altiora

Thanks guys. As for the tea: I love Jasmine Dragon Pearls (a mixture of green and white teas infused in jasmine). Absolutely divine: see www.tleaft.co.nz. Read quite a bit of Hua Ching Ni: unfortunately he seems to have been the subject of a smear campaign on amazon.com (the same person posting the same message on every book). While I think that he is orthodox Daoist in his main books, the amazon smear campaign has left a residual sense of doubt about him. I do however love his book of "The Taoist Inner View of the Universe" and his "Spirtual Handbook" -- with its blunt advice just chose a practice and stick with it for life (the simplest being the best), and his providing of Daoist invocations for use. Interestingly, I'm currently preparing to conversion to the Eastern Orthodoxy, and it's amazing the similarities between Orthodoxy and Daoism (as described by Hua Ching Ni) -- both talk about creation being a matrix of energies emanating from God/Dao. Of course there are clear differences -- I'm not one of these people who ignore them -- but it seems to me that they are trying to describe the indescrible same story.

I was wondering if you could tell me whether there is anyone who teaches the Taoist meditation/qigong practices from which modern day bagua zhang apparently derived. There is some more information about me in my Lobby intro message and why I'm searching. I love the circle walking but (due to being rather unco-ordinated and demands of my work life) I'm not willing to commit the time to learning the martial arts applications. I know that martial arts and spiritual practice are inextricably linked, but to me it's a case of how to best use my limited time to maximum benefit.