The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang (Part 4)

Continuing my discussion of the Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang, by Frank Allen and Tina Chunna Zhang, we turn to the chapter entitled "The Daoist Roots of Baguazhang."

The chapter can be summarized like this: Dong Haichuan and Liu Hung Chieh both studied with some unnamed Daoists and Daoists do meditation. Baguazhang practitioners do sitting, standing, and walking meditation, which must have come from these unnamed Daoists. See the problem yet?

In the second paragraph we read:

Apparently, these Daosits looked to their predecessors--the shaman founders of Chinese culture--for some of the patterns of their moving meditations. Some of the oldest texts relating to the study of the Dao have chronicled a few of the dance patterns of the legendary Yu, mythical father of Chinese Shamanism. The patterns of many of these Shamanistic practices were circles and spirals.

The connection of the Dance of Yu to baguazhang is one of those big multi-layered topics for another day. But I can at least point out what the authors don't; Da Yu (the Great Yu) was an exorcist. The reason he is considered the founder of Chinese culture is because 4000 years ago he toured the known world (the whole country) performing the first national exorcisms.



I grew up around a lot of Cantonese speaking kids. When they got mad they would shout "Fuk Da Yu!" which sounded so much like F--k Y-u! that we had a lot of fun saying it. It turns out that they were saying "A curse upon your ancestors." Yu is the mythic ancestor of all Chinese and his name has actually come to mean "ancestor!"

The authors present Professor Kang Gewu's thesis that the roots of baguazhang are to be found in a circle walking practice of the Longmen sect. The concept of "secularism" does not translate very well into Chinese. For instance, Catholicism and Protestantism have often been viewed by Chinese as completely different religions. The idea that Daoism has sects is foreign to Daoism itself. This notion adds somewhat to the confusion about baguazhang's daoist roots. If it's possible to be ordained in a Quanzhen monastery, go and study ritual with a Tianshi householder, and then go live in a Zhengyi hermit enclave on Mao Mountain--then these categories don't meet the definition of sects.

To the authors credit, Longmen (Dragon gate) is correctly identified as a later Daoist lineage (1656) of the Qing Dynasty which merged with Confucianism and promoted a public code of conduct for lay practitioners. (I think of it as decaf-Daoism. It would be very hard to figure out why people drink coffee everyday if the only kind you had ever tried was decaf.)

That's most of what the authors have to say about Daoism. At one point they describe the meditative goal of circle walking as, to "make heaven and earth reside within one's own body," thus joining our inner world with the outer world to become "One with the Dao." Thanks for that. Basic Chinese cosmology posits that we are a temporary contract between Heaven and Earth to hang out in a body for, give or take, 80 years. How does walking in a circle make that more or less true?

In the second half of this chapter, the authors describe in detail a method of "dissolving" taught by B.K. Frantzis. The method described here is great. The problem is that without contextualization, without some grasp of the view which inspired this method, there is a very high probability that the fruition of practice will be overlooked. (And that appears to be what happened.)

The method they describe has the goal of clearing "energy blockages" from the body so that we can store unlimited amounts of qi. I'm deeply familiar with this method but I don't personally like to think of myself as being full of energy blockages, whatever that means. Frankly, the method is not very important.

My intension is not to sound dismissive, by all means, clear out those energy blocks! But taking a step back, isn't that what I am-- a big old energy blockage. To all my fellow energy blockages out there (this means you, dear reader) I say this: Respect yourself, lighten up, and trust your experience. You'll figure it out.

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The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang (Part 3)

Chapter 6 is a translation with commentary on the Bagauzhang Classics. If someone actually thought these ideas worth putting into poetry, I should hope that an effort would be made to make them sound like poetry in English. Maybe the problem is in the original, I can't tell. The book doesn't give enough background about these classics for me to know if I should take them seriously. They don't say much. The Taiji Classics where written for the advanced student, but these classics seem more rudimentary. Usually poetry is multi-layered, but if there is a second layer to these classics, the translation hides it. Why are we writing songs about martial arts anyway? In an age of video, a martial arts song better have some substance.
Here is a song about martial arts worth singing. "bmm bmm bmm...another one bites the dust."

Still, I'm going to study the classics. I can't help it. But I find myself wishing they said something different. Here is a fun one (#33). The Chinese title is "not-two-natural-principle" The authors' translated it "Accuracy Method.":

Do not shoot an arrow without a target,
Shoot again if the target is missed.
Even if he moves like a ghost,
I catch the evil spirit in no time.

The authors commentary interprets this to mean be accurate, wait rather than strike blindly. If you strike and miss, you leave yourself open. If you do miss, keep striking constantly until you win.
This was worth putting into poetry? A jade-maiden just whispered this in my ear, perhaps it is an improvement:

Baguazhang is an art without arrows or targets;
If something can be missed once, it can be missed again.
Even if my opponent is already committed to his own death,
No time or distance separates us.

Here is another one from the book (#31):

Blocking is a skill of protecting,
To avoid attacks with a casual attitude.
When the distance is more than inches away,
Skills are useless and power will not be effective.

The commentary says it means blocking is important and should be casual and effortless. Be close enough to block, if you are too far away you won't be in control.

Oh, I feel another tickle in my ear. She says write!

If blocking works, it's not a real fight.
It's not my intension to melt,
I simply have nothing to protect.
Wolves bite flesh, not air.

The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang (Part 2)

Here I continue my commentary on The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang, by Frank Allen and Tina Chunna.
The first section of the book is called "The Origins of Ba Gua Zhang: A Blend of History and Legend." It is the most complete collection of stories about baguazhang that I've seen. It follows all the various lineages down from Dong Haichuan. Wow, how do I put this? Writing should be like fighting a war. I fell asleep six times reading this section.

Still I found lots of material that was new to me. I didn't know that Wang Shujin spent a year studying with Wang Xiangzai, the founder of Yiquan. Hong Yixinag and Wang Shujin Yi were both members of the Yi Guan Dao religious society. "The outer teaching of the sect revolved around the belief that Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity are all different expressions of the same universal and unwavering Dao, while the esoteric teaching of the sect involved various qi gong and other energy practices. " Wang was a Yi Guan Dao leader and thus fled with the Nationalists to Taiwan in 1948.

This section has lots of interesting material I didn't know before. I think my frustration with it stems from that fact it wavers between the encyclopedic tracking of all the various bagua masters, and stories about them. Should I memorize these stories? Is there some teaching point behind them? Does this history mean anything?

I know a reason these histories are important. If you go into any park in the morning, anywhere in the world where there are people practicing Chinese martial arts, and do your baguazhang, people will come up to you and ask where you learned. They will probably trace you back to a common gongfu ancestor with someone else in the park. Chances are good that they will ask you to perform and that if you have been taught correctly you will refuse twice, saying each time that you really are not good enough, that you would only embarrass your teacher, and that only your teacher's teacher was really great. But the third time they ask you, it becomes your duty to perform. The benefit of this is that after you perform you can point to anyone who was watching and they will obligated to show their stuff. It's kind of like a drinking game with your "new family."
There is also another reason. Many of us want to know how our individual style got its characteristics. The authors do a good job of tracing this "progress" or "decline" (which ever you prefer) from Dong Haichuan. However; where Dong Haichuan learned his Baguazhang is at this point, just a bunch of ledgends and unconvincing theories.

Frank Allen's main teacher is B.K. Frantzis and since I also do his style of Baguazhang, we have the same lineage through Frantzis to Liu Hengjie (Liu Hung Chieh).

In the section on forms (p. 87-88) the Authors explain why Liu Hung Chieh didn't teach a Baguazhang form and why his style is not orthodox Yinfu or Cheng Tinghua:

While still in his teens, Liu Hung Chieh became the disciple of bagua master, Liu Zhenlin. Liu Hung Chieh furst studied with Liu Zhenlin when Liu was teaching in the school of Cheng Tinghua's son Cheng Youlung and Dong Haichuan's student Liu Dekuan. Liu Zhen Lin was a famous fighter and bodyguard who first studied bagua under Yin Fu's student Liu Yongqing (who was a close friend and training partner of Yin Fu's top student, Ma Gui). The young Liu Zhenlin learned all of his basic bagua from these two masters, but his teachers brought him to bow before and become the disciple of court minister Liang Zhaiwen; in this way, Liu Zhenlin received entry into the third generation of bagua masters, which was the same generation as his foundation teachers. Liang Zhaiwen was a military man who had been the chief guard at the most important fire gate on the Great Wall before becoming a court minister. Due to Liang's position in lthe court, his association with the palace eunuch servant Dong Haichuan was not widely known until after Liang's death. Because he was the top student of Liu Zhenlin, it is same to asume that young Liu Hung Chieh also received training under his teacher's gongfu "uncles," Liu Yongqing and Ma Gui.

I am indebted to the authors for supplying this history even if my regular readers are likely to find it on the boring side. I promise to spice things up in the next couple of posts!

The authors go on to say that Liu Hung Chieh spent many years studying Daoist Circle Walking Meditation which influenced the development of his style of practice and teaching. In my opinion, someone, very possibly Liu, studied Daoist exorcism, not just circle walking. From my experience of Daoist exorcism it is a more likely source for the diverse phyiso-spirit knowledge that Liu passed on to B.K. Frantzis, (even if I'm the only one who thinks so.)
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The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang

Let me begin by saying that books are very important to me. My books are like my relatives, each staring down at me with their own ideas and expectations for me. And like relatives, there are those that I would prefer to see only once a year on Thanksgiving. That being said, I have a whole shelf of martial arts books that make me feel uncomfortable and for whom I am embarrassed.

I love baguazhang. When I pick up a book about it, an intense struggle begins. For the last month I have been struggling with The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang, The Art and Legends of the Eight Trigram Palm by Frank Allen and Tina Chunna Zhang. I wish I could write an objective review of it, but I care too much. If you love baguazhang, you need this book. It is clearly one of the best books on the subject written in English.

I'm going to spend a few days talking about the book, but more importantly the book is a good jumping off point for my own ideas.

Since it is late, and I haven't published a blog all day, let me begin with the superficial.

Frank Allen can really manifest the different qi qualities of the various palm changes but that doesn't really come across in the photos. Photos of applications are of little use, applications must be felt because in Baguazhang they rely not on the movements, or which foot is where, but on the quality of movement in contact with an active opponent. To photograph it well would take a very skillful photographer who understood what they were trying to capture. Also, what is the point of photos of a bagua form? Or in this case three forms. I don't get it. Nobody can learn a bagua form from a book. A book like this should be a collaboration with a great photographer or the photos should be left out.

I asked a non-martial artist what she thought of the picture of Frank Allen with all the tattoos doing roushou with B.K. Franzis and she said, "Oh, is he a Hells Angel?" So I showed her the picture in the back of Frank with his reading glasses on and she said, "He looks like a guy in the advanced stages of Wise Man Syndrome." So if the authors were shooting for funny, they got funny. (Note to Frank, I think it's the hair.)

If you practice Baguazhang, buy the book and we'll talk about it more tomorrow.

Grip

I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the way to the mountains last month. I checked the oil and it was pretty low so I bought a couple of quarts. I worked in a gas station when I was 14 so I know some tricks for getting a good grip, but my engine was really hot and the oil cap wouldn't budge. I went looking around in my trunk for someway to get more leverage and came up empty. I felt my manhood was being challenged. Just then a thick stocky man, about 6 inches shorter than me said, "Can I give you a hand." I'm sure I looked embarrassed but then I looked at his hands and they were clearly twice the size of mine, his fingers were as thick as cigars. "Sure, uhh...thanks" I said, and he unscrewed it. I asked where he got such huge hands and he said it was his Scottish ancestry.

Bone crushing power like that can not be trained.

I've been looking around the internet for a good picture of a bundle of chopsticks used for developing twisting power and grip strength. I don't see one, but I've done a fair bit of this type of training and I recommend it.

Grabbing is often considered inferior to striking or throwing because if my hands are closed around my opponent's body they aren't free for fighting. In a one-on-one match if someone grabs my wrist, I still have my hand free.

But that's generalizing, in reality there are many different types of grabbing that are effective.

If your grip is strong and well placed it can cause a lot of pain and injury or death to your opponent. For this type of grip to work your wrist, elbow and shoulder must be free to move, not rigid. Your nails must lengthen out like a cats claws with the intent to pierce the skin. The two smallest fingers are actually the strongest part of one's grip for holding, but the two larger fingers combined with the thumb are often superior for piercing.

In Taijiquan the movement "Cai" or plucking is a type of very light grabbing used only when your opponent is already leaning. Cai uses the two larger fingers with the thumb to move you partner on a 45 degree angle toward the ground. It requires no strength training, just sensitivity and clear intention (yi).
Likewise, good grappling technique does not require strength, it is all about positioning and timing. If I get you in a hold it's because I'm sensitive and you've made yourself vulnerable; it can't be planned unless one is using a surprise attack. If I've got you in a hold I can increase the pain or brake the joint with little effort. If I don't have you in the hold, strength isn't going to help me get there.

Half grips are used a lot to suddenly jerk your opponent. Done well these can cause dislocations, but they don't require that you hold on to your opponent, so a light grip works fine.

Curved fingers are used for plucking tendons. This technique is like a grab but the hand doesn't usually close.

What is important about a grip is that it connects to your torso. Twisting a bundle of chopsticks is a good technique for developing this because you are effectively twisting one arm against the other and the two arms meet in the torso where the real power should come from. You can do a simular thing with two hands on a spear.

I also practice a light dynamic grip by using a jian (double edged sword) with a slippery handle.

To develop the ability to inflict pain, you need a willing partner who lets you know what really hurts and what doesn't. You can also practice on yourself to some extent.

Making fists correctly will really develop your hands and improve your grabbing skills. If you don't practice making fists all day long, you're probably not a martial artist. It is painful to hold a solid, tightly packed fist for five minutes unless your technique is good. If it hurts, it is wrong (the spirits have left the body.)

Grabbing should be relaxed. When your hand closes it should feel like your whole torso is wrapping around something, all your organs and big muscles should support the movement. Developing Popeye forearms is a waste of time.

The Re-generative Cycle

Here is a concept from Chinese Medicine which has a lot of currency for internal martial artists.

The body has two cycles: A generative cycle which is operative whenever we are active, and a re-generative cycle which is operative when we are sleeping and resting.

First I should remind everyone that people cultivate Qi in four ways: Eating, Moderate Exercise, Sleeping, and Resting.

The generative cycle uses up qi, if we stay in the generative cycle we will slowly get more and more tired until, if we are still healthy, the re-generative cycle grabs us and throws us on the couch. If for some reason we don't have an opportunity to rest our reserves of Qi called Yuan Qi, or original Qi, start getting used. This is what people sometimes call "getting their second wind." If we habitually tap into our reserves of original Qi, it often leads to insomnia, and then slow degeneration; the body's ability to store and distribute fluids becomes impaired leading to weakening of the teeth and spine, loss of flexibility, and eventually death (a final return to the re-generative cycle).

OK, that was grim. But remember sleeping and rest allow our bodies to re-generate so that we don't expend Yuan Qi. Eating, Exercising, sleeping, and resting are all essential. A change in one of the four will produce noticeable changes in the other three.

So where do internal martial arts fit in? If practiced correctly they fall in between exercise and rest. It is possible to practice in such a way that you move between the generative and re-generative cycles. The long term effect of daily practice is that you can easily start up the re-generative cycle while you are in slow motion, doing simple tasks, like making tea, or taking a stroll.

More on this soon: Internal Arts and Death

I got the Art work above from Jamie J. Rice, check it out

Philosophy of Fear

Imagine you are a wolf, or some other predator, who is absolutely terrified. Not just passing fear, but the kind of fear that colors everything. Tree branches could fall on you at at any moment, the sun burns and dehydrates, the night freezes. Even the air you breath is frightening.

When you enter a fight, it is with total fear. You must kill to survive, but because everything is experienced through fear, nothing is treasured, and there is nothing to defend. You fight because you are afraid, but you are no more afraid of this opponent than you are of your own mother.

The entire universe is out to get you. Because every centimeter of your being is fear, there is no way to tense up. Fear has already permeated everything.

This is one path to Dao. It is the path of the Shaman-warrior, who charges off into battle, Baguazhang style, with a deadly poisonous five-steps-down snake in each hand.

Contrast all this with total transcendence. The vision you hold of the cosmos has become so expansive that the entire human race's existence is less than a mite on a fleas ear. You experience yourself, not in terms of your own birth and death, but as part of this gigantic, unfathomable, limitlessness.

For you a fight is no different than walking or riding a bicycle. You are utterly fearless because your own death is no more significant than anyone, or anything, else's. Because your detachment is so complete, you have nothing to defend.

This is another path to Dao. It is the path of perfection, it is how gods are made.

What if you didn't know why you are here? or where you are going? What if fear came up and then dispersed easily? What if transcendence came and went like the clouds? What if not knowing were actually the only constant? What if you were just normal?

When you fight it is a dance. You treasure every bit of flying dust, every rotating muscle, the ground and the sky. You use no technique at all. Because you accept not being able to control the future, you have no need for intermediaries, like technique, strategy, or even hope. Your only tool is intimacy.
This is called the path of wuwei, it is also a path to Dao.

"You have no doubt heard of those who are good at nourishing life."

Appetite and Discipline

One of the biggest challenges of being a teacher is that students are always trying to get me to equivocate. For instance, I say, "Practice standing completely still for one hour early in the morning, everyday, before you eat breakfast."

Some student will always want to know what will happen if they don't? I usually answer, "Sifu will kill you!" But they always laugh, and then ask what if they only stand for 20 minutes? or do it in the evening? or every other day?

The truth is, I don't know. I've always practiced the whole thing, without equivocation. I can guess or I can ask other teachers. But honestly, what I really know is what I've practiced. The reason I don't stop practicing is because I have a real appetite to practice as much as I do. I stand in the morning for the same reason I eat in the morning.

There is another way, and I've used it on solo retreats. It is called the Wandering of the Mare. I have several artist friends who live this way all the time. They eat when they are hungry, they sleep when they are sleepy, they paint, or read, or call up a friend totally spontaneously whenever they feel like it. I'm never surprised to hear that they have been up all night painting.

On a solo retreat, I'm the same way, I sleep until there is absolutely no more feeling to sleep, and then I close my eyes one more time to make sure. I sit still, or stand still, or walk the Baguazhang circle, until I'm done. No schedule, no limits.

But most of us work for a living. We have people to coordinate with.  We have to at least try to stay awake during meetings. Five days a week we have to get the kids off to school with a good breakfast and matching socks.

Hermits and anyone on a long, private retreat, can freely follow their appetites. Many of the most potent and profound Chinese disciplines were created by hermits. What to a hermit is natural discipline, may seem to us, living as we do in the world with other peoples needs and expectations, like "militaristic discipline." To spontaneously follow one's personal appetite(s) is to be in an on-again, off-again, conflict with the social world.

We might do better to think of Taijiquan, Baguazhang etc... as the "ritual resetting" of our appetites.  By "winding" us back to zero once a day, they allow us to follow our appetites spontaneously--within the social world.

Eyes and Baguazhang (continued)

In the fourth Palm Change (zhen), the eyes smoothly transition back and forth between looking far off into the distance and zeroing in on a point, like clouds forming and then dispersing and then forming again.

In the fifth Palm Change (li) the eyes are trained not to respond to, or get drawn off when arms come in and out of the field of vision. This is done by circling the arms in the coronal plane, while turning and walking. It is also used for training us to not blink when bursts of air or hands come suddenly toward the eyes.

In the sixth palm change (kan) the eyes do the same thing they do in the third palm change, but instead of spinning the body, the head looks spontaneously form side to side, creating a similar blur or whirl effect while doing the palm change.

Again, it is easy to imagine these uses of the eyes becoming different types of possession. The fourth, taken to extremes is what people who are manic look like after not sleeping for a few days.

The eyes of the fifth are important for any type of fighting, but would be dangerous walking through brush because we need to close our eyes quickly if a branch is snapping toward them. I know of an old Gongfu master who worked bank security and kept a bit of metal-filings dust in his pocket to throw in peoples eyes if necessary. Better hope your blink reflex is operating if that happens. Taken to a possessed extreme, these are the bug eyes we sometimes see on crazy people.

The eyes of the sixth can be many things, among them an Exorcist head spinning type of effect, also seen in African and Chinese possessions.

If it is not obvious already, there is some danger in trying these yourself. The danger is minor as long as you:

1. Are relaxed, the eyes should never ever feel like they are doing work.
2. Understand that you are learning what not to do.
3. Are comfortable trying to be just below average.
4. Know in your heart that cultivating weakness is O.K. because we humans are strong enough already.

Eyes and Baguazhang

As most readers know, when we practice baguazhang we walk a circle, sometimes around a tree or a pole. If one is practicing different ways of changing direction on the circle, as opposed to a form or routine, we call this "practicing the changes" or practicing "palm changes."

There are many different ways of organizing information into categories so that it can be remembered by students. By putting teachings into categories it makes them easier to remember (especially for the illiterate, or when what you are practicing might be illegal). Thus in some schools of Baguazhang all the teachings are divided into 8 categories. Each of the 8 categories has one Mother Palm and an assortment of teachings and variations, sometimes called qi transmissions.

The teaching about the eyes for the first Palm Change (Chien) is one I have described in earlier posts. It is to look into the distance with relaxed eyes. If you do this with your hand up while walking around a pole, you will see two illusions. One, the hand will appear double, and two, the pole will look like it is turning on its own.

The teaching about the eyes for the second Palm Change (kun) is that the eyes relax and draw in. Like I described predictor eyes in a previous post.  If you use this type of gaze to move toward someone it feels like they are getting closer to you, as if you were drawing them in. This is a subtle but important distinction. Usually when we walk toward someone we have a sense of our body getting closer to them, predator eyes are intrusive.

In the third Palm Change (xun), we practice spinning. While we are spinning we relax the eyes so that they don't catch or focus on any one thing, even at the moment when we stop spinning, or change direction. This means we are practicing becoming comfortable with the whirl or blur of the world passing by. The moment one locks on to something with their eyes, they have to keep repeating that, or they will get dizzy.

(Dancers and acrobats generally use a different technique something called "spotting," which means they focus intently on a point and then whip around to see that point again. One can also whip around from a point to another pre-chosen point. In North Indian Classical Dance we would "spot" on all four walls, spinning one and a quarter turn between each split-second turn. This cool effect was sometimes used to create the illution of a multi-armed, multi-headed deity.")

Normally our eyes are changing all the time. It's easy to imagine meeting someone whose eyes are continuously suspended in one of these patterns. If you saw someone gazing far off into the distance as they were getting on a bus, you'd wonder if they were seeing paradise just a bomb blast away. This is a yang use of the eyes, and is associated with, among other things, heroic martyrs.

I described the yin eyes of the second palm change in the brutalized assassin I mentioned in an earlier post on eyes.

Everyone is familiar with the eyes of the third palm change, it's what happens when we drink too much alcohol. Drinking alcohol and spinning, or dancing in a circle, until one falls down is a staple method of shamanic practice used to contact spirits in many parts of the world.

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