PLB

Cat, I should make clear that I didn't coin the phrase. Nietzsche started that way of putting it. What you say about an impulse for one thing becoming hijacked for the purposes of another is what he most ardently strived to bring into awareness. While I am doing such a thorough job explaining myself, let me correct a misspelling from my initial response: the name of the French guy I mentioned is Le Rochefoucauld.

The spirit of punishment is a difficult thing to wrestle with. Whenever it is depicted as a simple choice of ends or agency, the culpability of the moment, with all the elements of what is known and forgotten, is not accurately reflected. I am with Kafka and DeRochefoucauld when they say that righteousness is not about being certain of being righteous. .

The way I look at it is that it is great when when a teacher shows us something we can't find by ourselves or didn't see before it was shown. But it is important to remember that we aren't helpless before that moment occurs. My own existence is a place waiting for attention. It is confusing but ever inviting. Waiting for me to come home.

Yes, that sort of thing.

Well, Chi dragon may be agreeing with you afer his own fashion. Scott Meredith is an interesting cat. I look at it on the level of who I meet in China Town and the rest of this NYC. Everybody I meet who trains enough has stuff. The rest, not so much. So I train more.

Iskote, You ask "Regarding this, does anyone know for certain if Cheng Man Ching ever taught fajin?" I don't know for certain because I wasn't there. But I have run into his students who seem to know something about the release of energy. Kicked my ass anyway.

Starting is as simple as paying attention to your body. There is much more to consider and there are different approaches that emphasize different experiences. But all those very interesting practices start from the same place: Your body and what you do for it and with it. Finding good teachers is important. Everybody has to negotiate that part for themselves and it is not easy unless chance has thrown you a bone. But your body is here right now. It will be there until you die. A slightly desparate feeling motivating one to engage with it is not a bad thing.

I wouldn't say that it "exists seperately from intellectual cogitation entirely" Because that would suggest "we" have a sufficient understanding of what that cogitation is about. Once one part is in motion, the rest is in play.

Republic of Zen, What do you practice? I ask because it makes a difference if what you are feeling seems to come from out of nowhere or is a response to something that you are trying to do.

Greyharte, you ask: "Is Qi a real thing in the sense that it is wholely contained in itself and perhaps misunderstood, or is it more of a metaphor for the multiple body systems working together to make the results of Qi? Is it something else entirely?" I don't think qi is contained in itself since we only know about it because of the way it is attracted by focused intention. There is a feed back element that is essential to the stuff. Once this connection is experienced, what makes it more "real" to separate this qi from consciousness? What is consciousness? If qi is a "metaphor for the multiple body systems working together to make the results of Qi", then wouldn't the experience of that "working together" require an actual organizing principle that either exists or not? If you or I confirm that things happen that way, then the organizing principle is not a theory or poetic allusion but a thing that exists. If the thing is supposed to only exist if it can be confirmed as "real" outside of my experience, then my experience is not "real." That is an absurd result and can be discarded without proving it true or untrue. When you ask if it "Is it something else entirely", I don't understand how the first two frames you proposed are mutually exclusive. Something can be what it is according to its own nature and we can experience it disjointedly and talk about it only through various language games. If it is something entirely diiferent than either frame would suggest, we can't prove that by excluding the idea from one or the other domain.

What JustBHappy says is true. His recommendation of the Cheng Man Ching form is sound. Whether you take his suggestion or not, each of the real styles require you begin at the beginning. It doesn't matter if there are ten thousand moves if one hasn't learned the first one. I don't think the 24 set is completely without value. But it is not a school or a philosophy of learning. What ever doing tai chi chuan can do or one acheives, it is a gate way to a new experience. Forms are only important if you look for something through them. A short form is not a short cut.

If the direction of thought that brought the term "chi" into discourse is not wrong, we see chi every where we look. It is the super abundance of it that requires getting used to, not the lack of evidence for the existence of the thing.

There are lots of possible routes to suggest. But maybe you could say more. I am curious why the "24" move set became a point of reference for you. I am also curious about the materials you did purchase.

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baiqii, Yes, it was the close connection with Guo Yunshen that got me thinking about Sun Lutang. By saying that Wang wasn't entirely serious, I didn't mean to say that he didn't want to make a sharp demarcation between what he was focused upon versus what others talked about. As your own comments suggest, there was more to what was being said and not said than the comments reveal taken by themselves. There was a context and it is difficult to grasp all the elements of it now. One way to look at it is to see all of that generation we can access now as being concerned with the "modern." I am reluctant to frame the matter as one of western rationality versus eastern intuition because the Taoist tradition has its own rationality, logic, and metaphysics. That is why I thought Wang might be joking a little bit. Thank you for bringing Wang's views forward. I will look further into his work.

I read the whole interview and I am not sure Wan Xiang Zhai is being entirely serious. Despite his comment to the contrary, I am pretty sure he knows exactly why the term "internal arts" became associated with Xing I, Bagua, and Tai Chi Chuan. He demonstrates an understanding of Taoist philosophy and yet blows off the theory of elixir by saying the abdomen is a place for intestines not for chi. Seems oddly mechanical for someone accusing tai chi chuan boxers as being robots. I am pretty sure he knows Tai Chi Chuan didn't start with the Yang boys. His references to the San Feng tradition makes me more sure. Looking at these things together, I think Wan is making a comment about the culture of making martial art available to all who would take it up. Perhaps he merely wished to get a rise out of Sun Lu Tang.

Looking back on the times I lost it, there is a peculiar asymetry that has always occurred. I acted in the interest of gaining more power or control of the situation but the results always led to the opposite. So there is something promised in the immersion of rage that is not delivered in actuality. Where did this promise come from? It is the question that swallows up rage, not an answer to it.

Something has to go up for other things to go down. So what gets separated as up and down will make for a different experience. Open the bai hui, or crown and it will pull the zhong ding up from the perenium. Gravity will pull everything else the other way. Doing both things together creates a center. That center is the dan tien. Once the dan tien can be in one place, it can be in many places.

mYTHmAKER, I like the sound of gniynag for the job. The pronounciation could allow it to be spelled 'knee nag'; which is an apt name for an explanation of why some events don't happen.

If synchronicity occurs then perhaps its opposite also happens: Instances where events would have happened together but are kept apart; By something or a complex of things.

How can one prove or disprove the existence of a quality? I am going to go all Wittgenstein on you all and ask what language game this debate is happening within.

I think we are born with the Dan Tien. In Tai Chi Chuan, the requirement is relax the mind and connect the shoulder/hips, elbow/knees, hands,feet to the dan tien. It seems to me that the Six Harmonies exist with or without intention; that is why they are called harmonies. Notes need to be played to hear it but the music didn't create the connection that let the music happen. So I propose that one isn't connecting different parts of their body to the dan tien but connecting two different kinds of connection with each other. The dan tien is all of the joints and limbs. All of the joints and limbs are the dan tien. When the two kinds of connection are brought together, tai chi happens.

The idea of solipsism assumes the domain of the self to be a given condition; giving it the impregnable quality Astral Monk refers to. But the classical texts refering to the Tao speak of 'being your self' as not a given but the result of perseverance and insight. Zhuanzi provides an apt example: When measured against the quoted standard, the solipsist is a thief who has stolen the world itself. Nobody can steal it back from him but nobody would give him anything for it in exchange.

taijistudent, Your statement is a well balanced response to my assertion. People all have their own interpretations, including myself, and that is a good thing. It means the idea is alive, personal and communal at the same time. But I think there is value in listening to the voices in the tradition who challenged the distinctions we like to make a priori. Asking us to look how we separate things and how do we go about verifying what has been thought. I love reading Zhuangzi because he has so little patience for anything that doesn't have a person doing all they can to make their life better. He says flat out that certain kinds of arguments will never help you. I don't completely agree with him but he has put the burden of proof on me if I disagree. Zhuangzi wants to see some skin in the game if some one wants to know the difference between this and that. And, er, yes; that is a personal interpretation.

Maybe we don't have access to the answer of the question of whether the Tao is like this or like that. The classic texts make fun of people trying to make it fit inside tents, people, or paragraphs. There is much emphasis upon the limits of language. But there is also the clearly expressed desire to change the way we talk about things.