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Anyone knows if this temple and it's people are legit? From a layman's perspective they seem to be...even if giving off a bit of "used car salesman" vibes in some videos... On one of their recent videos they "made it free" some scriptures and "books" but I don't know if their processes are legit or even if they should be ok to be attempted by beginners. You can find the link to their pages with the "freebies" in this video:

Ah, the "Tin Yat Lineage" guy who charges $300 for a remote "ordination", I didn't realize that was his blog. That explains a lot.

I see. I've heard things about Mantak but then again, I've heard things about everyone. I get lumped in the Taoist crackpot category along with Mak Jo Si of Tin Yat. The wider Occult community has the same issues, scammers and con artists. As of right now, my interests are mostly weather magick and natural spirituality. Maybe one day we could Skype, I'd be up for that.

Hey you're not in league with Mr Tin Yat of Cananda? Most genuine Daoists and shamans wear jeans and a t shirt; The forces or heaven and earth don't give a monkeys what you wear, it's about the power one possesses. The more powerful the Daoist the less likely he or she will need silly hats, robes and paraphernalia.

Tin Yat is someone whose "system" I will go out on a limb to say that it is more dangerous to study with him than it is to make up your own nonsense from the misinformation out there that people get from YouTube videos and books or DVDs by popular teachers whose names I will not mention here. I should also mention that one of his own pathetic attempts to describe demons in Buddhism was laughable. For starters, he believes Buddhism is demonic and especially attacks Tibetan Buddhism, but also fails to understand that there are many sects of Buddhism, not even realizing Pure Land, Vajrayana, and Theravada are all different. Guess whose picture he posted as a demonic entity? Akuma/Gouki, a character from Street Fighter. It's like he's not even trying...

Tin Yat is a false comparison to people who actually have skill, wisdom, tradition, and something worth teaching. I believe a master can charge whatever they want because it's not just the prestige of that knowledge and skill that will transform your lives, it's the fact they need to babysit people who just want power. And people who want power or skill for free are kidding themselves.

I understand the wariness about teachers charging for spiritual teachings. This relates to something the Christian church calls "simony"- charging money for ordinations, sacraments, teachings. Some things to keep in mind, though- in the "old world", ie China or connected areas, a monastery or temple usually has a certain amount of social infrastructure, that is, a recognized place in the surrounding society, devotees, history, allowing it to rely on donations from many sources or sometimes even government subsidies. In those contexts it is relatively easy for teaching to be given free of charge or on a sliding scale. A Taoist teacher in the West is generally not going to have this kind of infrastructure. Absent some generous donors or a solidly supportive Chinese diaspora community it might be hard to pay the bills while offering free training for long amounts of time. I am not saying this to justify charging exorbitant fees for lessons, books, etc- there is plenty of room for criticism there. But I also don't think we should be too harsh. That said there is no way I'm scrounging up $400 to get remotely ordained by that Tin Yat guy.

One of the biggest frustrations I have about this forum and the anonymous nature of the Internet is that it also takes something very difficult to fundamentally measure fairly rather than objectively or equally, which is the esoteric path. I will actually be referencing a few groups here including our favorite WMP friends and am trying to speak as respectfully as possible with the full disclosure that I am making zero attacks on anyone mentioned here. To put it simply, none of us for the most part know each other's complexities as human beings, even divorced of our practices and our participation here. What we especially don't know about is the veracity or legitimacy of someone's practice, which can vary with topics outright decrying Mantak Chia and Michael Winn as frauds and weak or unhealthy practices versus people who are very happy with the results. What is more important is the sincerity of each practitioner, and even then, it's hard to verify, because besides generational, national cultural, political, and linguistic barriers such as many who don't speak English as their first language here, we also have the further limiting factor that is people's ability to communicate in writing their depth of understanding, let alone the difficulties even I as a writer and professional struggle with in conveying my points. By the logical positivist school of thinking, we are all failures in our ability to communicate effectively. By my own humanity, that failure is what makes us closer to one another. The administration here describes this as a café-like atmosphere where decorum and etiquette are determined by them, but when you mix spiritual and esoteric practices, it becomes more of a pub in that regard since these practices affect our perceptions and relationship with the veils of the myriad of realities we pass through, but more apparently, it stirs egos, both our own and others. And while in an actual physical establishment where people will gravitate towards others who share similar interests and can ignore the others who clash with them, the problem with the nature of an Internet forum is that these conversations, unless edited, hidden, or deleted, stay here forever and people are judged by those posts, which are also impacted by the above complexities I've mentioned with language, age, culture, and such. I'm not ashamed of my posts, but I am also not proud of a few of them over the years, and I went from being an idealistic and curious individual in 2015 to someone more settled into my path, suffice to say I am more of a journeyman and an adept in 2019 rather than a recently-elevated senior apprentice then. And as a human being, I of course have my moments and struggles. What I have found helpful was talking to people in private and even offline, especially when I gave free or voluntary donation-based Akashic readings here and got to know many individuals on video conference or phone calls, and even meeting up in person with some. It helps to hear the tone, to know someone as a person, an individual, and a human, and find out how they sound and look and their little tics and quirks are far different from their ability to express themselves in writing, and likewise, people don't see us, they assemble us through the filter of their own projections as we do to them. In short: we have both hands and feet tied to the chair, our mouths gagged, eyes blindfolded, ears plugged, and are judged by our ability to understand Shakespeare, Sartre, and Solzhenitsyn in Sanskrit and communicate it in a translation into Esperanto while using only morse code to others, and the consequences of this stay with us for a long time because they only know what we've said and do not how we look or feel, nor do they know anything about us. The metrics by which people measure their own practice and others is not a constant in this forum. Flowing Hands is someone that could be a fraud or a holy man and nobody knows without knowing him or being part of the same school. By the metrics of my own lineages, I give him my respect because I can sense it in him and in GSMaster, while those same metrics are the ones that make me grateful for Flowing Hands informing us of new developments from Tin Yat Dao and advising caution. By those same metrics I personally have, I may not agree with the deviations from traditional transmission of the WMP group, but I can empathize with them even if I can't agree with them since their metric is not mine and my metric is not theirs, and still be friendly with them so long as we understand that we aren't converting each other the same way a Jew and a Buddhist talking about their different views doesn't have to be about burning synagogues and temples but about understanding why they believe what they believe and don't necessarily agree with your views. (Briefly, I offer apologies to any of you members of that group reading this because I only say WMP since that's the common recognized title for you as they separate you from actual and current students of JC's lineage). As a result of the lack of consistent metrics to measure and verify practices or recognize authority in others and their practices, we can't really help but be agnostic about everything, even if the actual masters people revere were to post in this forum. It already happens as I know even Sifu Terry Dunn of the Flying Phoenix thread is so busy that I've been asked to help manage that thread as his student. The problem with the above as a representative of Terry Dunn is that when an incident occurs that his own students understand what is wrong (trolling our thread, insulting Sifu Terry, and defending a scammer), those on the outside and not in the know have indeed construed their own version of events and I have endured their insults, including the most amusing one when someone said "My flow is better than yours". It's an opinion and not the most endearing thing to hear (to say the least), but it's also an uninformed opinion because it has more to do with that individual looking through the lens of their practice, their values, and their ignorance of the internal situation in our own corner of the café (which will not be available to see as most of the offending posts have been edited out), as well as the emphasis on the overall forum's view of fairness, which again is not consistent even amongst mods as it is to their own discretion with again their own human fallibilities. This thread has gone from being a public service announcement to stern warning on civility and now the questioning of legitimacy and authority or qualifications of individuals like Flowing Hands and another exhausting chapter of the battle between the mods and the individuals over what is proper, and unfortunately, even if I agree with Flowing Hands, we're in their territory and it's a lost cause since their priority is to give everyone an equal opportunity to speak and have themselves protected within reason. It is one thing to be non-judging, but the problem here is people are also being non-discerning in an effort to appear non-judging. A political example here (and again, apologies to those who fall into the partisan divide, particularly Americans): in the vein of John Locke, I don't agree with someone's opinion, but I will fight for their right to speak it, so when someone in Berkeley says something in the vein of white nationalism and calling dark-skinned individuals like me part of the problem of the eroding identity of America, I consider why he says that even if I am biting my tongue already and know that he may not view me fairly because of his bias, but I win because I have heard and considered him and done my own investigation through both dialogue with him and research about his views. I lose if I am the Progressive idiot who punches him in the face because even if his views are alarmingly bigoted, I feed the bigotry by resorting to violence. (Disclaimer: I am a Progressive-leaning political Moderate, but find both parties disappointing). So in order to protect people's speaking privilege here, mods step in before they see someone potentially being punched in the face or what they see as a perceived threat of a punch, and I leave it to your imagination to figure out how that translates to online communication. Whether you are actually going to proceed to punch them in the face and if that is actually your intent are two entirely different things, again subject to debate and what they see. I apologize to everyone for this long-winded post and hope my view has offered some insights. I am uninterested in participating any further on this thread because Flowing Hands has already made his point, the mods have made theirs, the new direction of this thread is a repeat of something else I have already experienced, and I have spoken my piece on this as an individual member. In the words of Rodney King: "Can we just get along?"

I´ve no idea about the Tin Yat Dao Sect but I know Yoda from his postings way back when and was very fond of him. He came off as a genuine good guy. Yoda was (is?) that rare spiritual seeker type with a bold -- dare I say fun -- experimental streak. I enjoyed following his spiritual adventures.

Hi Folks I looked up our old friend Mak Jo Si who basically makes hundreds of videos about some aspect of Daoism, who tries as hard as he can to get his students and friends to validate his teachings. He has reinvented himself three times and is now calling his system Tin Yat Dragon. For any new people who has not come across him before, looking for Dao practices, he is a fraudster and really is only interested in your money and pumping up his own very inflated ego. It seems to me he reads alot of books and looks at videos and makes up his own versions of things that are part of a genuine Dao practice. He is not doing genuine Dao sects any favours with his obsession with guns and knives. Buyer be very aware is all I have to say.

At one time, he was touting himself as a modern day ghost busters group... armed with guns (in pictures) to remove any ghosts. I would personally advise you drop it and look for something more realistic and of substance. JMO. Here are his posts here: Tin Yat Taoist

One of the things that you can do on the Dao Bums is save search results by copying the address out of the space that has the IP address of the page you on. I did a search for Tin Yat as a topic and came up with the following: Search "Tin Yat" on Dao Bums There are a lot of good posts here which should give some idea of what is going on with Yin Tat Taoism. The most important one is probably this one: Yin Tat Taoism by Yin Tat Taoist There are also a few on Mak Tin Si. In a funny example of self-reference, the first thread listed in the search is this one. To give some credit where credit is due, it was our former staff member Kar3n who found out that you could save searches like this, and it is a real useful technique for data mining on Dao Bums. Edit: Corrected link to Yin Tat Taoism

Can anyone tell me more about this Guy. I tried searching here to see if this System is Discussed here. Would this be considered a genuine lineage ? I'm posting the website and another video : https://www.tinyatdragon.com/

Mak Tin Si did some fabulous posts specifically about Chinese New Year and practices to prepare for that. Tin Yat, I would love to hear your perspective for Ghost Month, Moon day or any other upcoming Taoist calendar events. Thank you

Welp, that was fun while it lasted Tin Yat, you can stay with us, it's easy for mods to change your name, you just have to ask

I remember "Mak Tin Si" (Mak Jo Si) from when he used to post here a few years back, so after seeing this thread I was curious what he is up to now and did some searching on Tin Yat and Mak Jo Si and found this exchange going on in another forum. Read through the following thread on that forum. Mak Jo Si's and some of his sect member's comments are quite eye opening to say the least. I thought I was reading a copy of a script from Goodfellas or The Godfather there for a while. Mama mia! The thread starts off sounding fairly reasonable, but if you read right through the entire thread it really is an eye opener. Mak Jo Si or Tin Yat Lineage Taoism Q and A http://taouncut.forum.com.bz/t31-mak-jo-si-or-tin-yat-lineage-taoism-q-and-a

Breathing practices...depends on what you're practicing I should clear up a few definitions before I proceed. As I understand it, many schools perceive 'pre-heaven chi' as hormones, or genetic predispoition, that sort of thing. Pre-heaven chi, in our view, is a bit more complicated - it's the stuff that comes from outside the physical world as we see it. 'Post-heaven chi' is, of course, food and air, the stuff you take in physically after birth. We're on the same page there. For the cultivation of Taoist magic, we devlop our ability to tap into 'faat', which is a form of pre-heaven energy. Simply put, it's a pure energy source accessed from the Celestial Realm, made available to official members of the lineage. We access this through the use of spells - handsigns, fu, activated weapons, and the like. Our level of access is determined by a lot of factors - regular use of the magics, cultivation, adherence to our protocols - but this is not cultivated through breathing practices, because it comes from an extra-physical source. It's something we devlop through intention and use. Pre-heaven energies can also be drawn from outside of the earth - planetary energies, that sort of thing. But, our bodies aren't really designed to handle that without a proper filter in place, so it's not a good thing to do. It's like trying to breathe water - fine for fish, not so good for us. For post-heaven chi - most of us practice chi kung, but it isn't a requirement. Anyone of any religion can practice chi kung, so we don't think of it as a 'Taoist' practice in the religious sense. Meaning, it's good and it's encouraged, but you don't have to practice chi kung to be a Tin Yat Taoist. We aren't blazing new ground there, it's a lot of 'try it and see what works', you know how that goes. One breathing pattern that we do use a lot, we call it 'real chi breathing', is to inhale for four seconds, hold for one second, exhale for six seconds. We use this to blend and circulate chi.

Cheers Tin Yat Taoist, I don't like Tao Uncut but thanks for the info.

That is a really tough question to answer satisfactorily, but I'll do my best! When it comes to things like martial and healing arts, you are indeed correct - most of your results are immediately visible. That isn't always the case, though - anyone who's ever had to drink a particularly vile TCM tea for any length of time will know that you have to sometimes show patience and watch for results. With our magical cultivation, it has a lot to do with being tuned to your own perception, and evaluating your results immediately and over time. The immediate - particularly sensitive people, and people that have cultivated for a good length of time, will often feel sensations of heat - flashes of warmth, or even breaking into a sweat when working with magic. some feel tingles, some see flashes of light behind their eyes. Generally, if its the sort of thing you'd categorize as a 'yang' manifestation - heat, light, white, etc - it's a good thing. Cold, dark, sinking, yin - indicates a negative presence or influence, and is to be avoided. In the long term, you have to look at the progress of your life and well-being. As mentioned before, our magic is intended for spiritual cleaning, improving the souls and spirits, and as a consequence this sort of thing tends to make one's life flow smoother, makes decisions more clear, makes the right job easier to find, that sort of thing. If you look at the testimonials that have been put forth by some of the TIn Yat students, you can see this recurring theme - escaped a shitty job and got a much better one, found my way out of a bad relationship, things of that nature. I know that these are somewhat ephemeral descriptions, but part of the difficulty is in trying to explain something to someone who hasnt experienced it. How do you describe 'blue' to a blind man? I hope this helps, and feel free to ask for elaboration if there's a point I can help with.

Hello Tin Yat Taoist, Sounds like fun. Would make a great anime series. But I'm curious, how does your lineage distinguish reality from illusion (分真假)? And how do you verify your theory with reality (证明)? These are problems in any cultivation practice and one of the reasons so many daoists are drawn to martial and healing arts. Both fields provide plenty of humbling experiences that push a person to further refine their understanding. Failure makes a fertile substrate for progress. But in the case of exorcism, dieties, writing fu and other magical how do you know when you get it right and when you don't?

Marblehead - Okay, root premises. Please let me know if this helps, or if you would like elaboration or clarification at any point. Tin Yat is a conceptually modern Taoist lineage. While we respect historical Taoism, one of the problems we perceive is that it has been too often blended or taken entirely off course by Buddhist, Christian, Bon Po, and other influences. As I mentioned above, we believe that the path requires purity of intention to be effective and that's why we don't support the other religions. We don't have any particular problem with them, but we don't generally think they're on the right track. Our magical system reflects this idea. We are purifiers - we exorcise, we destroy spirits and negative energy, and we protect ourselves from those and from negative magic. We don't have offensive magics to use against people, but we can and do reflect ill-intended attacks back to their sources. Part of the modern concept of Tin Yat Taoism is that we do not restrict our cultivation and use of magical tools to the traditional swords, fu, etc. Airguns and flashlights are among the more common modern tools we use, and I respectfully submit that, if there had been access to our technology 2000+ years ago, the original Taoists would have happily included such things in their arsenal. In our lineage, the altar is perceived as a workspace, more like a mainframe terminal than a place of worship. Deities are perceived as influential beings that exist in another space or dimension, who are willing to assist us when asked politely. Sacrifices and worship are not required, just positive intention and respect. Like any other lineage, a person has to be a registered believer or member to have access to such things. Mak Jo Si and Lau Jo Si have also taken an approach that is a reverse of the common model of a Taoist temple: If you have a desire to learn and train in our magical system, a ton of information is free and available through the website, and they are happy to answer sincere, respectful questions and help the learning process. If you want them to provide you with their magical services, they charge for the fu. It seems reasonable to me, but I know there are people that disagree. I hope this was the sort of information you were looking for, feel free to ask if there's anything you'd like me to add or clarify!

Sorry I'm slow to respond today, life away from the net has been demanding. Marblehead - Wow, that's pretty open. give me a few minutes to formulate a response Leif - I perceive that first one as a difficulty of translation. What it boils down to for a member of the lineage such as myself, is that it is counterproductive to try and follow more than one path at a time. put equal parts gasoline, motor oil, and water into your gas tank, and the car isnt going anywhere. On a personal, not-a-spokesman level, my opinion is that you should try things out that seem right and see if they work for you. Tin Yat has worked well for me, and that's why I'm affiliated. In the official capacity, we aren't really going out of our way to research every path of every religion out there to verify them, since we have our path and it works fine for us. The recent kerfuffles regarding Luk Yam are from Mak Jo Si's personal experience and knowledge of their system. Second - You have to judge for yourself and see what seems right to you. I was pretty cautious when I first encountered Mak Jo Si myself, but he was patient and more than happy to answer questions for me. With Tin Yat, you can also start out at the 'registered believer' stage and see how it works out for you, no commitment, no strings attached. And at any stage in training and cultivation, you're free to leave if you feel that it's what you need to do. Third - you'd have to clarify what those two terms mean to you, for me to be able to answer that one clearly. That's his title in our lineage.

I only have three questions. According to the Bad Paths scripture (located on Chi in Nature website) authored by the Tin Yat ™ co-founder aka "cheerful and friendly 100% truly pure Taoism Master who hates evils" (and who is offering "100% effective with no side effects" services, that quite caught my interest), Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Bon Po and Hinduism (and tens of others) are all completely evil. Is Tin Yat ™ the only path that could possibly save me, or are there some paths that passed the scrutiny so far and that Tin Yat lineage accepts as non-evil if not equal? For those that can't afford long travel to Ontario at this time, can you as a Tin Yat ™ student offer some tips on how do they recognize real "100% truly pure Taoism Master" from all those available where they live? Is Mak Jo Si just a master or actually a celestial master (given his email address is celestialmastermak)?

My altar is in my bedroom, because it's the only place I have space in my current home, and actually happens to be oriented north. I agree about the privacy consideration - though we at Tin Yat don't have a formal policy one way or the other on that aspect, it's not something I want to have to explain to guests, or to have to deal with people poking at it.

Thanks for the opportunity! IF any of my answers arent clear enough or sufficient, just let me know. The Tin Yat lineage was co-founded in 2009 by Mak Jo Si and Lau Jo Si. Several longer-term members here may remember the former lineage, Ng Yin Do Pai, that had been formed in 2008. They had started it with the best of intentions, but determined that it was best to end that lineage and reform as Tin Yat. That situation is a bit more complicated, and if people really want I will do my best to explain it, but the short version is that negative influences early on had poisoned the process for them, and the best course of action was to cut it free and start over. 'Tin Yat' is Cantonese, spelled 天一 in Hanzi, and also pronounced 'Tian Yi' in Mandarin. It roughly translates as 'first in heaven'.