LBDaoist

Exorcist, Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I find this subject to be a very interesting one. It brings up the notion that the study of Taoism involves more than a singular focus on the cultivation of qi. That cultivation exists as a branch, not the root. The mind and our ability to turn the mind upon itself, to refine the mirror... to calm the pond... that practice leads to a greater awareness of the way. I consider it like this. By focusing the mind upon a notion of qi and cultivation, we distract the mind and disturb it. Yet once we clear the mind and let go of desire to cultivate qi, it becomes possible to cultivate it more fully. Or to put it another way, the spirit will condense and the qi will flow naturally once the mind has been settled.

This discussion of masters and economics is an interesting one. My experience has been most closely related to what FiveElementTao has put forth. The master I train with required an entire year's worth of payment in advance. His philosophy is that if a student is interested and committed to learning, they can come up with the money. If they cannot come up with the money, the odds are that they are too busy with other parts of their lives (like struggling to put food on the table) to really dedicate time to mastering the art. That concept of mastering the art is an important one. My master is training future masters. He has been teaching for 36 years, and so far at least half a dozen of his students have gone on to open temples of their own. Not everyone who trains the art will end up making it their life's work, but the potential is there. My master is also working on creating a university where students will be a able to earn a real, accredited degree. The university is not going to build itself. It takes money. As sifu always say, "The art is free, you are just paying for sifu's time." The art is free. Feel free to go figure it out on your own. If you want guidance, have the respect for the master and compensate him for his time. At one point I was facing financial hardship and I thought I was going to have to leave the temple. I went to my sifu and explained to him that I could not continue to train anymore because I could not afford it. He shook his head and explained to me, "I accepted you as my student. You are going to continue coming to the temple, and you will pay me again when you can afford to." I have been training with him for ten years at this point. I willingly pay my tuition and participate in fund raisers because I know that out of the 100 students that sifu has at any given time, at least a couple of them might be in the same situation I was in. Nobody wants to teach a freeloader. At this point, those who are studying the art and sharing their findings with others are standing on the shoulders of others, going back over 1000 years. Each one of those people took the art, improved their own lives with it, and passed it along to others. Nobody got a free ride. In my own life, the art has improved all of its aspects. Sifu has a philosophy. Life is like a table with four legs. The legs are your health, your finances, your relationships and your job. All four of them need to be in balance before you can really dedicate yourself to learning the art. At the same time, learning the art will help you balance those four. If any one of them is too far out of wack... too short or too tall, the table will not be level and whatever you set on top of it will slide off. To the OP, make sure that your table is level and that your legs are even. Spend your free time training what you know. A master will show up. I contemplated qi and meditating and martial arts since I was 8. It wasn't until 23 that I discovered that I was living three blocks from a Daoist master (having moved a few times since I was 8 obviously).

Qigong. The real kind, where you move. None of that standing in place, doing it with your mind nonsense.

This forum has had a positive impact in my life these last couple of weeks. Because of that I wanted to just take a moment to say thanks. You see, we have this wonderful communications medium in the Internet. Any point of view on practically any topic imaginable exists at some place on the Internet. I find that I spend an inordinate amount of time consuming content and information related to the material world. And by doing so, I perpetuate all of the attachments that come with that focus, both for myself and for others. In the sea of information, this forum remains an island of spirituality. Some of the contributors here are obviously earnest practitioners who are walking a good path. Students and teachers alike are finding the way. Over the last couple of weeks I have come across many positive conversations that have furthered my own practice, and refocused my mind on trains of thought that I had left behind. From discussions of bagua as a healing art, to helpful suggestions on meditation, to a discuss on rooting... all of them have rekindled that understanding for me. That process of rekindling the positive, of focusing upon the transformative power of the way has been beneficial. As human beings, we are one of the few species on this planet that can consciously choose what sort of changes we will embark upon. Where as plants and animals are preprogrammed, and in some ways quite blessed to simply be and do as they do.. humans are provided the opportunity for thought, and contemplation and choice. So it becomes important, both for ourselves as individuals, and for society as a whole for us to choose to tune into the oceans of infinite positive possibility, expanding in the ten thousand directions that fill the senses with light here in the now. So thank you again, all of you who are walking the right path and sharing your experiences of it.

I derive my opinion from my experiences with sparring and a couple of real fights. The forms are good, but a fight does not conform to the form. At best the form helps to develop the muscle memory so that when the opportunity presents itself, you can string together a couple of strikes at whatever vulnerable targets are available at that split second in time. We seem to have shifted away from the original point I brought up. By focusing on a single form to the exclusion of all others, you will be selling yourself short.

I understand where the problem came from. My question is, if all of those CDS and derivatives are allowed to go belly up, so what? You have maybe a dozen major banks who are all leveraged to the hilt and if you trace the money, all owe it to each other anyway. Who cares if you "wipe out" 100 trillion dollars when in reality, the only people who really have access to that "money" are a very small subset of the overall population. Put another way, if Wall Street fell into the ocean tomorrow, how long would it take to setup a replica of the system in Texas, or Chicago or Boise, Idaho for all anyone cares? Or more importantly and what I don't understand is this. So what if you wipe out hundreds of trillions of dollars? It is all "fake" in the first place. If nobody can afford to pay $5 for a loaf of bread, the price of bread will fall. If a Wall Street broker can no longer afford to spend $250,000 on a Porsche, the price of the Porsche will fall. From that point of view, a balance will be achieved. In my neighborhood in the early 2000s, a home was about $200-300,000. By 2007, that same home was $750,000+. But see, it is really a only a $250,000 home. It was never, ever, ever really worth $750,000. There was not enough real earning power in the economy for those homes to be "worth" that much. So why not let them adjust back down to what they should be? Would it really be so bad to wipe out all of the bankers and force them to take a haircut? Society will still have banks. People will need services like checking accounts and ATMs. Loans will still be necessary. But that whole generation of "financial professionals" who screwed the pooch... those people failed at life and they need to be fired. They already earned their 6 and 7 figure salaries. They had their time at the troth.

How is it destroyed? That is the one part of the equation that I am still trying to come to grips with. What brought me to that point is why is it not being destroyed (in respect to the over priced mortgages). Here are some of my incoherent ramblings on the subject as I was trying to come to grips with the loose threads of thought floating around in my own head... http://lbdaoist.blogspot.com/2011/09/money-what-is-really-going-on-with-it.html

Lau Kune Do. It is my favorite because it is the only one I know.

As I say to my students at the end of every class. "Will one of you please sweep the floor?"

To reenforce your inclination, if the form itself has been developed well, you might only need one form. We have a handful of tai chi forms, but Sifu constantly emphasizes that if a person were only to ever practice the first form, they would be able to gain the health benefits and eventually open up all of the primary channels. Sifu has proven to be very practical like that. He has developed his art to be useful from day one. On the other hand, when you get into the martial side of things, eventually forms get in the way. The form exists as a convenient way to string together a bunch of movements. The form exists to make the movements easy to remember and to practice. The down side of practicing forms exclusively comes when training meets reality. Combat has little to do with forms. Although the forms can provide the foundation, they are not the be all and end all. If I were to dissuade you from focusing too fully on one form, I would do so by mentioning the following. During any sort of physical practice, the body hits natural road blocks. It falls into ruts as the muscle memory forms familiar grooves. Often times it can be very beneficial, and I might even go so far as to say.. necessary, to change it up. I would liken it to reading the Tao Te Ching. If I put the book down for a few months, or even a few years, and then pick it back up again.. I get something different from it. Even reading the same passage a couple of weeks apart can provide different insights. Form training can be much the same way. Sometimes it can be best to step away from a particular form and focus on something else, and then come back to it. FWIW - I have a couple of forms that I like more than others. I have some weapons like I like more than others, and palms that I like more than others. That seems only natural that we will take to certain motions or sequences more easily than others.

Can you?

Love exists as a manifestation of personal power. It has the power to heal and to empower others to feel good about themselves. That sensation of love, that good feeling... that is power.

First, accept the jealous and avoid the inclination to think less of yourself for feeling it. Then, find the positive opposite of jealous and cultivate that. Lastly, it might help to develop the belief that change is inevitable and you will be in a good relationship again. It might be a bit early in the healing process to get your mind wrapped around that though. A breakup can be traumatic, and healing does need to happen.

I have had this experience. On my own quest to lessen the chaotic thought energies, I find that tuning into sound has been helpful. It seems to me that "thought" exists as a sense, just like sight or sound or feel. By actively engaging in "listening", it has become easier to tame the errant thoughts.

I've found it best to exchange the energy both ways. Draw energy up from the ground on the inhale and ground it down on the exhale.

Anyone who has truly mastered martial arts (no matter what the style) will understand that in any confrontation, you will get hurt. No matter how good you might be, the potential to get hurt is there. Now if you value your life and are serious about training to protect yourself, why would you put yourself in a situation where you could get hurt? If you are going to be in a dangerous situation, you want to be able to protect yourself with all of your tools. I have trained with guys who have hardened their palms to the point where they can crack coconuts. Do you think the soft spot on the top of the head is thicker than a coconut shell? How about where the spine goes into the base of the skull? MMA is a sport. MMA guys can defend themselves. But you cannot compare a sport with rules, with life or death, no holds barred combat. In MMA if a guy shoots for your legs and tries to take you down, you have to have some counters to work your way out of it within the limits of the rules. In real life if someone is going to put their head down and go for your legs, they are opening themselves up to a world of hurt. Do you know how much force it takes to shatter a temple? Do you know how easy it is to generate that force? Last I checked, you can't fish hook your opponent in MMA. Why is that? Last I checked, you aren't allowed to gouge eyes out. Why is that? Real fights are ugly things. Wind pipes get collapsed. Eyes get taken out. Bones are broken. Watch some high level wing chun some time. Those strikes are fast, and all it takes is a split second to strike at the wind pipe or carotid artery and that's that... a life is snuffed out. That is not something you joke about. You don't play around with life like that. It is too precious. It has nothing to do with 'tai chi' or 'kung fu' versus 'mma' or 'random art'. Some people can kill with their hands if they have trained long enough and are willing to do it. Once a person has seen how easy it is to really hurt someone else, even by accident, they usually get over it. If they don't, they have serious psychotic issues and need to be locked away from the rest of society.

Yes, we all require guidance to reach enlightenment. At some point, we all have to admit to ourselves that we do not know it all and that we can learn from others. One of my favorite Taoist sayings has been, "If I only meet three people today, one of them can be my teacher." If you believe that no one else has anything to teach you, are you enlightened? Having said that, it would be prudent to be wary of those claiming to enlighten you... especially if they want money.

I think that these conversations will always go in circles because they will never be proven. Anyone with a very high level of kung fu expertise is not going to go into an MMA ring where their options are severely limited. A true kung fu martial artist who has trained both the internal and external to the point where they are deadly is also going to respect themselves and what they have. They will be smart enough to not put themselves in a situation where they might get seriously injured. Everything I have ever been told is, "Avoid a fight whenever you can. But if it comes down to it, you give it 110% until your opponent is in no position to threaten you ever again." That does not mesh with the MMA mentality. Those guys are trying to make a career out of it. They are trying to become a "champion". Why would a person who has attained high martial and spiritual abilities throw it away for a couple thousand or tens of thousands of dollars? If you really value your life and your health, why would you ever compromise them? Why would someone who has trained their hands to pulverize bone put on a pair of padded gloves? Why would someone who has trained to strike at the eyes and the throat put themselves in a situation where they are not allowed to do that? The reality is that conflict is ugly. Fights are ugly. Both people get hurt and injured. Nobody really wins. The smart person avoids the situation. Only an idiot goes into a ring with something to prove.

This guy sums it up better than I can. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-currency-wars-trade-and-consuming-crisis-capitalism

That makes sense. By meditating only on the mind, it would be easy to get caught up in thoughts and carried away. A focus on the breathing and the body gives the mind a foundation.

That's interesting about Theravada Buddhism. My only exposure to Buddhism has come through Thomas Cleary's translations of the Chan Buddhism classics, and a smattering of Buddhist / Shao-Lin exercises / forms that are part of the art I study with my sifu. My sifu is a Tao, so that colors my practice and understanding. I've been told that generally, Buddhists train from the hard to to the soft... from the external to the internal... body to the mind and spirit. Taoists train the opposite way... soft to hard, internal to external, spirit to mind to body. Do you have any thoughts about that?

The breath should be continuous and never held. There might feel like periods where you are not actively focused on trying to breath, but you are breathing anyway. At no time should you ever hold your breath. In my practice I find that at times on very long inhalations, my mind becomes so attuned to the pulsating body that I lose track of the actual inhalation. Conversely I seem to remain fully aware of the exhalation no matter what else happens. In "perfect" practice the inhalation and exhalation should be equal in length and quality.

That is an interesting statement. Where do you derive that from? In my own experiences, studying Buddhism after spending years focused on Taoism seriously deepened my understanding of Taoism. It seemed to me as if both schools were speaking of the same thing, yet coming at it from different perspectives. The Buddhists seemed to focus mostly on the mind and thoughts, where as the Taoists focus mostly on the body and sensations. On a deeper level, both the awareness the mind puts on sensation, and the awareness that the mind puts on thoughts can be unraveled to return to the root... the essence of the mind, and that from which the mind sprouts. Both are tools for self contemplation, reflection and provide an earnest practitioner with a path to follow that will point them at the spirit. In the end, it comes down to the body as a temple for the spirit and making that temple as conducive of a vessel for the spirit to inhabit as possible. Whether we clear the mind of distracting thoughts, or clear the channels of obstructions to the flow of qi... it requires many tools to reach clarity. Yet once clarity has been obtained, the tools seem unnecessary. And they are, at that point. Until that point, they are all sign posts along the path, clues to the astute traveler. Only the ego differentiates them and elevates one over the other. A true master maintains a full set of tools. Not because the master needs them, but because they are useful to the students.

The "surface conscious mind" seems like a very high level generalization. What specifically do you think of when you mention that. Can you give an example. The same can be said for "penetrat(ing) the depths". Again, that seems high level. What specifically do you mean. How would you contrast that with the surface mind? When I read what you wrote, I consider the difference between the awareness of conscious thoughts, such as visualization and internal dialogue.. versus a deeper awareness of the sensations in the body. Where do you draw the distinction between the two?

As my sifu often says, "There is nothing wrong with enjoying ... The troubles come from chasing after enjoyment." Actually, that's not true. He often mentions it in the context of material possessions. "There is nothing wrong with driving a BMW. The trouble is wanting a BMW."