aspect of dao as 'source', for want of a better word. This is all just my view of course, but I think that people who have some real experience with actual daoist traditions will understand where I am coming from. IMO, it is still an interesting and nicely done documentary none the less.

The following is a documentary (in Mandarin) from China, from the early nineties or so I believe, showing a Chinese qigong master demonstrating various impressive looking feats. I realize that any decent stage magician could duplicate such feats using magician's tricks, but that doesn't mean that what is shown in this video is necessarily tricks. Some of the feats perfomed by the qigong master in this documentary are things such as breaking cutlery in various ways, breaking a brick at a distance without touching the brick and then getting an audience member to repeat the same feat, and a few other things including doing a qigong healing session on someone and pulling reddish liquid out of the patient's forehead without breaking their skin, and transporting a fish out of a river or lake or whatever supposedly by using qigong and making the fish appear in a basin of water (yeah I know this sounds very fishy ). If you post a comment saying that you believe this is nonsense because any magician can do tricks like that you won't be saying anything that isn't already understood, but the information I am looking for is if anyone knows who the qigong master is who is shown in this documentary, and if anyone knows any details about him. I don't speak mandarin so I don't know what they say about this qigong master in this video. "The Possibilities of Qigong"

The official account of how Bruce Lee died is that he took a type of pain killer for a head ache, which caused an allergic or bad reaction reaction in him and he died of cerebral edema (brain inflammation). Some people close to him at that time such as Chuck Norris have confirmed this account is correct, although Chuck Norris said the brain inflammation was actually caused by a bad reaction between pain killers Bruce was taking for his back pain and the pain medication he took for his head ache. I think that doctors at the time couildn't say for certain what caused the bad reaction, but cerebral edema/brain inflammation is reported to have been the cause of death. For example see this video for Chuck Norris's account (He starts talking about this at about 4:05):

Thanks a lot!

infini-tea?

Hola mewtwo. Sorry, at first I thought you must have meant this thread as less than serious since discussing tao is kind of like discussing what the dimensions of infinity are. After re-reading your post, now I am not so sure. Either way, what is the significance of "The tao is 6 pounds of flax seed in a 5 pound bag"?

I was told by the great modern day master 菩熊 (Pu Xiong) that tao only reveals itself to those who have achieved the golden elixir, also known as the golden honey. Otherwise it is unknowable. Paradoxically my master 菩熊 also revealed to me that the honey that can be spoken of is not the true honey. However he promised to point me to the aisle where the true honey might be found the next time we go to the supermarket. He then went into a deep meditative state of stillness for the winter.

I can tell you for certain that in at least some daoist cultivation traditions the MCO (as you refer to it) is not opened intentionally and actually opens by itself naturally as a result of meditation and other related practices. No intention is really involved to open the MCO or direct its flow. This all occurs naturally. There are various practices out there that people call 'daoist' nowadays mainly as a marketing strategy from what I can tell. It seems to me a lot of these other practices are more likely not at all related to real daoist practices, or are divergences from original daoist practices. The authentic practices are hard to come by from my experience.

If anyone who reads or speaks Chinese can let me know if they do mention the qigong master's name in the chinese writing at the beginning or in the spoken dialog in the video, and any other interesting details about this guy they may mention, I would appreciate it.

No, I think you can still always follow the same general approach. If I were attacking and robbing someone I would think it reasonable that they would try to protect themself if they were at risk of immediate harm, and also try to stop me from robbing them if possible. I would think it would be reasonable for me to do the same as well if I were being robbed or attacked, but I personally still wouldn't want to use more force than necessary to protect myself, and I might rather prefer to let the robber take my money rather than force a physical confrontation if I wasn't in immediate danger. It would depend on the exact circumstances. Nothing in this world is perfect and sometimes we make mistakes, but I do think that if you follow some simple guidelines the potential is at least there to keep moving forward in a positive direction. Also, I don't think we are saying anything so different at the core of it. There is an expression that goes, 'the spirit resides in the heart and is expressed through the eyes'. I do really think we just have to take some very simple steps to start to quiet down the clutter to start to see things more simply and clearly. Just my opinion.