Ganying

[Taomeow]

I was buying something yesterday and as I paid and turned to leave, the sales person called after me, "Do you want your keys?" Turned out I left them on the counter. Some people do it all the time -- I had a friend I used to hang out with who would have to go back to wherever we were before to retrieve his keys, wallet, sunglasses, hat, something -- whatever it was that he had, more than half the time he left it behind. (I kept telling him that it's psychologically significant -- he's unconsciously "trying to lose something.") Well, I never do that. Hardly ever. Never say never. But it's not a habit with me. Habitually, I scan any point A for whatever personal items I might be leaving behind before moving on to point B.

 

So, the sales woman told me, "you are the third person in the last hour who did that. Left the keys on the counter and walked away." Aha! So now I knew it was not an accident. It was... but wait, let me give you another example.

 

My ex was cutting some hard cheese and cut into his finger almost to the bone. The bleeding was far in excess of what you see with a routine kitchen mishap, the kitchen looked as though he'd been trying to slaughter a bull rather than cut cheese there, so we decided to go to the ER. The finger indeed proved to need a few stitches, and as the doctor was administering them, the nurse casually mentioned to me, "today is the cut fingers day. Number five, this one. No wait, number six." What?.. "Is it something you see every day -- five or six patients coming in with this particular trauma?" No. But sometimes, when they start coming, particular types of traumas come in clusters. "Saturday is the cut-across-the-palm morning." Why? "Bagels. They get up and go get fresh bagels from the bakery and bring them home to the family, and then they try to slice the bagel while holding it in their hands." OK, that's understandable, at least there's a sequence I can discern, a reason for a cluster. But cut fingers on a random week day? "Were all the cut fingers kitchen mishaps?" "No, all different circumstances." "Any palms, thumbs, other cut body parts today?" "No, just fingers. Six people, six cut fingers, all from different accidents."

 

This, folks, is ganying, the mysterious resonance that causes seemingly unrelated events to happen simultaneously. Most of the time you see them as unrelated because you don't see the larger and subtler picture. But they are related. How?.. It's like the weather. When it rains on Avenue A, chances are it also rains on Avenue B next to it. It's like sunshine. If it's sunny on Avenue A, chances are it's also sunny on Avenue B. But whatever happens to cause people to get "under the weather of cut fingers" is not as readily visible... And yet it's there.

 

Have you ever seen "Magnolia?" I watched it a couple of times, a few years ago, and could never get over the fact that it was all about ganying -- like a textbook illustration...

Edited April 14, 2013 by Taomeow

[Mandrake]

Would you think that this is the modus operandi of more accomplished cultivators? I.e. when you ask for help and assistance, it frequently unravels as ganying?

 

I once was to move to California, and the year before, all these very strange coincidences started turning up. People who just happened to stop at the house I was visiting, a foreigner who was at a café who was from the town I was to move to and on and on. I never before experienced it as strongly, which was probably why I didn't understand the significance of it.

 

Do you yourself use ganying actively? How/ for what?

 

 

Thanks for quite a juicy topic!

 

Mandrake

[Taomeow]

Would you think that this is the modus operandi of more accomplished cultivators? I.e. when you ask for help and assistance, it frequently unravels as ganying?

 

I once was to move to California, and the year before, all these very strange coincidences started turning up. People who just happened to stop at the house I was visiting, a foreigner who was at a café who was from the town I was to move to and on and on. I never before experienced it as strongly, which was probably why I didn't understand the significance of it.

 

Do you yourself use ganying actively? How/ for what?

 

 

Thanks for quite a juicy topic!

 

Mandrake

Thanks for noticing!

 

Yes, I do think cultivation expands one's perceptions of ganying, and in nonordinary states of consciousness, exponentially so. But even in the ordinary state, once you start noticing, there's more and more to notice. I don't remember if I wrote about it here, so if I'm repeating myself, please forgive me -- I have come to believe that ganying is not mechanical, it is not a "dumb law of nature," it is an intelligent law of nature. Even, perhaps, emotional. Which seems to make some logical sense, since if it's a resonance, a reverberation, a propagation of events in and out of the space-time continuum (a Minkowski space to a special relativity dabbler, and more to a taoist sciences aficionado), a mirror of mirrors -- the "string of pearls in the heaven of Indra,"

 

then it can't help resonating, reverberating, mirroring by being what it resonates with, embodying what it mirrors--

 

so, it would be strange if this phenomenon lacked the abilities and attributes of intelligence, emotionality... even, in my experience, a sense of humor.

 

As for using it -- of course. It's the basis of all empirical applications of the taoist theory rooted in the macrocosm-microcosm interactions, from medicine to taiji to divination to feng shui to talismanic calligraphy to the Peasant Calendar to... frankly, I can't think of an activity a practicing taoist would use that doesn't use it. Of course practice makes perfect, so it's the fruits reaped and savored by the high level cultivators that are particularly juicy... but anyone who's had a taste might appreciate it... I deliberately limited myself in my examples to "coincidences" pointed out by someone else and not personally significant, to avoid (if I can) arguments in favor of "unconscious expectations" and whatever else the "skeptics" like to replace the actual phenomenon with on the street in their mind...

Edited April 16, 2013 by Taomeow

[thelerner]

Hmnn, like the ghosts in the machine are everywhere, localized fields of influence.?

[Birch]

I was considering that the use of discreet entities (spirit worship) to identify impersonal forces was specifically for collaboration with the latter on the levels required to effect changes relevant to the people needing or wanting the change.

 

 

Or something like that.

 

---ramblin'---

 

[JustARandomPanda]

I always had the impression that C.G. Jung's theories about synchronicity were inspired by his investigations into Taoism...one of which was Gan Xing (ganying)

[zerostao]

I always had the impression that C.G. Jung's theories about synchronicity were inspired by his investigations into Taoism...one of which was Gan Xing (ganying)

i think it was Jung's study of Taoism that confirmed (to him) many concepts he had been working with. synchronicity being maybe the most famous. but i think Jung originally got the concept from Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass

[mYTHmAKER]

I'm walking on crowded Canal Street last Saturday and I nod hello to a man coming from the opposite direction. I have seen from time to time playing taiji in the park. We never have spoken.Just looked and acknowledged each other.

So we are on Canal street and we stop - he takes my hand and starts reading my pulses.

I had been trying to figure out what is wrong with me and he tells me then and there.

mYTHISmAKER read his palm in return. Strange world

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

whence our identities are secure and we have awakened to see ourselves as one, this occurrence is the least of things to ever deem strange.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

... although the tragedies and mishaps would lessen if we were awakened.

[PLB]

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.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Omniversiality; oneness without exclusion, including exclusion.


Oneness alone is formless without comparison, by dissecting and arranging patterns, it can create "self" and "non-self" to illustrate the myriad things internally, externally, wholly, and in part both as self and as not-self.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Northern Avid Judo Ant

[mYTHmAKER]

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.

gniynag

or

yticinorhcnys

[PLB]

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.

[Taomeow]

I've often suffered from knee nag. Didn't have a name this elegant for the phenomenon though (thank you MM and PLB) -- my working title for this has been "the almost-there f...-up." (There's a Russian slang idiom for this too which is strange but expressive and refers to events that should have happened but didn't--"flying over and past it like plywood over Paris.")

Edited April 20, 2013 by Taomeow

[mYTHmAKER]

"flying over and past it like plywood over Paris.")

 

LOL

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Sounds more or less like what "Western" astrology is about - showing the forces of influence. I wouldn't believe in astrology if not for the fact that I went through several months of reading a particular astrologer at the end of the day and every time, the most significant issue of the day was signified quite categorically in horoscope's counsel. Eventually I came to realize the influence that was strong in the mornings that needed to be acknowledged and stopped looking to the horoscopes to tell me what it was (which planet was presiding).

 

People might like to try and bash things as "new age naivete" but coincidences can be like road maps sometimes.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Harmonious Emptiness

[suninmyeyes]

Taomeow , I am so happy to learn that this has a name : Ganying .

[Mandrake]

I remember a man I met who was one of the very few on the planet who had inherited a special method of divination from China. Numerical it was. Quite strange to hear him - who had never met me - write out the years I've moved over seas, what body parts I damaged and when, promotions, gossip over women, exact things.

 

I wonder over the topology of this space. It's as if you fold it here, then it will fold another way in another place, and a lot of other things take place. At certain times I've been dreaming very lightly and suddenly strange things happen simultaneously in the dream and around my household, at exact moments; small hints that the ocean is much deeper. I wonder how these old guys came up with these uncanny divinatory systems.

 

But it is not only a domain of discrete units; it's also a continuous warping isn't it, an influence? Occasionally I marvel at times when I unconsciously walked into a persons life and afterwards heard that it was just the right time, and I helped them tremendously. It could be a friend who just divorced without me knowing, a guy who stood at the cliff or many other situations. I didn't know, but I just turned up! (I'm not a saint, not at all hahaha). I just lived my live but life creased in such a way that we met. So our whole beings participate. Change yourself, and your sphere of influence and all its tentacles expand and change.

 

Another man I met was a master of a western system of divination. It was not based on intuitive reading or similar. He described what exactly I did for work in a certain city, what had happened with my family etc. Scary. But he was the best. The difference here is that he had pretty much tailored the method to himself; the method reflected him and he reflected the method. Incidentally, he had attained one of the powers of voice: what he said manifested; it's an interesting one, but I won't elaborate on it here. It's just that his special intelligence didn't stop at his vicinity. He also (as did the first above) notified me of the importance of knowing your correct birthtime if the method uses that: your fate changes tremendously by just five minutes; sometimes one minute makes quite a difference! Now when I have more experience myself, I smile at people who believe they can make others dig up secrets by throwing at them a quite liberally approximate time.

 

What also was made quite clear is that you just can't encounter these guys according to your own wishes; it's deserved, your zhen arranges it for you, or conversely: the pattern prevents your from reaching them. Remarkable how people people believe that they can approach the secrets without a modicum of yuan, heng, li and zhen! Even if it is so square in the face as the methods utilizing the Yijing!

 

 

Thanks for noticing!

 

Yes, I do think cultivation expands one's perceptions of ganying, and in nonordinary states of consciousness, exponentially so. But even in the ordinary state, once you start noticing, there's more and more to notice. I don't remember if I wrote about it here, so if I'm repeating myself, please forgive me -- I have come to believe that ganying is not mechanical, it is not a "dumb law of nature," it is an intelligent law of nature. Even, perhaps, emotional. Which seems to make some logical sense, since if it's a resonance, a reverberation, a propagation of events in and out of the space-time continuum (a Minkowski space to a special relativity dabbler, and more to a taoist sciences aficionado), a mirror of mirrors -- the "string of pearls in the heaven of Indra,"

 

then it can't help resonating, reverberating, mirroring by being what it resonates with, embodying what it mirrors--

 

so, it would be strange if this phenomenon lacked the abilities and attributes of intelligence, emotionality... even, in my experience, a sense of humor.

 

As for using it -- of course. It's the basis of all empirical applications of the taoist theory rooted in the macrocosm-microcosm interactions, from medicine to taiji to divination to feng shui to talismanic calligraphy to the Peasant Calendar to... frankly, I can't think of an activity a practicing taoist would use that doesn't use it. Of course practice makes perfect, so it's the fruits reaped and savored by the high level cultivators that are particularly juicy... but anyone who's had a taste might appreciate it... I deliberately limited myself in my examples to "coincidences" pointed out by someone else and not personally significant, to avoid (if I can) arguments in favor of "unconscious expectations" and whatever else the "skeptics" like to replace the actual phenomenon with on the street in their mind...

 

 

[Cat Pillar]

I see Ganying in action all the time at my place of work. Device failures and issues tend to happen in clusters. One day it will be load balancers, another day firewalls. One day will be switch reboots, another issues with Juniper routers. It's always fascinated me.

 

Great thread!

[dwai]

I see Ganying in action all the time at my place of work. Device failures and issues tend to happen in clusters. One day it will be load balancers, another day firewalls. One day will be switch reboots, another issues with Juniper routers. It's always fascinated me.

 

Great thread!

 

I had to respond to this since I'm in a similar line of work. I've had strong premonitions about the s#it about to hit the fan at times when I'm on the verge of a major operation (say maintenance on a very critical system or group of systems).

 

At first I out it down to nerves. Then a pattern emerged - every time I brushed aside the almost physically compelling urge to stop what I'm doing and pushed through I ended up being very sorry. But it's hard to explain to those who don't know why and what I felt.

 

But I've seen the pattern too - particular type of events happening ( switch one day, storage array another and so on)

 

[Cat Pillar]

Yup, I know exactly what you're talking about, Dwai. I've experienced the same thing with certain maintenances or troubleshooting activities.

 

Sometimes you just "know" it's about to go sideways.

[joeblast]

heh, reminds me of poincare group concept - so the whole ganying thing embodies a vector

[Taomeow]

Here's one of the greatest instances of ganying in my family.

 

My mom was 8 when WWII came to Russia, and the nazi troops were about to take the town where the family lived when the authorities ordered evacuation of civilians. My grandparents were scheduled to stay until the last moment and the last train and be evacuated together with the personnel of their respective places of work, while all children of the personnel, including my mom, were put on the first train going east. There was much chaos. Bombs were falling, tracks were damaged, schedules and any access to any reliable information as to which train goes where became temporarily nonexistent. Plans were being changed, so when my grandparents boarded their train three days later, they had no idea whether they would arrive in the same spot as their daughter or wind up totally elsewhere.

 

In the meantime, days of stop and go travel later, at a brief ("ten minutes!") stop in the middle of nowhere, my mom decided that she wanted to get some hot water (available at stations) for the tea, took a kettle and got off the train so as to fill it up. At exactly this moment, another train stopped at the next track, and a woman got off, kettle in hand. Who just happened to be her aunt, my grandmother's sister. The aunt had up-to-date (three days fresher) information about my grandparents' destination, which indeed was nowhere near where my mom's train was headed, and she was traveling in that direction herself, having changed trains many times in the process, so as to be able to joint them on arrival. My mom returned the kettle and got on the other train with her aunt. Within a few days, everybody was reunited.

Edited April 25, 2013 by Taomeow

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Hey Taomeow,

 

any idea what the classical characters might be for Ganying??

Edited April 30, 2013 by Harmonious Emptiness