5 elements in the real world

[GrandmasterP]

I only have master's but I come from four generations of Ph.D.s -- physics, engineering, biology, medicine. My father had me recite a treatise on thermodynamics by heart when I was 4, just to amuse the guests. I knew the books medical students study from when I was 8, also by heart (I had photographic memory and learned to read at 3).

 

Stosh et al, the point here is that for some of us -- key word "some" -- taoist sciences is not a cop-out resorted to due to a lack of "modern" scientific education, understanding, and ability -- rather it's the continuation of these into the next, superior, more advanced level. I know it's hard to stomach. But that's exactly true in my case, and I believe Steam was trying to say something similar.

..............

I have an eidetic memory too, it's a flippin' nuisance sometimes.

Getting better as I get older as it's not as acute as it was in younger days but I still have a head stuffed with useless factoids along with the stuff I need to know.

[Andrei]

Well my dear professor, not exactly rocket science but let me tell you rockets are not so complicated as aircrafts. More over rockets don't need to land. Safely.

[GrandmasterP]

Forgive the flippancy Doctor.

It was just too tempting to resist.

I have cause to be grateful to your profession.

Every plane I ever flew in took off and landed safely.

That meant a lot back in the days when one flew to travel.

 

[Taomeow]

..............

I have an eidetic memory too, it's a flippin' nuisance sometimes.

Getting better as I get older as it's not as acute as it was in younger days but I still have a head stuffed with useless factoids along with the stuff I need to know.

 

I lost mine in my teens, and that's how I discovered the joys of thinking. Used to be completely unnecessary. The five senses plus the kinesthetics informed me of absolutely everything. I think I had an atavistic mind of a pre-neoteny human, which was doing just fine without all that arrested-development nonsense that comes with the neocortical stimulation at the expense of the rest of the brain. (Do you guys know that all functions of the neocortex inhibit all functions of the midbrain, the lower brain, and the brain stem? That's one problem I have with "modern science" -- it utilizes the human brain in a way that puts stop signs on hundreds of thousands of processes it could engage in, and a "go" on just one at a time, and only involving the topmost layer of the brain, and spending 85% of its energy on repressing 95% of its functions -- what a waste!! That's why "modern science" can be done without involving the body. Taoist sciences can't be done like that. They aren't for the head alone and they are not concerned with events happening to the gadgets outside the scientist's own systemic perceptions. Taoist sciences actually happen to the scientist. That's why a brain steeped in these is capable of things linear-trimmed ones think of as fiction.)

[Taomeow]

Well It sure is nice to hear so many folks stand up and admit it for a change, instead of just those who think they

have telekinesis or can turn invisible or can change the weather with their minds, it allows me to drop into preferable obscurity

rather than be a lone voice for the value of Science as a means to ends rather than an enemy of Taoism.

 

You got what I said backwards, alas. I didn't "admit for a change" that taoist sciences are primitive compared to our scientific progress. I said the exact opposite. To wit, that modern scientific background may lead one to taoist sciences which are the next, superior level of science. People who are not very well educated in modern sciences and think these are superior because that's where they get their TV and their computer from may not arrive at this conclusion. In our age of specialization, few people have a broad enough scientific background to grasp the advantages of avoiding reductionism in science, still fewer (perhaps some Karl Popper's aficionados) are equipped to discern the problems with reductionist methodology as a general approach, and fewer still are lucky enough to find its viable alternative. That's where taoist sciences enter the picture -- for those (of whom I mentioned a few, too bad you ignored those names) who happen to combine a decent (or, more likely, superb) modern scientific education, a mind equipped to integrate and connect rather than merely collect information (wisdom vs. trivia), and a bit of luck to set them on the right track. That's what I admitted, and nothing else.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

I'm thinking with my heart here, but.... how about that glass of muddle now? i'll buy a round for everyone, I think y'all need it.... Taomeow... stosh... don't mind me, just fascinated by the 5 element system and my attempts to categorize it into a 4 tier system of 20 elements... I think it's working out nicely, but it seems i'll have to make a post in my personal practice forum to get any input. as for that muddle, i'll have a tall glass. please. and thank you

[Walker]

They tried to explain rusting- WITHOUT CHEMISTRY

They tried to explain biology - without knowing what oxygen was!

 

It is true that our ability to coherently express ideas about and manipulate the physical world seems to be at unprecedented heights, as evidenced by the wonders of modern technology. It is also true that one finds plenty of evidence of naive, half-informed notions about "the way things work" in ancient education. No bout adout it.

 

Nevertheless: again: be not confused: the five phases are not a clumsy attempt to describe the physical interactions of wood, fire, soil/earth, metal, and water. The whole "dig in the ground and find metal; look at metal and see condensed water" is rather a clumsy attempt by modern people to explain ancient education too subtle for most modern minds to grasp! The five phases are a set of metaphors describing--loosely, gently, flexibly, and with plenty of wiggle room--the patterns of movement of all things made out of qi, which just so happens to be, all things. When one grasps (but not too tightly) a theory such as that of the five phases and spends years cultivating sensitivity and insight, then one begins to see--nay, feel--(a) how all phenomena, even seemingly vastly different phenomena, do indeed unfold in patterns much the same as one another and ( that we actually only need a simple vocabulary to describe this endless, myriad unfolding (modern people prefer to see the myriad phenomena, and then invent myriad vocabulary words; good for developing technology; not good for developing insight; see: pollution, modern warfare, etc.)

 

The very real possibility of using a very simple vocabulary that manages to explain myriad phenomena is the reason for the seemingly infinite applicability of the Daodejing. Thus, enthusiasts from any field on earth all declare, "hey, this book is about me and my hobby!" Thus, it is a reality that one can not only use the five phases to describe how qi moves in anything from weather to illness to relationships, but also to influence and harmonize/harmonize with aspects of those phenomena. That does not mean that those who know how to think in terms of the five phases believe that trees create the wind, that the color red is made out of fire, or that bones are made out of water.

 

What the five phases really are is a more detailed examination of the 升降出入 (rising and falling, exiting and entering) or 开合 (opening and closing) of all in creation--six characters which in actually mean the same thing and all point to 隂 yin and 陽 yang.

 

And of course, there is certainly much more to them which I have yet to glimpse, much less grasp.

 

Learning to think like an ancient is not easy. Be patient, it takes years. Not learning to do so will, I imagine, create obstacles on the paths of most who wish to cultivate.

[Stosh]

It is true that our ability to coherently express ideas about and manipulate the physical world seems to be at unprecedented heights, as evidenced by the wonders of modern technology. It is also true that one finds plenty of evidence of naive, half-informed notions about "the way things work" in ancient education. No bout adout it.

 

Nevertheless: again: be not confused: the five phases are not a clumsy attempt to describe the physical interactions of wood, fire, soil/earth, metal, and water. The whole "dig in the ground and find metal; look at metal and see condensed water" is rather a clumsy attempt by modern people to explain ancient education too subtle for most modern minds to grasp! The five phases are a set of metaphors describing--loosely, gently, flexibly, and with plenty of wiggle room--the patterns of movement of all things made out of qi, which just so happens to be, all things. When one grasps (but not too tightly) a theory such as that of the five phases and spends years cultivating sensitivity and insight, then one begins to see--nay, feel--(a) how all phenomena, even seemingly vastly different phenomena, do indeed unfold in patterns much the same as one another and ( that we actually only need a simple vocabulary to describe this endless, myriad unfolding (modern people prefer to see the myriad phenomena, and then invent myriad vocabulary words; good for developing technology; not good for developing insight; see: pollution, modern warfare, etc.)

 

The very real possibility of using a very simple vocabulary that manages to explain myriad phenomena is the reason for the seemingly infinite applicability of the Daodejing. Thus, enthusiasts from any field on earth all declare, "hey, this book is about me and my hobby!" Thus, it is a reality that one can not only use the five phases to describe how qi moves in anything from weather to illness to relationships, but also to influence and harmonize/harmonize with aspects of those phenomena. That does not mean that those who know how to think in terms of the five phases believe that trees create the wind, that the color red is made out of fire, or that bones are made out of water.

 

What the five phases really are is a more detailed examination of the 升降出入 (rising and falling, exiting and entering) or 开合 (opening and closing) of all in creation--six characters which in actually mean the same thing and all point to 隂 yin and 陽 yang.

 

And of course, there is certainly much more to them which I have yet to glimpse, much less grasp.

 

Learning to think like an ancient is not easy. Be patient, it takes years. Not learning to do so will, I imagine, create obstacles on the paths of most who wish to cultivate.

 

Thats all calmly said , You would agree the form its in currently ,your post is really just assertion , right?

Except for the last line , which seems more of an escape clause that says you have nothing to demonstrate

the assertion with.

If thats not true then you can do so , present away!

Tm thinks phds and recitations are impressive ,

but they dont prove anything about the subject at hand.

So I dont share the view.

 

If the ancients has cars they would have driven them too.

 

Learning that your favorite path of cultivation is strewn with false assumptions and confusion

can be quite a shock , it is bound to leave you wondering how you are to know which is

wise and valid and which is bogus. So the tendency is to suck it all up together and treat it all

like it all has the same validity,, or toss the whole kit and look for another to trust.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Stosh

[Isimsiz Biri]

Could any body explain why there are five elements in Chinese system where as there are four elements in ancient Western systems? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element)

[Taomeow]

Could any body explain why there are five elements in Chinese system where as there are four elements in ancient Western systems? (http://en.wikipedia....assical_element)

 

Yes.

 

In a nutshell, Indo-European systems leave out the phase of qi (not "element") of Wood. Now Wood is the kind of qi that propagates life in the universe. It is the intermediary between matter and spirit, corresponding to the taoist placement of Human between Heaven and Earth. What Indo-Europeans notice is that there's Air between heaven and earth, but people, animals, plants -- they don't see! Meanwhile, Wood (people, animals, plants in the grand scheme of wuxing, though each individual human will have all five of course unless grossly imbalanced -- Prince Charles, e.g., has only two, Fire and Water -- and each individual tree will have Wood phase dominating but all others present too) -- where was I? -- oh, Wood is a legitimate and powerful force of nature in all its manifestations, a distinct phase of qi whose property is to Expand, and biological life/Wood, the Expansive phase of qi, is also interesting in that it is a self-organizing kind of expansion, unlike chaos. It is the only force in the universe working against the second law of thermodynamics that posits the non-decrease of entropy -- life actually organizes things instead of disorganizing them as it expands.

 

For the Indo-European hierarchical systems, the invisibility of this phase of the cycle has everything to do with the overall philosophy of belittling and disdaining life. Where these doctrines begin, animal, plant and human unity ends, and next, whole groups of animals, plants and humans are singled out for extermination, and next, the whole phenomenon, the whole phase of qi is forced out of cognitive paradigms, it isn't there anymore. This is why today we live in a world of Fire and Metal, a grossly imbalanced one with continuous deforestation, unprecedented mass extinction of species, and steady deterioration of human DNA that keeps accumulating gross mistakes with every new generation. This, we call (or rather "they," our non-biological rulers, the semi-synthetic archons, according to gnostics et al, have duped us into calling) "progress." It does make building artificial hierarchical structures easier when a natural expansive process of self-organization is cut down. Hierarchical arrangements partake of the Fire qi property -- Ascend. This is the model offered by all Indo-European cognitive paradigms, religious, scientific and social alike. Of course Fire burns Wood. Of course life on this planet has been burned...

 

Have no fear. We can and will fight back. Wuxing can be thrown off kilter in some places some of the time, but being a universal cosmic process of qi manifestations, it can't be distorted like that forever.

[Andrei]

I am a 5 elements worshiper but I thought Fire is expanding and Wood is ascending... And I thought Wood is the equivalent to Air and Metal to Ether or Akasha.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

see? this is why I like going all out with 20 elements.... more complex, less confusing

[Taomeow]

I am a 5 elements worshiper but I thought Fire is expanding and Wood is ascending... And I thought Wood is the equivalent to Air and Metal to Ether or Akasha.

 

Well, look around -- Life (Wood qi) goes everywhere, up the mountains and down the oceans, it's under your fingernails if you look under the microscope, it's sending roots deep into the earth and flying on thousands of designs of wings in the sky, it spreads across the land in all directions, expands everywhere -- there's my favorite creature on earth, bacterium radiodurance, that lives in nuclear reactors. And if you consider the theory of panspermia which is rather likely to be correct, you will notice that life expands to all planets, solar systems and galaxies in existence.

 

Then strike a match and watch the behavoir of Fire. Light a candle and watch some more...

 

Air is related to Metal because it is one manifestation of the spectrum of Metal qi properties (oddly enough, it becomes clear with some knowledge of chemistry... but it was clear to taoists who connected the Lungs with the Metal phase without Mendeleev.)

 

Ether and Akasha, far as I know, are hypothetical. The difference between taoist sciences and Western esoterica/mysticism and "mainstream" sciences alike is that taoist ones are put to practice all across the spectrum of taoist empirical arts -- be it medicine, martial arts, qigong, feng shui, astrology, cosmology, etc., you are always dealing with the same forces and energies of the world, on the level of the microcosm and macrocosm alike. I am yet to see how Ether or Akasha are empirically used by anyone who is not Edgar Cayce. (Likewise, I'm yet to see a Western trained astronomer whose scientific training has informed him what to do when he contracts a Toxic Fire disorder, e.g. liver cirrhosis. A taoist astrologer does know -- if she's trained in astrology, she can't help knowing! -- that's the nature of her scientific training, to be able to apply everything she learned of the taoist scientific fundamentals all across the spectrum of human knowledge, without compartmentalizing.)

[Aetherous]

"Tao" itself, or when they speak of the void, could be quintessence or aether.

[Enishi]

My own experience with Akasha, both from Initiation into Hermetics and from William Mistele's articles, is of a deep stillness/awareness that penetrates through both time and space. It seems dark at first, yet is at the same time laden with potential life and energy waiting to be actualized.

 

The description of the traits of Air/Fire/Akasha in IIT is comparative to Wood/Fire/Metal to an extent, but not in full. The Western Elements seem to be more about astral/mental plane rarefied essences as opposed to direct physical transformations and phases.

 

Overall I find it more enjoyable and instructive to work directly with various energies. My poor frustrated left-brain wants to try to grasp and define it all, but anything written on paper tends to a case of a sign that can only point you in the direction, it can't capture the actual reality.

[Aetherous]

a deep stillness/awareness that penetrates through both time and space

 

Same here.

[Walker]

Thats all calmly said , You would agree the form its in currently ,your post is really just assertion , right?

 

Of course.

 

Except for the last line , which seems more of an escape clause that says you have nothing to demonstrate

the assertion with.

 

No, it is a nod of respect in the direction of those whose insight is deeper than mine.

 

If thats not true then you can do so , present away!

 

I have nothing to present but my understanding of theory.

 

I don't think you understand what I said very well. The five phases do not manifest in reality as physical objects nor distinct phenomena.

 

They are only ideas which are convenient for allowing us to understand the ways of qi. There are times when the theory can be used; there are times when not. All this I have said previously. Therefore, all that I have to present, I have already given. If you want to know more, then find a teacher, humble yourself, study dilligently, practice regularly, and then check back in in five years.

 

Tm thinks phds and recitations are impressive ,

but they dont prove anything about the subject at hand.

So I dont share the view.

 

That is fine, possibly even wise. It would be silly to believe something just because somebody on the internet said that several people with PhDs are into it.

 

It would be equally silly, however, to reject a theory that you do not actually understand.

 

 

If the ancients has cars they would have driven them too.

 

Read more carefully. I fully and clearly acknowledged the wonders of modern technology.

 

Note that it would not be impossible to explain the general workings of a car in terms of five phase theory or yin yang theory. To explain the specifics, of course, would require using the specialized vocabulary and knowledge unique to creating automobiles.

 

Learning that your favorite path of cultivation is strewn with false assumptions and confusion

can be quite a shock , it is bound to leave you wondering how you are to know which is

wise and valid and which is bogus. So the tendency is to suck it all up together and treat it all

like it all has the same validity,, or toss the whole kit and look for another to trust.

 

Sigh. If you had read carefully enough you would have had no reason to write that. Well. Whatever.

 

Also, Daoism, Chinese medicine, internal martial arts, and so forth have loooooong been strewn with false assumptions and confusion, sometimes to the detriment or even death of unfortunate practitioners. Is what you describe "the tendency?" For some, perhaps. If you were more familiar with primary texts from traditional Chinese culture you would know that many of them were penned precisely in order to clean and clarify "the whole kit," rather than toss it, or believe blindly. Further, real practitioners are not in the game of looking for something to "trust." Not at all.

 

Read much more.

 

Read more clearly.

[Isimsiz Biri]

Yes.

 

In a nutshell, Indo-European systems leave out the phase of qi (not "element") of Wood. Now Wood is the kind of qi that propagates life in the universe. It is the intermediary between matter and spirit, corresponding to the taoist placement of Human between Heaven and Earth. What Indo-Europeans notice is that there's Air between heaven and earth, but people, animals, plants -- they don't see! Meanwhile, Wood (people, animals, plants in the grand scheme of wuxing, though each individual human will have all five of course unless grossly imbalanced -- Prince Charles, e.g., has only two, Fire and Water -- and each individual tree will have Wood phase dominating but all others present too) -- where was I? -- oh, Wood is a legitimate and powerful force of nature in all its manifestations, a distinct phase of qi whose property is to Expand, and biological life/Wood, the Expansive phase of qi, is also interesting in that it is a self-organizing kind of expansion, unlike chaos. It is the only force in the universe working against the second law of thermodynamics that posits the non-decrease of entropy -- life actually organizes things instead of disorganizing them as it expands.

 

For the Indo-European hierarchical systems, the invisibility of this phase of the cycle has everything to do with the overall philosophy of belittling and disdaining life. Where these doctrines begin, animal, plant and human unity ends, and next, whole groups of animals, plants and humans are singled out for extermination, and next, the whole phenomenon, the whole phase of qi is forced out of cognitive paradigms, it isn't there anymore. This is why today we live in a world of Fire and Metal, a grossly imbalanced one with continuous deforestation, unprecedented mass extinction of species, and steady deterioration of human DNA that keeps accumulating gross mistakes with every new generation. This, we call (or rather "they," our non-biological rulers, the semi-synthetic archons, according to gnostics et al, have duped us into calling) "progress." It does make building artificial hierarchical structures easier when a natural expansive process of self-organization is cut down. Hierarchical arrangements partake of the Fire qi property -- Ascend. This is the model offered by all Indo-European cognitive paradigms, religious, scientific and social alike. Of course Fire burns Wood. Of course life on this planet has been burned...

 

Have no fear. We can and will fight back. Wuxing can be thrown off kilter in some places some of the time, but being a universal cosmic process of qi manifestations, it can't be distorted like that forever.

 

 

Dear Taomeow,

 

Thank you for reply. But I am more confused now. Instead of Air in the West, Chinese has Wood and Metal. You did not mention Metal.

 

First, I do not undertand why you say Wood Qi propagates life? I always thought other elements has also equivalents in human body and related with life.

 

Second, what is Metal standing for? Metal is normally within Earth (as metal ore) and it is made by Humans artificially.

 

I am sorry to bother you.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Andrei]

That stillness awareness that penetrates both time and space is my definition for Void, which is a modern word that comes from Buddhism or Taoism. Ether or Akasha is the same word that comes from Hindu philosophy and entered the western philosophy in 16th century with the theosophists. Actually Ether comes from ancient greeks, and I believe we are talking about the same thing.

But how does it equate with the Metal element from Taoist philosophy, that beats me. And how Air relates to Metal that beats me too. It seems to me that Taoists took the 4 hindu elements and changed their meaning and relationships, added one and said "this is how it should be".

[Stosh]

 

Theres places there where we can agree.

But you also put your finger on the main point where we dont.

 

That one-I shouldnt dismiss a theory which I dont understand,

I dont think Im so stupid that I cant understand valid theories.

So I do reject those things that I cannot reconcile in a way that makes sense.

For instance

I do think that one can cross reference the two 'world views'

I can equate yin yang with say -entropy

But it doesnt yield the info to make a car.

I do think it can suggest relationships which may apply to quantum mechanics

or maybe astrophysics because an investigator may be freed up from

dogmatic mindset

but I dont think it will yeild the info to make faster computers without

scientific investigation following it up

A man can imagine anything , but he has to discard the false , (which science is willing to do)

 

 

And thats why I said that the two fields are complimentary.

[ChiDragon]

Stosh...

"And thats why I said that the two fields are complimentary."

 

Do you mean Complementary....!!!

[Stosh]

That too !

[ChiDragon]

ooh......

[Taomeow]

Dear Taomeow,

 

Thank you for reply. But I am more confused now. Instead of Air in the West, Chinese has Wood and Metal. You did not mention Metal.

 

First, I do not undertand why you say Wood Qi propagates life? I always thought other elements has also equivalents in human body and related with life.

 

Second, what is Metal standing for? Metal is normally within Earth (as metal ore) and it is made by Humans artificially.

 

I am sorry to bother you.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Hi Recep Ivedic,

 

you are not bothering me at all. Anyone who is going for to grasp the basics of taoism is doing the right thing. (Anyone who forms and peddles an opinion about them without years of study and practice is doing the wrong one. )

 

OK, let me try to help if I can.

 

1. Forget the "correspondences" with Western (or to be precise, Indo-European as opposed to Southeast Asian) system, they are sought by those who are familiar with the Western system in order to -- well, I don't know, in order to make things easier by concluding that if they know the Western system, this automatically imparts knowledge of the taoist system? In order to stay on the linear hierarchical plane where there's "lower" and "higher" "elements?" There's taoist schools that have been influenced by Buddhism (some lightly and some heavily) that will find these correspondences and use them in their interpretation of the taoist system. But Wuxing, the Five Phases (of qi, not the "five elements of substances" as Western understanding tends to interpret them), is an original taoist system that neither came from the Indo-European ones nor shares their prejudices. It is a taoist system that describes the permutations of qi in a cycle of phases which transform into each other as they go, generate each other, increase or decrease each other, control or are controlled by each other. They are not static, and they are not limited to an "element" that gave them their name. The name is not the phase of qi. The name is a label. The material phenomenon labeled thus -- Water or Metal or the rest -- is an immediately perceptible part of this particular phase of qi. Water is wet, Fire is hot. But the immediately perceptible "elements" do not reveal the whole paradigm of properties of a particular phase of qi. These are vast and need to be studied for a long time in order to be comprehended. A good place to start is with the basic properties of these phases:

 

Water descends

Wood expands

Fire ascends

Earth rotates

Metal contracts

 

The question "why" is an advanced one. If you practice a taoist art hands on, it answers this question better than explanations divorced from any material that relies on these . Pick one and start there, you'll understand. E.g., take taiji. If you punch someone the taiji way, they can't block. There is no block against a taiji punch because the punch is utilizing a Water principle -- it's not coming against a block like a stick against a stick or a metal rod against a metal rod. It is coming as a stream of Water. Block it in front of your face with your arm and this will not stop it -- the taiji arm willl cascade over and down and into the face, like a stream of water would when hitting an obstacle at that angle. I could give you a thousand examples, but the properties of the five phases can be grasped only if these examples had a real-life frame of reference in your life, i.e. a practiced taoist art, any authentic one will do, they are all based on the same principles (hooray! )

 

2. You are right that the body is made of all five phases of qi (and, actually, even of the five "elements" -- e.g. there's plenty of Metal in the red blood cells which bind iron). In terms of "elements," the human body consists mostly of Water (70-85%), but the story of the five phases is not the story of "elements," like I never tire of reiterating, it is the story of cosmic qi -- in its microcosmic manifestations in the case of the human body. So, yes, all five in a balanced human being (not just the body, the mind too is part of the five phases -- e.g. the thinking process is of the Fire phase, which has become clear to modern science when it discovered the electrochemical nature of synaptic firing -- notice the term "firing" it uses -- in other words, every thought in your head is a mini-explosion, a mini electrical discharge -- electricity is of course of the Fire phase -- which throws a particular molecule across the synaptic gap into the arms of the neural receptor, and that's the physical basis of thinking, a Fire phenomenon.)

 

But each of the phases of qi is present in the body in a state not easy to see (e.g. iron in the blood, Metal "element") while elsewhere it can be encountered as an "element" in plain sight (that's the source of the confusion -- the element in plain sight is "it" but not "the whole it"). Metal in plain sight is, e.g., a piece of ore, or a fork extracted from it. Water in plain sight is a river or a bottle of Perrier. And so on.

 

Wood in plain sight is a tree or a table, but Wood qi is also the sea slug which is part plant part animal (see, e.g.,

http://www.msnbc.msn...UJ1LWo7FW_U ) -- a multicellular animal producing chlorophyll in its skin, to say nothing of single-cell critters that can flip the plant-animal coin any which way they like -- all the way to Terence McKenna's assertion that "animals are just something plants invented in order to move seeds around." Animals and plants are of the same phase -- and the label, the name of this phase, is Wood, but it is in no way limited to a tree or a table. It is the phase of qi whose material "elements" are biological creatures, DNA based life.

 

Let me know if I helped un-confuse you or made it worse. And do remember what I said about study and practice -- no one can really grok what it's all about from the label of the "element" -- not even close...

[Isimsiz Biri]

Taomeow,

 

You really spent time for your reply. I appreciate it.