PLB

I don't know from better or worse. I do a lot of both positions and find the differences between them mirror each other. I like the graphic of the hunyuan with the dots shown at the bubbling points at the feet, the dantien, and the baihui. It is hard to beat this alignment if the goal is to connect the feet and crown and have them open and close together. The hands are turned toward and relate to the shoulders and close a kind of circuit of the harmonies. When I sink with my weight slightly forward, my feet are connected with my elbows. When I push from that place, I feel the other person's feet. The santi shi involves a weight differential and a pronounced difference between receiving and projecting as one opens and closes. The feedback is different because it involves the changes of actually moving while standing still. The line between moving and standing becomes smaller and stepping is easier to experience. What Green Tiger says about one being more martial than the other makes sense as a general rubric. But there are cats out there that make the hunyuan primary and they are no joke to push or punch with.

The makers of these systyms didn't hope to stay current with what you or me thought was interesting or worth understanding. Answers are a funny thing. You want to know if a set of practices addressed what you think is the most important thing. All practices ask the individual to work hard at stuff before they ask too many questions. A stand off, if you will.

In regards to the quest for information, I am reluctant to be any kind of judge. It surely can be a distraction or a replacement for doing or learning something important but it also can be a pure expression of the searching mind, travelling along many paths, opening up unforseen possibilities. I don't know much. My senses are dull. I try this and that to see what happens. The clearest direction given by a perceptive teacher may give me plenty to work on but still leaves me to live with the practice as my experiment, carried out by myself. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Sometimes, hatred and apathy are not mutually exclusive. The most dangerous people I have met were bored out of their minds and looking for any escape from it. They didn't properly own their hate the way someone does when one recognizes someone who is working against them. But it was obvious to me that they hated all those who didn't live as they did. Depression has a similar dynamic. It doesn't care about your intentions, it reacts to whatever one does to reject that life for themselves.

In regards to the marrow washing discussion, I think of it as a matter of access. If you can feel a direct connection to your bones, work with it. If you don't have that direct connection, something else will have to happen first. My results vary day to day.

Apech, I am glad to hear you say, "I also feel that he did meet someone who taught him something - just an instinctive thing really." For me, the whole story he spins is an attempt to deal with an encounter he was unwilling to speak of. Maybe a demand that was made of him. An exchange.

If I may, I would like to talk about being a poverty that was not touched upon before. The idea that the best possible condition is already availble is a harsh lesson. This condition sucks in so many ways. Most people interested in Christianity start there.

I don't hanker for immortality so a lot of what is discussed toward that end is way over my head. I do see in my practice how important yin is toward being able to listen, feel, and absorb. Yin is good.

I like the hammer. I took the stone hammer head (made of steel to cut stone) I have worked with for many years and put it on the end of a very good fiberglass axe handle. It breaks rock easy and with a relaxed stroke. I can chop granite blocks in half by hitting the same spot several times. I have brought it into my martial practice with a focus on the principles and a care not to hurt my shoulders. Despite how little I have advanced with it, I still would never want to be on the other side of it. I have practiced throwing it too. The accuracy is exciting but then there is the downside of just having thrown your weapon away...

I have started practicing the form described here at the Brennan translation site. There are many different variations of this style. I am learning the form as taught through the Dong family. It is a great complement to the Yang Cheng Fu 108. It simplifies and complicates at the same time. But the range of interpretation prompts me to ask you Bums if any of you all are involved with this form. What Shaoru emphasized has been taken in a lot of different directions than what I have been taught. This form is where Sun Lu Tang derived his version of Tai Chi Chuan. His writing has become more alive for me now that I can understand what he chose to emphasize or not.

Yulaw, It is great to hear from another Dong lineage player here. I hadn't known that it was Dong Zeng Chen who had emphasized practicing the Hao style. His version is indeed what I am practicing as shown by him here: The form adheres to much of the Shaoru document I linked to but charts a different path as well. The Hao style is definitely visible in the fast form but it also is behind the subtle differences in the family's version of Yang Cheng Fu 108 compared to other schools. In particular, getting used to turning on the weighted foot and the expression of Tiger Returns to Mountain. I will have to think about comparing the Hao with the Chen style. I see one of your listed interest is in Xingyiquan. I see the Hao coming more from that energy, especially with the use of so many follow steps to advance and completely open.

No refutation. He clearly challenged the logic of explanation that was popular at the time and history has not recorded any takers (that I know of. I don't know much). Maybe there was a dinner party we weren't invited to where someone kicked his butt. I tend to doubt it. He was really clear and offered the oppurtunity to be denounced. When you say the renaissance, I get the western connection and there are interesting paralells. But in terms of what was happening in China, I think the flower is what was said happened in the early twentieth century before the Revolution buried it with all those other things they buried.

It depends on where you were putting your attention.

Very good point, Stosh He is not heard if not in the context of a careful balancing act that was telling other people he knew where he was..

It is good to find someone, or even better, more than one someone who can see/feel what you are doing and get you to experience the differences made by small corrections. Easier said than done. I have been getting help this way recently and I really appreciate it. It didn't happen because of a set of choices I made. Or maybe it did but it is not like the kind of choice that charts a course or bakes a potato. So in the endless debate about how much you can learn on your own, I fully support both sides. All that we learn is on our own. We live and die with what we choose to do all the time. No teacher is going to change that order of existence. But teachers can help us make those changes for ourselves. So, to answer the question of your post, Yes and No. You are screwed if other people don't help you And Yes, it is self taught.

I won't be able to answer any of your questions. The element I most cling to in my Zhuangzi reading is the emphasis on how little one can say about what is happening. There is a critique of logical explanation here that is not a simple rejection of the activity. He is underlining a way we talk that is subtle. He doesn't want us to sum it up because that would be like the talking he wants to put under question. He is like Kant in his humility regarding what can be proven, explained, or what have you. But he clearly sees the prize and wants others to see it too. For me, he is the Sufu closest to what I strive to follow.

I don't know if you are into martail arts but if you are, the Brennan translation site is a great source of Taoist expression.

I hope Apech answers your question but I would like to say how it feels to me. The dantien is gyroscope that spins all directions. When I "intend" one direction, I am feeling what it is already doing in that direction. I am not setting it into motion but adjusting the mind to the degree necessary to experience it. A bigger mind than mine mind could notice more and so maybe.....

If the idea is that the rebirth happens because of what wasn't completed in the present life, then the process isn't about what one desires or a hope in a continuence of the self. It is one way to frame the incomplete in a manner that can be acted upon.

Twenty Four Seven is large. Incrementaly increasing the ratio wherever I can has been my working relation with the thing. My results widely vary. I like what Suninmyeyes said about loving the feeling. I love the feeling.

I push regularly with a guy who is into Kant. I read Kant pretty carefully at a certain time in my life and every cell in my body wants to correct his view of what is at issue with the parts he focuses on. But I wouldn't advance or get a prize if I did that and his fondness for it tells me he wouldn't advance or get a prize if I argued with him. So I let it ride.

Jung would probably agree with your comment: His interest in alchemy and transformation demonstrates he was more positive than the guy who said "our job is to turn hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness."

Asking how does one see oneself can be heard in two different ways. It can be a request for an image or an assessment. Maybe a narrative that serves as an explanation or description that paints a true picture. Or at least a picture that is not terribly wrong. Asking "how" can also mean asking how is it done. What makes the perception possible and what is the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived? I propose that conflating the two kinds questions is a source of confusion. We are limited in our abilities to answer either sort of question. They each have different kinds of limits. With that said, what Jung said about casting a shadow is interesting in both registers. One begins to pay more attention after realizing one doesn't know oneself and that self is out doing stuff.

I am just another pilgrim so I can't say what might lie beyond the next ridge. What thelerner said about locality rings true to me because the work has to fit in with the rest of one's obligations. Whatever you choose to do, do it all the time. It helps/has been helping me to push hands with many different people. When I see/feel what other people can do, it gets to be less about charting a path of training and more about seeking what others have found that I cannot do yet. Those things could be inside of what I am working on already or not. Or both. I appreciate all the help I get.

If what works well always starts from the bottom and builds up, three different sorts of problems confront the builder: How low is the bottom? How deep do I have to dig to be done with digging? Digging kind of sucks. Where can I go and what do I have to do to get the structure to appear. If it needs to be designed to fit, it is just another program to run. The readiness to build is a keen focus on what the design might be. I am weak. How do I get stronger? Seeing changes as natural is an appeal for information from new sources. If we are just making this stuff up, we are screwed. The listening stops. Desire turns into a gnome in the garden. The only alternative is to work on the basis that there is something to be learned and that something is right there, just beyond the grasp of a sparrow. Everything else is despair.