Otis

+1

I do not get any chance to read Liao's book , but I always find this kind of philosophical or artistic interpretation of Zen problematic. Besides, a persistent wordless spiritual process only provides us some initial condition to start , yet is still something unproductive ; hardly can it be claimed as any kind of significant achievement . Problematic? Unproductive? Insignificant? Why do you say that?

This is a great point, and why I say: if you already have a good connection to your energetic path, then that's your best road map. Symmetrical work is useful as a "one-size-fits-all" solution. But individuals are not symmetrical. Our conditioning distorts and binds us. So the needs of the body will not be symmetrical, either. (My caveat to that: my right-handedness creates a bias in some practices, and I find it useful to remind myself to bring in the left).

LOL at the "town loon". Sounds like a great practice.

Another good reason for us to be slow to say "you're wrong" to each other. Often, it's only the words that disagree with each other, whereas our meanings overlap nicely.

Too true. The classics on discussion groups: mind, consciousness, love, self, God, heart, reality, surrender, desire, enlightenment, etc.

I think that's the best reply you could give. I'm a huge believer in following "it", and my experience is that "it" doesn't lead me to injury, despite stretches (for example) that my head thinks are going too far. As long as you're not pushing yourself after some conceptual goal, but following your inner guidance, I think you'll do great. Even if you tire, get sloppy and cause a headache or whatever, it'll help remind you to keep to your guide. Good luck!

Sounds like a gift to me. When I get angry is precisely the worst time to open my mouth.

Why these exercises? What do you get out of it?

I gotta ask: did you used to go to Dance Home in Santa Monica? Or the 5 Rhythms jam? I go to both, every week! As you might imagine, I am pretty devoted to improv dance (it's my best Qi practice, along with stretch), so I haven't been taking formal dance, as it always feels like the wrong direction. Too much concept-first. I have, however, taken both salsa and swing in the past, and they have the same problem, between them. Salsa involves freedom at the hips, that is just not allowed in swing. Each has its advantages. (I've also taken Tai Chi, but haven't experienced a specific conflict with the dance I've taken). The cool thing about Tango (IMO) is how the partners become one gravitational/inertial unit, rather than acting as separate planets, in orbit around each other. You can find that same exploration in Contact Improv, if it's local to you. And I have friends who teach both, and a hybrid of the two. But it does seem that you have to learn some artificiality in Tango, in order to enter into the form. I imagine that sense of strangeness will fade quickly.

1. Love your body. It is everything that I am or have. 2. Love the "mistakes". Surrender the need to be right. 3. Learn to be vulnerable to others, because being safe is a prison.

I think you're right; that's what Buddhism is about. The middle way does not exclude life, even as it seeks to let go of panic and habits of avoidance and addiction. I have, however, heard several Buddhists repeatedly endorse the "detach themselves from the world" model as their own interpretation of Buddhism. Engagement with life (the yang balance to yin "surrender-of-attachment") is seen as anathema.

Absolutely. You won't hear me making any grand claims that aging is an illusion, or whatever. That's all way beyond my experience. I do wonder, however, how much of the aging that we all take as inevitable, is really just some form of premature aging, like what I'm describing. Especially with sedentary lifestyles, which I think are pretty destructive/restrictive on body freedom. Everything that I've now reversed, once seemed inevitable and irreversible to me.

Yeah, this comes up whenever there's the question of whether babies are examples of our "original nature". Parents are perfectly aware of how much id is played out by the kids, so they don't exactly seem enlightened. But I think there are really two different paths being described here. One is maturity, which is the ability to place my immediate needs within context of a greater world. Of course the newborn has no maturity, in that sense. The other path is freedom from delusion, which is the undoing of all the conceptual lenses that we've created to control our experience of the world. I do believe that the newborn is free from the "should", the "no", the "impossible", and all the other oppressive dualities that arise with language and conditioning. That is where their innocence is. In our society, so much effort is put into "fixing" the lack of maturity in children, usually through creation of belief/delusion and conceptual framework. Those delusions, of course, actually inhibit the long-term maturation process, because they bind the perspective, rather than opening it up. The ideal, IMO, is to raise the child as a Buddha, through encouraging a broadening of perspective, without reinforcing any one fixed perspective, too much (including that of the parent). That way, the kid can learn about how they interact with the world, without all the self-blinding beliefs, adjectives, and social expectations that we use to encourage "maturity".

As I come into my middle age, I am hit with the question of how the next half will be. I look around me, and I see some friends and family on what I call a "shrinking-V" path. That is: what is possible, comfortable, available for them, gets smaller and smaller over time, as they exclude the risky, the unknown. And I see others (who are aging very well) who are on "expanding-V" paths. They are adding new skills and experiences all the time, are not afraid of growth, risk and adventure. Note that it is not the risk-averse (those who would religiously avoid the Amy Winehouse phase) who stay young. They become old the fastest, by selecting out all the experiences that threaten their security and/or comfort. Even if they haven't incurred the wear and tear of a rough life, they have no capacity for new things. They stay soft on the outside, but hard on the inside. They learn to vote Republican, see only their own religion as true, and hate immigrants and young people (gross generalizations, sorry). The "expanding-V" people I know do not avoid stress; they just don't take it personally. They play with the extremes, but their hearts stay joyfully in the center. And their bodies and faces reflect that joy.

My experience is a qualified yes, that Chi practice can indeed reverse the aging process. Physically, I'm much younger than I was 10 (or even 20) years ago, in terms of my ability, endurance, flexibility, resistance to injury, reaction time, strength, etc. And I don't see an end to that process, within sight. However, what I think I'm reversing is premature aging. I'm waking up a body that was never fully woken up as a child (and which was crashing in my 20's and early 30s), so I'm experiencing the vitality that was hidden from me in the masses of bound and atrophied fibers. I'm going from a contracted body to an open one. I also believe that I am aging forward at the same time, so there are opposite forces at work. And I don't have a long view (just 10 years of practice), so I can't predict the future. For now, at least, most of the effects seem to be going towards getting younger.

Excellent!

Well, I figured the title of the game couldn't be taken too literally. I couldn't tell you what an enlightened person would do, because how the hell would I know? But what I can do (and what I figured you were asking for) is give my most enlightened answer. That's the best I've got, anyway. In that case, the sage is just a substitute for "me", and there's no reason I couldn't be arachnophobic. I think it was a good situation, because (among other things) it plays with some mental assumptions as to what an enlightened person would do (would he have phobias, would he kill bugs)? I think it's good to approach these questions from our guts, rather than just provide hearsay (academic) answers.

Accepting failure has been one of my most necessary steps in growing. How can I be a beginner, if I can't accept failure? My own "need to get it done right" is no more than an addiction, I think, a way of trying to prove to myself that I am worthy. It cuts me off from new opportunities, because they present new chances to fail. Why do I need to be "worthy"? Why do I need to be "right"? Those adjectives only describe arbitrary nodes on spectra that are created by my own perspective, the accuracy of which is unknowable. I don't understand what "being content" has to do with "being ungrateful for the past opportunities". Can I not be fully grateful, without holding on to regrets of what I have not achieved? (There is nothing wrong with the message that regret brings; the only problem is how loud and persistent it can be).

Personally, I see the concept of enlightenment as a destination as a red herring, a distraction that takes away from the real process at hand: that of living one's life. For that reason, the OP's conclusion that enlightenment = Love, seems perfect to me. Love as in loving Life, all its contents, and all the other participants in the game. Because then enlightenment is a growth-filled path of discovering myself, others, and the world, that lasts the rest of my life. It has nothing to do with comparing myself to others, or to some conceptual model. It's just living my life with great care and fearlessness, which is exactly the path I want to be on, anyway.

Awesome!

I'd make their presence a chance to practice. Get really close to them, even get them on me. Since I'd be grateful that they helped me with my practice, I'd make the ending of that practice scooping them up and bringing them outdoors. A similar practice that I've indulged in (and highly recommend): going through the woods alone at night, indulge in every horrible fantasy of killers, zombies, flesh-eating insects, whatever makes me want to push those thoughts away. Really play out the feared fantasy like a horror film, including imagining all the destruction to my flesh. Turns the fears into a game, and makes them seem absurd.

Very nice.

Situation #3: the poor-parking Sage. So, let's suppose the Sage, coming home late at night, has been sloppy in her parking. She has accidentally grazed and dented the door of an expensive-looking car (owners unknown). She has the opportunity to re-park elsewhere, with no one the wiser, and hope that the driver of the other car has comprehensive insurance. Or she can leave a note on the car, taking responsibility and paying for the damage (and let's assume for this situation that the sage is pretty poor). At this moment, "getting away with it" feels like the path of least resistance. What does she do?