JustBHappy

Bagua is the best, but of course I am a bit biased.

Bagua is the best walking meditation one could do, but of course I am a bit biased.

Where to start....It all looks bad, at least for someone claiming to be a Tai Chi master. I personally have seen a few older internal martial artists that have destroyed their knees, so for me that's always one of the things I tend to focus on. His poor excuse for a Dan Pien extends the knee beyond the toes on both sides, which I find quite amazing. I can see pushing a little to far onto the front foot, (it's a common beginner mistake) but he does the same with the rear foot as he extends out the beak hand. Get the alignment wrong + over extend the knee = possible knee problems. His shoulders and elbows are floating, not sunk or dropped. You can tell that he's not pushing off the heel of the rear foot when going forward and the angle is incorrect. The arms move on their own with no body movement. Forgetting the all important 'one part moves, the whole moves' On a related note, the hips/qua don't rotate open/close with the movement, they remain locked and tight. Surely not a Tai Chi master from what I've seen on this video.

What's the lineage? They are the originators. Obviously another person that doesn't understand lineage. A lineage is a LIVING transmission, a living flame or spark of true mastery, knowledge and skill. It's not a book of movements, postures, or techniques, it's a living embodiment of enlightenment or mastery. If you yourself become enlightened, or develop insane skill then you too could be the next Lao Tzu, Cheng sen Fang, or Buddha and the originator of an authentic lineage, until then....... Are you seriously putting this guy's dvd's and 'tai cheng' on the same level as these enlightened masters? I found some videos on the web since my last post, and frankly I feel embarrassed for the guy.

I haven't seen the informercials, and it's highly unlikely that I will unless they are posted on the web somewhere, but I already agree 100%. How can this be? Well it's simple, and comes down to one important word, that to me is extremely important when learning any internal art. Lineage. The surest way to destroy Tai Chi or any other art is by ignoring the importance of lineage. It's strange to me that so many people are completely ignorant when it comes to this vital point. They are happy to learn some crappy form made up by uncle cheng or aunt wang, or even the through the coercion of the communist government! Purity is everything when it comes to keeping and passing on authentic arts. The true lineage holders are the few disciples chosen by the current or past masters. Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Buddhism/Tantra, Bagua, etc... are only pure if we have an authentic lineage. Today there are many many "masters" who have little bits and pieces, but very few who hold the entire and pure lineage of what they are teaching. Part of this passing on the torch also requires a high level of mastery. The flame cannot be passed on if it died generations ago. The sad truth is that the ignorant sheeple don't care. This guy is just continuing what the communists started with their nationalized sterilized sport Tai Chi. Don't get me started on the ridiculous form competitions and Tai Chi sumo wrestling for skinny people that passes for push hands in China and Taiwan. They are all just another nail in the coffin. The ignorant masses simply don't care or understand the value of authentic lineage and this is yet another example.

Just go to the parks near your apartment in the mornings and evenings. Many teachers also teach at schools or Universities or other public places. It's all going to depend on your schedule, your transportation and where you live and go to school. I like to visit what I call "push hands" park since there's so many different groups and people to push with. I think it's called peace park, or 288 park but for some reason they keep changing all the names so I'm not sure. Not sure about other days, but on Sundays you can find a ton of groups doing Tai Chi, some Wing tsun, some white crane, maybe the crazy drunk master, mantis, qi gong, etc..... It's a cool little park with good energy. A great place to get tossed around by little old Taiwanese men. Chiang Kai Shek park is also where some groups practice, but once again I think they changed the name to something more politically correct since Ma's been in charge. This is where Lou De xiu teaches his style of Bagua. The last time I was there he had tons of foreign students so that might be a good option for you if your into it and your transportation and schedule allow for it. Some of the more famous masters also have physical schools, websites, and don't teach in parks. There are also some like my Gao Bagua Sifu, that don't teach publicly. It's going to take some guanxi and/or yuánfèn and some skills to find and be accepted by these and if your only staying for 6 months it's likely a waste of time to even try. You just need to get out and watch and meet some people until you find an art and teacher that works for you. There are also a few old threads on the local forum to answer this very question. You can also google it once you have a more specific idea of what you want to learn. I seriously don't think you will have a problem in Taipei finding some good teachers to choose from, maybe right in front of your apartment in a little unnamed park.

Lineage is everything. Plain and simple, no replacement or faking an authentic lineage. You can learn all the same external moves, practice them for a lifetime and still come no closer to mastery without the lineage. There is so much more to an internal art like Tai Chi. You will never be able to spot what is hidden within the forms, nor will you get the real jewels of the system. The forms are the mere tip of the iceberg. It's strange to me how westerners fail to understand lineage, and it's profound importance. Most of my Asian friends just take this as common sense, but for some reason most westerners just don't get it.

You will do fine in Taipei, it's an easy city. No need for a guide or much worry. Most people who come to Taipei complain that people speak English to them! They try to use their Chinese and people reply back in English. Oh to have such problems! Once you leave Taipei and head on down to central/southern Taiwan then things gets a little more challenging. Not only are there few people that will/can speak in English, many of the older folk use Taiwanese instead of Mandarin. Taipei, like I said, is an easy city. You could even get by without ever buying a scooter/car and just use the MRT and public transportation system. It is really quite convenient. Housing sucks in Taipei compared to the rest of Taiwan. You might have to share an apartment. Don't rent an apartment near a school or a temple. Buy all your electronics at home before you come to Taiwan. The quality sucks, and the price is higher. I don't know about Germany, but this is true for me being an American. In fact when I buy something I always consider having someone in the states buy it for me then send it to Taiwan. I never have though, because the customs here is notorious for being nasty when it comes to electronic goods. Just for a comparison, before you come, go to an electronics store in Germany and write down some specs on the laptops/cameras and the prices, then when you get to Taiwan see how they compare. The prices are higher, and the specs are pitiful. Don't sweat it, like I say, Taipei is easy. There are tons of furriners and the people are civilized, quite unlike what you find down south. Many great martial art and qi gong masters are in the Taipei area so there is absolutely no shortage of incredible teachers. You can find anything from the penis/ball weight hanging dudes to the living lineage of Chen Man Ching. It all depends on what your looking to practice. There are many great Gao y sheng lineages alive and thriving if your into Bagua, there are also some insanely powerful white crane masters, hard gong masters, mantis, etc... you name it. If your into martial arts, you are coming to the right place. Six months is not long, but I'm sure you can make the most of it. All your day to day questions can be answered on the flob (forumosa) , the not so affectionate name for the English language forum. You might want to search and research first though before asking 'stupid' questions or your likely to get flamed. It's mellowed out through the years, but it still common for rudeness and venting to arise. If you come across the nastiest smell in the world, and find lots of people lined up at its source, thats stinky tofu. They take perfectly good tofu and ferment it until it's covered in mold. The crazy locals love it. You will smell it a block away.

Sorry to be so blunt, but it's silly to say free will is BS. Will is something that all great masters train. Yes train, it doesn't develop on it's own without slowly and patiently working on it. The important thing is to understand that it can be trained, and has tremendous benefits to those who commit to it. The common man on the other hand, weakens his will day by day and has no understanding of the jewel he has lost. Make no excuses, and don't buy into anyone's negativity and pre-made excuses for failure. We all have free will, but most of us do not value it nor develop it. Instead some of us use the silly "there's no such thing as free will" as an excuse, a crutch towards mediocrity and failure. In some sense, it's better this way because the few that do develop their will to a high degree wield an enormous power and with power comes responsibility which clearly those who cannot or do not develop their will wouldn't be able to handle wisely.

I recommend you ditch any aspirations of learning/practicing the 24. You can research the history and formation of this poor attempt at authentic Tai Chi yourself, but to put it in a nutshell it was the communist attempt to destroy real authentic tai chi. Around the same time, wushu was created, and the ridiculous sport of push hands and all the other pissing on centuries of wisdom and mastery was started. All real authentic masters were tortured and murdered, or they hid quietly for many years or fled to Taiwan or other nearby countries. Then the clowns in charge in Beijing created this silly 24 forms routine. Why anyone would waste precious moments of their lives practicing or learning this will never make sense to me. There are so many pure lineages of Tai chi you could be learning and investing you time and energy into. I recommend you start on the Chen Man Ching system. Traditionally you learn the 13 first, and then the 37, but many just go straight into the 37 and there is no shortage of tutorials on youtube or dvd's you could buy if you can't find a teacher.

One is simply not going to get the lineage transmission without the personal time year after year with an authentic master. Videos don't cut it for the internal arts. A few minutes with a real master is much more valuable than all the video lessons in the world. Even for something extremely simple such as a static wuji posture. Then it becomes even moreso when you get into complex movements and energies. Sure its good to go with what you have and where you are, but if your looking to develop true mastery then there is no other way in my opinion. This of course brings up the actual teacher and his/her qualifications. I would wager that most self appointed teachers or masters out there have no real skill or lineage to offer. Finding a good teacher can be a lifelong process. Personally I am thinking about meditation, qigong, and bagua/tai chi 24 hours a day so I often seek out alternative sources. I often buy too many dvd's/vcd's and books every-time I go to lionbooks but rarely does anything come close to the quality of instruction my Masters have given and continue to give me. Learning from books and videos guarantees that you will never receive the inner door knowledge and skills. No Chinese master would ever publish these things in my opinion.

Yeah I'm curious about it myself. I know I practice different methods for different purposes. So many ways one can express and cultivate within Bagua. What lineage has these 8 different types of mud stepping? I've never heard of it in Gao, Cheng, or Liang so I'm guessing it's Yin, or one of the lesser known systems. I would be interested in learning what they look like/involve and what the purposes of each one is.

This thread hasn't made much sense to me. Mud stepping is well.....mud stepping, otherwise known as tang ni bu. The others mentioned, are completely different stepping styles, and definitely aren't mud stepping. As far as tang ni bu, each and every teacher, even within the same system will teach it a little differently. The one thing they will all have in common, if they are actually tang ni bu, is some sort of slide as if you are stepping in mud, thus the name.

Yeah exactly. Metta, or Maitri as I'm used to, is another great example of using the power of the heart, or emotions and feelings in meditation. People always seem to think for some reason that meditation and cultivation is about the head. They only want to intellectualize and theorize what needs to be experienced in the heart. Even modern science has verified that the heart has a much stronger magnetic and electrical field than the brain. I stress again, that if you truly want to develop your visualization or any other cultivation practice you need to engage the heart.

I was thinking exactly the same thing as I read this thread. All is well, it's just part of the wood energy manifesting and expanding. Like everything else in life, it's temporary. Great time for doing qi gong and meditations that focus on healing the liver, gallbladder and the eyes and generating love and compassion. I like it. There's a lot of energy behind anger. It's pure, honest, and powerful without any pretentiousness. As long as we don't get taken for it's ride, or fight against it, it has treasures, wisdom and energy to share with us.

You are mixing up emotions with kleshas. There are positive emotions that are extremely powerful and transformative such as love, compassion, and devotion. Also, the creation stage is not about directly seeing through and dissolving kleshas in the same way as completion stage practices. From your response it seems like these are being blurred together. So of course one would not use feelings/emotions while doing those practices. I am not comfortable revealing personal information on the internet. The same goes for teachings and practices from retreat. I can only discuss the Njondro and things like the basic daily schedule etc...

For me though, it depends on the actual meditation, not just the posture. I can sit in full lotus for two hours without much problem, but what one is doing with the mind/heart is where the magic happens. Holding the posture painlessly is just about relaxation verses reaction. Sitting in full lotus while watching fox news, will just rot your mind into the sheepledom conciousness. The posture alone is powerful, but still limited without the actual meditation. This is why I was curious about drew's actual meditation because the posture alone isn't going to do much in my experience. In fact many great yogi's and qi gong masters don't sit in full lotus yet attain high levels of mastery.

This is how my lama taught me, it's fine if you disagree, but my experience confirms my lama's teachings on the subject and nothing could sway me now. Before going into 3 year retreat I had thought just as you and most others, that visualization was about seeing. This is an extremely limited view and will stunt ones practice. It is about feeling and emotion. This is what unlocks the power of the heart. It's quite magical actually, the 'visualization' comes effortlessly after this and includes smell, touch, taste, hearing, and of course seeing but in an almost effortless way. When one has developed the practice to the point where overwhelming emotion is experienced while doing the creation stage, the visualization will come as a result. It's not about focusing on a diety's body, implements, consort, or mandala, it all about feeling the presence of and the resulting emotion which opens the heart and mind in a powerful magical way. People misunderstand concentration and think it comes from effort, and focus. It doesn't, it all comes from relaxation and letting go. The intense focus actually causes tightness and thus distraction. For most westerners, what is needed is relaxation and letting go, not discipline and concentration and focus. It's ironic, but truly, when you finally stop trying, you will have meditation.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Lets get some healing blue light enveloping this planet!

Interesting. . Now I understand, there is no one full lotus meditation you simply do any of your seated practices from this posture. Thanks for clarifying.

Still no clue about WHAT meditation you're talking about or referring to when you keep saying full lotus meditation. I could sit in full lotus and watch tv or surf the internet. I could close my eyes and focus on a point in the body, tons of possibilities there. I could sit in full lotus and focus on an external object, or one of the four immeasurables, or the breath, or a diety. I could simply rest in awareness. Literally thousands of different meditations or other things could be done in the lotus posture. The physical position is only one part of it. My question is "what is the actual meditation that you keep referring to." Not the posture, the meditation. I'm quite familiar with the website and ChunYi, in fact I listen to him weekly (healling connection) and also monthly through the 'deep healing' year long program. It's all great stuff, but none of this answers my question.

Drew, what exactly is the meditation? Saying full lotus meditation doesn't explain the practice at all, just the physical position. There are thousands of different meditations one could be doing while in the full lotus physical position. So what practice is done in full lotus within ChunYi's system?

Feeling. Get the heart and emotional power involved. Developing the feeling of being, and experiencing is much much more powerful and important than focusing on the visual aspect.

I think it's also important to note that often we ourselves are allowing our energy to get quickly depleted even when no others are present. We do this with our kleshas and our incessant monkey mind. Then our emotions and the physical responses start to kick in. Our breathing pattern is disrupted, our posture incorrect and energy is literally flying out of us. An episode of anger, or desire, or fear etc... sucks a huge amount of energy from us. We are often our own energy vampires. So it's not only the external, but also the internal energy leaks that we need to be aware of. Good thing is that we have much more control over the internal ones, but only if we are first AWARE and conscious of them. Often the external ones are difficult to deal with as they may be family, friends, co-workers etc... that we really can't or don't want to diss-associate from. If someone mentioned this topic to me ten years ago I would have dismissed it. Now after a particularly intense ten years of meditation/qi gong training I have no doubts that this is valid and happens all the time. Few people are aware of the energy exchange and dynamics between people so it's easy to belittle and blow off the issue. It was a nice comment about water and the tree but completely missed the point of this thread. Heck even some unconscious zombies can agree that when there is a group of people in a room and a person with an extremely strong klesha like anger comes into the room they can feel the difference even without a word being said.

What I want to know is: "where is drew?" Three pages of energy sucking vampires and no drew, the universe is out of balance. They exist, at least in as much as anything else "exists." One of my short and long term goals is to find a teacher/teachings on how to fully protect myself. Not so much just for this, but for the whole myriad of challenges myself and others face as we progress on the path. My goal is to one day be so powerful where I am not swayed, damaged or adversely affected by "bad" energy but rather radiate my own love and light to effect my environment in a tangible way. I am way way too sensitive, I pick up on too much and the more I practice, the more this intensifies. I would like to keep my sensitivity, but somehow have the photon shield up so my senses and heart can remain wide open without being dragged down. In my opinion, a huge huge segment of the general population are energy vampires, but most are unconscious with no ill intent. It sure would be nice to lift people up, like the great qi gong masters do at the mass healings instead of getting dragged down. We are all lucky though, as most of us TaoBums have great qi gong, meditation, and movement arts to keep recharging our batteries. No doubt in my mind why many Taoist and other yogi's preferred a more solitary mountain lifestyle.