Wayfarer

The only thing I know of that comes close is about not leaking energy from this area and that is guarding the yin. I dont know where i read it but when thoughts settle and there become an inner quiet, the energies naturally settle and there is a sinking feeling in the belly that feels as though energies are kept there. This is more about immortality than storing excess qi. Also there isnt a source of qi as such, the whole of you is qi manifest from the Dao, or rather not from but as you. It may help to know the reason behind the OP question.

interesting video for sure, a little weird in the delivery but if it is true it brings into question some of the things we understand about Daoism.

Great replies, thanks guys!

Hey all, Advice please... I like the style of this Radek Kolar's Chen Tai Chi and Qigong. I stumbled across his YouTube videos because of wanting to look at how people expressed Tai Chi etc through the hands, however, although this looks super-nice it seems to me that it is a little over-stylised and self-conscious. To me, the centre creates the movement and the arms follow as the chi flows in and out of them. There are times though that if you watch the centre the arms aren't really following it. Like there is an abrupt turn of speed. The idea is to be like you are reeling silk which breaks if there is a sudden change in the pace and flow of movement drawing it in and working with it. So, when I practise I try to forget about how the Qigong or silk reeling looks and feel how the flow of qi moves from the belly to the fingertips and so on... and to be super-sensitive at the beginning and end of a move's cycle to not break that flow, that silk. Or am I wrong? I know the newer styles of Chen were quite showy but they seemed not to break the flow in this way - am I missing some advanced skill here? Compare this to Chen Xiaowang also below and there is a world of difference, but I love the appearance of Radek's qigong, and in my search to improve my own practice I was wondering who best to follow.

great point about the dantien not connected into the earth through the kwa - thanks.

Great I will check out the video. Yes, I first read about it in one of Chee Soo's book but have heard it mentioned quite often since, and certain groups of Chinese people were claiming that these mummified European figures were their ancestors. They were apparently tall too and taught about herbs and energy. The yellow emperor was meant to have got his information from some "external" source. I'm not trying to take anything away from the Chinese as such, there are many parallels with Druidry, the cauldron, the flow of Awen, Immortality and the forming of the Adderstone or Jade Egg. Interesting.

yes, there's another name for it too, something to do with mountain ridges but I forget.

Whether you have one hand moving or two the dantien is still doing the same. There is nothing different in the movement for one or two hands. As it happens, the dantien does not exist. It is a point that explains a feeling, an energy. If you close your eyes and listen to what is happening within you will get to feel what the answer to your question is

In Daoism it is called the celestial eye (could of course be how it was translated and not that at all) - directing energy there is part of the cycling of energy up the spine, through the head, down the nose and down the front of the body. There's a ton of descriptive words for these areas such as the red chamber, mapgie bridge and so on. The 3rd eye can vibrate very rapidly and in a very small area, then the trick is to draw that energy down the nose, the throat, the chest, the lower cauldron, and back up the spine. It is meant to be part of the awakening process but I think it was used to a) help focus the mind away from thoughts and b ) warm up the meditator in winter.

I don't know if this is still live for the OP. I read the first page only tut tut. But to the OP you are coming to this with too many ideas. If you sit down with a cup of coffee do you have a view of how this should be done? Must you watch your breath while drinking tea? All these thoughts and ideas are here because sitting (or meditation) has become a doing. When a cat sits there does it have an idea of breathing through its heels? Does it look at the landscape and think, I shouldn't be thinking of the landscape because I then hold a concept about it blah blah. Look. You already are what you are seeking through meditation. No technique can help you draw any closer to what you are already. You simply haven't realized it yet. Whether you want to know the truth or just become less tense meditation is not guaranteed to do either. So, just sit. Stare out of the window and do nothing. Don't have a single care whether you have a head full of thoughts or not, they will gradually, naturally quieten. If you sit there thinking from where do thoughts come and go, that in itself is a thought. You can't clear away the shit if you are thinking about doing so. It happens naturally by doing nothing. Like a cat. Doing nothing. Forget the results. And by the way, the subconscious mind has nothing to do with it.

It was either Chuang Tsu, or the Hainantsu, or both that said "sages come to being through non-being" - something like that... Wei also means "being" - be without being. In a sense, it means that when our mind, with all its anxieties, hopes, desires etc gets out of the way then the Way happens of itself. I don't mean that the Way is trying to do something, but there is a natural unfolding of itself, which is affected by the energies through which its expression is manifesting. A person can act without a conscious thought of acting. They can simply respond, or they can do a task with a blank mind. Like a horse standing in a field, it is usually very still and tranquil. When a dog runs towards it, the horse will respond. While this response is calculated at some level, it is not necessarily at a conscious level. Another example, if we practise Qigong and repeat a new move until we "get it" but we continue to repeat the move, the mind will at some point drift off on to other things; be they shopping, the weather, something that must be done etc. So, the brain learns that when an action is repeated it no longer requires conscious effort to keep repeating it, it kind of goes deeper. We are still swinging our arms around, and don't really come out of that trance until bored or the teachers throws in a slight change, and then we have to learn it consciously. So, we are doing but not actively seeking to do, and we are being, without a thought of how to be. It doesn't mean ignorance. It means without concentrated effort. When we experience that the Dao happens anyway, of itself, and we are actually not a "we" but the Dao appearing "as" us, like the fact, nothing is raining rain, nothing is sunning the sun, they are there as a consequence of how Life has unfolded in that moment, we are no different. When we believe that "we" are making things happen, and "we" are masters of our destiny, then this forced... and often severs the flow of how Life is coming into being... so our frustrations and wants can unsettle the energy of what is naturally unfolding. Then we do not have wei wu wei.

Being that there is only one thing; that we call the Dao then fullness is the Dao and Emptiness is the Dao, same too for big and small, here and there, black and white, yin and yang. back and front. In a sense when we argue over emptiness and what it is and is not we are saying. This Dao, is it like that Dao or this Dao? What do I (the Dao) have to do to attain the Dao - ah you must practise meditation (an action of the Dao) to settle the mind (the Dao's energy returning to its natural state of stillness). So what else is there that I (Dao) can do (also Dao) Rather pointless no? An interesting forum nonetheless.

Apart from there is no "I" actually doing it

No, I didn't mean Wu Wei. I mean not to make your meditation a "doing". Think of it more like, if you do nothing but sit there and drink a tea you're not thinking about whether you are doing it properly, you're just taking a drink when you want it. There's no mind that has a concept of how you should or should not drink tea. There's is nothing benchmarking how successful you are/were at drinking tea. So, be the same; sit quietly without the tea (or with it!). If you meditate with a special cushion, in a special room, before a special altar then how is this sitting and forgetting; zuowang? The part about alchemy and the stillness is that the presence of THAT WHICH IS STILL is there whether you are calm or not and to meditate is to feel that presence, to drink from it whether sitting or standing. It is like a cup within the body that fills up the more tranquil we are - this is the alchemy - this is turning the body into an immortal. It is the cauldron. It is the Holy Grail Jesus drank from - it is drinking of the presence of God or Dao i.e. endless stillness. It is to realise that you are also THAT, and therefore unable to die. It is a realisation - nothing has changed other than the fact you noticed. But if you sit there seeking stillness, it becomes a doing. It becomes a searching. You have to sit without a "need" to. In the same way you just sit and drink your tea. In the same way you drive your car and let the body just do what it needs to without a conscious thought of it. It is a little like the process of hypnosis where the conscious cognitive part of the mind is put to sleep to access the deeper subconscious. Putting your thinking mind to sleep - what remains? Wu Wei is something else, but is about the same thing

To the OP: A couple of points. Emptiness is not really a Taoist concept it is a Buddhist one. It may just be translated in that way, but for Taoism it is no-thingness, which lacks nothing and is as full as it is empty, it neither one nor the other while being both - there are subtle differences between what Buddhists & Taoists mean here. Whatever alchemical practice you do, you won't gain anything because what you are attempting to gain is what you already are. If we stick with emptiness for now... whatever you are looking at is what you are calling empty. Why do you not know that, I mean KNOW it, is simply out of a lack of experience, or a belief of what you are is different than what you consider to not be you. All the fancy alchemical terminology referred to in centuries of text is a little back-to-front. It is a little like writing down how to drive a car, or how to balance on a bike; you are attempting to break up something that is experienced systemically. Not always, but often, people who sit quietly in stillness i.e. when there is no thought, it can be that there is a sense of something settling down into the base of your belly. If we look at the opposite and say when you stressed or angry there is a sense of something rising up your chest and into your throat - well this is the opposite. You can talk about dragons copulating with tigers, and red chambers, and magpie bridges, but they are mostly a distraction; a distraction from the wandering mind, so that the settling occurs. If you think, I will imagine my energy traveling up the spine, to the heavenly pillow, towards my celestial eye blah blah - it is really baloney - yet in the same way that it is right to describe the balancing of a bike... you sit on it and pedal... it is not totally true to say that all this stuff about dragons and tigers is false. It depends whether you want the difficult or the simple. To me, Taoism is about undoing. At its heart is simplicity, aimlessness and stillness. If you sit in meditation and your mind wanders around thinking about shopping, then you have a busy mind. If you focus it on your breath, or creating alchemy - you have a busy mind. Where there is no thought, there is no emptiness nor lack of emptiness. There is not a thought about it. There is not a thought about what to do, or what to do next - there is simply vacancy and consequently spontaneity. In a classical sense, the more still you become, the more like the Source you become. It appears a complicated matter that the Source is also all the things you are trying hard not to become. So, whatever you do, you are the Source, and whatever you don't do, you are still the Source. So the answer to your original question is - nothing. Nothing you do matters. So do nothing. Then you may find it.

Life's not that simple. When you go to teach you have to pay to use the facilities. People usually want tea and biscuits. After a while they might bring their own... If you are the type of teacher that plans ahead then you might be giving out printouts etc. Sure, if you're stitching people up that's different. I don't see too many rich spiritual teachers. Sure, Mooji maybe. But I doubt it. People pay for books, why not pay for face-to-face chances to get your questions answered. It's a service at the end of the day. People pay it or they don't. It has nothing to do with what is being offered, or a supposed conflict of interest. I'm sure Buddha didn't pay for building a temple, or for the food that he was eating; someone gave it him, he wasn't earning money. So, what's the difference? Really, what needs to change is our idea of a spiritual teacher. Oh, they are soooo enlightened why should we pay? They're are charging us for something they got free etc? Yes, go get it for yourself. Do you go to a qigong class and think I shouldn't pay? Do you learn to drive and tell the teacher - I'm not paying you because you should be making the roads a safer place, and that's enough of an exchange? Come on! People go to a spiritual teacher for a stack of reasons they might have to pay a therapist for; dealing with anger, wanting more calmness in their life, learning meditation techniques and so on. And no. You don't have to allow toxic people into your group. You do what's right for the group. You speak to these people and if they don't like it you tell them to go - or do you think you are too enlightened for that? It comes down to what you care about - if that's what other people think, then maybe you shouldn't be teaching.

That's a lovely video Steve, I have watched it before and it was good to be reminded of it. Looks like a great centre you have built up. Best of luck, Heath

I taught for a few years before moving abroad. I asked that we all split the costs of hiring the hall, even so, people wanted to pay more. If I were to then think, no, I don't want any money - that's not accepting what the Way puts before me. So, when I got extra I put it into a group pot to buy teas and things. People like to say thanks by giving. And although it wasn't relevant to me at the time, it would be now... if I was to teach an hour of Taoism, I would be missing out on an hour of earning money - and while it may be very "enlightened" to not charge, the cold hard facts are that I have bills to pay and a family to feed. It's a bit foolish to think that a person who doesn't charge must be more of a "sage" than one who does. Should a teacher wish to exploit people that comes from the same place, as one who fears asking for money. Either one could be a great teacher. You either go or you do not. That's pretty much the end of it

Yes, many people think they have to master something or become a sage - that there is some effort involved to "see/find" the Dao - but it's everywhere we look.

That is a nice read but it is still confused. See this "So I teach taiji through these nine stages, culminating in emptiness." Nothing culminates in emptiness. This implies that there was a stage when something was not empty, and then it becomes empty. That is dualistic. There is no becoming. There only is. The Dao is a "thing" that is eternally unchanging and undisturbed (because there is nothing beyond itself to disturb it - there is only itself). However, it has an energy, and the energy forms in what we see around us, including us. It is the "Li" of patterned-nature but it is still the one Dao. We tend to get caught in the appearances and all the change but there is no change. The Daoist principle of immortality is based on the realisation that you are actually the same as everything you are looking at... you are That which is unchanging, and therefore you cannot die. So, you are Dao appearing as you. You are its energy manifest as you. Nothing needs to transform, nothing needs to be done, nothing needs to be undone. The only thing that changes when one "attains the Dao" is our understanding. What confuses everything is because the Dao is still, but its energy is vibrant - and so all opposites are not opposites. Dark is Dao and light is Dao, silence is Dao and noise is Dao, stillness is Dao and movement is Dao - where is the difference? People can sit cross-legged, cycle energy up and down the spine, do qigong until energy shoots out of their ears - but nothing changes - you will be the same Dao before and after. Take it easy, mellow out, don't let your thinking get uptight.

The answer is easy... Become a parent, have a few kids, have no time to practise Qigong, get kept up all night with various demands, problems, nightmares. Wake looking like a bloodhound. Rush around getting breakfast and school things ready while dreaming about Zuowang sitting and forgetting. Collapse in a chair - wake a few hours later wondering where the morning has gone. Then you soon begin to realise how much sleep you need, and what's the healthiest way to do it...here is the answer... Grab any you can get - hope it won't be interrupted - get through 7 hours full and jump with joy - healthiest way? Close eyes, close ears, remove all distractions - sleep.

It is a bit more simple than that. There is nothing that Dao is not. If we then say the Dao is stillness, this implies it is not its opposite. It is both because all things are Dao, they are manifest out of its own energy but they are not a "they". So, the Dao cannot be closer to emptiness because they are one and the same. Emptiness and fullness, yin & yang. Hence the "middle way" or "Dao of middle oneness" is not to seek the point in between emptiness or fullness because that is also making a distinction - it is to realise that emptiness and fullness are the same - then there is no extreme and no middle either. This is what the final lines of Verse 1 of DDJ refer to as being the mystery. Our nature is not even know of a mystery, to not have a concept of emptiness or fullness - not-two or not one. In "returning" to our nature we hold no concept of anything and there by simply observe, without a sense of being aware of something. Hope that gets across what I was hoping to convey.

Hi, Yin Yang or YinYang is difficult to understand because it is a concept that is untrue - in a way If we look at the symbol we also see that the two are present within a single circle, they are contained by it. Now this is all metaphor - we are in a manner of speaking, discussing the problems of something that does not exist, like arguing about the issues a unicorn is having. Not-Two! Is what Daoists say. So where does Yin & Yang fit in not-two? If we say YinYang then if they are both one, why bother saying YinYang? To name it one or the other is to be making a distinction. It is like saying BlackWhite - we are still seeing the difference but making them one. It is simple. Yin is Dao, Yang is Dao. How can the Dao be in or out of balance with itself? If we are attempting to harmonise then we overlook the very fact that there is no harmony - there is only One. Yin is the energy of Dao expressed as Yin things Yang is the energy of Dao expressed as Yang things By looking at Yin and Yang we overlook the Dao. The Dao is stillness, undisturbed, endless, untroubled, infinity - and all its opposites. There "appears" to be opposites because of the fact that the One has energy and the energy is vibrant - the energy arises in the "circle" of the Presence of the One, it only appears one way or the other. This is why things appear to oppose each other - but they do not - they are not "they" but IT. You are this IT. So, forget about harmonising as it is all in perfect harmony anyway. Forget about coming and going because IT goes nowhere. It is all a load of tosh that the mind gets caught in. Now return to settledness and you will be like the Root (Dao) and not like the Traces (10,000 things) ...but the extremes of Root & Traces (a Chongxuan concept) are still the One - this is the Way of Middle Oneness - to forget both extremes and be at the "still point at the center, seeing the infinite of all things" - Chuang Tsu

Hi everyone, I am looking for new "voices" for Cloud Wanderer Taoist & Zen poetry magazine. You can read that last copy here: https://issuu.com/cloudwanderer/docs/cloud_wanderer_issue_two_autumn_win You can see the style of poetry published, I also include Neo Advaita work. What I am looking for is poetry regarding: The Way, The Sage, Alchemy, Wandering in Nature, Mountains, Forests, Water, Hermits, Everyday Life, Drinking Tea, Simplicity, Enlightenment & Non-Duality. You get the picture. I am looking for pretty good quality work, writing that has a great sense of place and / or a kind of childlike simplicity and innocence. What I don't want is haiku. While I do like it, there are already hundreds of places to publish haiku and not so many to showcase longer work. If selected, your work will also be in the good company of classic writers. I want to publish very soon, so if you have any work please submit up to 6 pieces (if longer than 30 lines, send only 3 please) to: [email protected] and put "Poetry Submission" in the title so I will get to it quicker. I will respond within 2 weeks and if not accepted, I will tell you why, as I see that should the be role of an editor, to hopefully bring on and nurture new writers If I include your work I will need a short bio and photo from you. The Ezine is available for free online, so I cannot pay you sadly. It is a good showcase and currently has around 1,000 readers from around the globe. Best wishes, Heath

Hi everyone, I am looking for new "voices" for Cloud Wanderer Taoist & Zen poetry magazine. You can read that last copy here: https://issuu.com/cloudwanderer/docs/cloud_wanderer_issue_two_autumn_win You can see the style of poetry published, I also include Neo Advaita work. What I am looking for is poetry regarding: The Way, The Sage, Alchemy, Wandering in Nature, Mountains, Forests, Water, Hermits, Everyday Life, Drinking Tea, Simplicity, Enlightenment & Non-Duality. You get the picture. I am looking for pretty good quality work, writing that has a great sense of place and / or a kind of childlike simplicity and innocence. What I don't want is haiku. While I do like it, there are already hundreds of places to publish haiku and not so many to showcase longer work. If selected, your work will also be in the good company of classic writers. I want to publish very soon, so if you have any work please submit up to 6 pieces (if longer than 30 lines, send only 3 please) to: [email protected] and put "Poetry Submission" in the title so I will get to it quicker. I will respond within 2 weeks and if not accepted, I will tell you why, as I see that should the be role of an editor, to hopefully bring on and nurture new writers If I include your work I will need a short bio and photo from you. The Ezine is available for free online, so I cannot pay you sadly. It is a good showcase and currently has around 1,000 readers from around the globe. Best wishes, Heath