konchog uma

thanks. I have seen that book for years but never read it. I appreciate it. $5.50 on amazon, its on its way to my house, thank you again

being slow to anger is a sign of natural wisdom. If you don't get angry, don't get angry. Just laugh it off or something. A lot of people who are quick to respond with anger and violence wish they could be more patient, so count yourself blessed!

thanks

evidently! hahah

well thanks (i think) a third time, but i would still like to read a good book on it. hhahaha since the only thing you know about me is what i type on taobums, your judgement about me not being ready is, well, worthless. You should at least charge people a lot of money before you dispense with guru-ish drivel like that!

a tree

Well making small progress every day is the way to go at first. Just keep sitting. Why do you want to be angrier? You don't need anger. If it fades away quickly thats a sign of a healthy body. This isn't an action movie. And as to fear, as you meditate, you will find that your emotions regulate themselves more to your benefit and less work against you than they did at first. There are specific emotional meditations, and since each emotion is the expression of an organ (fear/kidneys) there are specific qigongs you can do to build the strength of those organs. As you learn more im sure your practice will deepen. For kidneys, practice touching your toes, stretching the lower back and breathing with the belly in a smooth fashion. You can breath healing light from the pure source of reality into your kidneys too just by intending it and visualizing it. It will have an effect if practiced daily. Traditional chinese medicine recognizes 18 kinds of qi, and thats just human kinds. There are countless kinds of qi, dynamo jack was probably talking about yin qi and yang qi. I wouldn't think too hard about all that just yet.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Marrow is not the same thing as bone marrow, but the stage prior to becoming bone marrow. Marrow is the pre-substantial Jing that forms the matrix for bone marrow, the spinal cord, and thebrain ok so thats a quote of jerry alan johnson from "chinese medical qigong therapy" p. 288 i was looking for a map of the bones because i just sat down for cuppa tea with my meditation (kuji-in) teacher and he said "oh youre building lots of radiant energy now, don't let that dissipate. When youre done, put it in your marrow." So he advised me to look up bones and marrow, and get a good map of it in my head, since that will help the technique he showed me to send the excess. so now i have questions for all you bums, since i am not really in the know. especially TCM-knowledgable ppl please chime in 1. is marrow similar in composition to semen/cerebro-spinal fluid/grey matter? Is there anything i need to know about it in relation to that? I have never heard the correlation drawn before. 2. now i am sure he was talking just about bone marrow. He isnt tcm. Should i bother with this expanded idea of marrow or just stick to the bone marrow? What would be the advice, as far as sending the excess radiant energy to the brain or spinal column or testes, as well as the bone marrow? 3. does this close the circle of jing-qi-shen "refinement", since i am taking spirit energy in the form of light and charging my jing with it? Am i understanding that right? 4. if this does close the circle of jing-qi-shen and that is now a closed circuit, does that mean i can stop intending anything and just let my body do what it does naturally (once my excess energy starts going to the marrow naturally i mean) thank the mess out of whoever responds, i really appreciate it!

if you are trying to cryptically say that i am already doing it, or already know how, thank you. I agree, i am definitely seeing a difference in consciousness and emotions with my qi cultivation. And while the raw intention to do it might be just the seeds i need to bear the shenly fruit, i would rather hear it from a qualified teacher, which i am not sure you are. No disrespect, i do appreciate your opinions, i just learn in a certain way, and its not always from my own intuition, higher self, etc. That is, if thats even what you were trying to say.

the Mair helps that one make sense. I couldn't get it just from reading the Legge. they're really laying into ol Confucius now. That one seems almost pointless except to say that daoism is better than confucianism! I mean what Lao had to say is certainly nothing that isn't covered elsewhere. I don't really see the point of that chapter except from the point of view of frat rivalry. If the writer wanted to say that life and death were the same, he should have written a story about that. These anti-confucian stories are losing their um je ne sais quoi.

from Victor Mair's "Wandering on the Way: Taoist Tales and Parables" In the state of Lu there was a mutilated man, Toeless Nuncle Hill, who went plodding along on his heels to see Confucius. "Because you weren't careful," said Confucius, "you have long since brought such a misfortune upon yourself. Although you've come to see me, it's already too late." "It's only because I didn't know my duty and was heedless of my body that I lost the front of my feet," said Toeless. "In coming to you now, I am still possessed of something more precious than my feet and that's why I am striving to preserve it whole. There is nothing that heaven does not cover; there is nothing that earth does not support. I thought of you as heaven and earth, sir. How could I have expected that you would treat me like this?" " That was uncouth of me," said Confucius. "Why don't you come in and allow me to explain for you what I have heard?" Toeless left. " Be diligent, my disciples!" said Confucius. "Toeless has been mutilated, and yet he conscientiously studies to make up for the error of his previous conduct. How much more should someone whose virtue is whole!" Toeless went to see Old Longears and told him: "As for being an ultimate man, he hasn't made it yet, has he? So why does he imitate you so assiduously, sir? He probably hopes to become famous for his bizarre ideas and strange notions, but he doesn't realize that the ultimate man would consider himself to be shackled by them." "Why not just have him consider life and death as a single cord and 'permissible' and 'impermissible' as a single strand?" asked Old Longears. "Wouldn't that free him of his shackles?" "Heaven is punishing him," said Toeless. "How can he be freed?"

um thanks again. I think i'll stick with the instruction of a master, or at least guidance from a good book.

thanks i can mend some spacetime but not all of it

i dont have the book but its in chinese medical qigong therapy vol 3 chapter 28

also marius, doing yoga like neck rolls, and the plow/cobra combo helps keep you comfortable through sitting. you should look them up, but i just recommended it to someone else so i will cut and paste that here the cobra pose opens the conception vessel, and the plow pose opens the governing vessel. To do cobra, lie on your stomach, putting your hands at heart level and pushing the upper half of the body up, stretching out the chest and stomach. Keep the hips on the ground, heels together, and raise the chin high to stretch also the neck and throat. Breathe in this position for a while, keeping the mind on the ren mai or the dan tian. It will help to open blockages and isolate energy tensions. to do the plow, lie on your back and put your hands out 45 degrees to the side. Lift the legs over the head and touch the toes down over your head so your weight is on your shoulders and you are looking at your knees. Keep the legs straight. it is good to do these exercises together, since they balance on another. Don't do the cobra without doing the plow or vice versa. It helps me to breathe with my focus on the perineum since that is the beginning and end of the du and ren mai.

I think what Marius Tudor is trying to accomplish is stress management. Attempting any kind of semen retention can be maddening for beginners. Much less celibacy. So i think semen retention is GREAT, and all the sexual kungfu practice is close to my heart, but i just have to chime in in this case. I am at ~50 days, and i totally agree with you in theory (i regularly go long periods between ejaculations but im not "going for 100 days" or anything like that, its just natural for me) @MariusTudor: the thing that helped me most to accomplish meditation in the beginning was an attitude of acceptance. If you are breathing shallowly, just smile and engage your diaphram. If your mind wanders and you catch it racing, smile and return to the stillness that the posture enables. If your shoulders slouch and your back bows, smile and straighten it. Dont get frustrated at yourself. In vajrayana its called calm-abiding, accepting everything that arises on principle and not rejecting anything or fighting or struggling.. just calmly letting whatever happens happen, and doing your best to maintain the structure of meditation, from which the benefits are derived. While i have found that the real work of meditation comes from sitting through discomfort, and dealing actively with the pains and aches of the body, in the beginning, if your back hurts to the point that you aren't kinda blissed out, just quit sitting. Do some stretching and breathing with the stretches to chill out. In the beginning, its like youre 8 years old and you just need to be treated gently. Don't push it or get the wrong ideas about hardcore practice. Just listen to your body, and keep sitting. I think its better to sit for 5 or 10 minutes than not at all, so if thats all you get to do in a given day, its better than not sitting by a LOT. stick with it! if you are attempting to manage stress, visualize sitting on a beach, your breath and the waves in harmony, the ocean and you are one. At your back is a mountain, where spiritual accomplishments and tranquility reign. You can either practice sustaining this visualization as a mandala practice, or just come back to it when you get frustrated by the obstacles of beginning. Bless you!

Vajrayana. and buddhist qigong. (I love the yijinjing) Breathing with the diaphram, dantian, and perineum while doing anything (and everything) is great. I like buddhist practices, but for philosophy and literature, stick with the classics, cause the more modern the scholar, the more convoluted the nonsense. Read the dhammapada and just focus on that in small bites til youre done with it. hahaha buddhist lit will do that to you btw, look out.

the cobra pose opens the conception vessel, and the plow pose opens the governing vessel. To do cobra, lie on your stomach, putting your hands at heart level and pushing the upper half of the body up, stretching out the chest and stomach. Keep the hips on the ground, heels together, and raise the chin high to stretch also the neck and throat. Breathe in this position for a while, keeping the mind on the ren mai or the dan tian. It will help to open blockages and isolate energy tensions. to do the plow, lie on your back and put your hands out 45 degrees to the side. Lift the legs over the head and touch the toes down over your head so your weight is on your shoulders and you are looking at your knees. Keep the legs straight. it is good to do these exercises together, since they balance on another. Don't do the cobra without doing the plow or vice versa. It helps me to breathe with my focus on the perineum since that is the beginning and end of the du and ren mai. anyway those will help you get deeper in touch with the small orbit, and daily practice alone should remove most blockages over time. I think most (at least i did) who works on opening their MCO gets pressure in their head, and its because the energy moves up the spine so much faster and easier than it moves down the front. So for a while, the head feels full, and you think "oh no!" but hopefully it will just inspire you to work hard on your conception vessel and all will be well.

i study qigong under a ch'an practitioner. He talks about regulating shen. I would have asked him tonight, but its a holiday, so no class. Thank you for your advice.

thank you so much! I don't consider perception to be a matter of mind as much as it is a matter of spirit. So i feel right in line with your advice. You said a lot that resonated with me, i guess i'll just quote that

Well, i think any lineage is a sort of passing on of knowledge, but i don't know if its necessarily a passing on of opinions. So probably some of Chuang's thinking was there, but i can't say how much. I don't know much about that line of students except by reading the writings. If anything, just judging by the text, i think Chuang had less to say about Confucius, he just stuck to principles. Its his students that had all that to say.. I have read differing opinions about how much of it he actually wrote. I am pretty sure I have read somewhere that of the body of work attributed to him, it seems likely that only the inner chapters can be attributed to him, so some people think that the book is mostly the work of his students. The chapters number 7, but that was what Legge called chapter 1, various sections. Or maybe thats just Marblehead's way of delineating it. either way, out of 33 chapters, most scholars seem to agree that he wrote only the first 7.

weather storm... awesome track Massive Attack - "Splitting the Atom" from Heligoland and their badass youtube channel for your viewing pleasure http://www.youtube.com/user/madotie?blend=2&ob=4#p/c/75774F88CBDDAC47/25/zH9HA9AI_RI

i think daoists of the Chuang lineage (because i dont think Chuang himself wrote any of what we're reading now) took any opportunity they could to insult Confucianists and point out the absurdity they perceived in confucian way of life

thats a good idea happy thanksgiving!