What is Taoism

[ReturnDragon]

39 minutes ago, dmattwads said:

How does Qigong tie into Taoism? Is it what Hatha yoga is to Hindu meditation? Preparing the physical body to be able to sit in meditation for extended periods of time?

Qigong is the major breathing exercise for a Taoist. We can say that all the health benefits are tied into the the practice of qigong by the ancient Chinese Taoist(not Taoism) . I mean anything you name it. I can tell you. Taoist believe in alchemy and Qigong is a must to be performed for the accomplishment. Meditation is the term that the Chinese Taoist do not use. The term "zazen(打坐)" is more like it to be used as one sits in a semi/full lotus position to perform abdominal breathing.
 

Edited April 7, 2020 by ReturnDragon

[Walker]

31 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

Qigong is the major breathing exercise for a Taoist.

 

Falsehood. 

 

Many qigong methods do not involve breathing instructions.

 

Many Daoists practice methods that deemphasize or even eliminate breathing.

 

Many Daoists do not practice qigong.

 

31 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

We can say that all the health benefits are tied into the the practice of qigong by the ancient Chinese Taoist(not Taoism) .

 

Illogical statement.

 

31 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

I mean anything you name it. I can tell you. Taoist believe in alchemy and Qigong is a must to be performed for the accomplishment.

 

Falsehood.

 

Alchemy can be practiced in total absentia of qigong.

 

31 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

 Meditation is the term that the Chinese Taoist do not use. The term "zazen(打坐)" is more like it to be used as one sits in a semi/full lotus position to perform abdominal breathing.

 

Major falsehood.

 

Daoists most certainly do use the term 打坐.

 

打坐 does not mean zazen. 坐禪 means zazen. I have already corrected you on this before. Stop lying at people.

 

In Daoism, 打坐 does not mean seated meditation. Wang Chongyang (who you pretend to have read but obviously have not) explained this extremely clearly. This has been explained to you before, even years ago by opendao. 

 

Stop trying to ruin people's learning with your lies and imaginings, 氣蟲.

[Starjumper]

1 hour ago, dmattwads said:

How does Qigong tie into Taoism? Is it what Hatha yoga is to Hindu meditation? Preparing the physical body to be able to sit in meditation for extended periods of time?

 

I don't know about Hatha yoga, but chi kung is not so much for preparing the body to be able to sit for a long time, although that can be a side effect of being in better overall condition.  The moving exercises are an addendum to meditation, they work to make your meditation more highly energized and therefore more effective.  The moving exercises should get your energy buzzing well, at which point the meditations, of which there are many, which are also energy work, will yield faster results.  The sitting meditation should therefore be done after the standing, moving exercises.

 

I suggest ignoring Return Dragon, he is clueless about the breathing.  Some chi kung uses some breathing, some types of chi kung don't, and yet they still generate a lot of energy.  Some breathing methods, which are actually a lot more than just breathing, which are secret, do add quite a lot to energy cultivation.  the kind of breathing tat Return Dragon is talking about does nothing much for energy cultivation

Edited April 7, 2020 by Starjumper

[gatito]

 

2 hours ago, dmattwads said:

Is it what Hatha yoga is to Hindu meditation? Preparing the physical body to be able to sit in meditation for extended periods of time?

 

You don't need to practice Hatha Yoga in order to practice Hindu meditation successfully.

 

And Hatha Yoga may well be a modern invention:

 

 

Some blurb about this book, which I've cut and pasted:

 

Quote

Yoga is so prevalent in the modern world--practiced by pop stars, taught in schools, and offered in yoga centers, health clubs, and even shopping malls--that we take its presence, and its meaning, for granted. But how did the current yoga boom happen? And is it really rooted in ancient Indian practices, as many of its adherents claim?

In this groundbreaking book, Mark Singleton calls into question many commonly held beliefs about the nature and origins of postural yoga (asana) and suggests a radically new way of understanding the meaning of yoga as it is practiced by millions of people across the world today. Singleton shows that, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence in the Indian tradition for the kind of health and fitness-oriented asana practice that dominates the global yoga scene of the twenty-first century. Singleton's surprising--and surely controversial--thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women's gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition. This discovery enables Singleton to explain, as no one has done before, how the most prevalent forms of postural yoga, like Ashtanga, Bikram and "Hatha" yoga, came to be the hugely popular phenomena they are today.

Drawing on a wealth of rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the USA, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly figures in the 1930s Mysore asana revival, Yoga Body turns the conventional wisdom about yoga on its head.

 

 

However, events moved on a bit since this book was published and I've started a Hatha Yoga thread in the Hindu section, so that this post acts as a split instead of as a derailif anyone wants to discuss it.

 

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by gatito

[GSmaster]

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

Return Dragon, he is clueless about the breathing.

 

Fraud Dragon is clueless about anything literally, he just uses baidu search to read random CCP articles and post this "divine truths" as a practical advice on forums.

 

He is like a malicious virus.

[ReturnDragon]

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

 Some chi kung uses some breathing, some types of chi kung don't, and yet they still generate a lot of energy.  Some breathing methods, which are actually a lot more than just breathing, which are secret, do add quite a lot to energy cultivation.

Hi, Starjumper
What chi kung did you practice today? It would be helpful if you can tell me how did you practice with as much detail as possible. Thank you!

[Walker]

46 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

Hi, Starjumper
What chi kung did you practice today? It would be helpful if you can tell me how did you practice with as much detail as possible. Thank you!

 

This dude mad creepy. 

 

1 hour ago, Starjumper said:

 the kind of breathing tat Return Dragon is talking about does nothing much for energy cultivation

 

 

True that. 

 

But evidently it is like pouring nitrous oxide into stupid, so it is not without power...

Edited April 7, 2020 by Walker

[Rara]

5 hours ago, Starjumper said:

I suggest ignoring Return Dragon, he is clueless about the breathing.  Some chi kung uses some breathing, some types of chi kung don't, and yet they still generate a lot of energy.

 

+1

 

I do both, depending on which one I am doing.

[Starjumper]

16 hours ago, ReturnDragon said:

Hi, Starjumper
What chi kung did you practice today? It would be helpful if you can tell me how did you practice with as much detail as possible. Thank you!

 

Sorry, it's a system of real nei kung which contains thousands of techniques, it requires a very good observer, in person, to notice some of those techniques, it is impossible to describe such things in words.  At best it would require a lot of words, and more words count less.  It would take a hundred big books, at least.  Some of the methods are secret and unknown to chi kung experts, and the tradition is that the sage teaches without speaking, for very good reasons.  Try to guess some of the reasons.

 

Here is one description of my methods, but it is quite incomplete.  Just ignore the fakes doing magic tricks, real nei kung masters don't do public displays.

 

But hey, you're in luck, there are some videos of some of the beginning levels that you can watch in order to see for yourself.  There is even one of  a very powerful Taoist wizard doing a higher level.  It was requested of me to add spoken instructions, so I did, against my better judgement.  I might remove the instructions any second, so hurry.

 

Here are the videos:  

 

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Starjumper

[Maddie]

Question of the day.

What is the Taoist perspective on the spirit world and it's interactions with us? How does one protect oneself from the bad ones? Why do the bad ones do bad things?

I went to a local Buddhist temple where there were a few western monks, and they basically looked at me and reacted as though the question was stupid and I was crazy. So not helpful. I later came to find out this is the perspective of a lot of Western Buddhists. 

What's the Taoist perspective on this?

[SirPalomides]

There's a wide variety of nuisance and malevolent spirits in the Daoist lore and different ways of warding them off. A common problem is the spirits of deceased whose family members did not offer them the proper sacrifices and care, so who wander and harm people. These are the "hungry ghosts" that dovetail in Chinese popular religion with the Buddhist pretas, though they are not really the same as the pretas as defined in orthodox Buddhist accounts. Both Buddhists and Daoists have rites for appeasing them and laying them to rest. There are demonic beings formed out of corrupt qi that prey on mortals to steal their life energy or otherwise harm them. It is also possible that they are sent by wicked sorcerers. Some beings can be either good or evil- the fox spirits, for instance. Evil foxes practice a kind of cultivation that relies on sucking life energy out of humans so they eventually become immortal nine-tailed foxes. The most common protection against demonic beings and baleful energies is the paper fu talisman, usually written with red ink on a long strip of yellow paper, with different designs and inscriptions for different purposes. Consecrated images of deities, ba-gua mirrors, and other sacred objects can do the trick too. A particularly difficult case calls for a Daoist exorcist who will have a variety of techniques, depending on the situation and the Daoist's training, for communicating with, commanding, binding, or banishing spirits.

[Maddie]

I wonder how one tells if they indeed had a problem like this and then if so what is the source of it i.e. a ghost, a demon, blackmagic?

[ReturnDragon]

The Taoist exorcist was known to have super vision to see both worlds.  The eyes of the exorcist are known as yin-yang eyes. The world of the deceased is yin. The world of human is yang. Only the Taoist exorcist can see what is going on both sides.

The Taoist exorcist can tell by a person with the pale color of the skin or black spots in certain area on the face. Sometime a person might be acting strange.


PS I am a theist. All the mentioned is only what I heard and see from fictional stories and movies. My input here is strictly for entertainment.
 

Edited April 7, 2020 by ReturnDragon

[Starjumper]

@ReturnDragon  You didn't answer the question I posted for you.

 

9 hours ago, Starjumper said:

The sage teaches (Nei kung) without speaking, for very good reasons.  Try to guess some of the reasons.

 

Then I'll give you my answer, which you may think is hilarious.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Starjumper

[ReturnDragon]

15 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

@ReturnDragon  You didn't answer the question I posted for you.

 

 

Then I'll give you my answer, which you may think is hilarious.

 

15 minutes ago, Starjumper said:

9 hours ago, Starjumper said:

The sage teaches (Nei kung) without speaking, for very good reasons.  Try to guess some of the reasons.

 

I really heard nothing was said. You had posted something that was not new to me. They are all esoteric and passed down from history still mysterious. Guess? Your guess is as good as mine.
 

Edited April 7, 2020 by ReturnDragon

[ReturnDragon]

13 hours ago, Rara said:

 

+1

 

I do both, depending on which one I am doing.

If you were doing Chi Kung, then the other one is just a regular exercise. The former is preserving energy and the latter is consuming energy. There must a be a difference. It cannot be both. Yes, it is got to be one or the other.

[Rara]

10 hours ago, ReturnDragon said:

If you were doing Chi Kung, then the other one is just a regular exercise. The former is preserving energy and the latter is consuming energy. There must a be a difference. It cannot be both. Yes, it is got to be one or the other.

 

So do you not call ba duan jin qigong?

Edited April 8, 2020 by Rara

[ReturnDragon]

7 minutes ago, Rara said:

 

So do you not call ba duan jin qigong?

Yes, it is because it does emphasize on breathing.
 

Edited April 8, 2020 by ReturnDragon

[Earl Grey]

6 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

Yes, it is because it does emphasize on breathing.
 

Not all variations of Baduanjin emphasize breathing.

[ReturnDragon]

14 minutes ago, Earl Grey said:

Not all variations of Baduanjin emphasize breathing.

Baduanjin is Baduanjin. How many are there? Which one doesn't?

 

[GSmaster]

I am not an expert on qigong.

 

But Qi means energy, Gun / kung means mastery.

 

Nothing is said about breathing.

 

@ReturnDragon do you know what qi is?

[ReturnDragon]

18 minutes ago, GSmaster said:

I am not an expert on qigong.

 

But Qi means energy, Gun / kung means mastery.

 

Nothing is said about breathing.

 

@ReturnDragon do you know what qi is?

Yes, 

氣功(Qi Kung)
在這裡氣功的氣(qi)是呼吸(breathing)的意思。
功(kung)是功能

氣功(Chi Kung) 是呼吸的功能。
 

[Rara]

42 minutes ago, ReturnDragon said:

Baduanjin is Baduanjin. How many are there? Which one doesn't?

 

 

The one I was taught doesn't. Just natural breathing. Which is still breathing.

 

But if you learn Return Spring, there is a distinct breathing pattern to follow.

[Rara]

20 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

There's a wide variety of nuisance and malevolent spirits in the Daoist lore and different ways of warding them off. A common problem is the spirits of deceased whose family members did not offer them the proper sacrifices and care, so who wander and harm people. These are the "hungry ghosts" that dovetail in Chinese popular religion with the Buddhist pretas, though they are not really the same as the pretas as defined in orthodox Buddhist accounts. Both Buddhists and Daoists have rites for appeasing them and laying them to rest. There are demonic beings formed out of corrupt qi that prey on mortals to steal their life energy or otherwise harm them. It is also possible that they are sent by wicked sorcerers. Some beings can be either good or evil- the fox spirits, for instance. Evil foxes practice a kind of cultivation that relies on sucking life energy out of humans so they eventually become immortal nine-tailed foxes. The most common protection against demonic beings and baleful energies is the paper fu talisman, usually written with red ink on a long strip of yellow paper, with different designs and inscriptions for different purposes. Consecrated images of deities, ba-gua mirrors, and other sacred objects can do the trick too. A particularly difficult case calls for a Daoist exorcist who will have a variety of techniques, depending on the situation and the Daoist's training, for communicating with, commanding, binding, or banishing spirits.

 

Ugh. Should I start being nice to my sister from now then, or is it worth the gamble to just not and maybe buy some paper fu in roughly 50 years?

[ReturnDragon]

16 minutes ago, Rara said:

 

The one I was taught doesn't. Just natural breathing. Which is still breathing.

 

But if you learn Return Spring, there is a distinct breathing pattern to follow.

There are too many so called teacher, in the west, did not learn it correctly and start teaching. There is, one only one, Ba Duan Jin(八段錦) with distinct breathing pattern to follow. Someone just tagged "Return Spring" in front of the original name doesn't mean it is a different style. 

Edited April 8, 2020 by ReturnDragon