The Cloudwalking Owl

Just what exactly do you mean by the term "discharge"?

Do you mean General Guan stroking beard? Kwan Yin is a woman (at least in China---he has a moustache in Tibet, but I've never seen a beard.)

I think it's important to remember that a lot of lineage stuff consists of "wild history". For example, most scholars I have read suggest that Damo never really existed and is instead a mythical figure. I have read a fair amount on this subject with regard to Zen buddhism (which puts a huge emphasis on lineage for theological reasons) and it turns out that a fair number of Zen masters were given their "inka" (or license as a Zen lineage holder) for reasons that had nothing at all to do with attainment. It is good to have a handle on one's history, but unfortunately lineage has become a huge crutch that gets in the way of honest study. Having said that, I have a Master's degree from a Western University and if you think about it, that is pretty much the same thing as being given a lineage license in a tradition that is traceable all the way back to Socrates and Plato. The difference between it and an Eastern lineage license is that I can do research and work back through all the generations, and there is a collective process that involves oversight from a lot of various government officials and official bodies. In contrast, the lineage system for a lot of Eastern schools are totally idiosyncratic---which will inevitably cause problems. (I have a lineage chart from the school that initiated me. The few lines above my teacher might be useful, but beyond that it enters looney land---culminating in the Laozi and Damo.) One final note. Traditionally in China, I believe that religious people were government regulated. If you read a lot of novels you will see that Daoists had to have a license from the government to practice. (This is still the case.) This involved sanctions for misbehaviour. For example, I am reading a translation of Journey to the West, and at one point the Tang Monk and his disciples save a female and let her tag along with them in the wilderness. One of the arguments that Monkey makes against this is to say that if any government officials find a Buddhist monk travelling with a woman he would be executed and his disciples punished. In this sort of context licenses and lineage documents have practical importance.

Take it for what it's worth, but I had a taijiquan student who who was also learning hung gar from a guy who was supposedly taught his martial art to be an "enforcer" for the Chinese FreeMasons of Victoria British Columbia. He was an old guy. But supposedly he had broken his allegiance and left the group. That is the only time I have ever heard of the "Chinese Free Masons"---but it makes for a good story.

Here's one suggestion about how both he and the ancient Egyptians did it: I grew up on a farm where if you couldn't do things for yourself, it didn't get done. As a result, we learned that the whole idea of "moving a thousands pounds with four ounces of force" was simply mechanics.

It's impossible to learn baguazhang and quigong from a teacher too----. Ultimately, you can get exposed to a form but you have to figure it out for yourself. On a practical level, if you try to learn an art from a video, even if it is terrible, it means that you will learn that much faster when you actually do manage to find a teacher. And don't forget that there are a lot of very, very bad teachers out there. Ultimately, you have to figure it out for yourself----.

The best method I've come across is to say to yourself (either verbally or internally) what you are feeling. So when you are embarrassed say "Feeling embarrassment". This allows you to "hold onto the One". I came across this in a sermon at my Unitarian Church where someone talked about a Buddhist teacher who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. He found himself in front of a crowd of people in a lecture hall and totally forgot what he was supposed to be saying. So he simply listed out loud all the emotions he was feeling, joined his hands together and bowed to the audience (i.e. "Feeling embarrassment", bow. "Feeling shame", bow. "Feeling anxious", bow. etc.) I use this technique all the time. The important point is to understand the separation between your various souls and don't forget about your higher self ("The One", or in Buddhist terms, "the Buddha Mind".) You don't have to try and put your lower self in chains, just remember that the higher one exists and identify with it instead of the lower one. (I know, easier said than done---.)

I learned the Yang form open hand set through the Daoist Tai Chi society (not terribly good, but the only game in town) for about five years and then left them. I've kept practicing since then (close to 25 years now) and attend various workshops and lessons when I can. This has included the five animal frolics that a grad student was teaching, a summer course on sword that a technician who used to be a member of a Chinese provincial wushu team was teaching, various workshops that the Canadian Taijiquan Federation was holding, and, an intro to XingYi and Bagua workshop that Andrea Falk was holding in my area. I'm currently working through a Chen spear routine that I have on a dvd.

Idiot Savants have been well-described by the psychological literature for a long time. It is a rare form of autism and is a miracle in the same way that cancer or any other disease is. My question would be "when this little girl grows up will she be able to provide for herself---or will she have to live in a group home or institution?"

Wait a minute! I am not saying that I do not practice neidan or know the experiences people are talking about here. I am saying "been there, done that, and it isn't the way people are describing things---". That is very, very different from dismissing things out of hand.

Ah yes---but is it the "truth" that allows airplanes to fly through the air, or the "truth" that said that the earth is flat?

And my response is to look at this website: http://skepdic.com/kirlian.html The "aura" in an Kirlian photograph is simply an electrical discharge---.

I wouldn't place much faith in this video. Everything I saw on it can be reproduced by various quite explainable phenomena. Fro example, did you notice that in some of the shots the guy was playing with the "funny bone" on the arms of the fellow on the massage table? There are a lot of things that you can do by manipulating the acupressure points of someone that will make their muscles jump. As well, there is a phenonmena known as "suggestion" that many people are susceptible to. If you are good at it, and you find the right person, you can get them to do all sorts of things. One of the problems with videos is that producers only show you the situations where it "worked". This is also a problem with people who won't let you know anything about them---you have no way of checking up on stuff. Finally, the bit about pushing the chopstick through the table. This would be very easy to reproduce simply by having a table with a hole drilled through the back. The knee could push the chopstick through the formica table top. Ultimately, Daoism is about making people better human beings rather than being able to fart lightning bolts. Nothing on this video---even if true---compares with the wonders of modern medicine and engineering.

I can guarantee that not a single person on this discussion group is doing their taijiquan form "right". No matter how often you do it, it is constantly changing and you should be learning more and more. People often get funny feeling in their hands and other parts of their body when they start doing taijiquan. IMHO, a better indication of how you are doing is whether or not your tailbone has unfused and the cartilage in your chest has decalcified. When the former happens you usually hear a loud crack and you can feel it breaking free. With the latter, your chest goes through about a month or so of sounding like you are breaking a bundle of dry sticks over your knee every time you flex it.

Just as there are variations in the definition of "Christianity", so there are with Daoism. I think the discussion is more fruitful than any absolute statements. I think that a lot of people are misguided when they dismiss the Daoist religion as just "superstition". I also think that traditionalists are misguided when they say that no one who isn't Chinese and initiated into a recognized lineage should call themselves a "Daoist". The word itself is a Western invention more than anything else, so Westerners should be able to define it in a way that fits their experience. What I am concerned about is that some folks tend to conflate the idea of "Daoism" with something that looks a lot like something from a Star Wars movie. Daoists are not "Jedi Knights" who manifest "the Force" but instead call it "qi". I would suggest that instead a Daoist is someone who has personally identified with an ancient religious/philosophical tradition that makes some pretty radical statements about the universe, people's place within it, and, what is the best way to live.

That's not as absurd a thing to say as you might think. When Moy Lin Shin found out that one of his students was a vegetarian he would do things like get him to go out to a restaurant for supper, sit next to him and order something like pork chops, and take the meat off the platter with his chop sticks, put it in the vegetarian student's bowl and order him to eat it! (He was an extreme person.) There are Daoists who maintain that meat is absolutely essential to a healthy diet. You pays your money you makes your choices----.

These are good points. I noticed how I could change my consciousness and energy level through manipulating my conscious mind---and not just through the use of sexual arousal. I don't like to jump to theory from experience without a lot of evidence, but it could be explained by the manipulation of hormones within the body. A key point is that once you start working on these processes you have to be your own guide to a very large extent. A teacher can answer some questions and the tradition can offer suggestions. But the internal processes are so subjective and hard to describe that it is impossible for someone to talk you through the whole process. That is why, IMHO, it is so important to avoid the whole "orthodoxy"/"heterodoxy" thing and instead follow a skeptical, rationalist point of view. (Please note, I wrote "skeptical" and "rathional"---not "naive materialist" or "reductionistic".) Following an orthodox teaching like a robot will simply not allow you to learn how to do anything except recite language that you don't understand. If you don't "poke and prode" with your rational mind, you will also be prey to superstition.

This is an oversimplification. Daoists from the Complete Reality (Quanzhen) sect practice strict vegetarianism. One of the things that cause confusion with understanding the path is that there is no centralized "authority" for Daoism, but rather a lot of different lineages and regionally-based schools. This means that not only are there any set "rules" about what it means to be a Daoist, but also that very few practitioners know much about what goes on in schools other than their own. This leads to all sorts of dumb arguments about "what is true".

I have read translations of old Daoist texts that suggest that the real energy loss comes not from sex, per se, but rather from the energy one puts into a relationship. The "left handed path", therefore, is not sex, but instead learning how to have a healthy relationship with another person. Don't forget that before birth control the only sure way to avoid having children was to not have sex. Maybe I'm a misanthrope, but it seems obvious to me that it is immensely difficult to have any sort of spiritual practice while you are in any sort of relationship---and damn near impossible if you have children. Having said that, I did practice retention for a while and to do it requires a lot of self-discipline, internal control and concentration. These are all essential things for any sort of spiritual practice, so it would be very good grounding as long as people don't obsess. Finally, I have come to the conclusion that "jing" doesn't only refer to sperm but rather "life energy". So I would suggest that we also waste our jing through a lot of other activities besides sex. For example, I think that video games also waste our jing.

My experience is that your weight should be spread over the entire foot. This is very difficult for beginners to achieve (it took me 20 years to achieve myself.) There are no specific rules for doing this, IMHO, because everyone's body is different. For example, I have very, very flat feet and for years I tried to do taijiquan in the flat mocassin-style shoes that everyone in China used to wear---bad idea. I switch over to using good athletic shoes with orthodics and it made a big improvement. It also made a huge difference when I started doing walking qi-gong every morning plus a bunch of stretches for my upper body. (Every part of your body has an influence on your feet.) There are only so many things people can suggest over the internet because taijiquan correction is a very, very complex thing to do. But I would still suggest that you aim for the entire foot, as that seems to me to be non-negotiable.

I remember reading somehwer that soya beans were considered a "grain" at one time in China. If you read the autobiography of Empty Cloud, he says he spent part of his youth living exclusively on some sort of evergreen needle. When his master found out about it, he ordered him to start eating rice like everyone else and stop "showing off". I heard an interesting take on the whole "not eating grains" thing a while back. A fellow pointed out that in the past all taxes were paid in grain. This meant that anyone who didn't raise grain didn't need to pay tax. So any Daoist who learned how to live on a non-grain diet (and using "grain" as defined in the tax regulations) would be able to legally avoid paying taxes. Another point. I have a friend who was diagnosed as having diabetes. Her doctor put her on the so-called "cave man diet". This is a diet that is based on speculation of what paleolithic human ate: basically meat and green vegetables. Her diabetes became so well controlled that she was able to stop injecting insulin. Having said the above, it is impossible for all people to live on the cave man diet simply because there are too many people on the earth. Moreover, farm raised animals do not have the nutritive value of wild animals. And wild animals are now heavily contaminated with industrial poisons. (For example, the Canadian government has advised our people to not eat moose liver because it has too much PCB and dioxin in it.) Food has always been a complex subject. Best to simply eat what makes you feel good and leave it at that.

Years ago, while I was still a student, I had an experience where something "spoke" through me. I was sitting at a desk in my office and I spontaneously got up, put on my coat and walked over to the door. When I thought "what am I doing", my lips spontaneously moved and I said "We're going to meet our friend Wayne." This was odd, as I knew he was working at a factory in another town. I then walked over to the student union building. When my hand was on the door, my lips spoke again and I said "No, Wayne isn't there." I then turned left and walked over to a street. As I got to the curb, Wayne drove up, stopped, and I got in the car. The interesting thing was that uncanny as this experience might have been, it was totally irrelevant. Wayne is and was no spiritual master, but more of a "good-time Charlie". We drove off, had a few drinks and may have even ended-up in a strip joint. I tend to believe that these sorts of experiences are best ignored. If we fixate on them I think we can end up causing problems. Your stress seems to suggest that these are transcient phenomenon. I think your concerns about schizophrenia should be thought through, but it doesn't sound like you have had them for any length of time or very often. If you did, I would strongly suggest getting some psychiatric help. I have had friends with schizophrenia who refused treatment and it was extremely painful to watch. I don't know if you have a meditative practice, but if you do, I would suggest that you try to lead as "grounded" and "normal" a life as possible. The ordinary practices and routines of life are pretty good counter-balances to the "mysterious realm" that pops up for many people who meditate. (I don't know if this applies, as you have said so little about yourself. Take this suggestion for what its worth on that basis.)

I bow to fellow travellors on the Way: I came across this website while cruising the internet. At first glance it seems promising. When I signed on, it suggested that I offer up a little about myself by way of an introduction. I was initiated into a Daoist lineage about 25 years ago by Moy Lin Shin and Moy Ming Do. To the best of my knowledge, these two folks were refugees from mainland China who had set up residence in the Yin Yin Institute in Hong Kong and started their own sub-temple called the Fung Loy Kok, which they then spread to Toronto, Canada. When I was initiated I had no idea whatsoever about what was going on and then split up with them shortly afterwards. (There was an enormous culture clash that they seemed incapable of bridging with most of their students.) Since then I was drawn---almost against my will---to getting more and more involved with Daoism and now live as an urban hermit. I try to chronicle the issues as they arise for me on a blog: http://urbanecohermit.blogspot.com/ I also have a Master's degree in philosophy and work at an academic library as a technician (sort of like Laozi.) I have gained a lot of knowledge about Daoism from people I met on the internet, so I look forward to interesting conversations. I bow to fellow travellors on the Way, The Cloudwalking Owl

All tajiquan uses these techniques. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of practitioners only learn the initial stages of taijiquan for health promotion. I learned from a school that teaches pretty much only to senior citizens and people who don't even know it is a martial art. But I ended up being taught how to break fall, use weapons, absorb punches, do "live push hands", etc. (Alas, I'm not terribly good at any of this, but that's me.) I think it is important to think of taijiquan as something like a canvas that the student and teacher use to paint their own picture upon. The moves can be kicks, blocks, joint locks, etc. They can also be ways of massaging your internal organs and working on the mind. As the Karate master Kim used to say "The man makes the art, the art does not make the man."