erdweir

During the Quanzhen revival of taosim in the middle ages of china, the northern branch of quanzhen or "complete reality" taoism absorbed allot of influences and people from Ch'an, which was then in decline. Actually, The complete reality reformation of Taoism was an explicitly non sectarian movement, which incorporated the teachings of buddha and confucius. So yeah, there is allot of common ground, especially between the northern quanzhen sect and the old taoist school.

with the southern school there is less overlap, because the southern quanzhen sect retains allot of "physiological" practices and emphasizes energetics in the beginning, not stillness meditation like the northern school. but it not even that simple. the founder of the southern sect warned against deviant practices in his work "understanding reality", and this work is studied by the northern school as well. some parts of understanding reality seem quite compatible with zen.

But picture a Mantak Chia or somesuch personage sharing much with Zen? Zen and most of the northern school, as well much of the southern school would not be in agreement. This kind of physiological alchemy is often placed on a lower level of practices in the classic hierarchies written by the founders of the quanzhen sect, whereas the highest levels of practice described by seem very much like zen.

[quote name=soaring crane' date='29 January 2010 - 11:43 AM'

='1264794209' post='174614]

There is no tradition of reincarnation in pre-Buddhist China, to the best of my knowledge.

There is this book called "Ancestors and Anxiety, Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China", which i have not read, but i noticed that it was about the introduction on reincarnation beliefs into china by Buddhists in the 3rd to 6th centuries.

here is the link to Amazon's page:

http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Anxiety-Daoism-Rebirth-Lilienthal/dp/0520259882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264835257&sr=8-1

Anybody read it?

http://www.alchemylab.com/golden_flower.htm

https://www.atlantic-university.org/free_intro_courses/IS535/pdf/Secret_of_the_Golden_Flower.pdf

 

Which translation is best and why?

The secret of the golden flower has translations that are radically different from each other. the Wilhelm version translates the key phrase as the "circulation of the light" whereas the Cleary translation translates the phrase as "turning the light around". the might sound similar, but they are very different.

Circulation of the light, also sometimes known as the microcosmic orbit or small heavenly cycle, is a energetics meditation, one that concentrates and moves chi in the body.

Turning the light around refers to the Ch'an buddhist practice of training consciousness to become aware of it's true nature by watching thoughts without clinging to them. Cleary also interprets the "backwards flowing method" as a Buddhist technique of mind returning to itself to realize it's true nature.

Cleary claims that the WIlhelm translation is corrupt, and incomplete, and gives reasonable explanations for this in the introduction to his translation. But Cleary is kind of biased in favor of the northern school of the quanzhen taoism, which is heavily influenced by zen. the one link you have there from atlantic university is a condensation or paraphrase of the key points of Cleary's translation and interprets the SOTGF as a Ch'an tradition. If you like the sound of this, pick up Cleary's book.

the other translation there i have not read, but it seems to be more of a southern school/microcosmic orbit interpretation or the SOTGF. It uses illustrations also used in "Taoist Yoga", a circulation book. To make matters more confusing, there is another translation by one of Wang Liping's students floating around on the internet, which seems to be a MO interpretation as well. Wang Liping teaches the SOTGF in his seminars, and one would assume he knows what he is doing, but his students text is very short, the shortest i have seen. Even if you accept Cleary's criticism of the Wilhelm translation, which he says is corrupt and incomplete, you have to wonder why Wang Liping, with a supposedly highest level transmission, would be handing out some bunk version that makes the same mistake of Wilhelm and is even more truncated. The energetic stuff of the southern school is in my opinion more dangerous to practice without a teacher. If you are really hot for this, maybe go check out one of Wang Liping's seminars this summer in China. He teaches the SOTGF in them i think.

I guess Cleary's work is probably the most accurate and complete translation, but that doesn't mean it's "the best". The SOTGF, like many things in Chinese meditation terminology, means different things to different schools. It depends on what part of the Taoist landscape you are most attracted to. The problem with all of these texts is they just dont appear to be the same thing at all, so it's really a choice between different schools, not two versions of the same text.

edit

How about Enlightenment as having broken through all conditioning? To see past the small individual consciousness and apprehend the world as mind?

 

I have some articles related to your training. If possible, can you PM your email, I am happy to give it.

 

Can you post a link to the articles?

Zhang, Am I saying you have to figure it our by yourself?

not necessarily. enlightened help is good, seeing it is better

What I am saying is that if you cant find what you are looking for, it may right there and you cant see it. That's been the case with me numerous times. When I do find things, it is often not what i think I am looking for, but it is what i need. I guess what i am saying is that recognizing the way is harder than finding it, if that makes any sense. It's often so simple as to escape notice, and yet takes such dedication to develop that few succeed. So maybe practice is even harder than recognition.

As far as the powers go, this is that way i look at it. If you want to have psychic powers, you can get them by transcending your ordinary discriminating consciousness. By that i mean the consciousness of things as separate objects with boundaries and differences. But in order to do that you have to let go of your worldly attachments. That's part of transcending the ordinary material consciousness. So lets say you do that. what then is the point of manipulating reality when you do not identify with it?

While my long term goals are cultivation and stuff, in the short term my goal is attaining psychic abilities...

 

So, I mean, if my priority is to get psychic abilities, then shouldn't my practices lead to my goal?

 

I have a fairly clear image of "what I think I want", and, you know, the best teacher is experience, so if anyone wants me to find out how psychic abilities are not the answer, please, by all means, give me the method to get them

in my opinion, the problem is this, that a goal oriented attitude in cultivation can actually hurt your efforts. this is because the desire for powers will taint your practice. You have to be sincere if you want to achieve some high levels of attainment.

You may achieve something, and be impressed by it, but it will probably end up deluding you and you wont understand why certain things are "happening to you"

Take a look at Aleister Crowley's life for a good example of what not to do.

As far as getting the powers, you have to work really hard to attain those levels. If you cant find your way there, if you are not really seeing the way, then nothing anybody says to you is likely to help you.

anybody who trains like hell for years on end with a good method can manifest something of your goals. Anybody who cultivates with sincerity and tenacity for a long time, disregarding lust for powers, will be able manifest far more abilities, if they so choose.

I get this feeling that desiring psychic powers may actually impede one's cultivation efforts, just like any other desire or clinging to phenomena will.

Cultivation will earn you some psychic visions in my experience, but it wont necessarily be what you want or think you want.

Transcending "illusions" (what is often mistaken for reality) gives you power over them.

Happy transcendence..

It's something that happens during meditation sometimes that's all. nothing that special or scary. when the mind quiets, energy comes forth. best not to pay it much mind, just keep going and focus on your breathing.

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Eating goat testicles exorcises the scrotum spirits:

 

Solving History with Olly Steeds - Television Review

Solving History with Olly Steeds Reviews & TV Show Ratings for kids and families. ... Steeds participates in traditions like eating a goat's testicles. ...

http://oliversteeds.com/

where can i get some goat balls?

 

I definitely had some great and really psychedelic lucid dreams. I visited Tony Wright and he was showing me these models of civilization from 1,000 A.D. (not quite 100,000 years ago but anyway).

 

There was this wild hog and so I chased it down and tamed it - just like in Avatar! And it rolled on its side and I was massaging its gums - - like cats like -- but the wild hog had huge fangs.

 

Still we bonded emotionally together -- it was all warm fuzzies.

 

This is awesome weirdness.. pass the salvia

 

The case of the haunted scrotum

 

A 45-year-old man was referred for investigation of an undescended right testis by computed tomography (CT). An ultrasound scan showed a normal testis and epididymis on the left side. The right testis was not visualized in the scrotal sac or in the right inguinal region. On CT scanning of the abdomen and pelvis, the right testis was not identified but the left side of the scrotum seemed to be occupied by a screaming ghostlike apparition (Figure 1). By chance, the distribution of normal anatomical structures within the left side of the scrotum had combined to produce this image. What of the undescended right testis? None was found. If you were a right testis, would you want to share the scrotum with that?

 

J R Harding

Consultant Radiologist, Royal Gwent Hospital

Anybody who takes haunted scrotums seriously is ok with me. but what's the point of talking spring forest when you've got ghosts in your sack? stick to the good stuff, man.

 

 

Santi routinely destroys cell phones. When we talk on the phone sometimes the phone dies out.

 

 

I always wondered what KAP was for..

Found some interesting "fa jing" videos from the Southern Indian style of Varma/Marma Adi:

 

 

and

 

Cool.

I always figured the Indian Martial Arts had to have some Fa Jing, they seem pretty deep to me, but they are much less known in the west than the Chinese Arts.

The attractions in both videos are more the acting skills of Tom Tetreault (yeah, it's the same guy) than the Jing of the "masters"...

Typical: so-called master demonstrating Fa Jin on his student...

Gin Soon Chu is for real. He only has two students, as far as i know. He is retired from public teaching. My teacher is one of Chu Sifu's two remaining private students (the other being Vincent Chu) and he has this kind of Fa Jing as well. No acting involved.

This is a good conversation, but let's get down to business. Does this guy have the goods? I do yang taiji. My teacher is good, but he cannot teach me this stuff.

Yes, Gin Soon has the goods, but he doesn't teach anymore. His son, Vincent Chu, teaches in Boston.

If your teacher cant teach this stuff, then his yang tai chi isn't authentic, unfortunately. You will most likely have to start over when you find a teacher with an authentic transmission.

Gin Soon Chu is one of three full disciples of Yang, Sau Chung. Ip Tai Tak was another one, but he has passed away. I think the third disciple is in England. All three were full "inner door" students, who received full lineage transmissions and were authorized to teach by Yang Sau Chung. Gin Soon and Vincent Chu are recognized as being legit by the Yang family because they are legit. Yang Sau Chung's three daughters are still practicing and teaching in Hong Kong, along with some of Yang's other students.

Many of the so called Yang style teachers out there can be traced back to students of Yang Sau Chung and his father, Yang Chen Fu, but most of them did not study with the Yang family for very long and thus their knowledge of Tai Chi is not that deep. Most of them have modified the style they learned and made it more "flowery".

Real Tai Chi cannot be learned in a few months or even a few years. The reason why there are so few authentic practitioners out there is most cant find an authentic teacher, much less spend the spend the 10-15 years of studying with them.

I bet some one hundred years ago Radio and Television looked creepy to many: boxes out of which people spoke or made figures...

The stem cell blood transfusion machine is the most advanced technology in terms of using natural resources, combined with technology, to cure quite alot of diseases...

You can add to that that Tao Garden is one of the very-very few places in the world where Stem Cell therapy is aided by:

- zapping

- infrared treatment

- ozone therapy

- rife machine therapy

- nutrition counseling

- colonic detox

- parasite, virus and dangerous bacteria and mold cleansing

- a very good and sofisticated Qigong program that can help the patient recover a good deal of his/her Original Force - without it, the Stem cells don't have enough power to work... And without the above quoted therapeutic steps, the body would be too toxic for the Stem cells to begin working...

Someday I'd like to get my hands on some very detailed testimonials related to that particular Stem Cell program...

With the rest of the weird stuff is the same: not enough information... When you know how things work, it's plain and clear...

maybe you should take another look at television, IT IS creepy.

I disagree with most the rest of what you said as well, although I am not above a little detoxing.

This author has a few misconceptions about Buddhism I think. Buddhism is not about God revealed Dogma, for instance, or world negating Nihilism. World transcending, sure. Buddha and Lao Tzu were not so much ahead o their time as unbounded by it. I think Wilkinson is suffering from trying to stuff Eastern concepts into western modfels. He is repeating the old misconceptions of Buddhism articulated by Hegel, Nietzsche, and others.

Also, if you want to talk about Dogma and Belief, what about The Western Scientific worldview? Of course Buddhism and Christianity, when narrowly and dogmatically debased, can be moribund relics of corrupted traditions, but Empirical Science and Skepticism have their high and low forms as well, which can be just as life negating as misapprehended spirituality. I think Wilkinson actually suffers from applying his critique too narrowly and in immoderately broad categories.

If you want to salvage something from the article, maybe one could walk away with it's central point, that it is not good to place old teachings above the present, and this is ok with me.

Usually it looks pretty bad from my experience. Most people dont teach real stuff or dont teach it well. I recommend visiting ALL the teachers in your area, and expect to be disappointed most of the time. Dont be discouraged, trust your own judgement, check their lineages. It takes time, effort and luck(karma or merit, if you will) to find a good teacher. When you find one, appreciate it and follow their teachings diligently.

Did not Yudelove learn it from Mantak?

Absolutely. He is Chia's student.

Yudelove also lost his mind for a while from too much sorcery.

hope he is doing better

there are allot of problems with what Mantak Chia does, i think. Michael Winn admitted on his forum that Chia had never done the Kan and Li stuff from his books for instance. And then there is this thing about him plagiarizing his inner smile stuff from a Pranic healer in India, etc. Most of the good teachers I have met will tell you that allot of the stuff in his books is real, but you need allot of supervision and training to do it. Allot of people have hurt themselves doing the meditations from his books on their own. then there is the stem cell blood transfusion machine he has in thailand, which i find creepy. you find more weird stuff the deeper you dig.

Hello, I am a new member. I have read a good deal of the comments on Bill Bodri & Master Nan. I would like to offer a few thoughts that I believe are balancing regarding what I believe Bill is attempting to do with his writings, direct teachings and website.

 

I have taken the Stages course and found it very valuable. At no time did I feel it was so doctrinaire as to shut out the great diversity of practices we can avail ourselves of. In fact, I feel the throughline of the logic espoused actually allows one to pursue exactly what they need to use, including physical and tantric practices, while becoming well informed about how these efforts fit into the underlying goal of achieving true quiescence, samadhi and transcendence of egoic limitations.

 

Since Bill has put out thousands of pages of text between his site, books and courses, I would advise some people to reconsider their assumption that he is pitting the Zen tradition against the others. If you know Bill or his work well, you will find out he has absolutely no issue with using methods from any tradition. While he has his biases and can be blunt, he would use whatever works according to the needs of the individual.

 

It is his assessment of those needs that I think causes confusion about his approach. He is committed to asserting that once you do get your chi moving that the primary way for it to actually do its work of purification one must surrender, avoid subtle ego identification traps and let go of notions that you are either your body or your attainments.

 

In the simplest terms, he is saying that even if you do have great practices and have great chi cultivation you still will have to LET GO to advance much further.

 

And I am not dumbing anything down. This is surely my limited experience as well. Remove impediments. In life, in your habits, and ultimately your notion of your self. And you will open. You can visualize and stimulate and activate to great benefit, but at some point your greatness will only be revealed by truly mastering the process of letting go.

 

Bill uses Sutras as source material. They are ancient records and guides as we all know, dependable sources of realized wisdom that have stood the test of time. Some people may find him repetitive, but that is a teaching technique used to great effect if you just go with the flow and read the material. And in his books and courses, there is a great compendium of very useful quotations from many sutras. He is thorough. It may not be your style, but I don't believe that should ever be a ground for criticism.

 

And Bill is not in the least advocating you sit and let your legs rot off and your circulation stagnate. Not true at all. He advocates exercise, health routines that suit you, he is big on detoxification practices. He may point out that many martial artists have dirty chi as a result of their mental orientation and low level of spiritual comprehension, but that does not mean he believes there are not more advanced yogis out there.

 

And by extension, I have seen no advocacy of simply sitting as the only path. I do not see how this misconception can be formed if you simply read enough of the free material on his site. He merely points out over and over again that proper view is everything (some may use the word VIEW from their Tibetan background), thus any practice can lead you astray if you are so results oriented as to not achieve true quiet and release and abiding states.

 

He has assembled a great deal of traditional knowledge that allows you to place frameworks like dhyanas and skandhas and levels of consciousness into a full framework. Yes, he emphasizes Buddhism simply because the Buddha(s) left a diligent record of the refined states of awakening making for a very good map that is inclusive of other traditions and their schemas. It is Bill's basic assertion that Buddhism gives you the best map for achieving enlightenment while Taoism is the best for health practices and longevity and qigong. He finds corollaries in every tradition including Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

 

Any characterizations that polarize these efforts may stem more from reactions to his personality than to the actual mission or knowledge assembled by him. I find nothing offensive in the material or him. He's busy, he has done a great service to many people and he has made peanuts from the meditation materials and site in relation to the huge amount of time he has put into writing, publishing and teaching these materials. That people misinterpret his marketing techniques as somehow a demerit is puzzling.

 

Personally, I have found his willingness to put himself out there rather brave and most definitely in service of the dharma. When a teacher travels to teach a group of meditators, you do pick up the tab and pay for his airfare and food and lodging, don't you? I would suggest people to be more respectful of someone who really has not been heavily compensated for doing something that has incurred great costs to him.

 

Wrapping up these thoughts, I'd say there is nothing in Bodri's work that truly suggests circulating your chi is wrong, merely that it is not a higher level practice. That is not the oppositional stance that I think some people take it to be, nor is it a simplistic bias. Rather, it is an inclusive system of thought with distinctions as to the level of awakening certain practices can lead to. It doesn't negate their value, but instead seeks to emphasize what will eventually be necessary to proceed to deeper samadhis and your own personal realization. Thus, Opening the dharma eye may not be a result of qigong attainments, no matter how great, and more a result of true surrender to the original Tao. If you spend any time with Bill and his materials, you'll see he recognizes the value of all forms of purification, including directed practices, as long as you then learn the value of truly quieting the mind and letting go.

 

He is now doing teleseminars. I attended the one he did last Saturday night on breathing practices and it was really good. He's doing another this Saturday evening. Its $15 for about 2 hours on a conference call which is reasonable. I got an email, but I assume he has something posted about it on the MeditationExpert.com site or blog.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Regards,

Mud Lotus

Thanks for putting all of this out there, I took the time to read it all and I agree with most of it. It nice to have someone with personal experience with Bodri to share their view of him.

What I will say about my own experience reading his writings and his website is that it is informative and I am glad i read it, but he contradicts himself allot. I feel like this is mainly just an unpolished surface though. You just have to read between the lines with him, that's all. If you read one of his books that actually has an editor, like his 25 Doors, it reads more consistently and clearly.

But allot of his self published work can really be confusing because he doesn't use terms consistently, among other things, and it took me a while to realize that he is not just bashing southern school style esoteric techniques, but trying to show that they can be misinterpreted. He does over-argue some points, and the quote that started this thread is a prime example of this tendency. it can be pretty annoying, but to his credit, he does also talk about how zen can be misused as well. He mentions "dead tree zen" for instance, and says that many modern people's psyche's are too complicated to reach realization through zen or orthodox methods and therefore body cultivation techniques can be more appropriate for them as long as they dont get too wrapped up in them.

I think his stuff is worth reading if you have a discerning mind. but some have said it much more simply, like for instance:

Focusing on openings is easy to get into, but final realization is hard. Not focusing on openings is hard to get into but final realization is easy. It is easy to give instructions for focusing on openings, hard to give instructions not focusing on openings. - Hsiao T'ien-Shih

this quote is from Cleary's translation in "Vitality, Energy, Spirit", a book Bodri recommends..

If you read Nan's Tao and Longevity he actually says one "cannot argue against" the efficacy of circulation.

I know the Wudang Deutschland school and Ismet Himmet. He is a very good teacher as far as I can tell. But what do I know? The school is definitely worth checking out. Tell me if you are going to visit there.

 

Chrisn

oh hey thanks, but i left berlin last month..

It is also possible that he was pulling from Alistair Crowley's Thelma Religion, which was taken from a bastardization of Robelais' medieval period ideas. I guess it could be argued that Crowley understood Robelais better than anyone else and just put his theories into action, but I prefer to think that Robelais was just exaggerating to shake things up and make people think.

RAW and Leary were well aquainted with Crowley and knew about his Rabelais inspiration also, they are explicitly using crowley there.

R.A.W.'s eight modalities framework comes from Timothy Leary actually, he freely admitted this. Go to Infopsychology for the source, which is itself a rewrite of Exopsychology.

I havent thought about RAW much, or Leary for that matter, in a long time. I first read them as a teenager, the first real esoteric/counterculture ideas I encountered. I'm pretty much over it now, but Enjoy!

RAW's book the New Inquisition led me to discover Reich and Tesla, which then led me to other things, and so on. So it was a good stepping stone and introduction to escaping from consensus reality. Probably true for allot of people, definitely a good guy.