What is your purpose for your practice?

[Sleepy Bluejay]

Apparently, nobody believes that they can live for more than 100-200 years by practicing internal alchemy. They also do not believe that they can eventually jump over a house or split a mountain in half by practicing martial arts together with internal alchemy.

 

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

What is your/their final purpose with doing so?

 

- A sleepy and curious bluejay

Edited October 25, 2023 by Sleepy Bluejay

[Partez]

I work as a hypnotis, hence I'm quite skeptical on the "Qi" that I feel, but I do feel it, and it feels nice.

 

As a way of doing self hypnosis I always attribute a healing, positive character to the sensational which works on the subconscious mind.

 

Of course, there's a part of me that holds out for the house jumping, and that "Qi" is something more tangible than just sensations created by my mind.

 

Worst case scenario tho, is I'm spending some time doing light mobility and stretching exercises as a moving meditation, with some positive, subconscious programming for self healing and energy every day.

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, Sleepy Bluejay said:

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

please understand that 'they' do not practice internal alchemy because 'they' did not obtain the whatever thing the alchemy is supposed to obtain. Its like asking why somebody plays a guitar when in fact he plays an air guitar. What they do is a bafflingly incorrect imitation.

 

And the answer is: because they are yearning for rejuvenation and health and other miracles which internal alchemy is supposed to provide. But they get bored pretty soon and hop on to the next seminar.

[ChiDragon]

3 hours ago, Sleepy Bluejay said:

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

I have relatives that lived more than one hundred years old without practicing internal alchemy. Those who might not live that long would like to practice it. So, they might be able to live longer than normal. Practicing internal alchemy will provide a better health for the pactitioner. Indeed, it prolongs life. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by ChiDragon

[kakapo]

8 hours ago, Sleepy Bluejay said:

Apparently, nobody believes that they can live for more than 100-200 years by practicing internal alchemy. They also do not believe that they can eventually jump over a house or split a mountain in half by practicing martial arts together with internal alchemy.

 

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

What is your/their final purpose with doing so?

 

- A sleepy and curious bluejay

 

An acorn sprouts, absorbs photons, absorbs water, absorbs CO2, absorbs minerals, and fuses these together, and uses the energy to grow into an oak tree.

 

For most people, their acorn's never sprout.

 

The goal of my practice is the same as an acorn.

 

[Giles]

3 hours ago, kakapo said:

 

An acorn sprouts, absorbs photons, absorbs water, absorbs CO2, absorbs minerals, and fuses these together, and uses the energy to grow into an oak tree.

 

For most people, their acorn's never sprout.

 

The goal of my practice is the same as an acorn.

 

 

The analogy is a straw man argument @kakapo.

 

[Neirong]

5 hours ago, kakapo said:

An acorn sprouts, absorbs photons, absorbs water, absorbs CO2, absorbs minerals, and fuses these together, and uses the energy to grow into an oak tree.

 

For most people, their acorn's never sprout.

 

The goal of my practice is the same as an acorn.

 

You are not an acorn.

[Sleepy Bluejay]

6 hours ago, kakapo said:

 

An acorn sprouts, absorbs photons, absorbs water, absorbs CO2, absorbs minerals, and fuses these together, and uses the energy to grow into an oak tree.

 

For most people, their acorn's never sprout.

 

The goal of my practice is the same as an acorn.

 

 

I can relate to this analogy!

I too sees the beginning of ones practice as a type of seed. In my case I use potato seed instead of acorn because a potato seed sprouts its roots, then later grows its potatoes (the roots of the plant to me symbolizes the meridians, while the potatoes symbolizes the dantians).

[silent thunder]

1 hour ago, Neirong said:

You are not an acorn.

And you are not a qualified observer.

[liminal_luke]

To be a better, cleaner, kinder, more capable version of myself.

[Dedicated]

For the experience 

[thelerner]

On the spectrum of things I can be doing, my practice seems least harmful  

 

When a Tai Chi player was asked why he did his practice, he stated- The birds like it.  

I've found that to be true.  

[Sahaja]

I enjoy the experience of the qi moving in me. I like the feeling something is being added in terms of knowledge and capability. I like that it is making me more accepting of what is being lost through time and decay. I like that there is mystery and unknown in it.  I like the juxtaposition that I can touch something that is profound to me that is not meaningful to others. I like that the qi showed up and showed me things before I had the story to explain it - and that it continues to do this.

[kakapo]

19 hours ago, Giles said:

 

The analogy is a straw man argument @kakapo.

 

 

Usually a straw man means that you are misrepresenting your opponents position. 

 

For example if I said that I think cars are good, and my opponent claimed I said that I wanted to accelerate global warming, that would be a straw man.

 

My position could be that hybrids are ok, but electric cards were best, but he created a misrepresentation of my argument so he could use it to discredit me. 

 

So I am not sure what you mean here, because I am not arguing with anyone, I just stated the purpose of my practice.

[Partez]

14 hours ago, thelerner said:

On the spectrum of things I can be doing, my practice seems least harmful

 

A Qi Gong practice taking some time away from relentlessly committing crime seems as good a reason as any to continue.

[thelerner]

On 10/26/2023 at 11:21 PM, Partez said:

 

A Qi Gong practice taking some time away from relentlessly committing crime seems as good a reason as any to continue.

and if ever caught and sentenced, the practice comes in even more handy 

[idquest]

On 25/10/2023 at 11:25 AM, Sleepy Bluejay said:

Apparently, nobody believes that they can live for more than 100-200 years by practicing internal alchemy. They also do not believe that they can eventually jump over a house or split a mountain in half by practicing martial arts together with internal alchemy.

 

My questions are;

why do you/they practice internal alchemy?

What is your/their final purpose with doing so?

 

- A sleepy and curious bluejay

 

Practice evolves, and the goals evolve as well. This is a moving target. This is why it is more important to do something than not to do and just try to understand what exactly to do.

[Nintendao]

On 10/25/2023 at 4:28 PM, Taoist Texts said:

please understand that 'they' do not practice internal alchemy because 'they' did not obtain the whatever thing the alchemy is supposed to obtain. Its like asking why somebody plays a guitar when in fact he plays an air guitar. What they do is a bafflingly incorrect imitation.

 

Air guitar  i love it.  Would you be willing to provide any examples of individuals, living or historic, who do/did the real deal? Also any elaboration of whatever thing the alchemy is supposed to obtain?

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by Nintendao

[Partez]

40 minutes ago, Nintendao said:

Air guitar  i love it.  Would you be willing to provide any examples of individuals, living or historic, who do/did the real deal? Also any elaboration of whatever thing the alchemy is supposed to obtain?

 

Mentioning alchemy is actually quite appropriate, because medieval alchemy had a goal of finding the fountain of youth and creating gold, and while it didn't obtain those goals, the practice contributed to the scientific field.

 

In the same way I think, ancient Daoists set loft goals, and while the jury's still out on anyone obtaining those (much like the fabled philosopher's stone)

 

Through the practices they discovered something of value none the less.  I believe.

[Taoist Texts]

1 hour ago, Nintendao said:

Air guitar  i love it.  Would you be willing to provide any examples of individuals, living or historic, who do/did the real deal?

well one man's history is another man's fairy tale

The Five Southern Patriarchs

• Zhang Ziyang
• Shi Tai
• Xue Shi
• Chen Nan
• Bai Yuchan

The Seven Perfect Ones of the North

• Ma Yu
• Tan Chuduan
• Liu Chuxuan
• Qiu Chuji
• Wang Chuyi
• Hao Datong

2 hours ago, Nintendao said:

Also any elaboration of whatever thing the alchemy is supposed to obtain?

it is something called the elixir. There is no alchemy without the elixir.

https://en.daoinfo.org/wiki/Small_Reversion_Elixir

Someone who claims to practice alchemy or neidan yet who did not obtain the elixir is like a baker who did not bake a single loaf; or like a banker who never been to a bank. Such ppl are deluding themselves, they have no clue what they talk about. I never make fun of such ppl because they are in a sad place as it is.

However there are frauds who having no clue what the elixir is, let alone having made one, 'teach alchemy' for money, defrauding poor naives who crave youth, life, health. 'secrets', lineage. And that is amusing so i occasionally poke fun at the teachers - holding my nose because this type of fraud is just particularly sordid.

[Nintendao]

5 hours ago, Partez said:

Through the practices they discovered something of value none the less.  I believe.

 

Absolutely. 

 

In this day and age words like alchemy, cultivation, enlightenment, have been through so many adoptions and abstractions that without additional context or within a specific lineage, we may have to accept things as a spectrum of what they are even referring to. I definitely do not want to lead this thread into debate or critique though. There's more value in connecting and sharing personal motivations and expectations for our ... practices.

 

For me it probably all started with sheer admiration for and inspiration by characters like Kwai Chang Caine or Cord the Seeker are just the first to come to mind. Then we always left wondering, just what exactly the old blind guy was teaching those kids (beyond the obvious of how to whup ass). With the recent proliferation of xianxia manga I can only imagine what kind of ideas people might get into! With any luck and persistence, these pursuits often do mature into authentic endeavor, at the very least giving many years of increased health, capabilities, and discovery of deeper natures.

 

In other words I think fantasy can play a great role in motivation people to look for actual truths that are beyond the mundane. I'm sure there are some highly accomplished engineers that at some time daydreamed about being Ironman, or skilled acrobats that dress like Spiderman.

[kakapo]

On 10/26/2023 at 4:30 AM, Neirong said:

You are not an acorn.

 

It's an analogy, but the concept is very similar.

[ragune]

As everybody, I can only talk about myself, of which I don't know if it is in any way representative:

Same as for science, I was very curious in the mysterious world. At 8, I read a weird book by a weirder author (Frank Rudolph Young) and dabbled with the exercises until they freightened me a little. Later on, there were many, many, many other real contacts with real teachers, but I rarely practiced anything for a longer time. At 22, I had a WOW-experience when an I think advaita acharya from a sect (Ananda Marga) initiated me by meditation (or hypnosis, I don't know), where I completely lost any sense of me and dissolved in everything. I realize, that sounds like really weird stuff, but it neither left any long-lasting impact on me and neither did my other "initiations" into any system. I was just curious and - born at the end of the fifties - one of the late hippie generations (Taijiquan, BaGua, Magic Mushrooms, anything you name it). I tried fasting, veganism, vegetarianism, darkroom meditation (boooooring!) andwhatnot, but neither of this became a longer lasting passion. Tibet and India were also on my schedule, but not for long.

After 13 years in Asia I went back to Europe, founded a family, had kids and forgot about all that stuff, since I was busy enough and thus my curiousity was on hold.

Finally, when my kids were adults, I gradually felt a very subtle kind of longing again, but unclear for what. So I dabbled again, met some of my former teachers (then 40, now 80) like Christopher Titmuss and looked for something nice to learn again.

Since I am very bad at emptiness meditation and needed some exercise for my "cauldron-storage", I took up the exercises I was taught in Taiwan again, then by Master Lee Feng-san (actually its 李風山, shan with "sh"）who now is only famous for his Shuai Shou Gong  - and while I felt I also try some silent sitting I took some retreats to take a look, about whats out there now.

 

So I ended up doing Daoist meditation again (whatever you think it is it is), since had this affinity to China since the first time I read the Lao Lao-Zi (I was 16 then).

Funny was, with 15 years later my dream came true and I read the original text in Taiwan and was disappointed that neither Marcel Granet, nor John Blofeld nor Richard Wilhelm was wrong about it, since there IS no right interpretation of the Dao De Jing, haha.

Now, I rather shun away, when another clever guy puts out ANOTHER NEW translation of it (makes me want to vomit...).

 

But anyway, half my family is Chinese from both sides of the Taiwan straits (I spent 7 years on the mainland, after the 6 in Taiwan) and find classical texts not very hard to read (sound like boasting, but I really like this stuff).

So now I study what some call Nei Gong (internal work) doing Zuo Wang (坐忘) and my old exercises for keeping fat belly's moving and have not yet seen anything great about neither of it. Maybe there won't be.

 

So why o why am I doing this? I definitely am not afraid of death (never was), and I don't want to spend 20 years with Alzheimers just to live until 100, and I never understood what is the big deal about "enlightenment" or Kundalini, although I had some experiences that could have been interpreted as such, but who knows whether it was real?

It's over now and not important, there was no lasting impact on my life as such. Maybe I am still waiting for something? If rolled up in one word, why (alas, above there are many more words, I know), I would say: curiosity.

But - the good thing is: I have no goal, thus I cannot be disappointed if I don't reach it. ;-) 

I hope that helps (probably not, sorry)

Edited October 29 by ragune

[Thrice Daily]

To ride the very crest of the moment, along with others who also choose to be so bold.

 

Sometimes… 

 

Othertimes to build good health and inner wealth… 

 

To supersede the mundane, with gusto.