Daolander1

In daoist taijiquan and neidan focus is on developing the middle dantian as a source for your taijiquan efficiacy, but for both it starts in the lower dantian, although women also have to do additional alchemical work to not damage their blood cycle. When they practice well theyr cycle returns to premenstrual default

Strolling is fine Anand.

Hi Anand, are you now trolling me? lol. You know the story of the hare and the turtIe? The turtle and the hare see along the way they are running an apple in the gras. Close by there is also an elephant ripping branches from an apple tree. The hare says, the apple and the elephant are the same because it is the same sun that makes them visible. On wich the turtle sighs and sais: I have no anwer for those who think the apple and the elephant are the same.

Hi Anand, no disrespect but however you see them it is the language that you use. If you use english, that is hardly the language of the sun if something like that exists. Meanings of one language and another are commonly more often than not dissimilar. On the level of a newspaper you would not notice, but when you talk esoteric issues or philosophical issues there are usually huge differences. Takje energy and qi, there is little of similarity between the two concepts. energy is a modern scientismic interpretation of god's divine life force, while qi is an esthetic moral result of action. For the one you need a divine being to exist and for the other you more or less need to be humane. Ofcourse in our fantasies we are always right, but the truth is, and that is a daoist wisdom, it is always better to assume we are wrong. What I go for is that if I talk from my own perspective 99% change I am wrong, since i am not a genious, or not even smart. But If I try to understand what the ancient classics said within the context of their own science and culture as dissimilar to mine and separated by history as well as cultural distance, I might have a chance to understand it. And to come back to the sun metaphor, i feel like that too sometimes, but it doesn't make me right. So again, no disrespect for your thoughts and feelings, but simply for the nature and form of other cultures. Likewise i wouldn't dare to say anything significant of say, Hindu or Anansi culture, even though i studied about them. I didn't live them.

Hi Anand, but if you lens all cultures only through your own culture's language, don't you make the other cultures then not subservient to your own?

Hi Anand, you wish to make all cultures one so that everyone talks the same? it sounds a bit brave new world to me. Isn't the world already one global village allready? earth is small, precious to us, but heaven doesn't care and treats it like a straw puppet. If all cultures become one it impoverishes our ability to see new worldviews and perspectives. so no, one global worldviews with many cultures seems more wise to me becasue i like to be wrong sometimes, and when all cultures are the same ev eryone seems right all the time. Good remark though, thank you.

cultures used to be locality specific. You can now be part of that culture, but you need to play by its rules to understand what it can teach you and what not. scientism is a culture, and so is universalism, but pretty much a limited strand of a larger culture. daoism is sort of a heart of Chinese culture, and neidan is a strand of that. The thing is, I think, that people from one culture tend to have difficulties understanding other cultures and their ideas. It is why some reject strangers and others sometimes think strangers are an aquired taste. Neidan similarly, it takes some study of chinese root ideas to get it, and you cannot read shortcut language and than think you got it. Neidan is already a slow learning process, but then if you are with 70 on your deathbed exhausted from life and disappointed with lack of result... that gives neidan a bad rap. on the other hand, if you really tried to understand this other culture and you celebrate your 150th birthday, you can claim you probably understand it. I cannot make this claim. But my claim is simply more rational than to think you can replace words with other ones and then still mean the same. It is colonial thinking. Being raised in a formerly colonial power in europe, some awareness of this fault people make (chinese people do it with our culture too!) is a form of respect for the otherness of what you do and of other cultures you work with.

it is ok to think like that and get no further. in daoism alchemy is the result of action now being performed and storage is in the form of ability to perform as a result of learning how to act as a completion process not a piling process or a transformation process. the transformation only takes place if all three preconditions are completed at the same time. In the west we tend to think about these things as if we are cars. but we are more like a central heating system with three pumps. Only if all three work at the same time the water flow and heating works well. one pump does not cause the next to work. No pumps do some of the work, one pump a bit better, two pumps even better and three pumps bridge the gap between being an ok system to perfection.

Before I start commenting, please accept already my apologies in case i offend your ideas. I do not sign in often, but if I do i focus mostly on one thread to see errors and use them in my classes as examples. Don't worry, I do not use your names. But here is a compensation for my use of your thoughts: In daoism dantian are not just focal points but they are part of the engine of being a person in the world, and of your relationship with the supernatural. The middle dantian corresponds in the body with the zhengqi, and thus with how you relate to other beings through your posture. It is also the source of taiji thinking of the upper body, in your moral social life and as a moral esthetics in martial art. it is not a chemical or pseyuso chemical event. All alchemical events in daoism use chemical language but are about personhood. The development of the middle dantian depends on the development of the lower dantian and the embodyment of the person. You lose connection with both when focus is on energy or spirit (breath), because it is to abstract and causes mixing of substances that should not be mixed to keep the alchemical proces going. The middle dantian is associated with the heart because both are home to the shen-awareness. Shen awareness is flourishing as a result of the flourishing of jing-coherence and qi-perfection. When all three flourish the last alchemical stage can be entered. One does not transform in the other. The three treasures should be kept as one, meaning unified as one, not transformed from one to the other, that is part of christian and islamic alchemy. Mixing the dantian up with chakra's is a bit of a confusing point. Colours and functions between chakras in sofar as used in daoism differ from those in Indian beliefs from the 19th century onwards, but also with those from before this time (and they also differ from each other). Chakra theory is a highly apologetic ideology, and it looks like dantian theory also turns into one by equalizing meanings in an unsubstantial universalism. It is as if culture doesn't matter. But culture is what determines the outcome becasue culture describes a worldview and a sense of reality within that worldview.

My name is Rene Goris, My daoist name is You Li-Ou （游理欧) I started study daoism when I was a bout 12 or 13, from 1999 I lived and in China's Wudang mountains, I studied at beijing Baiyunguan informally, and did teach chineseand daoist medicine for a department of the beijing Chaoyang Chinese medicine university. I currently live as a practicing Daoist in the Netherlands. I run a school for Daoist Medicine, the IOC Daoland. For this school I also manage a patreon account at www.patreon.com/daoland_healthcare. I am trying to involve people in studies, but a lso I try to set up a dutch daoist association. I study to promote an integrated approach of daoist medicine taijigongfu, neidanshu and neoconfucianism, in the way Zhang Sanfeng promoted it as a historian of said disciplines.