Bubbles

You are very wise.

This is what I have done. I said, giving some facts, that the principle you presented was not a Traditional principle of Taijiquan but YOUR principle.And that you didn't want to see that. There is no personality problem here. Just facts. This is nonsense. You talked about TRADITIONAL taijiquan first. Just have a look at the meaning of it in your dictionary. A tradition is something you receive from someone who is considered as legit by the community. This is the case with Chen Xin and the whole Chen lineage. If you say that your viewpoint is more valid than what the Chen's are teaching, this is not Traditional Taijiquan it is ChiDragon Taijiquan. Perhaps your Taijiquan is better, but you will have to prove your point. And we are still waiting for it. I have no biased feeling about it, because the fact I presented is not my fanciful invention. Everyone can have a look into the book I mentioned. I am not the author of it, I have no personal interest in giving high kick instead of low kicks. You can find something similar in Yang tradition: for eg Deng Jiao posture in the Yang form. Everyone can shoot a demo and post it in www. It doesn't make it more valid to me. So either you are talking about traditional tajiquan, either you are talking about your taijiquan. If you are talking about traditional taijiquan, you have to prove by something else than anonymous yahoo video, anonymous posts on forums that high kicks doesn't exist in it or that they are not traditional. I specifically mean, prove us that in Tui Jin there is no place for Wai Bai Jin or Nei Bai Jin.

This is just an attempt of yours to hide behind the smoke screen of the victim role of the misunderstood sage. Because I am far from being an authority in Taijiquan, I am just checking your claims against Chen Xin's text (Chen Pinsan Taijiquan Jiangyi) which is a reference text for the Chen Family for nearly a hundred years, and against The Chen family practice as it is displayed and recorded. If you say that in Traditional Taijiquan legs shouldn't kick above waist and that you can find the contrary in a Taijiquan treatise from one of the oldest lineage of Taijiquan and in the actual practice of it, what would you expect people to think of your claim? Problem is each time you are asked to show the background of your claim, you fail to give it and evade. I have nothing against you personally but you seem to be a very good example of what you are accusing others to do when it comes to knowledge. Let me quote you and ask yourself if it could apply to you first and foremost: Apart from your own voice telling you that you know Taijiquan better than Taijiquan treatises and masters, what are you really ready to hear?

Find below the verse dedicated to the posture Zuo Ca Jiao ( rub with left foot) p446 of The illustrated canon of Chen Family Taijiquan written by Chen Xin My link: "The right hand moves from the left side of the torso to draw a circle rightward The hand is at the level of the heart to make a line with te outstretched forearm Standing on the supporting left leg and kicking up with the right toes; If you do not succeed in kicking up to the chin, kick to crotch level With such a technique you can knowk out a foe seriously for a while. Where there is no need to apply this technique, don't apply it; Since it should not be used rashly, don't monkey around with such a tool" Draw your own conclusion : in Traditional Taijiquan there are kicks in which legs are raised above the waist. Unless you consider that Chen Taijiquan is not traditional but you will have hard time proving that. This is just a sample. In Er Qi Jiao (Double raise kick) for eg. it is all the more clear. Just browse www and look for Laojia done by one of the Chen's or by Wang Xian Please don't make claims unless you really know what you are talking about. There is enough pollution in the world, and in the www in particular.

The first version of zuowang I was taught was very similar to xiantiangong described by Master Wang. I had to focus on lower dantian, by an inner gazing and by an inner "hearing" until mental activity calm down and lose its facination power and eventually dissolve. The LDT would become warm, would offer some feeling of density and compactness. In this regard, I see it more as youwei because there is still some intention of control or accomplishing something (for eg filling up the dantian, etc), hence the superficial differences I saw with YJM's Embryonic breathing. The latter has more focusing techniques but I would more see them as developments or refinings of tyhe simple technique mentioned in Master Wang's book. The second version was more radical in the sense that I should not focus on anything but sitting and uniting with the breath until everything dissolves.I was told this would be forgetting, even the breath which is just used as a uniting tool before dissolving. At some point,an experience of merging with the breath and posture would open a dimension in which everything could be dissolved in a forgetful awareness without any distinction between subject and object.This one be more like the wuwei you were talking about. This second version is more like my former Soto Zen practice in which any goal is eliminated from the beginning because zazen is said to be the ultimate practice and this practice is already realization. The motto was "Shinkantaza": just sitting. There are still slight differences between this version of zuowang and the version of zazen I practiced because in zazen, there is an stronger emphasis on the impeccability of the physical posture, but there was no intention whatsoever to control anything, nor to wait for any kind of feeling or experience. Hope it clears up a bit the origin of my post Be well,

You don't need to apologize. I enjoy your posts the way they are. This is what I feel, and I am sure I am not the only one to recognize in you the voice of a real practitioner. Not exactly, it is in your signature! Oh, I can see that. In this regard xiantiangong is what I have been taught as being zuowang by two different Daoist teachers. And I can't help recognizing this as having the flavor of the zazen (Soto tradition) of my early years in which you just keep the posture, focus on the hara and the breathing and let everything unfold naturally without clinging to anything. I can see that also and that's part of the reason why I had some hard time seeing so radical differences between the practices he offers and some others I have heard of. I am just bowing to that. I value practical experience more than anything on that matter. So if you say you experienced a difference, it must be real. I can't question that. This is the way I understood it. I also felt, with reason, that you were talking with a background that I have not. And I am fine with that. I won't troll this valuable thread. So, enough of my bubbling! Thanks for your friendly spirit Kindest regards

I have no problem with your disagreement. It is interesting and I can see what you are pointing at. But, to me, the distinction between an accumulation school and a non accumulation one is a little artificial. In the text you quote, one can see that focus on dan tian, intention is used in the cultivation process. So it is not completely yin, it is not as yin as, let's say, a dzogchen-like self-releasing method of meditation can be in which one is advised to completely relax in the luminosity of pure awareness (who remerbers anyway that before reaching Dzogchen a strong samatha-vipasyana practice must be accomplished?) Yang Jwing Ming book can appear more yang but he tells in several parts of the book that EB is not like other Nei Dan methods in which the mind is actively, and determinedly leading the Qi ( I am thinking of Mantak Chia's methods for eg). In the method he describes, he says that people can fall asleep during the practice, it is not a problem. I can't think of any accumulation practice that would allow that. I am not trying to convince you beacause you seem strongly rooted into the Water tradition, but I am just suggesting that whereas one could see a contradiction between the method you describe and Healing Tao practices (sorry, it is the only eg I have of Daoist Fire practices), I am not sure there is such contradiction between Yang Jwing Ming's EB and Xiantiangong. I can see differences but not to the point of seeing them as pertaining to radically different fields of practices. Since you seem to have an authorized position on qigong/neigong subjects in TTB, I am willingly retiring from this discussion so that your point can have all the audience it deserves but being strongly attached to this kind of opposition between accumulation schools and non accumulation schools can be a little unfair in the end because there may be more shades in practices than there are labels to name them. Best,

Hi Jetsun, To my knowledge and understanding, Yang Jwing Ming's book: Qigong Meditation-Embryonic Breathing is all about it. Best

Lam Kam Chuen is a very good guide. You may try again following him and see what happens.

Ditto

I have a problem only with the last post (in which there is only a rhetoric question) where as you have one understanding the whole thread. You are not in the best position to comment.

What you say is not very clear to me. Unless you are putting a lot of tension in your legs when you imagine holding a ball betwwen your legs, it is not likely to hurt in your knees. If you follow The Way of Energy by Lam Kam Chuen, you follow a very gentle way to do it, you shouldn't be hurt.

If you read Josama's post, will you?, you will see that ZZ is not his only practice. If he has a moving practice involving some squats or a sitting practice with an incorrect posture, it can create a knee pain that has nothing to do with ZZ. Moreover, as I wrote, if, in ZZ, his knees are bent too far, the weight will be transferred to the knees and not to the soles and it will create pain and damage them in the long run. He has to study his own practice. The "no pain no gain" catechism is not very helpful here, ChiDragon ( BTW, it is good to have us sparring again )

Yes, tension should be in the thights. If you have a sitting practice and use a incorrect crossed legs posture, it can create some knee pain. I would have a look into this if I were you.

MY GOODNESS ChiDragon... Yes it DOES! Muscle pain is normal, knee pain is NOT! Damaging your knee can lead to surgery, muscles soreness is nothing.

Here are some instructions for a beginner: Place your feet shoulder-wdth apart.Let your arms hang loosely by your sides. Lower your shoulders by relaxing them. Bend your knees so that you lower yourself a little as if you had the intention to sit on a high footstool. DON'T LET YOUR KNEES GO FARTHER THAN THE TIP OF YOUR TOES, OTHERWISE IT WILL DAMAGE YOUR KNEES. Let your weight sink down so that you can feel it evenly distributed on the entire soles of your feet.Keep your head straight but relax as if it was suspended by a string. After 5mn or so, raise your amrs as if you were huging a tree trunk betwwen your palms and your chest. Open your fingers. Be sure to stretch a little your arms when you give them the form of a ballon, it will open the space between your shoulders and a free an energetic pathway. MAKE SURE YOU ERASE THE LORDOSIS IN THE LUMBAR REGION TO AVOID DAMAGING YOUR VERTEBRA IN THE LONG RUN. As ChiDragon wrote it, feeling some pain in the muscles is quite normal. But feeling pain in the knees is NOT. I would work with body aligments if the knee pain stays. IME, practicing some regular mindful stretching helps a lot.

Please read again Josama's post: he/she's talking about KNEE pain and not leg muscles pain.

Thanks JohnC , you have just made my day with this one. Thumbs up!

This is a huge topic White Wolf Running On Air.. It covers several fields: philosophy, linguitics, religious studies, psychology,politics and would require a lot of serious work to address your questions in some ways that avoid peremptory statements or superficial views. I can't give any acceptable analysis now, you are putting me to work... If time permits I will ponder over it, but I can't make any promise. I know there are a lot of educated people here, native english speakers, who will chime in. Take care

I am sorry it took me so much time to understand what you were aiming at. My command of english is not good enough to allow me writing long answers and clear ones on abstract topics. happily some will say! Take care.

The idea of being as 'standing alone' can be found in the ancient greek term as used by Aristotle ousia which points to the essential being of something as an ontological unit, which can be apart from everything else, which the scholastics will later call haecceity (what one is said to be when taken in itself). But the latin term used for this is essentia (essence) and not existere (existence).In an empirical viewpoint, we equate to be and to exist. But all the Metaphysical thinking can be summarized as the effort to know what should we exactly understand under the term be ( to on in Greek) . To do that a distinction has been made between the essence of a being and its existence and the existence has been subordinated to the essence because the essence has taken in almost all the weight of the reality and the identity of the being, which lead to idealism. The essence says what the identity of a being is, the existence is the unfolding of the essence and is under causes and conditions. This is of course far more complicated than what I write about it because during all the century, each philosopher has given some specific way to think the internal relationships between be, existence and essence.

I understand better what you are saying. What you write is true as long as you keep it into the perception viewpoint. But it is only valid in the perceptive realm . When you take a photo, you focus on some object that stands alone, in the sense of being apart and separate from everything else, but you know that the background is necessary for it to stand out and be perceived, it is a relative being. So “standing alone” in the sense of being apart from everything else is acceptable but only in a relative sense. To manifest oneself, a background and an horizon are necessary otherwise, the one that is manifesting itself out by itself, as an absolute reality causa sui /cause by iself, and this is only valid for an absolute being (= God in monotheism). This is very well summarize by what Spinoza writes in Ethics, Part 1, axiom 1: Omnia, quae sunt, vel in se, vel in, alio sunt translated as : Everything that is/which exists, is/ exists either in itself, or in something else Only an absolute being can exist in itself, which means that nothing caused it to be/exist but itself (causa sui). In this sense it can stand alone. If something’s existence can be traced back to another being, then it can’t stand alone, it is linked to what causes it to be. This is the idea of filiation that pervades all uses of existere in Medieval philosophy and after.