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Hello everyone,

 

I am a student of the Tin Yat Taoism lineage, and I started an account so that people would have access to a real, confirmed member of our group if you would like to ask questions or have anything clarified. Please, feel free to ask questions, and if I don't know the answer, I'll get one for you.

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Tin Yat Taoist,

 

again let me thank you for your understanding and your patience. i have confirmed that you are indeed a student of Mak Jo Si.

i look forward to an informative thread here. i will start things off,

when did Tin Yat sect begin and what does Tin Yat mean?

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Thanks for the opportunity! IF any of my answers arent clear enough or sufficient, just let me know.

 

The Tin Yat lineage was co-founded in 2009 by Mak Jo Si and Lau Jo Si.

Several longer-term members here may remember the former lineage, Ng Yin Do Pai, that had been formed in 2008. They had started it with the best of intentions, but determined that it was best to end that lineage and reform as Tin Yat. That situation is a bit more complicated, and if people really want I will do my best to explain it, but the short version is that negative influences early on had poisoned the process for them, and the best course of action was to cut it free and start over.

'Tin Yat' is Cantonese, spelled 天一 in Hanzi, and also pronounced 'Tian Yi' in Mandarin. It roughly translates as 'first in heaven'.

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That's because it's his picture, and he's the one in the videos. And as you don't appear to be a moderator, let's keep the questions related to the lineage, and not my identity :)

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It's always nice to see new threads in the "Taoist Discussion" sub-forum.

 

It is my opinion that, as long as any lineage or variant has its basic roots in the TTC it is Taoism. This is why I can accept Zen as being a Taoist lineage.

 

As long as the TTC is not misrepresented everything should be fine. Who you realy are isn't important to me - what you say is very important to me.

 

I don't normally get involved in spats between lineages but try very hard to keep up with what is being said and try very hard to make sure that Taoist Philosophy (the TTC) is not misrepresented.

 

Anyhow, if you could tell us a little about your root premises perhaps we could get some good questions for discussion and your input.

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I only have three questions.

 

According to the Bad Paths scripture (located on Chi in Nature website) authored by the Tin Yat ™ co-founder aka "cheerful and friendly 100% truly pure Taoism Master who hates evils" (and who is offering "100% effective with no side effects" services, that quite caught my interest), Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Bon Po and Hinduism (and tens of others) are all completely evil.

 

Is Tin Yat ™ the only path that could possibly save me, or are there some paths that passed the scrutiny so far and that Tin Yat lineage accepts as non-evil if not equal?

 

For those that can't afford long travel to Ontario at this time, can you as a Tin Yat ™ student offer some tips on how do they recognize real "100% truly pure Taoism Master" from all those available where they live?

 

Is Mak Jo Si just a master or actually a celestial master (given his email address is celestialmastermak)?

Edited by Leif

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Sorry I'm slow to respond today, life away from the net has been demanding.

 

Marblehead - Wow, that's pretty open. give me a few minutes to formulate a response :)

 

Leif - I perceive that first one as a difficulty of translation. What it boils down to for a member of the lineage such as myself, is that it is counterproductive to try and follow more than one path at a time. put equal parts gasoline, motor oil, and water into your gas tank, and the car isnt going anywhere. On a personal, not-a-spokesman level, my opinion is that you should try things out that seem right and see if they work for you. Tin Yat has worked well for me, and that's why I'm affiliated. In the official capacity, we aren't really going out of our way to research every path of every religion out there to verify them, since we have our path and it works fine for us. The recent kerfuffles regarding Luk Yam are from Mak Jo Si's personal experience and knowledge of their system.

 

Second - You have to judge for yourself and see what seems right to you. I was pretty cautious when I first encountered Mak Jo Si myself, but he was patient and more than happy to answer questions for me. With Tin Yat, you can also start out at the 'registered believer' stage and see how it works out for you, no commitment, no strings attached. And at any stage in training and cultivation, you're free to leave if you feel that it's what you need to do.

 

Third - you'd have to clarify what those two terms mean to you, for me to be able to answer that one clearly. That's his title in our lineage.

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Marblehead - Okay, root premises. Please let me know if this helps, or if you would like elaboration or clarification at any point.

 

Tin Yat is a conceptually modern Taoist lineage. While we respect historical Taoism, one of the problems we perceive is that it has been too often blended or taken entirely off course by Buddhist, Christian, Bon Po, and other influences. As I mentioned above, we believe that the path requires purity of intention to be effective and that's why we don't support the other religions. We don't have any particular problem with them, but we don't generally think they're on the right track.

 

Our magical system reflects this idea. We are purifiers - we exorcise, we destroy spirits and negative energy, and we protect ourselves from those and from negative magic. We don't have offensive magics to use against people, but we can and do reflect ill-intended attacks back to their sources.

 

Part of the modern concept of Tin Yat Taoism is that we do not restrict our cultivation and use of magical tools to the traditional swords, fu, etc. Airguns and flashlights are among the more common modern tools we use, and I respectfully submit that, if there had been access to our technology 2000+ years ago, the original Taoists would have happily included such things in their arsenal.

 

In our lineage, the altar is perceived as a workspace, more like a mainframe terminal than a place of worship. Deities are perceived as influential beings that exist in another space or dimension, who are willing to assist us when asked politely. Sacrifices and worship are not required, just positive intention and respect. Like any other lineage, a person has to be a registered believer or member to have access to such things.

 

Mak Jo Si and Lau Jo Si have also taken an approach that is a reverse of the common model of a Taoist temple: If you have a desire to learn and train in our magical system, a ton of information is free and available through the website, and they are happy to answer sincere, respectful questions and help the learning process. If you want them to provide you with their magical services, they charge for the fu. It seems reasonable to me, but I know there are people that disagree.

 

I hope this was the sort of information you were looking for, feel free to ask if there's anything you'd like me to add or clarify!

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I hope this was the sort of information you were looking for, feel free to ask if there's anything you'd like me to add or clarify!

I think you did a great job. Now those who read this thread will understand what Y'all are about and if it interests them they can easily ask the questions that are important to them.

 

Me? No thanks. I already have too many labels.

 

So basically Y'all are Alchemic Taoists. See? I like to label. Hehehe.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write that up. I hope it is helpful for other members.

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Hello Tin Yat Taoist,

 

Sounds like fun. Would make a great anime series.

 

But I'm curious, how does your lineage distinguish reality from illusion (分真假)? And how do you verify your theory with reality (证明)?

 

These are problems in any cultivation practice and one of the reasons so many daoists are drawn to martial and healing arts. Both fields provide plenty of humbling experiences that push a person to further refine their understanding. Failure makes a fertile substrate for progress. But in the case of exorcism, dieties, writing fu and other magical how do you know when you get it right and when you don't?

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That is a really tough question to answer satisfactorily, but I'll do my best!

 

When it comes to things like martial and healing arts, you are indeed correct - most of your results are immediately visible. That isn't always the case, though - anyone who's ever had to drink a particularly vile TCM tea for any length of time will know that you have to sometimes show patience and watch for results.

 

With our magical cultivation, it has a lot to do with being tuned to your own perception, and evaluating your results immediately and over time. The immediate - particularly sensitive people, and people that have cultivated for a good length of time, will often feel sensations of heat - flashes of warmth, or even breaking into a sweat when working with magic. some feel tingles, some see flashes of light behind their eyes. Generally, if its the sort of thing you'd categorize as a 'yang' manifestation - heat, light, white, etc - it's a good thing. Cold, dark, sinking, yin - indicates a negative presence or influence, and is to be avoided.

 

In the long term, you have to look at the progress of your life and well-being. As mentioned before, our magic is intended for spiritual cleaning, improving the souls and spirits, and as a consequence this sort of thing tends to make one's life flow smoother, makes decisions more clear, makes the right job easier to find, that sort of thing. If you look at the testimonials that have been put forth by some of the TIn Yat students, you can see this recurring theme - escaped a shitty job and got a much better one, found my way out of a bad relationship, things of that nature.

 

I know that these are somewhat ephemeral descriptions, but part of the difficulty is in trying to explain something to someone who hasnt experienced it. How do you describe 'blue' to a blind man? I hope this helps, and feel free to ask for elaboration if there's a point I can help with.

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I couldn't agree more with your fourth paragraph. A better life, better relationships, and solving the problems in front of you, however mundane, is real cultivation.

 

Indeed I haven't tasted any ghostly experiences - so I'm unfit to judge them either way. I'll entertain the possibility, but unless I taste it I must remain agnostic.

 

In the case of Chinese medicine, the pulse, the tongue, the color of the face - sometimes they change even before the patient feels any different. It really depends on their sensitivity. But even with physical diagnostic criteria, wishful thinking might make the pulse feel like it's improved when it really hasn't. So the doctor's main job is not to trick him or herself.

 

It sounds like you have your own criteria though.

 

One more question, are all exorcisms a matter of yang overcoming yin?

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I am happy you are here to answer questions. We've had a few threads on breathing. There's a wide diversity of breathing techniques in Taoism. What breathing style or exercises do new students practice and how does it evolve over the years?

Thanks

Michael

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I couldn't agree more with your fourth paragraph. A better life, better relationships, and solving the problems in front of you, however mundane, is real cultivation.

 

Indeed I haven't tasted any ghostly experiences - so I'm unfit to judge them either way. I'll entertain the possibility, but unless I taste it I must remain agnostic.

 

In the case of Chinese medicine, the pulse, the tongue, the color of the face - sometimes they change even before the patient feels any different. It really depends on their sensitivity. But even with physical diagnostic criteria, wishful thinking might make the pulse feel like it's improved when it really hasn't. So the doctor's main job is not to trick him or herself.

 

It sounds like you have your own criteria though.

 

One more question, are all exorcisms a matter of yang overcoming yin?

 

As I understand it, yes. Important to note that it's not quite the same as yang or yin from a medical perspective. The way we define our terminology, we humans and everything we interact with exist in the 'yang' realm, for which there is a 'yin' opposite. This is the source of most of the negative spiritual things we describe. They are an improper yin intrusion into the yang realm, and by their presence they directly and indirectly cause all sorts of problems. So, yeah - it's yang expelling yin, to return to proper balance.

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I am happy you are here to answer questions. We've had a few threads on breathing. There's a wide diversity of breathing techniques in Taoism. What breathing style or exercises do new students practice and how does it evolve over the years?

Thanks

Michael

Breathing practices...depends on what you're practicing :)

 

I should clear up a few definitions before I proceed. As I understand it, many schools perceive 'pre-heaven chi' as hormones, or genetic predispoition, that sort of thing. Pre-heaven chi, in our view, is a bit more complicated - it's the stuff that comes from outside the physical world as we see it. 'Post-heaven chi' is, of course, food and air, the stuff you take in physically after birth. We're on the same page there.

 

For the cultivation of Taoist magic, we devlop our ability to tap into 'faat', which is a form of pre-heaven energy. Simply put, it's a pure energy source accessed from the Celestial Realm, made available to official members of the lineage. We access this through the use of spells - handsigns, fu, activated weapons, and the like. Our level of access is determined by a lot of factors - regular use of the magics, cultivation, adherence to our protocols - but this is not cultivated through breathing practices, because it comes from an extra-physical source. It's something we devlop through intention and use.

Pre-heaven energies can also be drawn from outside of the earth - planetary energies, that sort of thing. But, our bodies aren't really designed to handle that without a proper filter in place, so it's not a good thing to do. It's like trying to breathe water - fine for fish, not so good for us.

 

For post-heaven chi - most of us practice chi kung, but it isn't a requirement. Anyone of any religion can practice chi kung, so we don't think of it as a 'Taoist' practice in the religious sense. Meaning, it's good and it's encouraged, but you don't have to practice chi kung to be a Tin Yat Taoist. We aren't blazing new ground there, it's a lot of 'try it and see what works', you know how that goes. One breathing pattern that we do use a lot, we call it 'real chi breathing', is to inhale for four seconds, hold for one second, exhale for six seconds. We use this to blend and circulate chi.

 

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As I understand it, yes. Important to note that it's not quite the same as yang or yin from a medical perspective. The way we define our terminology, we humans and everything we interact with exist in the 'yang' realm, for which there is a 'yin' opposite. This is the source of most of the negative spiritual things we describe. They are an improper yin intrusion into the yang realm, and by their presence they directly and indirectly cause all sorts of problems. So, yeah - it's yang expelling yin, to return to proper balance.

Are there any situations where you would need to work the other way? To rectify a yang intrusion into the yin realm - to use your terminology.

 

Objectively our world is much more yang than in the past - combustion engines, electric everything, much more noise, light excitement and yang than any other point in human history. And it's only building.

 

What does a modern Daoist exorcist make of that?

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Are there any situations where you would need to work the other way? To rectify a yang intrusion into the yin realm - to use your terminology.

 

Objectively our world is much more yang than in the past - combustion engines, electric everything, much more noise, light excitement and yang than any other point in human history. And it's only building.

 

What does a modern Daoist exorcist make of that?

Nope, not in our purview. It's no better than the other way around, but that's for yin realm people to deal with. Not much we can do about it.

 

And on the other question - it's not relevant to the concept of exorcism, because the faat energy isn't from earth, so our atmosphere doesn't change it.

 

Here's a couple of other vids Mak Jo Si did on the relevant topics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBmNXDAi3bg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3CBwyFsbwQ

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I remember "Mak Tin Si" (Mak Jo Si) from when he used to post here a few years back, so after seeing this thread I was curious what he is up to now and did some searching on Tin Yat and Mak Jo Si and found this exchange going on in another forum. Read through the following thread on that forum. Mak Jo Si's and some of his sect member's comments are quite eye opening to say the least. I thought I was reading a copy of a script from Goodfellas or The Godfather there for a while. Mama mia! The thread starts off sounding fairly reasonable, but if you read right through the entire thread it really is an eye opener.

 

Mak Jo Si or Tin Yat Lineage Taoism Q and A

http://taouncut.forum.com.bz/t31-mak-jo-si-or-tin-yat-lineage-taoism-q-and-a

Edited by Iskote

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