Rocky Lionmouth

I dont know the secret but i keep thinking a lot about how one can put oneself in relationship with various things around oneself and know the strenght and weakness of the acting parties in the relationship. Like Chuang Tzu's Butcher, he knew how to follow the terrain in an appropriate way for his purpose right? Sorry for the derail, just had to throw a thought out there

God from Futurama seemed of Taoist leanings to me too, thanks for reminding me to watch that episode again! If it seems as letting go of the world and wanting nothing points to a complete lack of motivation and just waiting around to die, maybe you need to see that road through? As a thought experiment i mean Say all ambition and striving to achieve whatever is worth achieving is left to rot somewhere behind you on a road and boredom and demotivation sets in, what happens after that? What arises in you after that? Is wishing for more stuff or better positions and situations the only thing keeping you alive and in motion? Wasnt it Zizek who said something about desires being perverted conceptions of what we really want? (Albeit in another context but the point is valid here also i think) If one can strip desire and reconnect with our original nature perhaps our desires will dissolve into seeing what we want on one hand and in the other you can see all the concepts and thingamajingys we project that "true" wanting on?

I iron my wet clothes by wearing them and creating enough body-heat to vaporize the water in the garments. Iron Body i call it. Sorry i cant help myself, i blame Apech for being funny in the first place!

Oh oh a thread about the Gods answer to ambrosia! I wanna play! Maybe it has been said but sambuca style liquors (especially those less sweet) kick serious butt in coffee. After a nice meal of course. If anyone of you does the barista-machine style i can say that a sweeter and more rich brew comes from not compacting the fresh ground coffee before attaching the handle. (All the teachers say "press that thing into a hockey puck, making it more bitter and thin.) Letting the water outlet of the machine compress it for you changes the taste for the better imo. You'll need to run an empty handle after doing this to wash the powder out but totally worth it. Now i can get back to reading the whole thing...

Taking a crack at it: Wuwei and Ziran applies to ourselves and everything else in equal totalness. Not only are we exactly what/where we are and nothing else but also we are it without actually struggling to basically exist (i mean in the bluntest most literal sense, not counting the mess of eating, paying rent, dodging bullets, bacteria and bosses) until the day we die (wich of course may be precipitated by aforementioned messes of life). But changing anything (wich happens all the time) takes energy and energy is counteracted by inertia (bear with me), unless one piggybacks a change in energy on another energy. Water piggybacks on everything, even air, and in return, much life piggybacks on water. So for me, right now, wu wei and zi ran are both descriptions of status quo and descriptions of methods for changing without struggling more than necessary at a given time in a specific situation. Now mastering that is a whole different pair of shoes A rose bush is a rose bush and grew into being, but a brick is just as much ziran as a plant and it was made by hands. The two have endless possibilities but they are not the same. In martial arts you might use a myriad of different techniques to block a straight punch to the face and depending on the bodies, forces and other conditions involved, any of those techniques might be wu wei, but in each case it will be ziran... At least i think... i'm trailing now, not sure if something can be/have ziran or wu wei even but for now it will have to do. Missing the target is also shooting right?

There is an application for that too?! I just got through Requisition Permit for Lower Dan-Tien Form 81B.1 (the blue one for water-pigs), does this mean it's void or is it possible to recalculate it as detractable from the Estimated Preliminary Income of Qi like it were ordinary Jing-Expenses? I'm loosing my Shen over this every year.

I'm not sure wether or not Atman is identical with Brahman or a subjective part of it, but i feel the paralell of Shen being Tao and divine soul identical to god are inaccurate. Tao encompasses everything so it also encompasses Shen but they are not the same. Divine soul has a spark of gods breath but it is not god because god is separate from his creations, even though its said he created humanity in his own image he did not recreate himself in us, only a similarity. Now i dont follow that teaching any more but i remember priests and books being adamant on that subject. In my pigheaded opinion it's more dangerous than not to equate spiritual concepts within different traditions on the basis that they are spoken of in similar terms. Language can be a bridge and a trapdoor. The Tao might be absolute and is everywhere, that does not make it synonymous for The Absolute, wich is abstract and descriptive. The Tao is the Tao, comparison might help frame the set for initial understanding, but LZ said even giving it a name is misrepresenting it somehow. So it's not relatable to other apparently similar things. Tao is not a state of mind (or a state of post-mind), mind is perhaps in a state of relative vicinity/distance from Tao? I know that makes little sense but i think thats how i interpret it lately.

Perhaps a little bit of personal history and practice anecdotes for us who aren't yet acquainted with your Sifu, i always love to hear that kind of stuff More concrete questions: What are his thoughts on the relationship between the internal martial arts and the external martial arts? There is a widespread notion that the internal martial arts share a common core or are closely related. In Sifu Lloyds opinion, do xingyi and bagua share the same or similar mechanics and aspects? How do they differ (besides the obvious physical forms etc)?

There is an old saying: "keep your friends close, but your elbows closer."

Nice one!! I'd like to see more forms! The open wings and skip-jump technique is very similar to some southern bird-styles i've seen that also fall under "half internal" (at least in my mind). Do you know if its a standalone system or if its woven into one, like a subset of eagle or swallow?

I'd post some but i'm asked not to share outside of class because of all the confusion and misunderstandings that can arise. Person to person demonstrations are fine because then i have a chance to explain, but if someone were to take the techniques and practice them incorrectly, get hurt or hurt someone else then the problem has already arisen and responsibility is on me and my teacher. Especially if a less serious school were to repossess and use the techniques and then after try to create trouble by saying our school is no good, look at how poorly these exercises compare, everyone looses face and tensions ensues. And even though i'd like to show you my stuff my previous post about my results i'm sure you'd all just feel a collective shame at my flailing and falling

Agreed, fun that we shared similar experiences, sorry about the diversion, i get impulsive.

Not sure if this is tree gong at all but i feel like sharing it, chide as you see fit I've had multiple experiences where i felt like i was a tree, i could feel the roots in the earth guiding up nourishment, sunlight revitalizing my breathing through the leaves, a gentle nudge of a wind moving a branch or swaying my trunk. The world moved so fast it seemed like slow motion, small details a mere flicker in a peaceful landscape. Not a visual landscape, a landscape of sensation if that makes any sense. Like a parallel existance, something going on somewhere else but with me inside it. Pretty amazing and it just came along spontaneously, very absorbing almost overwhelming. Hasn't happened in some five years, i'll get a flicker of it as a reminder but not the whole nine yards. Also i'm not sure wether it's good or bad from an energy standpoint, it's pretty close to a dissociative episode or hallucination, not that interested in the changed mind state, rather an encompassing and expansive state of clarity.

:I

OR they flip it for more cash and a new focus group for ritalin.

I heard there is a subdivision of foods into the five phases also, but little more. I was talking to an old time Feng Shui master about it and his take was that yin and yang in his training regarding foodstuffs was that yang was determined primarily if it came from an animal with blood and yin was generally vegetables, he went on to say that the five phase aspect was more important to look after to mend or increase ones energy, but he said we didnt have time to get into the classification properly (because he was hungry and late) and would only say that it pertained both to tastes (according to 5ph theory) and the actual energy the food contained, so he said it was easier overall to learn to cook with high quality ingredients and eat as varied and balanced as possible, especially if you practice martial arts or exercise a lot wich he knows i do so it felt like friendly advice and maybe a hope to be invited for dinner sometime When i catch him next time i'll try to raise the subject again, might be a while though.

Mmm, i can relate to the accomplishment issue. It's an easy trap to fall in with qi gong also. I'd argue that play is play, just go with it and screw what anyone else says. Maybe decide on a strict and exact opening and closing sequence and just do whatever you feel like between the two, clealry setting the space for a free session? Or, completely opposite direction: Have you tried tai chi? It's got roundabout everything - a form to accomplish (clear your intent by exhausting it) and fun push hands with a partner (can be very focused or more playful). If you like it you can pour all that desire for accomplishment into something relaxing, useful and goal oriented and perhaps liberate your meditation practice?

Uh, i guess that depends entirely on what you hope to achieve, boring answer i know. The thing with established methods is that you dont have to reinvent the wheel, although someone invented them at some point. What kind of qi gong are you thinking about winging? Edit: took out the rant and advice you didnt ask for and refer to the post following this one, good stuff there.

And i bow with you, not one eye dry.

The most tangible results are: getting home late and eating late after class, arguments with wife about who should have made dinner and who should have done the shopping and all the weekends spent studying, Mo Seut exercise still presents frustrating challenges and i often ache for days after, my stances are still too high, techniques too stiff, my power is off and i still havent learned to shift my weight properly from foot to foot. Lets not even start on the spine and neck, stupid shoulders. My left leg is shorter than my right one and the axis of my hips and shoulders are still out of alignment. I still get angry, i still feel stupid, blind and insensitive. I get reactive, defensive, short sighted and anxious. I eat unhealthy, havent kicked the nicotine, caffeine or the sex. Any great revelations i've had have all been small and bland, utterly mundane. My sitting practice is intermittent and i cant stay still for more than the blink of an eye, thoughs scatter and race. I'm still an introverted cranky guy who'd rather not speak than be forced to explain and be held to a measurable standard of coherence and quality. And after almost a decade of not giving up even though im useless i'd wager i'm a stubborn fool. I wore holes in my nice kung fu pants from all the sitting, kicking and horse stance, many who started before me have black belts now and know double the amount of forms, i go through at least one pair of shoes in a year. I even pay for this every six months!! So much money, time and effort and nothing to show for it. Can't wait for next session though. A handful of insane people dressing up funny, standing still or moving almost not at all for long periods of time, playing with staffs like children and flailing swords around like howling madmen.

Saw this documentary short about a man in his 80s who had a passion for building birdhouses. Or fixation perhaps. He was a retired furniture carpenter and wood shop teacher. Long story short he'd gotten into his head to build the worlds best birdhouse. He ended up with different models for different birds, technical solutions such as a cat safeguard inside (working against cat anatomy, very clever) that doubled as a sitting platform for the young birds. Oak reinforced openings against woodpecker squatters. His idea was to make a house for birds that provided durable shelter and when he tried to get a store to sell them they felt they were going to be too expensive. He didnt care about making money off of it, that was beside the point. One unit had many many hours of work on it by a skilled craftsman. He'd always had fixations in life but had realized that his life was ending and he could take nothing with him through death. He said that people turning 80 stopped joking about old age because they realized "the party was soon over" (his words), he seemed kind of disgusted with the whole thing. When he said he was past 80 years my jaw dropped. He seemed more spry than my dad did in his 60s, with none of the frailty and insecurity in his body that people of his age usually display. He took dance classes and stuff, was active and fluid in his work, his voice was strong, eyes and wit quick. He laughed himself to tears when the filmmaker asked if he quit making birdhouses after he heard people referred to him as "Birdhouse", because he couldnt lie about it and he saw just how bizarre and ridiculus it was. It's called "Holkmannen" in Swedish (birdhouse-man), its really enjoyable. He comes off as a person in tune with himself and nature around him. He'll probably teach you how to build a mean birdhouse if you seek him out, and you'll be on your way to mastering fine carpentry, hopefully maintaining your skill and thereby your mind and body until old age, if it catches on with you.

The physical development of the opposable thumbs - on a larger scale - is what makes you able to burn paper, spirit might help of course but paper is the end product of a certain level of industry of manufacture, gotta have thumbs for those. Even a very small industry. Ken: burning paper has everything to do with spirituality, take ghost money for instance.

And here i went and thought a masters true ability was to teach someone in a way and method that suits that disciple so they might build upon the transmission and further their own learning even when their master is gone. What is there to achieve really?

Adding to the list of chariots: First thing that rang bells when i saw the topic of "Chariots" was something about Merkavah (spelling?) mystic/esoteric tradition, a chariot pulled by angelic beings has a major role there too. Had to get that out, i'll reread the op closely tomorrow when mind is rested

I'm a huge fan of copperplate script but damn that was difficult to read! I keep wondering "but what about the path of the artisan or the path of yourself?" I'm getting the new age vibe here too, mostly because it shines right back into both a "video game" perspective (choose your class and specialization) and it also sounds like classic self motivational speak, the basic idea might not be off but i find the package simplistic or tending towards the quick-fix genre, this hits my allergy buttons with deadly precision