Taomeow

On 1/22/2024 at 8:04 AM, Sahaja said:

The other day I was doing a seated  practice in the park and a gentleman in his 80s, originally from Hong Kong it turns out, randomly approached me and told me to insulate myself from the ground (bring a mat to sit on) or I will lose my yang qi. He seemed genuinely concerned for me. 

 

You cool your lower body too much if you SIT on uninsulated January ground.  It doesn't matter if you're doing a seated practice or not -- if you sit on a cold surface, it is considered unhealthy and leading to trouble, in many parts (including the parts of Asia familiar with cold) it is common knowledge.  Chinese and Eastern European moms will yell at their kids from an early age to not sit on cold ground, on any cold surface for that matter, and girls are particularly warned that they will have trouble with their reproductive and urinary systems down the road if they do.  Has nothing to do with touching or not touching the grass, only with cold surfaces not advisable to sit on for any purposes.  If one wants to make it fancy by calling warmth you do lose from the internal organs of your lower body "yang qi," fine, it's not entirely unrelated.  There's various ways to put it -- "accumulating too much Cold in the lower abdomen/back" is the common one.   

No, it's absolutely not true.  "Someone" who "mentioned it" either made it up or mixed things up.

 

There's a spot in the park nearby which has been used for many years by a bunch of taiji/qigong practitioners on an ongoing basis, year round, chiefly because it's a convenient even-ground spot in dappled shade.  The park is large enough but no other spot feels as invigorating.  One can feel a subtle influx of qi (if one can feel such things at all) in that spot.  The grass gets routinely stepped, stomped, jumped upon, and after some practices (e.g. with the long pole) the ground looks as though a herd of wild horses has been practicing there...  and yet the grass grows crazy green as soon as it gets a break, greener than the surrounding areas.  In feng shui, it's one of the indicators of a good place that "donates" qi, and (e.g.) people shopping for a house are advised to pay close attention.    

A red bullfinch globe

in a snow-covered tree branch.  

Thoughts of my homeland.  

 

-- by Masahiro Shibata, original written in Russian, translation mine

15 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

very good;) yes thats true. to their own new home, separate from the living

/Early Daoist Scriptures By Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Peter Nickerson/

 

 

I guess both are true -- indeed, in many cases the living preferred to avoid the dead, except for professionals, usually taoist or buddhist, who handled them as needed. 

 

15 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

 

 "When Zhuangzi's wife died, Huizi went to condole with him, and, finding him squatted on the ground, drumming on the basin, and singing"  

 I am sure you wondered why he was doing it squatted as opposed to sitting normally? Good question, most readers just skip over that part. Because 箕踞 jījù [sit on the floor with one's legs spread apart and stretched out] is a very specific posture according to the chinese body-language. It is both insulting to the observer and shameful for the sitter. Yet in wizardry it is used to ward off and to dominate evil ghosts as in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanwu_(god)

 

  

As someone who squats habitually and with ease (a lifelong habit), I doubt that "sit on the floor with one's legs spread apart and stretched out" equals "squatting."  Methinks it's two different poses.  Many Asians routinely perform various chores in the squatting position which is comfortable and stable if you're used to it, without meaning disrespect to anyone.  

 

 

and even

 

 

 

11 hours ago, Taoist Texts said:

drumming and singing parable

 

 a good example how Watts and his lot of western taoists totally misread the real ones. In this particular case the whole meaning of the parable is that Chuang's sings and drums for a very specific purpose, which has nothing to do with anything the westerners can even imagine.

Namely he does that to scare his wife's ghost away. It is a chinese custom the westerners have no clue about; so they have to make up some ridiculous new-agee explanations for his singing.

 

Didn't find your interpretation in the link posted either though, and was mighty surprised to read it.  Far as I know, the Chinese custom "the westerners have no clue about" is not to scare a loved one's ghost away but, on the contrary, to guide it home should the person die away from the native abode.  There was (and still exists in some parts, at least, to my knowledge, in Taiwan) a whole profession of ghost guides tasked with going to, e.g., battle grounds after the war, collecting all the ghosts of the fallen soldiers, lining them up and marching them home.  A couple of my Chinese friends witnessed such processions in their early years (and, being young, were somewhat freaked out, while older people actually paid the ghost guide to perform the task.) 

 

There was also a really superb 1999 Chinese movie, The Road Home (incidentally the first role of Zhang Ziyi of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) where, when the protagonist dies in his old age, his wife insists that the coffin be carried to their native remote village on foot all the way (long and difficult) in order for her beloved husband's ghost to remember the road home and get there safely.  

 

What you probably mean is that there is indeed a tradition of chasing unwanted ghosts (gui) away by various means, including making loud noises, but it's a different situation.  Far as I've been able to discern, Zhuangzi is indeed waxing philosophical in this episode rather than trying to shoo his wife's ghost away.   

2 hours ago, Antares said:

What were his plans? Don't forget to mention what plans global "elite" had against eastern regions and their plans got cancelled as the result of Stalin' counter measures

 

Not going there in this thread. 

11 hours ago, Gerard said:

It all started in a key date (1953 B.C) 

Astronomers Solve Ancient Mystery of the Chinese Calendar

 

 

Thanks for the link, interesting article.  The exact  date they pinpointed -- March 5, 1953 B.C. -- looked somehow familiar...  then I realized that March 5, 1953 A.D. was the day Joseph Stalin died. 

For those who know what his immediate plans were which got cancelled as the result, the repercussions were staggering.  This one death saved millions of lives.

 

 

3 hours ago, zoe said:

 is it at all beneficial for a person to be in the year of the animal they were born in?)

 

Depends on the animal.  In many cases two of the same kind don't get along when they meet, the Dragon being one such animal -- he (and this year's Dragon is a he -- yang) might compete and even fight with one's own Dragon of the year, month, day, and/or hour of birth.  But that's just one aspect, and it doesn't by itself mean any major adversities unless there's other adverse factors within the year that chime in.  However, some feng shui practitioners advise wearing a protective talisman -- in this case, a Rooster is supposed to work.  The image has to be 3D, a small pendant in the shape of a Rooster.  That's because Dragon and Rooster are friends and when he sees a Rooster, this might distract him from fighting with the other Dragon and soften his disposition.  

(In feng shui, Rooster is thought of as a bird closer to the Phoenix in its nature than to the domestic chicken, and the Dragon-Phoenix combo is a taoist alchemical classic.)  

 

 

22 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

How would I know if I have a lower dan tien or not?

 

(It strikes me that this question is a little like asking how much a certain item costs at a fancy restaurant: if ya have to ask, you can't afford it.)

 

Sometimes there's indirect indicators, none of them definitive, but sort of pointers.   E.g., 

a very intensely developed "gut feeling" (I call those feelings "warning and promises") that you routinely use to guide your decisions (and regret not listening to whenever you chose to ignore them or are forced to ignore them);

having carried a pregnancy to term;

a  history of dantien-developing practices and "internal" arts -- neigong, neidan, neijia;

somewhat frisky metabolism;

a tendency to bounce back from setbacks instead of going deeper into the mire when they do occur;

etc.

This is one of those things where imagination, visualization, "assuming" you have it are helpful toward actually developing it. (Not in the case of pregnancy of course.)  Unlike with your fancy restaurant example, where no amount of imagining more money in your wallet than it actually contains will materialize extra dollar bills, undertaking a good traditional dantien-developing practice and going about it "as if" you already have a dantien does help it form and function.  That's how children start learning -- by imitating a function they can't yet competently perform -- but this play activity does facilitate the emergence of the actual ability.  It's somewhat similar.        

 

4 hours ago, Antares said:

Will Trump win the elections?

I want to know it now

 

2024 -- Yang Wood in the Heavenly Stem, on top of Earth in the Earthly Branch.  This is a conquering/defeating relationship -- "Wood conquers Earth."  The two phases ("elements") are in the destructive cycle.  This means a year of more conflict and less harmony than one would wish for. 

 

Now the uncanny part is, both Trump and Biden have Earth in the Day-master pillar of their bazi charts, both in the stem and the branch!  So by the disposition of the heavenly-earthly qi, both are set up for defeat, though the kind of defeat it is may or may not entail winning or losing the presidency.  In this situation, a rather detailed analysis of the rest of the chart is needed in order to make a realistic prediction.  I would look into that if I saw the point...  But the completely identical Day-master pillars of the two candidates coupled with real-life observations tell me enough to not even bother.  Tell me once again that the Native American chief was right who said, "Right wing, left wing -- they are wings of the same bird."      

 

2 hours ago, dwai said:

Maybe, can you elaborate on  your theory of how language is acquired? 

 

 

I don't have "my" theory, it's a well-studied area of cognitive neuroscience that I was referring to as an analogy (not  "equivalency") to the development of the dantien.  For a brief intro, check out, e.g.,     

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8923642/

https://www.scilearn.com/the-reading-brain/#:~:text=The angular and supramarginal gyrus,we can then read aloud.

 

Briefly, the acquisition of language, which is contingent on exposure, practice, and timing, results in the creation of anatomical changes in the brain that tantamount to the creation of a new organ within it.  Specialized areas with specialized connections that together get to work like any other specialized organ of the body tasked with a particular function.  The difference being, you are not born with this organ, the co-creation between the innate potential and you and your environment and effort has to bring it into being.   

 

It can also be likened somewhat to how the orchestra conductor gets numerous various instruments to play together in a coherent interconnected and interdependent manner to create the sound of a symphony.  It's not that each instrument didn't exist before they were assembled into an orchestra-- but the orchestra didn't exist, it is a product of co-creation.  It is of course infinitely simpler than the orchestration of the brain for language inception and expert discernment and usage.  But as an analogy, either process can be a good illustration of how a dantien is created from the potential to create it.  Yes, qi abounds, with or without being organized, structured and directed/conducted in a particular coherent meaningful manner -- but it is this directed, conducted, structured, organized, meaningful usage of it that develops an anatomical foothold in the human body out of the potential present at birth.  And this is the function of the dantien.  You have to organize and harmonize the flow a certain specific way before it can assume certain functions for which you are born with a potential to create them but not the function itself nor the organ.    

 

2 hours ago, dwai said:

 

Life force is that which animates the living being. At its core it is awareness/consciousness. At different frequencies of vibration is it known differently as Jing, qi, shen in the context of a biological entity. 

 

 

I see.  The numerous ways in which I disagree, for some other time.

 

2 hours ago, dwai said:

 

BTW i think the lowest common denominator is the best place to start a discussion.  

 

 

Unless it entails throwing the baby out with bathwater.  "Lifeforce," "awareness/consciousness" used axiomatically as something "everybody knows" is an example of the kind of lowest-common-denominator reductionist approach that can hamper the emergence of comprehension -- forever.  (I believe that to a large extent the world is the way it is due to a multitude of such reductionist labels habitually used instead of...  but that, again, is for some other time, should it come.)        

 

2 hours ago, dwai said:

 

And how is a discussion of dantien complete without dicussing qi?

 

 

Within discussing dantiens qi is in its rightful place, but when my point is "dantien is co-creation between potential and actualization/exposure/practice" and you substitute the word "qi" for the word "dantien" and argue that "it just IS" the conversation is rendered meaningless, alas. 

In case my take asks for further clarification: yes, qi "just is" (though it isn't limited to "lifeforce" by any stretch of taoist imagination) but a dantien is something you may or may not develop to the extent it becomes a "quasi-organ," a locus-system-function engaged in meaningful orchestration of qi toward a particular modus operandi.  

2 hours ago, dwai said:

That seems like a false equivalence to me

Language is an acquired skill. Lifeforce is not. We either have it, or we are dead  

 

I don't think you're getting my drift.  If you were to look into how language is acquired (as I did, cognitive neuroscience used to be a huge hobby) you would hold off with that "false" label.  And it's not an equivalence, it's an analogy.

  

Also, I was talking about dantiens, not "lifeforce," whatever that means to you.  What does "lifeforce" mean to you?  To me it means to bring a taoist conversation to the lowest common denominator.  

 

2 hours ago, dwai said:

 

I disagree. It doesn't exist merely as a potential - it exists simply by being alive (qi, if I may call it that). What might happen, IMHO, is that one's exposure and practices refine it/enhance it. 

 

Again, we are talking about the dantiens, a particular and specific way the system can process qi if it is fully operational.  Not about qi.  And certainly not about "lifeforce."  Just dantiens.   

2 hours ago, dwai said:

I was thinking more along the lines of “what is the heart for” or “liver for” and so on. Dantiens are NOT created, they already exist. 

 

What about your native tongue?  When you are born, does it already exist in you or is it created in you?  

 

A dantien, as a very knowledgeable practitioner explained to me (then a beginner) a long time ago, is a product of co-creation between your innate potential and your exposures and practices.  In that sense it is no different from being able to acquire a native tongue -- I don't speak yours and you don't speak mine, but we were each both born with the ability to develop either one of them, it's exposures and practices that made it happen -- and being different, they resulted in different languages.  "They already exist" -- well, as a potential.  But exposures and practices is what turns them on.  Or not.  Does everybody (barring any kind of damage that might interfere) have machinery to acquire language?  Yes.  Is everybody born speaking it?  Nope.  And if you're raised by animals from an early enough age and miss the window of opportunity that is open only up to a certain age, you will never speak -- real-life stories of this nature are well known.  Real-life stories of inactive dantiens are not as obvious, but then, neither are stories of active ones.  It's subtle phenomena, but they are phenomena of co-creation, like many other things about us humans.

46 minutes ago, Apech said:

By the way regular cleaning of the saw's teeth is essential-

 

Regular cleaning of everybody's teeth is essential.  

 

As for qi-infused instruments, those do exist but are usually in the possession of masters who engage said tools in their cultivation.  There's many legends about swords, calligraphy brushes, acupuncture needles and of course talismans charged with qi by highly skillled practitioners.  An ordinary practitioner won't accomplish any such feats.  

 

What is available to a regular practitioner though is his or her own qi to the extent it has been cultivated.  Or 

 

22 hours ago, thelerner said:

Maybe not qi, but flow, a close relative, might make a difference.  Starting the cutting motion from your center, transmitting the force through your arm, whole body flowing back and forth as you cut.  

  

The principles, habits and skills learned in (e.g.) a good taiji practice can often be successfully applied to any other.  I found that they  efficiently improve swimming, tennis, household chores, food preparation and what not.  (I neither own nor need a garlic press, e.g., because I fajin a clove with the flat side of a cleaver in such a way that it simultaneously peels and pulverizes itself.  A whole bulb is turned into mashed garlic within seconds this way.)  

4 hours ago, Nungali said:

 

 

He went to Egypt , but things didnt turn out as expected ;

 

 

   

 

 

That Greek cat would have fared a lot better if he did indeed go to Egypt.  Even though, judging by these illustrations, some of the cat-worshipping Egyptians were getting tired of waiting on them hand and foot and were fantasizing about cats being put to work instead.   

55 minutes ago, thelerner said:

 

My wife reads alot of the classics.  Deep classics, like Euclid, Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Kant..

 

Me, not so much, in many ways she married a Neanderthal or on good days a Bonobo. Years ago I took a speed reading course.  I was able to read WaP in about 35 minutes.  As I recall there was a war in it, than it ended.  That about sums it up.  

 

That's how I read a lot of classics -- but that was cramming for tests/exams.  At the university we had a Foreign Literature course that was so unrealistically massive (pretty much all of the classics from all of the periods from all of the countries) that, per someone's calculations, in order to finish it all in the allocated 5 years, we would have to read for about 32 hours every day.  Since there's only 24 hours in a day, one had to pick and choose what to actually read and when to resort to the 35 minutes per 1000 pages method.  

 

One of my teachers was aware of it and opposed to it.  She wasn't satisfied with the student narrating the plot and naming the main protagonists -- she wanted proof that they did actually read whatever books were assigned.  So at the oral exams she would hit you with most cruel questions.  What was the name of Madame Bovary's cat?  What happened to the cat from The Batrachomyomachia?  And yet at a critical moment I managed to turn her attention away from the book I never read to the movie neither of us had ever seen and get the highest grade.  That's because the books I did read taught me how to cast a spell.   

35 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

And to anyone else who might get any ideas - forget it - there is only one.

 

 

Happy New Year bums.  May it live up to everyone's best expectations.

 

I remember making great plans for 2020.

That taught me about the truth of the adage, "Do you want to make god laugh?  Make a plan."

 

I'm nobody's comedian.  Whoever wants to laugh at my expense won't be helped along by my New Year's resolutions. 

 

2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

Would any Bums like to join me for a slow read -- one short chapter a day for the entire year -- of War and Peace?

    

I read it in high school -- it was included in our literature program, so I skipped chapters, like schoolchildren are wont to do when dealing with something this monumental.  The chapters I skipped were about war.  Nowadays those are the ones I would re-read (edit: "read") if I saw the point.  Maybe next year.   A lot more fun was to be had recently from a novel titled "T," by Viktor Pelevin -- it's about a fictitious version of Count Tolstoy the martial artist.  I was about to suggest it but apparently it still hasn't been translated...  

This was posted elsewhere by TDB's MythMaker, I'm just a messenger.  

 

13 hours ago, ChimpSage said:

It is the field in which the elixir is created.

 

”Elixir Field.”

 

Or, by another name, the "yellow sprouts court." 

 

What's the dantien for?  It's like any other potential that you can develop and use for whatever you're aiming to accomplish.  In this sense it's no different from the ability to acquire language, to read and write, to ride a bicycle, to juggle a dozen tennis balls, to form an emotional relationship with a human or animal or even a device. (Song in the background: "I'm In Love With My Car.")  You are born with the potential; you may learn to use this potential spontaneously upon exposure to whatever tools help it actualize, or (more often) via a particular set of practices that develop it.  

 

What do we develop the dantien for?  It's like asking what our writing ability is for.  Once you got it, how you refine and use it is your choice.  Become Shakespeare or get into arguments with strangers online.  Or both.