forestofsouls

Perhaps more accurately, for the Buddhist, to crave is to suffer.

This already seems to be a big step. How does the mind become concentrated totally without wandering thoughts on an ongoing basis?

Come on bums, me and turbo are in the chat room.

This reminds me of an old Buddhist saying: A beautiful woman for the lover is a delight For the monk, a temptation For the tiger, a good meal.

I usually meditate indoors, but when its warm, I'll often Tai Chi outdoors in the spring/summer. The difference is significant--- I find it is generally easier to concentrate (barring distractions) and the sensations are more intense. There are a lot more distractions outside (shifting temperature, bugs, people, even dogs) which can take away from concentration on the one hand, but helps one to learn to overcome distractions on the other. My wife and I went to several state parks this summer. I found that the heaviest, fullest sensations were places set in and surrounded by the earth.

He didn't. I think "Ian Baker" is Thurman's student. Robert Thurman from what I understand was the first Westerner to become a Tibetan buddhist monk. He reports that the Dalai Lama officiated the vows except the vow of celibacy. After a time studying with the Tibetans in exile in India, he stopped being a monk and returned to school. He married, had children, including Uma. He's now a professor, I think at Columbia.

Lin Ai Wei, Not giving rise or ending thought... this is interesting. I have a question for you. What is meant by thought? Does this refer to the mental audio/visuals/etc. in the mind, or does this any stimulation? For instance, if I simply look at a table, or sense my hand, but don't think about them, is this included as thinking? I know my chattering mind is much, much less if my senses simply feel. Thank you.

Why not schedule a live chat in advance?

Without actual, personal experience, all this theory amounts to straw, empty words, mist vanishing at the touch of the sun.

I think you're missing the point. People are at different stages of development and understanding, and need different things. In fact, if you give some one high level teachings before they are ready, you can in fact do them a grave disservice. I have known people who spend all their time engaging in intricate theory and metaphysics, but their actions don't match their intellectual understanding. Perhaps your school doesn't practice layered, individualized teaching? Regarding the book, my question was what you think. You have met people you belive to be enlightened, I was simply asking what factors they displayed (I haven't met any, or if I have I didn't know). I have plenty of books and know by personal experience that reading a menu doesn't feed my hunger. I went through a book collecting stage and a theory only phase. You don't need to wait to appear to be a saint. Practicing the five precepts (or other basic moral code) can bring us a long way without even any meditation. Why do you say this? What have you achieved using neikung that you haven't with other methods?

QiDr, What sort of traits, if you don't mind my asking?

Omnibot! I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid. I remember staring fondly at the pictures in the Sears catalog, for hours, thinking of all the wonderful thing this robot could do. I was certain he'd be nearly sentient, or at least appear to me. In the very least, I was eager to have my own robo-slave eager to do my bidding. My parents got him for me for Christmas as the BIG GIFT. I was so much in awe, I couldn't believe it. Then I played with him. My God, he was just a big, slow remote controlled car! I don't think I was ever so disppointed in anything in my life, not even when I discovered the truth about Santa Claus. A good lesson, though. Looking at the picture, my nose tingles with the dust that collected on his plastic dome.

I don't think its the vigor, but the tensing and the straining they object to. Many internal martial artists might practice quite vigorously, but they stay loose and relaxed. Like wild animals. Or tame animals. My puppy is very energetic, bouncing and springing all over the house. But she is always very light, relaxed, there is no tension or strain. May your knee heal quickly. Perhaps less BJJ and more TCC?

My current lesson is more along the lines of this verse: To change to let go, receive nothing and see the beauty of Nature. It's amazing how synchronicity works. The cosmos seems to speak in a whisper, but if we're in tune we can here it. In the course of the past few weeks, this is what is being whispered to me: Invest in loss. Enjoy your practice. Forget your goals. Let go and follow nature. I'm finally beginning to realize on a deeper level the meaning to these simple phrases. It is one thing to understand them intellectually, to agree on a mental level. But to incorporate it into my being, this is much slower. Just now, I was practicing my tai chi. My mind kept thinking of the next form, or another form, and it didn't enjoy the form here and now. Only when it enjoys the form here and now, then there is tai chi. As with tai chi, so with life.

Most of the qigong and tai chi I've run across tend to condemn these sorts of exercises. Some say that developed, hardened muscles inhibit chi flow.

We didn't necessarily learn these as separate entities. For instance, with the steps, we start off with simple advancing and retreating in an arrow and bow. We come to what you call yield and follow, I believe, when we learn retreat to ride tiger. Another stepping variation are the "five style steps" which we learn by using a sort of grid that looks like a 5 on a die to practice side to side, front to back, and attaching steps. I've been taught the energies pop up in different places depending on the form you're doing. We can do all 8 energies in two forms: grasp sparrow's tail (ward off, roll back, press, push) and single whip. When we're forming the whip, we go through shoulder, elbow, to roll pull (pull down). Then we shift to split. In our single hand push, our first two person practice, we do ward off to press to roll back, which when combined looks like a circle.

I found this site provides intepretations, but my chart is much different. http://www.purpleking.com

I've also heard it described in many different ways from different sources. Reincarnation is a moment to moment occurance, in some ways. We are constantly changing, down to our cells and atoms. Our thoughts and feelings change often, our bodies develop, grow, and decay. Yet there is a continuity here. I am the same now as I was when I was a child, though I am completely different. And if I remember to my childhood, there is a certain feeling of sentience that I observed then and now, the observer behind the thoughts, feelings, and attitude. I would probably call this my shen or spirit. In my tai chi school, it is taught that people are conglomerations of energy. At death, most of this energy disperses. It is possible to create an energy that can survive death, but it is very difficult. The best explanation from my perspective comes from Zen Master Seung Sahn. He wrote that the soul may divide, conglomerate, and change form. For instance, an animal soul may incarnate in a human body. That human body may die and the soul joins with two other souls to become another human. Then perhaps that larger soul dissolves into smaller souls, etc. He wrote also that strong historical personas are a collection of souls. I would imagine that along the way these souls can become more refined through good deeds, cultivation, etc. or more course through bad deeds, etc. This captures both the uniqueness of the individual (in this life), and the non-uniqueness of the individual (over the long run). One can resolve the tension of a Christian teaching "it is appointed upon man to die but once, and after that, the judgment" with the widespread teaching of reincanation. A lot of people note that there are billions of humans on the planet now, where did all these souls come from? Perhaps they came from all the animals that no longer exist on this planet.

Sifu Wong is an old school chi kung teacher. He believes that chi kung is aimed at developing and circulating chi. He also teaches that any stretches you get from these exercises are secondary.

The five skandhas are something that need to be developed, over time. I'm not saying they need to be used, but I've been finding them more and more useful. Of course, if some one does not find them useful, they should not use them. I believe that the form skandhas includes not only the physical form, but the bare visual/audio etc. form as well. However, this is a distinction without a difference: I've never seen form outside my own mind representations. Regarding sensation, I used to think the same thing. The duality, or in this, the triplicity, is due to the mind and the foundation for suffering, i.e. craving and aversion. However, I have eventually come to change my view after observation. If you're talking about witnessing thoughts, or bringing bare attention to them, then there is indeed a tradition behind this. I first came across this personally in the writings of Jack Kornfeld, a vispassana practicioner. Some forms of Buddhist teaching are especially keen on this type of detailed observation. One not only catalogues the sensations of the body (what is the shape of that pain, what is its size? does it have a color? etc/) but one does the same thing to emotions, thoughts, etc. The way I learned to approach it was to first establish a firm foundation in the body. There are a few reasons for this: 1) putting attention in the body naturally relaxes the body. A relaxed body is more open to observation. 2) the body is always anchored in the present. Thoughts carry you to the past and future, but the body is always here and now. 3) The sense of the body provides a striking constrast to the thoughts. It is like a shoreline you can use to observe all the boats in the water. If I had to guess, I'd bet that your author has either a Buddhist or Advaitist background. He seems to simplify and put the concepts in a more Western language.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean here by shengong. But if its what it means, at least in some basic way, what I think it means, then you're not alone. Sifu Wong teaches what he calls "Self-Manifested Chi Movement" in which a chi kung form is done and then is to let go of mind and body and let the chi move you about. He also teaches that one use of tai chi forms is as chi kung forms, and one can achieve the same result. He emphasizes that this letting go/manifested movement is the key to chi kung. My own tai chi teacher outlines the process of tai chi as follows. First the student learns the forms (we do single form practice). The forms are supposed to be the most efficient means of activating the energy flow. Over time, the forms become looser and looser until the form disappears. Simultaneously, the mind becomes more and more focused on what's going on and the inner state. The forms are on loan from the teacher until the student learns to work with the energy more directly. He says that if you see the higher level masters practicing, then it might not look like tai chi at all. These lineages are completely different, one being Buddhist/Shaolin and the other being Taoist. Yet, they follow the same pattern. One starts with form, then becomes more formless. If I'm understanding shengong here, then you're not as much on a limb as you think.

Lin Ai Wei, It looks like your forum is just beginning. I'll be interested to see how it develops, because it sounds like you have some good information to share.

This is sounds very much like a simplified version of the 5 skandhas of Buddhism. One way to classify them is as follows: 1. Form. The material building blocks in the world. 2. Sensation. The feelings that accompany sensory input. This can be classified into pleasent, unpleasent, or neutral. 3. Perception. A more complex ordering of sensory input. The mind labels at this stage. 4. Volition. The impulses, habits, intentions and reactions that drive us. 5. Consciousness. Sentience. I would suppose this would also include things like the du yin (shadow consciousness) and the transmigrating consciousness. I believe it also presumes a separate consciousness for hearing, seeing, touching, etc. with the mind being the 6th consciousness and including both thoughts (mental audio/visuals) and feelings (emotions). This seems to simplify them into three catgories: form, mind, and consciousness. I wonder about the analysis method referred to in a prior thread. Ian's "embodiment" method has widespread use and tradition behind it. All of my teachers have put an emphasis into less thought, more feeling, and as I've observed my thoughts over the last few years I've noticed that most of them are a waste of energy (specifically, I'd call them a waste of shen). I've also noticed that my own analysis come together over time. I don't sit and think about my experiences, they seem to collect and order themselves in flashes of insight. When I tried to psychoanalyze myself in the past, it did no good--- it just added more thoughts and more chattering to the fray.