松永道

I was a student. I actually started in Naturopathy and planned to dual degree. When I was there dual degree students first completed two years in the ND program then studied CCM and ND concurrently. All this in 5 or 6 years. The CCM program there stresses personal cultivation (taijiquan, qigong, deep study of the classics). Personal cultivation requires hours a day. If you dual degree you don't have those hours, you're damn busy! In other words no time for personal practice. Now the whole reason I wound up there in the first place was because I too needed to navigate some pretty dark waters. I had never been a happy person, and in fact believed happiness was antithetical to progress. I studied western medicine and was particularly familiar with one study that concluded, in simple terms, that some people were just naturally happy or sad based on their natural serotonin levels. Unhappy people were the achievers, they needed to accomplish something to get their fix. Whereas happy people were just, generally happy. Those simpletons! I began to identify with my 'natural' unhappiness and cynicism so deeply that I wound up with full blown depression and a variety of fatigue and autoimmune problems. I had all but snuffed out my own hopeful spirit, convinced small achievements no longer mattered because pollution, war, greed, global warming, would erase everything in the end. So what even mattered? I'm not sure many people follow their existential crisis as far as I did. It sounds silly to me now, reflecting back, because the emotions have all flowed out of it, but for a time I couldn't even talk about about that period in my life without crying. What changed? I moved in with a guy (now one of my closest friends) who knew qigong. My energetic system was such a wreck, that by the time he agreed to teach me a bit, the first trickles of qi felt like a waterfall. And I blasted off from there, spent the summer qi-stretching everyday and sure enough, though I didn't expect it then, my emotional life changed dramatically. I wrote you about homecoming and reunion because that was my epiphany. That my mind had gone off on some terrible power trip, routinely ignoring, insulting and abusing my body for over a decade. And when I finally stopped to listen, the body consciousness was there, waiting, loving, and forgiving. That dear old friend I abused and misused took me back without a second thought. Wow the torrent of emotions. Gratefulness, gratitude, guilt, relief. My health improved radically. Aches, allergies, chronic infections, and fatigue all gone. I started putting on mass. And you know what, I became one of those naturally happy simpletons! The odd thing is, my logic never changed, I still see all the problems of the world, I still don't know how it will all turn out, but despite it all my hope burns like a bonfire. By the end of the summer, Western medicine didn't fit anymore. I transfered to NCNM, started as an ND, then transfered to the CCM program because of my interest in personal cultivation. In the 6 month gap time I came to China, met my teacher and the rest is history in the writing. You know what the real tipping point may have been? It sounds silly but in the final failing month with my then live-in girlfriend, at the height of my depression, we went out for Chinese. And what did my fortune cookie portent? Your joy is your sorrow unmasked

Dude... If I believed in making things mandatory, I would make this post mandatory reading for all young seekers. Really I'm moved. People pursue things for all reasons and even the 'wrong' reasons seem en route to the 'right' ones. Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Happy homecoming. Nothing more beautiful than a reunion. (...now what's this "was" thinking of going to NCNM about? Someone of your rare and profound insight would be treasured there. And it's an incredible community, like a cross between Hogwarts, Wudang, and Woodstock in the best possible ways. I love that place, and though adventure has called me away for who knows how long, I dream of returning, either to teach or study. A new world is being born there...)

I thought "The Way of Energy" was great. Bruce Frantzis' "Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body" is also helpful. In my opinion though, standing practice is not as easy as it seems. It doesn't take much instruction, but having a teacher to help you with the posture just once, so you feel what correct posture feels like, is more valuable than an entire book on the subject. And if you can't find a human teacher, practice next to a big, healthy tree. Trees are standing meditation masters.

Christopher, Heiner Fruehauf, the dean of the Classical Chinese Medicine at NCNM (National College of Natural Medicine) down in Portland, Oregon was cured from severe testicular cancer without resorting to surgery. In fact, this experience is what made him become a Chinese Medicine doctor. His treatment involved herbs, acupuncture, and qigong. I studied with him and he is a top quality guy. You can contact him through NCNM or his Classical Chinese Medicine website. Good luck man,

Transform #1 into #2 with practice. Meditation itself is a forced activity. It's a choice of the ego. It also takes long term practice to sit in proper meditative position without force. That said, here's a thought. Doing nothing also means not resisting right? It means accepting everything without craving somethings and disliking others. It doesn't mean the end of thinking necessarily but it does mean the end of attachment to thinking. I think it's very helpful to have an awareness activity to keep your awareness from getting tangled up in your thoughts. Following the breath is good. Watching and feeling the natural rhythm. Scanning and feeling the body is also great. Just go through, inch by inch, staying in one spot long enough to be aware of how it feels. This isn't visualization mind you. You're not trying to see it. You're just sweeping through with your awareness. Both of these are tasks (#1) that will transform into non-acting awareness (#2) over time. Essentially both of these methods (and they can be combined of course) cause you to begin associating with the observer rather than the ego. The ego can think away, it doesn't matter, as long as the observer is paying attention to the reality of the body. Then the mind's chatter is just like any other background noise. Indeed this method works for even forced meditations, like reverse breathing, at first you need to force it but over time it will become integrated into your natural non-acting framework. Sure the ego will act out in all sorts of ways to try and get you to pay attention to it. Spoiled child. Stop rewarding its misbehavior and you'll eventually reach the tipping point when true consciousness takes back the reigns. Just don't ask me how to do it permanently. I'm still working on that part.

Hey I just wanted to report that I asked my teacher and a few Daoist cultivators this weekend about Bodri's teacher Nan Huaijin. The general consensus was that Nan is a well respected scholar but that his cultivation methods leave something to be desired. Of course these opinions seem to come down to the age old Buddhist/Daoist debate: to go strait for mental cultivation or to start with the body. As a Daoist, my teacher of course believes cultivation must start with the body. The roots of the tree grow before its branches. A very pragmatic approach. And that ultimately, pure mind cultivation will result in cerebral experiences that may or may not have anything to do with reality. Develop mind and body together and you'll have physical proof for mental enlightenment. Bodri says cultivate the mind and the body will follow. Who's right? I'd have to meet Bodri to get a better idea. I'll say, while I've been impressed with the good hearts and minds of completely wuwei practitioners, most of them had rather undesirable physiques (think Vipassana's S.N. Goenka). Whereas the taoists and yogis I've met have tended to have more extreme personalities, most very playful, some rather temperamental, but chubby or thin they were in robust health. Perhaps it's best to dress as the Chinese have: In a Confucian, a Buddhist robe, and Daoist sandals. Could there be reason to this? In the Confucian logic on top, Daoist vitality on the bottom, and a Buddhist heart to connect the two. Hmmm.

No easy way. Kundalini awakening is usually the result of rather long term practice. You could teach him to feel qi though. That's easy. Just make a qi ball and have him put his hand inside. Or teach him how to make a qi ball himself.

Better to do less thinking and more doing. Doing is yang. Pondering is yin.

I'd like to comment on the reasoning behind metaphors in ancient texts. They do serve a purpose. Cultivation is a practice of growing consciousness. This process changes reality. What is real and sensible at one level of consciousness is mythological and symbolic at a lower level of consciousness. Have you ever played scavenger hunt? I did with my girlfriend's family in Czech Republic last winter. Two friends left ahead of us leaving clues in the forest for us to follow. Arrows, riddles in the snow, clues attached to trees. Nothing very difficult. One clue said "find your lunch within 5 meters." We looked in holes, under bushes, and ultimately had to climb a tree. Each clue, in any other context, would have been meaningless. However, the right clue, in the right spot, meant a belly full of delicious potato pancakes. What's the point of the story? Metaphorical texts are like this. Deliberately situational and otherwise inaccessible. They are designed to have no meaning until you have the experience to make sense of them. Once you have that prerequisite experience, the metaphor becomes obvious, and gives you direction to keep going. Clues only make sense in context. Experience is the context. That particular piece of text is loaded. Translate dragon to liver, tiger to lungs, lead to Jing, mercury to qi, etc, and you are still without true context. And indeed you shouldn't worry. This is a clue for later. I could my scavenger hunt clue again here at my desk, and look and look though I might 5 meters around, I'll find no potato pancakes here (no matter how much I wish there were!).

Sounds like you want to learn Chinese medicine. For starters, "The Web that has No Weaver" is a pretty good overview. Though it doesn't cover foods. For foods an herbs there are plenty of books available, the ones I use are in Chinese, but I got my Mom, "Healing with the Herbs of Life" which looked like the best herbal and diet book available for lay readers. As for your third question you're looking for "waidan" herbal concoctions for the alchemical process. I'm not sure there are good books on this and without a good base in Chinese medicine you could well hurt yourself. Bill Bodri's "How to Clean Your Arteries and Detox Your Body for the Road of Spiritual Cultivation" may be a place to start, though I haven't read it so can't give a review.

Workshops, seminars, retreats all intensely expose students to a certain practice over a period of time and then end. The idea afterwards that the student might continue practicing on their own. This often means that most workshops teach a lot of material but don't leave a lot of time for practice. Understandably, the amount of material often factors into the price, more material, more money. That's the nature of selling something. But I question the end result. Real questions arise out of long term practice. The body transforms, goes through changes, the practice grows overtime. I've also noticed that I'm quite capable of experiencing the sensations I'm told to look for, but looking for something and having it arise out of practice without expecting it are two very different things. One, a palpable but potentially fabricated, and the other, an unavoidable, unmistakable result. For instance, I thought I had a lower dantian long before actually going through the experience of developing one (which involves unmistakable physiological changes and is not simply a matter of feeling and visualizing). And so I ask, even if the teaching is genuine, is it proper, is it ethical to teach it in a workshop fashion? I would certainly say it depends on the practice. Some practices need more direct observation from the teacher. But almost every practice inevitably requires some guidance. Should you learn it once, potentially never meeting the teacher again, is this a safe practice to pursue? And for the workshop lovers, is a little of this and a little of that a real road of cultivation? Or is it just jumping from branch to branch, playing and seeking, as opposed to getting to the root? (However, I have been told that people who have reached a certain level of gongfu will immediately see into the nature of a practice, which is the excuse for everyone practicing secretly in ancient China.) It seems to me that anything but the most natural, most foundational practices are bound to go astray without a longterm teacher student relationship. What are your impressions?

I'm not disagreeing with you at all. Your point is just as you say, simple and clear. I'm disagreeing with the people who try to ascribe some immediate moral bearing to any "accident". Of course in this example your actions put you right on target to get in an accident. However, at any other time those same actions would wouldn't have resulted in an accident. Certainly no one is saying turning one block earlier and going the the icecream parlor is a way to avoid all accidents, or even every accident that may happen on that particular road overtime. That would be superstitious. So while your actions put you on path with the accident, the accident was beyond your control (assuming it wasn't your carelessness that directly caused the accident). And who's to say the accident is even a bad thing. A broken leg could give you the time to read a book that will change your life. Some bad accidents engender good changes. Some good things end up harming us. Yin gives birth to yang and yang gives birth to yin. Who's to say what's good or bad, the best we can do is just keep rolling along.

I'm not saying this is your interpretation, but... I mean, were I to have mastered the "law of attraction" long ago I would have gotten into Harvard, married Natalie Portman and to this day be all the more blissfully ignorant for it. I mean, don't you look back on your life and see how the "bad things" actually turned out to be the best things? Could it be that car accident happened not because you were thinking the wrong things but because it made you closer to your loved ones, for example? Notions of direct punishment, reward and fairness are human not divine. If the universe worked this directly our children wouldn't be the ones cleaning up after our environmental destruction. This is one of the great truths of the Christ story in my opinion: the buck has to stop somewhere. Eventually someone, some community, or some generation suffers and thereby takes responsibility for everyone else's bullshit. Is it fair that non-industrialized islander's suffer for global warming? Is it fair that a smoker's lungs suffer for the mind's addiction? Is it fair that Australia's ozone hole was caused by Asia's industrial complex to feed America's consumption? The "Law of Attraction" to place blame or praise is idiotic. Karma is not such a simple matter. Woo I had a rant in me this morning!

Thanks freeform, good post! I like the photons and waves analogy.

I hear this one from unenlightened people all the time!

Can you spare 10 days? www.dhamma.org I just wrote more details about my experience in this post.

Full lotus has these benefits: In proper full lotus position the legs are a stable platform for the strait spine. Half-lotus requires a pillow to acquire this posture. Cross legged a higher pillow. Kneeling also correctly orients the spine. Sitting on the front of a chair (so the equipment would be hanging down men) also puts the spine in proper position. Yet there's also a transformation that occurs in full-lotus. The pain in the legs will move from ankle, to shin, to knee, to thigh, to butt, to coccyx. This stretching out, opening up is transformative. Then the pain will start moving up the spine. Where the pain has already been overcome is full of free flowing qi. So in a sense, full-lotus will force you to overcome more personal issues (they are all disturbed qi flow) to obtain relaxation. Trancing out in a bed or chair is interesting, but you're not dealing with the whole body, only a superficial level of body relaxation is required. But no rush. Where ever you are at, if you are dealing with pain and overcoming it with relaxed awareness you are progressing. It's as simple as that. Everyone's pain bodies are structured differently. Consider yourself lucky, the naturally flexible will have to search harder for their pain.

I like the "High Weirdness" Drew, I think you're the Hunter S. Thompson of Dao. I still don't understand the ratios and harmonics though, perhaps this will take some time to really study.

Along these lines, I spoke with a master last summer who claimed the Lower Dantian should always remain the anchor of consciousness. Opening up the 6th, third-eye, chakra more than the 2nd, sensory, chakra will inevitably lead to insanity. In the same way being too earth focused limits spirituality, being too heaven focus affects what society calls sanity. Did you know there are two types of people on earth with abnormally strait spines? One type are spiritual cultivators. The other type are generally found in mental institutions. Carl Jung has some great stuff from his studies in mental hospitals about the patients expressing archetypal experiences that he termed the "collective unconscious". What is collective unconscious? None other than the heavenly level of: 天 Heaven 人 Human 地 Earth Is it so bad to be over-connected to Heaven? To be deemed insane by society? This is a question of Hun (魂) and Po (魄). Hun governs our spirituality. Po governs our animal reality. Someone with Poli (魄力) or Po power is easily identified. This type of person is full of Qi. That doesn't mean they are a nice person but it does mean they are strong and healthy. A good martial artist, regardless of size, will have the upright effortless posture and intense eyes of strong Po. Po is our animal soul, emotions, and mortality. An overly Po, relative to Hun, person is overly attached to physical reality. An overly Hun person is overly attached to spiritual reality. Think artists. Starving, sometimes mad, but also brilliantly creative. Psychoactive drugs activate the Hun in a big way. The problem is, Hun needs Po to become manifest. Like a kite without a line Hun will flutter, fly away, and fall without a strong Po anchor. Without Hun, Po never gets off the ground. Both aspects, Hun and Po, Shen and Jing, Yang and Yin, Heaven and Earth, Xin (心) and Ming (命),Heart and Body, must be mutually cultivated. Now back to the topic at hand: I sit 1 hour in full lotus now. I started sitting cross-legged in the beginning. Then Half-lotus. Then 30min in full lotus and worked up slowly from there. In my opinion, once you can get in the position you can start cultivating it. And I do think there is a great deal of "Put up or shut up" to it. Productive meditation relies on concentration and relaxation. Being concentrated and relaxed when you are comfortable is easy. Now, keeping that concentration through pain will make it make it stronger. Right now, after the initial few minutes of discomfort, full-lotus becomes very comfortable for me until around 45 minutes. Then the waves of pain begin, each adding more energy than the last. If I stay concentrated I will ride through the wave and experience greater relaxation and concentration. Then the next wave comes. And the process repeats until the wave gets too big and my mind looses balance, at which point my posture breaks, my breathing looses regularity, and my mind jets back up to my head like a diver gasping for air. Or, my beautiful alarm bell rings and I stay concentrated through the end of meditation. In the first case, I need to stretch out slowly, walk it off, and calm my mind. In the second case, my legs are supple and I can get up right out of full-lotus are walk normally and my mind remains deeply connected into the body. If I am successful every day for a week, I increase my time by 5 minutes the next week. In other words, I think the full-lotus and getting there is all about how you relate to pain. Does it control you, or do you remain relaxed, aware, and concentrated despite it. It's all about discipline.

In Bodri's Best and Worst Spiritual Practices he quotes this "ancient saying": "Merely to cultivate your physical body in order to prolong life, but not to practice to realize your self-nature, is the first cultivation mistake. But to practice to only realize the self-nature, while neglecting to support the alchemical transformations within the human body, will result in you cultivating for aeons without becoming enlightened." Sounds like he understands the importance of both Xin Gong and Ming Gong but simply advocates focusing on spiritual results rather than physical ones. However, he also states that highly cultivated individuals, who have developed their qi and ability to concentrate, can become enlightened very quickly when exposed to proper teaching. So after all he's also in the dual cultivation camp.

The book I mentioned has not been translated into English, shame there's a lot of great stuff in it. Give me a few years and I'll do it myself if I have to. Explains the Dragon Gate system, levels and all, and then the rest is a modern translation of Lu Dongbin's questions to his teacher. Very good quality but not easy reading for me just yet. I'll photo copy and translate some of the charts and pictures in the book one of these days and post 'em up here. Thanks for the info Proc, I don't know much about Wu-lu, or many traditions for that matter. Before I got to China I was more a figure-it-all-out-myself kind of cultivator, I'm not sure I had it wrong but the tradition here has been good for me. Should you care to share more about Wu-lu I'd love to hear.

Hey Hugo, I've found the same from Vipassana. In truth it's really become my root for my daily life. I find the equanimous Vipassana mind can even greatly enhance "leading" practices like taijiquan, neigong, and other qigong exercises. I couldn't say at this point that any single practice has affected me so profoundly. Did you learn from S.N. Goenka's free retreats? I would heartily recommend them to any Tao Bum. Xin Gong at its finest.