Impulse Control

This is such a good title, I wish I had content that would live up to its promise. Still, I couldn't resist.

My simple offering is that we need impulse control to be successful, but we also need spontaneity. Teachers and students alike can find themselves mourning a loss of wildness, begrudgingly exchanged for the ability to focus, concentrate and persist.

Martial arts are often rightly credited with the ability to instill discipline in the unruly youth-- to curb desires and focus passions-- to turn libertines into responsible citizens.

I myself have often been sited for my patience and my self-disciplined example. Yet, I'm prone to identifying with the indolent prince, the artful dodger, and the easy life.

Daoism, despite its intricacies and difficult methods, has been called an apophatic tradition. Which means it teaches by unteaching, it reveals by showing what is not so, rather than what is so.

So, with Taijiquan (and other internal arts) it is said that all movement initiates from the dantian (the belly region?). To actual do this requires extraordinary impulse control. Why? Because impulses are how we initiate movement. Any impulse which originates in another part of the body will impede the one true impulse from the dantian.

One might even say that tension itself is a rouge impulse stuck in the "on" position. This is usually stated in the positive: "relax," "let go," "melt." But the actual "doing" is "not doing." This "not doing" takes years to undevelop, and comes with a simple guarantee; you can only get as much as you are willing to give up.

In the end all good teachers transmit the idea that the worthwhile result of impulse control is freedom itself.

So people sometimes ask me, "What does qi feel like?" It can be understood as an anti-feeling, a sensation of constant, unbroken, impulse control.

Climate Change Daoism

The idea of environmental stewardship has found it's way into Daoist discourses many times in history. Conservation is a Daoist precept and has often found its way into government policy decisions over the long history of Daoism's relationship with the state. This is not a human centered enviornmentalism, and because of that, Daoist have sometimes found themselves on the "wrong" side of population debates.

Still, many Daoist precepts have a personal/collective conservation ethic: For instance, "Own only one pair of shoes," "do not set fire to uncultivated fields of mountain forests," "improperly pick flowers or fell trees," "throw poisons into the sea, lakes, ponds, or rivers," "do not frighten birds or animals..."

So it was with great interest that I read this news article:

Something unprecedented happened in China in late October. It may not have been as glitzy spectacular as the Olympics in Beijing over the summer. It did not attract heads of state or world celebrities. But it possibly leave a more lasting imprint on the future of China and indeed the world.

Taoist masters from all over China gathered near the ancient capital of Nanjing to agree on a seven-year plan for climate change action. Anybody with minimal knowledge of China will immediately understand that this is more than a curiosity.....

snip...

Fourth, the Taoists are walking the walk. Over the last year or so they have installed solar panels on half of their thousands of temples around China and the job will be completed soon for all their sacred places. They are providing comprehensive guidance on all aspects of environmental and climate stewardship: water and land management, protection of biological diversity, energy efficiency of buildings, educational curricula, moral teachings, outreach through media and advocacy to business, etc. They will use their Seven-Year Plan to make a holistic and systematic contribution to climate responsibility and environmental stewardship in China. The perspective goes beyond seven years. The ambition is to change the course for generations to come. Because the Taoists plan to be around for quite a while longer, continuing their sacred cosmic dance that transcend time and space.

Then I read this comment at the bottom:

In order to save the environment, first you must realize the truth: that there is no global warming. Then, it is not the environment which is changed, but your mind.

There is a Daoist precept against challenging the veracity of local cults. The wuwei approach to politics is all about spin. Pollution and filth are reason enough to get together and issue a policy statement on the environment. Daoist have been dealing with apocalyptic cults who claim human conduct is the reason the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket since the first century CE. Notice, there is no quote from a Daoist claiming doom is here, now!

More Spirit

The other day I was playing the role of interpretor for George Xu and a boxer who was writing about him. George gave the expression "More Spirit Defeats Less Spirit," as a fundamental martial arts principle-- a principle true for all martial arts.

Now most of my readers will recognize right away that the term "Spirit" here is a translation of the term Shen, in Chinese. But anyone that tells you a particular Chinese word has only one meaning, probably doesn't know. Shen is one of those words which is sometimes used vaguely to bolster a teacher or a doctor's authority. "Do you feel the shen?" "Does he look like he has more shen now" (asked of observers after the treatment/performance). (I wrote about this idea here, the idea comes from Elizabeth Hsu, The Transmission of Chinese Medicine.)

Anyway, at first we thought George was talking about something very obvious. We thought he meant ferociousness, apparent psychic or physical superiority, a kind of prowess. Like for instance, if Mike Tyson got in the ring with Pee Wee Herman--Pee Wee would be instantly overwhelmed by Mike Tyson's spirit.

But that's not what George meant. If I didn't have a background in Daoism, I don't think I would have understood him. What he meant is that a fighter or a predator, can defeat another predator by being able to embody a wider, more encompassing focus.

A predator like a Cheetah who is focused simply on the hunt, has a plural focus. He senses movement, perhaps even the heart beat of the prey. He senses the wind and the shadows, and is careful not to let the prey see, hear, or smell him...until it is too late.

But a predator, like a lion for instance, hunting the cheetah while the cheetah is hunting a deer, will have a more plural focus. In addition to awareness of the deer's movement, the wind and the shadows, he is also making sure the cheetah doesn't see, hear or smell him.

The process of being a great hunter/fighter in this sense, is to effortlessly integrate more aspects of one's awareness. As the Huainanzi puts it, "While traveling-- to be the last one to leave camp in the morning, packing up the kitchen; and the first one to greet everyone as they straggle into the next camp in the evening... with hot water boiling on the stove." (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but you get the idea.)

In mathematical terms: The equation with more factors, is more advanced.

But why would this be called "spirit" or shen? A plural focus means to have a better sense of space, better active and dynamic spacial awareness. When George was trying to explain this, it suddenly struck me that he meant spirits plural, not spirit singular. Perhaps what George Xu should have said was: The fighter with more spirits, defeats the fighter with fewer spirits!

If I'm trapped in a room with 5 attackers, my superior spacial awareness will be tracking and adapting to all 5 attackers simultaneously. There is both a plural aspect to it and a singular aspect.

In Daoist ritual, a priest commands Spirit Troops. These Spirit Troops are both visualized and spatially felt. They surround the priest and answer to his or her commands, marching, running, charging, swirling in chaos, or standing at attention.

The highest ranking priest can have a maximum number of 75 Spirit Troops at his or her command. In the case of a married couple who are both Daoist priests of the highest rank with 75 Spirit Troops each--they are able to share their troops, so they can command up to 15O.

So here we have another clear example of high level internal martial arts being linked to Daoist ritual practice.

(I just spent about 45 minutes looking around for references on my bookshelf so that people could further explore what I just said. They are there but I didn't find them, man...Google is so much easier. Here is a site with a lot of cool stuff about Chinese religion: Singapore Paranormal Investigation. Here is a page from that site which explains Zhuxi's ideas about guishen [I believe the same term I'm using for "Spirit Troops," but maybe someone can correct me, or I'll find a good reference next time I have the time to look. Also the picture of guishen above came from that same site.)

A 160 Pound Bone Hammer!

The quest for power is endless.

However; we all know that no matter how frivolous or fruitless the quest for power becomes, people will still seek it.

The sacrifices we make in the pursuit of power are not small, and the likelihood of eventually becoming possessed is high. That's what power does, it possesses.

This is true of all sorts of power, including the most basic type: physical power. That's why demons in Chinese art are so often shown with "great" muscle definition.

Daoist precepts, which preclude the invention of internal martial arts, strongly discourage the development of physical power. Why? Because these precepts require us to be honest about just how strong we actually are-- from the beginning!

It is only through the quest for power that we come to think of ourselves as weak, or insufficient. Humans are naturally very strong.

Pure internal martial arts completely discard the idea of muscle force. They completely discard the idea that any form of exertion is necessary to generate force.

My hand, balled up into a tight fist, is mostly bone. So is my elbow, and so is the heal of my foot. I weigh a little under 160 pounds. If I can move, propel, rotate or swing my entire body weight and strike an opponent with all one hundred and sixty pounds concentrated at a single point, using my bony fist--what need do I have for muscle strength?

Even a 40 pound bone hammer can bring down most men with a single blow. Don't even waste your energy trying to image a 160 pound bone hammer, it's just too much force.

Relatively speaking, force generated from muscle exertion is pretty wimpy.

If you get possessed by the idea of being able to generate a lot of force; consider that time spent trying to move freely as a single integrated unit has a much bigger pay off than any muscle-force training.

A 160 pound bone hammer pay off.

Note: This post is a riff on Master George Xu's recient claim that he is a 160 pound bone hammer!

Second Note: The picture at the top of this post is from the Film "Hebrew Hammer," very funny, I recommend it! Shana Tova!!! (Yom Kippur starts tonight.)

And also I forgot to wish everyone a happy Double Nine Day (last Sunday)--It's Daoist New Year!!! and it's traditional to eat venison.

Practicing Internal Arts Will Shorten Your Life!

Continuing on the previous post "The Real Purpose of Internal Arts," I would like to say clearly for the record, Internal Martial Arts will shorten your life.

Why?  You thought they were good for your health didn't yah? Not a chance.  Yang Chenfu, the most famous Taijiquan Master of the 20th Century died at like 54.  Many Internal Masters have died in their 50's.  They were all too fat.  Many internal martial artists have died from fighting injuries and venereal diseases too.

Lets get this clear.  Practicing Internal Martial Arts does not make you a good person.  If you are a ruffian goon, you will live and die like a ruffian goon.  If you think you are practicing everyday for some future attack, to fend off some wild assailant, that view will determine the type of fruition available to you.

Even if you practice the highest level art, with the most supreme teacher, your view will still determine what results your practice produces.  The constant search for power and superiority will shut out the other types of fruition that these arts were in fact created to reveal.

The problem is that modern Masters have been cut off from their own roots, they have historic amnesia.   I know all these history book writers keep telling us that Internal Martial Arts were created by professional fighters because their jobs as bodyguards or mercenaries required it.  Poppy-cock!  It's just not possible.  Why would someone weaken themselves if they were facing actual violent adversity on a daily basis?

No, the Internal Martial Arts were developed by people who had already cultivated a subtle body; a weak, sensitive, feminine (yes I said that), humble, yielding,  and desireless physicality.  A body cultivated with the idea that lack of pretense is not only a moral way of being; but a moral way of moving.

This is not the morality of being good. This type of morality is based on being real.

The Daoist practice of being real produces freedom and spontaneity (ziran). The inspiration to create from that "body" has led to experiments in every walk of life. 

In every realm of living-- effortlessness, naturalness, and the complete embodiment of an animated cosmos, found a way into peoples' daily lives, into the sacred and the mundane.

If you just practice any of the Internal Martial Arts or Qigong you will probably get fat.  Why?  Because these arts were created from a "body" that was incredibly efficient.

When you begin training martial arts, especially if you start in your 20's or younger, you will automatically work hard, and over do it.  When we are young we have too much qi in our channels.  All we can really do with that extra qi is waste it.  Hopefully we blow it off in ways that won't leave a perminant mark on our bodies.

When working hard and training hard, we naturally need to eat a lot.  But if you seriously practice Internal Martial Arts or Qigong, you will become more efficient in your movement and you will have to be disciplined about eating less. If you do that, your appetite intelligence (your spleen function in Chinese Medicine) will become much more discerning. It will tell you what is good for you to eat, and how much is the appropriate portion.  You will be able to trust your appetite(s).

In addition, your digestive system itself will become more efficient over time.  Your body will extract more nutrients from less food.  If, however, you fail to regularly and consistently reassess your appetite, you will over eat-- and you will get fat.

Improved digestion and movement efficiency will happen simply from practicing any Internal Martial Arts method, it makes no difference what you think or what you believe.  But the fruition I'm calling "appetite sensitivity" will only develop if your view is that you are cultivating weakness.

Boom and bust fitness routines, like Boot Camps, are one of the worst thing a person interested in developing a subtle body could do.  Your appetite sensitivity will shrivel up and fall off.

The Five Healing Sounds

I recently got this interesting question from a reader.

I'm interested in the subject of voice: of resonance/vibration and its relation to Qi, chakras (is there a Traditional Chinese Medical term for energy centers?), meditation, inner insight, and states of consciousness.

Joseph F. Morales has written an excellent summary in which he compares what various modern Qi-jocks call the Five (or Six) Healing Sounds. But since none of these Qi-jocks seem to have a clue where these sounds came from or what they were originally used for, I'll take a stab at it.

The first needle an acupuncturist inserts in any treatment protocol is referred to as, "Calling the Qi to Order." This has a direct parallel in Daoist ritual. To begin (after days of preparations), the Daoshi (priest) visualizes massive demon armies in an unlimited chaotic torrent of violence. She then lets out a high pitch sound "Calling the Qi to Order." Through out the ritual there are other loud calls accompanied by ritual actions and visualizations which command the demon troops to do her bidding in the service of wuwei. [Wuwei is often translated as "not doing" or "non-aggression," even "without artifice." The term as I use it here takes on a cosmological quality. That quality is most succinctly defined as the teachings of Laojun (the iconized author of the Daodejing, Laozi).]

The so called Highest Clarity (Shangjing) Daoist movement took shape during the Tang Dynasty. One of the things it accomplished was the integration of internal alchemy with external ritual. This is a massive topic. My reason for bringing it up is to say that yes, Daoism has equivalents of the Chakras, but it also has 100,000 other things, categories, spaces, and organizations of the inner world. (I promise to pick a few to describe in future posts.)

Where did Daoism get these "Calls to Order" used in ritual? Obviously, one source would be warfare itself. A commander had to be able to make earsplitting sounds to command troops on the field. This ability in and of itself could be considered having strong Qi. If we go back to an earlier era, Shaman-Kings command troops and ruled through both their martial and spirit controlling prowess. In our era, Shaman are no longer kings (unless you count Sarah Barracuda?) but we still have people who are experts at controlling spirits. Spirit Mediums, called Wu in Chinese, also use sounds to call, to command, to signal entrance or exit of a spirit from a possessed person, and probably many other functions I don't understand.

This vocal skill has also survived and flourished in Chinese Opera, which itself follows some of the protocols of Daoist ritual and has some roots in shamanic clowning.

Thus I dare say, healing sounds have been used for a long time. Especially if you consider healing to be the banishing or rectifying of Yin Spirits. So the modern Qigong (or Qi-jock if you prefer) practice of using the five healing sounds has a wonderful historic precedent they don't really want you to understand.

Did Traditional Chinese doctors sometimes cross the lines into performance or exorcism? Yes they did. A doctor might prescribe making a forceful "HA" sound a few times a day to clear heat from the liver (Heat is the body's healthy response to decaying yin, it only becomes pathological over long periods of time.) They also might make particular sound vibrations to stimulate (move) or calm Qi within the a patient's body. (This is a highly specialized skill which a few talented people may be able to use clinically in conjunction with other methods.)

But something is missing from this discussion, big time! Singing is the most common and most potent way to use sound for healing-- And to curse someone, I might add.

One reason the Chinese invented the idea of Qi is that it separated the health giving aspects of singing from the enmity maintained by singing songs about the terrible things neighboring tribes did to your people in the past. If you want to bring a lot of very different ethnic groups together to fight for a larger nation, why not have them breathe together rather than have them sing their traditional, division creating, songs.

So my advise to people interested in The Five Healing Sounds would be to avoid the qigong hysteria. I would also advise avoiding spirit mediums, unless you already have one in the family. If you can find a master Chinese Opera vocalist, he can to teach you how to sing from the different organs. Chinese Opera vocal training is likely to blow your mind.

If you are not in a place with Chinese Opera, a traditional African vocalist may be able to teach you the same thing. I took a class years ago from a Congolese vocalist whose first lesson was about how to sing from different organs. He said that to sing a song correctly one had to know which organ(s) it was emanating from. He also gave us visualization for the songs.

And if you don't have a traditional African vocalist nearby, perhaps you can find a Love Church in a black neighborhood! Their vocal choirs move large amounts of qi down there every Sunday.

When I studied modern dance with Sara Shelton Mann back in the early 90's, part of our warm-up was to use specific sounds to vibrate different parts of our bodies, starting with "nnngg" to vibrate the center of the head and ending with a deep "ooooo" to vibrate the tail bone. She got that material from Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen whose workshops I took last May and June. Bonnie currently uses these vocalizations to activate specific glands and other parts of the endocrine system. Her studies were originally inspired by a 1960's understanding of Yoga and Daoism, but she has taken those ideas and made them more specific and precise than any vocalization teachings I have encountered from Asia.

Gaining Control

A female friend of mine was recently attacked by a crazed crackhead half block from her house.  He was big and he kicked her in the ribs.

She thought her ribs were broken, she feared for her life, and she thought about the lives of her two new born infants who were thankfully not with her at the time.  Then she "went crazy on him," and he ran off.

In telling me about the incident she said she wished she had studied martial arts because she wanted to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else.  That, I think was the rational explanation, the more spontaneous explanation, I'm guessing, would be that she wanted to kick his ass.

A few days later while we were sitting at an outdoor table at a local bakery/cafe, she asked me how much martial arts training would have helped her.  I dodged the question and talked to her a bit about self-defense and what kind of training we do.  Then a 300 pound guy sat down next two her on a large green wooden box which had a sign saying please do not sit here.  The purpose of the box was to guide the flow of foot traffic around the tables and chairs, and thus, not for sitting.   It promptly toppled over onto her--bruising her arm.

The guy was naturally embarrassed and apologetic.  But that prompted her to ask me if studying martial arts would have prevented her from getting hit by the box.

So I was cornered.  Would martial arts training help with a surprise attack or a surprise accident?  Yes, probably, maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know,... how could I know?

Hexagram 10 of the Yijing (I Ching) is about just such a situation.  The title reads Treading (Lu):

Treading on a tiger's tail: one is not bitten.  Auspicious.

The image is of an innocent, perhaps a 10 year old child, stepping on the tail of a tiger and not getting bitten.  Why?  We don't really know.  Perhaps it is because the tiger isn't hungry and 'though surprised, it doesn't feel threatened.

Chinese Internal Martial Arts cultivated with a Daoist perspective achieve quite the opposite results of what most people think.  These arts are not about gaining control.  They are not about preparing for some monstrous future attack.  They are not about trying to control or predict the future.

To the contrary, they are about giving up the effort to control.  The basic  assumption or experiment of internal martial arts is that other options will present themselves effortlessly when we give up trying to control.  Does this really happen?  Yes, probably...maybe...How could I know?  I don't know, I simply have the experience that being less aggressive reveals other options.  I certainly don't know in advance what those options will be.  I keep repeating and simplifying the experiments because having options sometimes seems akin to freedom.

In Buddhism they have the expression, "Skillful Means," to describe brilliant techniques on the road to enlightenment.  But it's also kind of a Buddhist joke because the end result requires no skill at all.

In my opinion, this friend of mine who got attacked, did everything right.  She did get some bruises on her ribs, but frankly a couple of weeks training in martial arts could easily produce the same injuries.  After she chased him away by whatever crazy moving, screaming and raging she did, she even had the peace of mind to record all the details about his clothing and appearance for the police.

Her innocent response was good enough.

And that is the point of this post.  Not only are we cultivating weakness, we are cultivating innocence.  The skills we develop in all the Internal Martial Arts involve discarding our learned responses, discarding our preconceptions about what our body is and how it works, discarding our ideas about how events begin and how they come to a resolution.

Discarding pretense, embracing innocence.

Emptiness

Appetite and desire, what's the difference?

Yes and O.K., what's the difference?

Jing and Qi, how can we differentiate them?

When we give a name to something which is subtle and difficult to discern, we risk obscuring it, even losing it, because the hardness or fixedness of the name shines light on something which only exists in the dark.  This isn't an argument against naming, only a reminder that naming is a kind of aggression.

Chapter 15 (Wangbi numeration) of the Daodejing,

The ancient masters of the Way

aimed at the indiscernible

and penetrated the dark

you would never know them

and because you wouldn't know them

I describe them with reluctance

they were careful as if crossing a river in winter

cautious as if worried about neighbors

reserved like guests

ephemeral like melting ice

simple like uncarved wood

open like valleys

and murky like puddles

but a puddle becomes clear when it's still

and stillness becomes alive when it's roused

those who treasure this Way

don't try to be full

not trying to be full

they can hide and stay hidden

This translation is by Red Pine and I think it is great.  He also translates commentaries on all the chapters, like this one by Ho-Shang Kung, "Those who aren't full are able to maintain their concealment and avoid new attainments."

What a contrary piece of advice:  Avoid new attainments.

What does someone who is "empty" look like?  Well, like they are walking on slippery thin ice without breaking it--very light, very delicate, precise with out being confident.

I think the phrase, "worried about neighbors" means attentive in all four directions.

Guests wait to be invited into action but help out generously if they are needed.

Melting ice is always becoming less.

The uncarved wood here is like big pieces of lumber, it is very useful but it is in a potencial state, uncommitted.

To practice being empty is a Daoist precept.  In martial arts emptiness seems like a pinnacle of achievement, but then I read this I'm reminded that fullness is hard to give up.

Empty and full, what's the difference?

Daoism and Sex (part 2)

In my previous post I didn't get as far as discussing the history of Sex and Daoism or misunderstandings resulting from that history. Instead I focuses on what Daoism understands sex to be.

The brilliant young scholar Liu Xun has written about two person Daoist practices from the ~1600's generally undertaken by two people of the opposite sex. Unfortunately it looks like his writing on this subject remains unpublished at this time. Perhaps he will read this and correct me. My recollection is that it is often difficult to tell from textual sources whether sex of any kind was involved because most of it is written in metaphoric language. There probably were some practices involving sex and meditation, but they were by no means widespread and it is questionable whether they should be called Daoist at all. (More on this below.)

Others have tried to say something about early Celestial Master (~200 CE) sex practices, but the truth is we don't know much about them. It seems like there was a short period in which teachers would pick two people of opposite gender from among their disciples and guide them through some sort of private marriage ritual in which the teacher and the two disciples were all present. Because the practice was discontinued, I think it is fair to conjecture that it didn't produce the best results.

Judging only from the precepts followed by Celestial Masters at the time, I think it is safe to say they were not engaged in anything they thought would increase desire. Most likely they were practicing not getting excited. Or, as I describe in the previous post, perhaps they were engaged in some type of physiological awareness which had as its goal, limiting the production of jing in the form of eggs or sperm, so that it would be available for some other practice. Generally speaking, sexual desire causes our bodies to produce more sperm/semen and more warmth excitement and lubrication.

I have heard that some Chinese Emperor's may have practiced getting an erection with out any desire. Supposedly it is possible, through extreme discipling of the mind, to get an erection, have sex, and neither ejaculate nor feel any desire. Presumably one doesn't feel much pleasure either, but I don't know. This kind of practice makes a little sense if you are an Emperor and have 800 concubines who are bored. It is important to remember that while some Emperor's were no doubt sex addicts, each and every concubine represented a political alliance which had to be maintained. If you never had sex with them, you might cause more trouble that it was worth. I can't imagine why anyone would want to try those practices today.

Now on to the misconceptions (no pun intended). The Daozang, generally known as the Daoist Cannon, has been complied by order of various governments into different additions over the last few hundred years. It is an enormous collection of texts (≤5000). No Daoist could study or use more than a fraction of these texts in a lifetime. Which would lead one to ask, "Are there texts in the Daozang which no Daoist has ever used?" And the answer is, probably. Compared to Buddhism, and Confucianism, Daoism has been a lot more lax about condemning what other people do. Practices which were outside the norms of Confucianism or Buddhism, were openly rejected by these two traditions. But Daoists have been more likely to respond, "Maybe it is Daoist, I don't know." So there is a trend that whatever no one else wanted, got stuck with the label "Daoist" simply because Daoists didn't reject it. Daoists have generally held precepts encouraging discretion and even secrecy, so it's likely that individual Daoists would not know the details of what other Daoists were doing.

That being said, there have been lots of books written about Daoist sexual practices. For the most part these have been invented out of whole cloth, or deal with issues your average sex advice columnist could handle better. But we also have the problem that people have intentionally limited (and therefore mis-translated) the meaning of the term jing to mean simply semen. Thus, we have been treated in some books to the disgusting image of semen traveling up the spine to nourish the brain.

And yes, of course, there are Daoist precepts against wasting jing. But folks, that is meant to refer to jing before it goes into sexual reproduction. There are many ways you could interpret this precept. For instance, I would say push-ups and sit-ups are a violation of the "don't waste jing" precept because the day after you do them your body will start using jing to regenerate your injured muscles, which is a waste because push-ups and sit-ups serve no purpose (except perhaps vanity).

[Note to readers, my updated position as of 11/17 is that people should practice Maximum Vanity. There is not enough true vanity in the world.]

The crazy idea that an average Joe, like me, would get an erection, make-out for twenty minutes and then have sex and not ejaculate, is the stupidest idea ever!

Man, just shoot!

Let it out, it's too late to save it, might as well clean out those pipes.

On a slightly different note.

Over the years, many people have come to me wanting to study qigong because, in their own words, "I want more energy!" After a couple minutes of interviewing it inevitably turns out that they are deficient either because they do drugs, don't get enough sleep, work too many hours, have a poor diet, or don't exercise enough. All of these problems are solvable with out qigong, so they never stick around. (A couple of times the problem has been they exercised too much, in which case the problem was easily solved by suggesting they do less.)

However, there are some weird power accumulation exercises out there falling under the category of sexual qigong. None of these are good for your longterm health, because like taking drugs, they mess with your endocrine system (In TCM language they use up yuan qi). They are also completely unnecessary because you can get the same amount of energy from proper diet, sleep and exercise. My guess is that these practices were originally invented for people who were starving in times of famine, when such practices might have served a real purpose.

Daoism and Sex (part 1)

Daoism's doctrine on sex and sexual practices is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Daoism.

I recently dove into the debates about gay marriage on some political blogs. I'm not going to link to them because I was just goofing around. But in the process of considering some of the strange and desperate arguments put forward against gay marriage, it suddenly struck me that many people actually don't know what sex is. Wow, what a shock.

So I thought I would try to shoot two pheasants with one arrow, and exposit both subjects.

The Daodejing has a phrase,

"If Heaven has a reason, nobody knows it."

I think this is a good place to start. We don't know why life exists. We are capable, however, of recognizing that there are two categories, "alive" and "not alive," and that we belong to the category, "alive." (I have talked about the blended categories of ghosts and other such "part alive, part not-alive" entities in previous posts--so I'll skip that part of the argument here.)

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the "alive" category is that we are capable of reproducing ourselves. The substance, force, and function which reproduces itself in all life is called in Chinese: Jing. The word therefore includes English words like, sperm or eggs, and underlays English functions like scabbing, and regenerating.

All living things ingest qi (air/water/nutrients/light) and transform some of it into jing. Plants and animals which reproduce themselves sexually also differentiate themselves (to some degree) into male and female genders (or parts of themselves in some cases such as worms and slugs). Sexual reproduction requires that the two genders of a particular species combine their jing.

All living things produce way more jing than they actually need for sexual reproduction to be successful, and way more jing than ever gets used in the sexual reproduction process. In other words, sex is very inefficient, A plant or animal can be extremely potent in its production of jing, and still not produce offspring.

Here are some examples. Some chickens lay eggs everyday. Cockroaches and mosquitoes produce eggs in the millions, with very low survival rates for individual eggs. During certain times of year, the grass and trees are constantly trying to have sex with my eyes and nose (pollen). Dogs hump people's legs.

You can fit a million sperm on the tip of a pin.

The process of transforming qi into jing has two basic routes it can follow:

1. Qi can transform into jing which regenerates and heals the individual living entity.
2. It can produce sperm, eggs, pollen or ovules.

Some Daoist practices seek to gain some volition over this process so that less qi will go down the sperm and egg producing path and more qi will go towards producing jing used for regeneration or healing.

Many plants produce beautiful flowers which take advantage of animal desires to help them combine their jing (pollen with ovules). Animal behavior which can lead to the combining of the jing of two animals of the opposite gender is, like jing production, incredibly inefficient in every species.

According to Joseph Needham in Science and Civilization, the three basic sex hormones were recognized and isolated into pure substances in China during the 5th century CE.

Daoist practices aren't concerned with hormones directly, but they recognize that certain foods, exercises, activities and even uses of the mind, can effect how much a person is concerned with or even obsessed with sex. More importantly, they recognised that no matter what we do, we are likely at any one moment to be transforming way more qi into jing than we actually need for producing a few viable offspring.

This natural inefficiency is inseparable in animals from the thorny issue of desire. Daoist practices can be divided into two categories.

1. Leaning how stop ovulation so that you ovulate only when you have decided to attempt reproduction.
2. Reducing or limiting desire.

Desire is a physiological part of our survival apparatus. It is also incredibly inefficient. When desire builds we become totally focused--to the exclusion of other information. To quote the huainanzi, "We run rough-shod over subtlety."

Thus, for Daoists, the physiology of efficiency takes on a moral dimension. Inappropriate behavior is not considered unnatural, it is simply excessive or deficient--misdirected or too strong.

The primary methods through which Daoism engages with desire, are the making of commitments and the refining appetites.

This always begs the question: How can we tell an appetite from a desire? There isn't a simple answer. Appetites generally include assessment and evaluation phases, they are more reflective and experimental-- less driven.

However, it would be a mistake to think that either appetites or desires are somehow rational. I guess you could say that appetites are to desire what reproduction is to sex.

Since all human sexual activity--from putting on lipstick to bumping chests with your male competitors, to vaginal intercourse itself--is naturally inefficient and rarely results in offspring, the desire to have sex with someone of the same gender, with a tree, or with a consenting gorilla, is all just part of this wild inefficiency and abundance we call life.

But if you've ever contemplated a rushing river pouring over a cliff, you already know this.

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