Rara

Lol...sounds like my mate who owns a pizza place. Constantly trying to pass things on to other people and drafting in temps so he can avoid going in.

Don't tell the qigong instructors this, their marketing will hit rock bottom! Hehe. Thanks for your reply...yourself and dawei have been very helpful to my understanding of this. Also, as it said in the introduction, ZZ lived to what, around 80 supposedly? Hardly groundbreaking, but not a bad run either way

Same difference but I like this regardless

So some could just naturally live a long time and others just couldn't? So why try to be what you are not? Is this what you mean...?

Ok but ny direct question is, if P'eng was human having but lived so long, what is Chuang Tzu's point when speaking down against those that tried to imitate him?

Sure. Exactly my angle with this question...

So do you think Chuang Tzu sees humans striving for longevity as futile? I'm trying to understand because if P'eng could cultivate to the point of living so long, why not others? Or are these others perhaps "wannabes", for lack of a better word?

My trouble is that I'm easily influenced. Reading Zhuangzi makes me wanna go out and mock everything in the world

I think this is a great point. Approaching it as a literary document is the easiest approach because then, it is what it is - a group of fascinating, quirky stories. Also, due to the many translations and interpretations, approaching this text from a philosophical angle leads to difference in opinions and therefore, if taken too literally, can lead to schisms in Taoist practice - just like you'd find in all world religions (and a lot in the Dao Bums forum!) I tried to analyse and make sense of it all then gave up. In my original translation by Martin Palmer, he said that it shouldn't be either, and that Chuang Tzu is up there laughing over those that do, figuratively speaking.

Hey! I missed a lot - could you help point me in the direction of any new Chuang-Tzu discussion? I'm back - intermittently. Got a new management job where I travel around a lot - plus was messing with chinese herbs to supposedly help balance me out. Didn't quite work out so I thought I'd let that all blow over =P

I just received this book as a gift. I've read the intro and just one page (I would like to read a page/meditation once a day) I just wondered if anybody else has this book and what they think!

I wonder how close I am here, and if anyone has any further knowledge. Having had a year of mixed, extreme emotions - some difficult family issues at the centre of it, I was finding my meditation hard to bear. I stopped for about five months and insomnia (a recurring issue) has returned. The other night, I was struggling to sleep and decided to begin mindful breathing. 20 minutes or so in, I began to notice that I had no power in my abdomen. I seemed unable to breathe deeply, it was like my stomach was a loose drum skin with the durability of some kind of gelatinous, flat mushroom. Then it dawned on me that, although this is an obvious sign of anxiety, being away from breathing practices may well be having an affect on my physical state BEFORE my mental state. The order of things seems very important to me right now...I can't explain why. No wonder I feel restless at night...with thoughts running all over the place. How can I possibly not get caught up in thoughts when I have no grasp of my own body and how it feels? Not being able to feel my abdomen internally makes me feel frail and disconnected with my body. I couldn't focus at all on the abdomen, it was numb inside...and quite scary. I am not trained in qigong or tai chi...I have just picked up what I have from meditation classes, video tutorials, this forum and internal aspects of external martial arts (forms) But I do feel that insomnia is actually a very serious issue, more than just not being able to sleep for a while until it passes (my previous way of shaking it off) Any input is highly appreciated. I feel I'm on to something here and am on my way to extinguishing the root cause. PS I stopped meditating because in a sad and angry time back in May, I felt so many overwhelming negative emotions that it put me in to shock. I think I'm still recovering. This is why I've been away from the forum for a while and occasionally eratic

Or that haha. Have you read Hendricks' and Lau's? Just wondering if you have a comparisson between your suggestions and leth's

Thanks for the link, although it's specifically a hard copy I would like. I use too mucb technology as it is

Thank you, this has been very helpful! I will probably go for Watson's Zhuanzi then because I enjoyed a lot of the later/outer chapters when I first read, so I would like to have versions of these still.

Yes I'm one of "those". For example, I bought the cheapest TTC and Chuang Tzu I could find as an introduction. Now I'm after something that, yes, will address the language/contextual issues but won't be too extreme for me to read. Would you say Marblehead's suggestion might be more for me in this case?

In short, I did Wing Chun for 5 years. After 3, when things were being ramped up in training and gradings, I took many blows to the head. That eventually slapped some common sense into me. I quit.

Sounds like a "Carry On Film". This story made me chuckle. Gotta wonder why so many people with joint problems to martial arts. It's like an asthmatic smoking, right?

The therapist should advide you, surely? I'm the same, I lift weights. Acupuncturist advised that I skip on treatment day.

Hi Oneironaut, Correct, many different Taoist beliefs out there and I had the same debates a few years ago. Eventually I had to submit to myself and recognise that my curiosity and dabbling in all this was really out of my depth and quite frankly, is out of anyones. I went back to Tao Te Ching and realised I saw little correlation between so-called Taoist beliefs/practices and this initial foundation for the philosophy. That was my choice, and I guess that makes me the Taoist I "want to be"...or simply, the person "I am". One thing that is universal is that eventually, everything is subjective. The Taoist that believes in reincarnation is attracted to the idea. The Christian that believes in God is hopeful of said God and the afterlife. The atheist cannot fathom a world governed by a higher being, and does not care for it. So the answer is in yourself...regardless of what text says what. And if I'm to inflict my bias on you, I'd say, go away and be reincarnated then come back and tell us. Then see who believes you =P I wouldn't say the yin and yang is a theory at all, nor dismissed by science. It is an observation of polarity, the scale from hot to cold, from day to night, from peace to conflict etc. So simple yet so confused by those that want a debate. No this is just nature, watched by scientists today. Taoists in their own right. As for Neidan arts etc, I don't know. The more I go to "practice" meditation or kung fu forms etc, the more forced it seems. I get more benefit these days taking my fiancee's mum's dog for a walk. And I think Wu Ming Jen was trying to say that the idea of reincarnation is still an equivalent of leaving control with the man in the sky. Again, it's just another spiritual belief which has had no proving ground whatsoever. For me, the Taoist can watch the sun-rise and set...there's little more a human is capable of. Within this there is potential...check out Lao Tzu's "Limitless" comments. Then there's Chuang Tzu's butterfly dream. So yes, things can get a little imaginitive, but don't confuse imagination with what we can actually prove in our own waking reality.

I had no idea of this....that's quite amusing!

The former. Why waste energy with assumptions?

This could be a huge contributing factor for me. I spend 6-7 hours a day doing phone/computer work from home. I lift weights to give me something physical to do. This is 60% of the month. The other 40% I'm running the events I've set up, doing 14 hour days on my feet, lifting things etc. And still I can't sleep. I can only imagine that I'm not tired enough during my home period and come event days, my body is going "what on earth is going on??!!" What do you think?

Oh, by this do you mean that you were rested enough which didn't make you tired come bed time to get a full night's sleep?

@Andre Thanks, I watched the first video and these are definitely things I'm working on. I will watch the other later and have a read through your article/post. @Gerard.....I was wrong! I didn't get Rhizoma Chuanxiong! It was written on the box so I assumed that's what it was...but they just reuse boxes. They are tweaking the formula based on my self-evaluation from the last 2 weeks so I'll be taking a slightly different mixture as of later today. They said they can give me a list of its contents if I like but I've decided against it. Otherwise I'll just end up over-analyzing which is probably a part of my problem anyway.