cohomology

Junior Bum
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    Dao Bum

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  1. I am interested in BaGuaZhang

    Hello again, bums. Long have I been interested in the Wudang art known as Bagua Zhang (Eight trigrams palm). Sadly, I don't have a master and I don't know if I could ever find one in my country, being it a relatively obscure art, and of course finding a true master is already hard for better known arts. Does anyone here practice? I am looking at several resources, and they all seem very nice, but if any of you could point me to some authoritative resource, I'd be very grateful. I fear that some of the ones I can find on a web search (and readily consume) may be misguiding. That is all for now, if you practice and have something interesting to say about the art, please do so. Thanks in advance. and have a nice day.
  2. Simplicity

    Hello. I have been putting off making this thread since it's hard to put this stuff into words. As I said in my intro post, I have strong influence from schools of Chan, and an inclination towards Dao, even though my background on these is rather on the lacking side. I mentioned that I don't like to subscribe to a "religion" because of their coercive nature, but I do like to inmerse myself when something interests me. I don't know much about Dao besides having read the Daodejing a few times (actually, I usually stop where it stops making sense for me, near the middle of the book), even less about the religious aspect of this. I don't know much about buddhism either, so I try to stay in the point where both systems (Dao and Chan) overlap. I think at the core of my aspiration lies one single idea: Simplicity. Which is probably why I have a stronger inclination towards Dao. That is one reason that I don't go into the more exotic aspects of either school. As with any discipline, mastery of the fundamentals is where the substance lies, where the plethora of different techniques and variations are like the flowers that stem from the roots of a handful of "strokes", as I like to call these fundamentals. Back to the point: Simplicity. Once I saw a video of a chinese old man making a porcelain vase, and it caught me. The man was putting his whole mind into it, and after decades of doing that, he had developed a sort of perfection (or as close as it gets) in his practice. That's why works like the Ox Herding Pictures are so appealing: as they simply and succintly express the path (any path, really) with 10 pictures. Where the void picture is not the last, but "Return to the world" is the culmination of it. I don't know if I am making sense here, but for me, this last step for return to the world represtens the maximum point in simplicity: You're no longer a master of X, but one more among men. Dao represents what would be the pinnacle of simplicity, and it's immutable nature, present in every situation and in every living being, a manifestation of such simplicity. I like to think life is essentially simple, and that we overcomplicate ourselves. Contrary to the Western mindset, I think we ought to rediscover our animal nature. Well, that's kind of what I strive for, and I am way too far from that yet. I am an overcomplicated person with possible ADD who is very confused about his path in life (and a huge ego that keeps talking about itself ). I can't even put my thoughts succintly into words. What do you guys think of this? I mean about the whole "simplicity at the core of it all". I know this is a Daoist forum so perhaps everyone will agree, yet some feedback will be nice. What do you think about the multiple practices of "daoism" in relation to this? Thanks for taking the time to read.
  3. Hello everybody

    Thank you! I will look around and see what I can learn
  4. Hello everybody

    Hello everybody. As you have probably guessed, I am new around. Let me talk a bit about myself, me me me. I am deeply interested in daoism. Though perhaps not as a "religion" per se. I don't quite subscribe to the idea of "religion" because it is coercive. I mostly follow my own path, taking wisdom from everywhere. However, it seems like the principles of daoism are well aligned with this approach. I am also interested in the Chan schools of buddhism, from which I've taken a lot of ideas for myself. I am aware that making such distinctions between Chan, Dao, etc, remains a discriminative mindset, I am a very short-sighted person as of yet. There are other things that interest me, I've been practicing shaolin kung fu for a while, but I am very interested in wudang arts, particularly Taiji Quan and Ba Gua Zhang. With this I have a bit of a problem, I used to have a teacher who taught me Kung Fu, and while he was also very fluent in Taijiquan, I am no longer with him, and so I don't have a teacher. I've been trying youtube and found some other lessons, but I am unsure if my progress will be enough (particularly, that I won't miss some detail and develop bad from from the beginning) by self-learning. Finding a bagua teacher may be next to impossible in my country. So that's me. Other interests involve computer programming, which is kind of at odds with the naturalist character of daoism. Anyway, thanks for having me here. I'll try to behave