Entry-level Taoism?

[Taomeow]

In class, my teacher's instructions sound as though they are coming straight from the mouth of tao:

 

"Open... close... Up... down... Heavy... light... Slow down... speed up... Hold... release... Coil inward... uncoil outward... Drop down... reach up... Spin... return... Intercept... redirect... Protect... attack... Hide... show... and here you can turn around and leave -- or step in and finish him off, your choice..."

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Well, you can say it was "Chinese" because Taoism didn't exist as a formalized religion, but, if it's about yin and yang then it's about Tao, so that to me, semantically, is Tao-ist. The Nei Jia falls under this as well, though Taoism may not have been formally named yet at the time, it was about Yin-Yang principles.

 

I think we ought to bring the party over to the new thread about this subject as I think your other points should be compared with it's OP.

 

Good luck on your path as well Monki

[konchog uma]

 

I read somewhere that tai chi was taught first to mongol rulers as a harmless and slow exercise, keeping the fast movements secret, but I don't know that validity of this.

 

 

from Tai Chi Classics by Waysun Liao p13

 

As soon as the Ch'ing empire builders) heard about the sophisticated art of Tai Chi, they drafted the most famous master of the times, Yang Lu-chang, founder of the Yang style or Yang family system, into royal service. Unwilling to teadch the Manchus, Master Yang deliberately modified the tai chi meditation forms, converting them into a kind of slow moving outer exercise and completely ignoring the inner philosophy and mental discipline which is the key to tai chi.

Master Yang knew that if the royal family learned of his unwillingness to teach them, and of his modifications, the emperor would take retribution for this offense and appease his anger b murdering not only him, but his entire family. Since Master Yang felt he could trust no one except his own sons, it was to them and to no one else that he taught the genuine art of tai chi. In this way he avoided implicating anyone else in his personal decision to deceive the royalty.

...

While the family style of tai chi decreased, the exercise style was encouraged and practiced by members of the Imperial family. It soon became the fad of the leisure class throughout China, and it remained so until the end of the Ch'ing dynasty.

...

In this way, the modified form of tai chi became today's tai chi chuan, or the so-called "tai chi exercise". This is the tai chi practiced publicly in China today; it is the tai chi dance, also called the Chinese Ballet by some westerners. In these modern times a person may receive instruction in and practice the art of tai chi for years, and, regardless of which sytle is being taught, still standa a very good chance of learning only "public tai chi". In other words, most of the tai chi practiced today is not the original tai chi, and is devoid of meaning.

 

 

in some of what i didn't type, Liao says that the other families followed suit after Yang chose to hide his true forms. Also that "temple tai chi" is the real tai chi as opposed to "public tai chi".

[ChiDragon]

Why worry about its nomenclature of the style...??? It was only a name and description. The effects of the practice do not change in any way....

Edited November 15, 2011 by ChiDragon

[寒月 Hanyue]

Well, you can say it was "Chinese" because Taoism didn't exist as a formalized religion, but, if it's about yin and yang then it's about Tao, so that to me, semantically, is Tao-ist. The Nei Jia falls under this as well, though Taoism may not have been formally named yet at the time, it was about Yin-Yang principles.

 

Good luck on your path as well Monki

 

Well that's one way to look at it! ha ha : ) I see where you are coming from. Yet the concept of Dao is not strictly "Daoist", as in that it comes from or originates from Daoism. The idea of dao came first (and is NOT the same as the idea of Dao later espoused by Daoists) and is used in many ways in Chinese thought. Confucianism is also about dao (rendao), yet their conceptualisation, elucidation and use of 'the wayof it is not the same. Daoism came about due to a particular bent on what Dao was and how to engage with it, in time this became known as Daoism. So you could call what was before it maybe proto-Daoism : )

 

This is how ideas shift and change in time, and are developed in different modes of thought. If you are interested look into it, if not don't. Everyone is of course free to pursue what interests them. As I said there are a myriad of ways of teasing out apsects of Chinese history and 'history' is subjective at best, even if informed opinion. I try to weigh internal lineage history against external academic history, both have value and are often engaged with for very different things as they both have a very real yet very different agenda.

 

Why worry about its nomenclature of the style...??? It was only a name and description. The effects of the practice do not change in any way....

 

Exactly. The heart of it doesn't change. Where it came from or what it was 400 years ago doesn't change what it is today and what it can be or do for people.

 

Best,

[Taomeow]

Why worry about its nomenclature of the style...??? It was only a name and description. The effects of the practice do not change in any way....

 

I'm told by people in the know that those who apply the principles and methods of taoism to taijiquan become very good at it, and of these, some become exceptional, great masters. I'm also told that those who don't incorporate these principles and methods in their practice remain mediocre no matter how long they practice. This makes much sense to me, because not understanding that taijiquan is an internal art of taoist cultivation turns it into a sport, and sports are decisively not taoist and even not Chinese (was just reading a Chinese novel set in the 19th century where some aristocratic youths were sent to Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard and Yale to learn the Western ways, and upon their first exposure, liked and embraced some, were puzzled and disturbed by others, and were put off by sports more than anything else, never understanding the purpose or such a useless waste of energy.)

 

Now then. If you are taught taijiquan properly, as a taoist internal cultivation art, you will be looking taoism straight in the face no matter where you turn. Taoism is not a "belief system," taoism is a system of embodying and living what you believe. Taijiquan is one of the methods to accomplish that. The art is a form-and-function manifestation of the most abstract and subtle taoist principles and notions. It embraces taoist cosmology (you can't do, e.g., Fair Lady at the Shuttles at a "supreme ultimate" level if you don't know that it is a "translation" of taoist creation/cosmology myths into the language of smaller-scale imitation, into the -- taoist again -- language of ganying). It embraces feng shui and wuxing. It teaches you to embody Luoshu and the eight trigrams and the four stages of the cosmic process. You can never do Six Seals and Four Closings the "supreme ultimate" way if you never get that. It starts teaching your body to understand the rhythm and pace of Changes -- you can't peng and fajin if you don't get that, you can only imitate it with li, and a real master will have a hearty laugh watching you (and destroy you in a real confrontation, should that ever occur.) And so on.

 

Taijiquan teaches the principles of taoism that cannot be taught with words. It is exactly what Laozi means in his often quoted, seldom understood first line. Tao can't be told, but it can be done. Taijiquan is the how-to method of doing it.

 

That's why it is very detrimental to the acquisition of the art to make no distinction between a comic book and a Picasso. If you learn taiji as a non-taoist art, you're paying the price of a Picasso for a comic book, not in money but in energy wasted on acquiring a mediocre skill that will never transcend its mediocrity no matter how much time and dedication you throw its way.

[Marblehead]

Taoism is not a "belief system," taoism is a system of embodying and living what you believe.

 

Just wanted to say that I love that statement.

[ChiDragon]

I'm told by people in the know that those who apply the principles and methods of taoism to taijiquan become very good at it, and of these, some become exceptional, great masters. I'm also told that those who don't incorporate these principles and methods in their practice remain mediocre no matter how long they practice. This makes much sense to me, because not understanding that taijiquan is an internal art of taoist cultivation turns it into a sport, and sports are decisively not taoist and even not Chinese

 

I can't agree more with you about that. I got the impression that you had learned a great deal about the principles of Taijiquan. Can you shed some lights on these principles...??? Or is it a traditional secret from your masters...??

 

ooops....edited at the wrong post...

--------- removed contents ......

Edited November 16, 2011 by ChiDragon

[Harmonious Emptiness]

What I would like to know as well, is how do you know, at an entry level, if your Tai Chi instructor has "the goods" to teach you? Do you have to be really really good before they will even take you on, or are there many teachers that will teach anyone the cosmological side of it from day one?

[Taomeow]

I can't agree more with you about that. I got the impression that you had learned a great deal about the principles of Taijiquan. Can you shed some lights on these principles...??? Or is it a traditional secret from your masters...??

 

Here is a demo.

http://www.ebaumswor...o/watch/949864/

 

You can start with the Songs of Taiji.

 

I can't presume to know what you do and don't know of the taoist principles incorporated in taijiquan. If you have any specific questions, I'll be happy to help, to the best of my modest ability. Sample questions:

what is "opening and closing," "manifest and unmanifest," "hetu and luoshu," "xiantian and houtian," yin-yang, wuxing, bagua, ganying, jing-qi-shen, yi, zhi, and then you can start getting into peng, an, lu and the rest of them... As for secrets from my masters -- here's one I'm free to share: no master has ever shared a secret with anyone who hasn't grasped the fundamentals.

 

As for the demo, I can only assert the obvious:

the men practicing in the video are 21st century Asians;

21st century Asians are known to practice many nontraditional arts that are not derived from taoism or China;

not to say that this is not traditional -- Mantak Chia, e.g., has a similar routine for women, and I've a hunch women can lift WAY more than men should they train in this particular sport, given the advantages of their anatomy and the powerful muscles there (try birthing a child and you'll know what I'm talking about... oops... you're a guy, right? So then... well, whatever );

and I have no idea what you believe the video you posted has to do with taijiquan, but if you're willing to share, please go ahead.

[ChiDragon]

and I have no idea what you believe the video you posted has to do with taijiquan, but if you're willing to share, please go ahead.

 

Thank you very much.

 

oops.......sorry

I posted the demo at the wrong place.....

[Taomeow]

What I would like to know as well, is how do you know, at an entry level, if your Tai Chi instructor has "the goods" to teach you? Do you have to be really really good before they will even take you on, or are there many teachers that will teach anyone the cosmological side of it from day one?

 

Good question.

 

You don't need the cosmological side of it from day one, and won't need it for at least the first few years, but you do need a teacher who has it, otherwise the patterns of motion and alignments you will get from him or her will be off from the start, and they are pretty difficult to correct once the wrong ones are ingrained.

 

How to find a teacher who has it -- well, that's where the traditional way of finding teachers shines. Lineage, what else. Who your teacher learned from, for how long, how intensely, and who the teacher's teacher was, and so on, pretty much does it. If you get any which party line instead -- that it doesn't matter, that it is to massage someone's ego and serves no other purpose, that it is overruled by a good heart or a good set of videos, etc. etc., all those endless arguments against lineage studies that you hear these days -- run! Run away from this party line and keep running for as long as it takes to find a teacher who is not proclaiming it, and then ask him or her for lineage credentials. It's that simple. We live in a golden age of taiji -- great masters have come to us, the ones we used to have no way to learn from. Would be a shame if we collectively blew it.

[Taomeow]

Thank you very much.

 

oops.......sorry

I posted the demo at the wrong place.....

 

Yeah, I've been wondering.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

 

We live in a golden age of taiji -- great masters have come to us, the ones we used to have no way to learn from. Would be a shame if we collectively blew it.

 

It's true eh? I guess I'm a bit of a sucker for the "never available before" thing especially when it comes to texts, call me a spiritual materialist.. But we are in like a vortex of available opportunity which is pretty tasty and hard to pass up on... don't want to have to wait like another 10 kalpas or nothin'.

 

What I find about Tai Chi is that it is a more complex routine of qi gong, with many more movements and so it takes a while to get them all smoothly, unlike most qi gong exercises which is usually a repetition of about 10 movements or less. So I guess the thing with Tai Chi is that you can never really go it alone?