Bubbles

Please GIVE the links to TTB posts/threads where people here have been caught into the traps of fake masters otherwise you are just fighting the shadow of your own thinking.

This is exactly where you are wrong. We are NOT interested in such masters. Our current practice has already been fruitful enough. Will you listen to that?

Don't miss my point: I suggest you open a blog with a suggestive title about fake masters and put the link in your signature so that people interested in that could follow your link and find your legit concern. But most of the people here are not the proper audience.

Well, you know your post seems well intentioned, but why don't you just wait that some people show up here claiming they have a extraordinary master who can do such and such amazing thing and then you could pop up with your own claim that most are fake etc.. Because you know, here at TTB, we are usually more interested in internal cultivation. Your numerous threads about fake masters are more like a shoot in the dark. You could touch a duck some time or another but...

Yes, but if I want to move an object I use my hand and pick it up . If I am disabled, I ask for help or wait. Moving objects with qi has limited interest and not really practical so why bother about fake masters etc..

Hi screenname "Lao Tzu", Instead of looking for exterior confirmations of fake or legit masters, why not just practice and see for yourself? We are not here in a community of blind devotees of the qigong church. A lot of people here have personal experience of what qigong can do to their health, physical or mental. So we all agree already about the fact that like in all fields, there are fake masters. But who really cares when everyone can judge by first hand experiences? Your exterior approach speaks for itself.

You can move the Qi by appropriate physical movements but it is better done when the Yi is applied to the movements as in Taijiquan. edit: it is better done when the Yi is the actual origin of the movements as in Taijiquan. English is not my first language

Yun Qi is moving the Qi so that stagnation is removed.

Thanks a lot, Trunk.

This is also my experience.

Apart from the very good points given by Jeramiah Zeitigeist, I would say that Zhan Zhuang is more a generic term for different realities. As I see it there is no orthodox way of practicing zhan zhuang because the different arts in which you will find this practice may have developped different techniques for different purposes and emphasis. Lam Kam Chuen book's present a generic and consensual way of practicing, very good for the beginner in search for a feeling of zhan zhuang. If you have entered into this practice through Taijiquan, intructions might be different but nonetheless very valuable. Stick with it anyway.

Thank you for that. _/\_

Thanks. I would say that the calibre of this teacher was one of love. What a heart he had! It was just amazing.

Yes, I know what you mean. My tears were not so much about him being dead (because of course, as a kind of bodhisattva, something of his generosity, love and spiritual power remain) but about the realization of how unworthy I am as his student.

Yes, to me at least and to the people he helped.

1. I deny the appropriateness of quoting Descartes here. Awareness is the realization of something (Oxford dictionary) so it encompasses every-thing and can't be reduced to sensory perceptions. Plus, you don't respect the intellectual context in which Descartes wrote what he wrote. You just cut, paste and assume it applies here when it doesn't. Descartes didn't care about what we are talking about here. He didn't care about oriental spiritual paths and their specific methods. 2. "Daoism is not the ultimate path" means to me: other paths are as valid as this one, so one can become strong enough to help others without alchemical work in the Daoist sense and I took my teacher as an illustration of that. So, following the same line of Scotty's thought, I was just thinking that charging thousand of dollars for mystical alchemical daoist formulas could be a consequence of this fact: spirituality is nowadays just another marketplace. 3. You don't respect the topic. Please read again Scotty's first post and the following posts. See and recognize that yours is just a opportunity you seize to drop by and troll with the same style, intentions and content as the other posts you usually make. Should I remind you that you have denounced lately (HERE) a "conspiracy of mediocrity" running here at TTB? Well, be consistent with yourself.

This is true. But we can receive spiritual empowerment from true legit teachers for a nothing when we compare to the thousand dollars charged by others. I am a true believer of what alchemy can do, but I am convinced that most of the spiritual work we can do for real to heal our wounds has nothing to do with alchemy or can be done without it by other paths. Daoism is not the ultimate path. If I have a look, I can see that the teacher who put me on the Way never taught me energetic practices. He did his best to make me understand the importance of 24/7 awareness, lucidity, integrity, compassion, because he made see how powerful and screwed up, deluded a yogi (in general sense of it) can be without awareness, lucidity, integrity, compassion. And he never charged me. He let me decide how much I should give for the food, the shelter and the teaching. Writing this I am almost in tears, because he is dead now, and I am an unworthy student. Thanks again Scotty,

Thank you for bringing up the topic. Actually I have been thinking in the same lines for a few months. This is not just morality, it is first and foremost common sense and common decency. Thanks again.

Sorry, I don't really understand what you just wrote, but rest assured that I do think we are friends despite all the blunt answers I made to your posts

As I like to say and think, people who come here would be better off and would benefit more to the community, by posting less but better and practicing more.

Sure, but as you know, Scripture study is as important as oral transmission in Daoism, and for the latter, one needs a teacher. It is somewhat naïve to think that everything is written plain and obvious in books for people to practice and follow. We won't find idiot's guides. Daozang is not a big idiots guide. And when it comes to practices that involves technical skills, internal or external, or just wisdom, proper guidance is necessary. People wouldn't question at all the need for proper guidance if it was learning jewelry or engineering, classical chinese medicine or whatever. It speaks volume about our corrupted, materialistic and super-ego driven age that for spiritual matters, people think they can do by themselves just with books (when they have minimal reading skills).

If your learn from books, be careful, If you learn from a teacher, be more careful, If you learn nothing, be careless enough to talk about how dangerous books and teachers may be If you learn something, practice it and shut up.

Some westeners have been to Japan and practiced Zen meditation there, in Zen temples, living the life of Japanese monks for months and years. So we have books, but we have also experienced people. A number of these people have been recognized by Japanese Zen masters as real zen practitioners. Some westeners have been to China and practiced Zuowang there, with Daoists masters, living their life. Some of them have been also scholars with a very very good command of English language and Chinese language. Some of them have been recognized by these Daoists as real practitioners and have been initiated into a Taoist lineage and received register.So we have some real people practicing Zuowang, translating real Daoist texts from the Daoist canon that speaks about their real daily practice. As an example, you can read L.Kohn's translation of Sima Chengzhen Zuowang lun I uploaded the table of contents as an attachment. Do you realize that the separation between East and West on that matter has been virtually non existent today because the Daoist scholars/practitioners of both side work together? So when you keep on coming back on and on with the language barrier complaint song, with the West misleaded by Western mind frame complaint song; you are fooling yourself. You may ponder some time about whether you are unconsciously led by a desire of being the unique and only one who hold a so called truth about Daoism. I am afraid your Daoism is not the Daoism that has been studied/practiced by people (CHINESE AND WESTERNERS) who know more about it than anyone else here. These people are our reference here and let me repeat: they form an international community. There is no conspiracy against you personally, and most of the people who interact with you are from different places, and don't know each other but we are basically in the same line: it should make you wonder.. But instead of that, you choose to withdraw behind your books and claim that the truth is there for you, a truth that no one but you can reach. What a delirium, man! Sitting in oblivion- table of contents.pdf

Hi RyanO, In the Taoist religious calendar, the day devoted to Guan Yin birthday is the 19th day of the Second Moon. Note that it is based on lunar calendar, so each year, those days fall in different solar calendar dates.