Krenx

What would you say are the key conditions and goals that are essential for a yang taiji form to be authentic in flavour? Beyond just moving slowly and smoothly .

Generally it is rooted in craving and aversion. - craving for sense pleasure - Aversion to neutral feelings, restlessness. - Aversion to pain. Self inflicted pain could temporarily redirect the mind away from the mental suffering, to the physical affliction. - Confusion, do not see a way out of suffering. So they end their lives, assuming death would end suffering. But it does not.

And what would be the conclusion from this observation?

Qi gong, Taichi, develops a unique kind of power and human potential. This power itself does not discriminate. It can be used to heal, or can be used to harm. The more power one has, the more potential harm they can bring onto others and themselves. Buddhsim helps develop clarity and insight, wisdom on what is skillful and unskillful. Understand the consequences of decisions. Discern what is virtue and what is non virtue. So such power can be developed to bring benefits the practitioner and not harm. Casualties of spiritual practices are no joke. The caution and safety mechanisms, virtues within the daoist arts are unclear, different from school to school, teacher to teacher, abstract, inconsistent. Unless it is supported by a more refined spiritual foundation like buddhism, you are an infant playing with fire.

Ignorance is the root of wrong views. But the Buddha sometimes uses them both synonymously. To not know the 4 noble truths, not realize of exist is ignorance, and people just do as they please, and fall into all the traps and harm in the world. So it is in that context. They are not aware.

The Buddha calls that ignorance. And as they continue to be unaware of their actions, a trail of victims grow in their path.

In this world, actions, intentions have consequences. And there are wholesome and unwholesome actions that lead to beneficial or harmful results. Anytime we suffer, it is a mix of our own unwholesome and ignorant deeds in our past, and the contribution of other people's unwholesome deeds affecting us. You do not really need a god to prove this to you. It is apparent in all our lives if we observe and investigate suffering deep enough. There is often the argument we hear that the animal kingdom kills, and does all kinds of insane things to survive and thrive in nature. And why don't humans adopt that mode of living. What makes what they do so wrong while having the right to exist on the same planet. Well, if you want to suffer as much as an animal, have lives as short as most in the animal kingdom, then acting like them would result in that quality of life, mind and suffering. Humanity has tried to wrestle with virtues, and find loopholes in it since it was discovered. There are no loopholes. Either you adhere to the standard of virtues most religions agree on, or pay the price for foolish unwholesome actions in your life. And the most harmful and result of unwholesome actions and views is, even if you get away for it, and nobody in the world knows what you did, YOU know, and your mind WILL be tormented by it. By the qualities of greed, hatred, delusions. The damage to your mind that does not know the way out of its suffering is a real tragedy.

Not sure what you mean by "middle center".

Yup. That is why I would disagree with Damo. The context is if you do ZZ ONLY in the beginning expecting to get results, you will not get results. But if you do it along side other important developments, it serves a good reference point to gauge improvement, until ZZ transforms to take off on its own as a stand alone cultivation.

These physical parts of the body, and gestures are used to train the "flavour" of Jin/power, force transformations. But in application, you use the flavours of these jins in a reasonable position. You do not try to insist the body part. In application, your goal is to express the jins cleanly. And that has little to do with the body position. The body parts might be used to recall the feeling of the Jin, but you do not really use the body part in an obvious way in application. Again to emphasize, body positioning, classical forms is important to "develop" the various jins and their relationships in the body, and relationship to one another. But when you apply it, you only apply the flavour of the Jin, not often the body positions. An actual fight does not allow you to do that. It is not wrong to use the body positions in application, but to assume the kung fu of the jins can only come out in particular body positions is a big mistake in understanding how jins work. Wang Yong quan's son once got a student to hold his finger, and he expressed all the jins individually with just that one finger onto the student, peng lu ji an cai lie zhou kao etc. To help the student understand what Jin really is, that it can all be expressed perfectly in just one finger, not bound by any particular form or position. To teach the distinction between training. And application of kung fu.

Beginners should not do Zhan Zhuang also a sole practice in the beginning. It should be done along side a bunch of things like loosening exercises, opening body methods, alignment practices. I think that is what he is trying to get at. Because to do Zhan Zhuang correctly, you do need all of peripheral training to support the standing conditions. Those conditions cannot easily be developed within the standing method itself "initially". But you can do it for short periods in the beginning to see if there are improvements every day.