Yongle Temple
/The Wall Street Journal just did a nice article and a video on Yongle Temple. Everybody knows about the importance of Wudang Temple. But for monastic Daoism Yongle is just as important.
Internal martial arts, theatricality, Chinese religion, and The Golden Elixir.
Books: TAI CHI, BAGUAZHANG AND THE GOLDEN ELIXIR, Internal Martial Arts Before the Boxer Uprising. By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($30.00), Digital ($9.99)
Possible Origins, A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts, Theater and Religion, (2016) By Scott Park Phillips. Paper ($18.95), Digital ($9.99)
Watch Video: A Cultural History of Tai Chi
New Eastover Workshop, in Eastern Massachusetts, Italy, and France are in the works.
Daodejing Online - Learn Daoist Meditation through studying Daoism’s most sacred text Laozi’s Daodejing. You can join from anywhere in the world, $50. Email me if you are interesting in joining!
Martial Arts and Meditation
/Standing still practices are widespread in the Chinese martial arts world. Most styles have some type of standing still practice, and most qigong is derived in some degree from these practices. For the sake of explication I'm going to divide stillness practices into two halves-- meditation and power-stretch. Power-stretch is a group of methods dealing with the transitions from stillness into movement and will be the subject of a future post.
Meditation is only half of the big subject; "stillness practices." But meditation in the martial arts happens in both movement and stillness. The most difficult thing for modern people to understand is that meditation training requires no instruction. It is not something we do with our minds. Meditation is not a clearing process or a form of mind-body repair. The martial arts are loaded with many different types of trance which do such things, but meditation is simply not a mental process.
The most common type of meditation in the martial arts is the practice of a form. In order to practice meditation using a martial arts form one simply does the form. (This is true regardless of the style, shaolin, taijiquan, baguazhang, or something else.) Do the form without self-correction. Do the form without any attempt to make improvements. Do the form without thinking of applications. Do the form without any agenda or focus, and you will be practicing the most basic and essential form of martial arts meditation.
Standing meditation is essentially the same. Stand in a posture which makes it easy to be still and discard the idea that stillness has an agenda, a focus or a reason. Some postures are easier than others, and for this reason having a teacher to correct your posture is very helpful. But whether you have a teacher or not, basic standing is practiced daily for one hour. After about 100 days the posture itself should start to reveal effortlessness.
The subject of trance in the martial arts can be divided into three basic categories, all of which are total sensery experiences. However; for the purpose of explication, each of them can be distinguished by the ways in which they use visualization.
Before I describe them, let me make it clear that I believe one should first practice a form, devoid of planning, agenda, magic, power, or utility. However, being a realist, I know that it is a rare student who comes to the martial arts without an agenda of fighting, prowess, heroism, health, vanity, or the desire to dominate. The old masters got around this by insisting on total subordination to the teacher. In my world I offer limited fulfillment of these "martial wonders" up front-- from day one. Through developing a personal relationship with my students I can slowly introduce the practice of emptiness and having a "zero" agenda.
In other words, the "zero" of martial arts meditation, and the one, two, and three of "power-healing trance" (see below), have no inherent order. They can be taught in any order-- in a disheveled go-with-the-flow way. However, at some point that zero-emptiness meditation practice must be established or the student will not have a dantian for their practice. The word dantian (literally cinnabar field) refers to a large empty space for doing ritual. It is most often described as a location in the center of the body; but as metaphors go, we could also describe it as a container, a vacuum, or silence.
The three types of visualization:
1. Deities. These are aspects of truth and nature. Some have biographies, or histories, and some do not. They are known by a list of their attributes which are then visualized in front of the martial artist, then above one's head and then descending into and merging with the visualizer.
2. Environment. One can visualize walking on a lake, in mud, through clouds or on a high mountain ridge. There is really no limit here. In baguazhang for example there are visualizations of walking through a tunnel of spiraling fire, or being surrounded by five mountain peaks. One can also visualize abstractions like the eight trigrams of the yijing (I-Ching) transforming into each other. Probably the most common thing to visualize is martial applications of fighting techniques.
3. Visualizing spaces within the body. For instance a huge palace can be visualized at the throat notch, or two deities sitting on your kidneys. Spaces can be empty or full, vacuous or active, dark or light. Spaces can be finite and solid, or infinite and formless. Basic "dissolving" practices like ice to water, water to steam fall into this category.
The three categories can overlap each other. A deity can be both inside and outside the body. The boundary between inner and outer can dissolve.
Next week I'll deal with the power-stretch half of stillness practices...ways of understanding transitions to movement.
Meditation is only half of the big subject; "stillness practices." But meditation in the martial arts happens in both movement and stillness. The most difficult thing for modern people to understand is that meditation training requires no instruction. It is not something we do with our minds. Meditation is not a clearing process or a form of mind-body repair. The martial arts are loaded with many different types of trance which do such things, but meditation is simply not a mental process.
The most common type of meditation in the martial arts is the practice of a form. In order to practice meditation using a martial arts form one simply does the form. (This is true regardless of the style, shaolin, taijiquan, baguazhang, or something else.) Do the form without self-correction. Do the form without any attempt to make improvements. Do the form without thinking of applications. Do the form without any agenda or focus, and you will be practicing the most basic and essential form of martial arts meditation.
Standing meditation is essentially the same. Stand in a posture which makes it easy to be still and discard the idea that stillness has an agenda, a focus or a reason. Some postures are easier than others, and for this reason having a teacher to correct your posture is very helpful. But whether you have a teacher or not, basic standing is practiced daily for one hour. After about 100 days the posture itself should start to reveal effortlessness.
The subject of trance in the martial arts can be divided into three basic categories, all of which are total sensery experiences. However; for the purpose of explication, each of them can be distinguished by the ways in which they use visualization.
Before I describe them, let me make it clear that I believe one should first practice a form, devoid of planning, agenda, magic, power, or utility. However, being a realist, I know that it is a rare student who comes to the martial arts without an agenda of fighting, prowess, heroism, health, vanity, or the desire to dominate. The old masters got around this by insisting on total subordination to the teacher. In my world I offer limited fulfillment of these "martial wonders" up front-- from day one. Through developing a personal relationship with my students I can slowly introduce the practice of emptiness and having a "zero" agenda.
In other words, the "zero" of martial arts meditation, and the one, two, and three of "power-healing trance" (see below), have no inherent order. They can be taught in any order-- in a disheveled go-with-the-flow way. However, at some point that zero-emptiness meditation practice must be established or the student will not have a dantian for their practice. The word dantian (literally cinnabar field) refers to a large empty space for doing ritual. It is most often described as a location in the center of the body; but as metaphors go, we could also describe it as a container, a vacuum, or silence.
The three types of visualization:
1. Deities. These are aspects of truth and nature. Some have biographies, or histories, and some do not. They are known by a list of their attributes which are then visualized in front of the martial artist, then above one's head and then descending into and merging with the visualizer.
2. Environment. One can visualize walking on a lake, in mud, through clouds or on a high mountain ridge. There is really no limit here. In baguazhang for example there are visualizations of walking through a tunnel of spiraling fire, or being surrounded by five mountain peaks. One can also visualize abstractions like the eight trigrams of the yijing (I-Ching) transforming into each other. Probably the most common thing to visualize is martial applications of fighting techniques.
3. Visualizing spaces within the body. For instance a huge palace can be visualized at the throat notch, or two deities sitting on your kidneys. Spaces can be empty or full, vacuous or active, dark or light. Spaces can be finite and solid, or infinite and formless. Basic "dissolving" practices like ice to water, water to steam fall into this category.
The three categories can overlap each other. A deity can be both inside and outside the body. The boundary between inner and outer can dissolve.
Next week I'll deal with the power-stretch half of stillness practices...ways of understanding transitions to movement.
Spectacle and Sacrifice
/"Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China"
a new book by David Johnson, Professor, History Department, UC Berkeley
DATE: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
TIME: 4:00 PM
PLACE: IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor, Berkeley, CA
FORMAT: IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on Asia
SPONSORS: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
"In the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China, temple festivals, with their giant processions, elaborate rituals, and operas, were the most important influence on the symbolic universe of ordinary villagers and demonstrate their remarkable capacity for religious and artistic creation. UC Berkeley History Professor David Johnson's new book describes the great festivals as their supreme collective achievements, carried out virtually without assistance from local officials or educated elites, clerical or lay.
Chinese culture was a performance culture, and ritual was the highest form of performance. Village ritual life everywhere in pre-revolutionary China was complex, conservative, and extraordinarily diverse. Festivals and their associated rituals and operas provided the emotional and intellectual materials out of which ordinary people constructed their ideas about the world of men and the realm of the gods. It is, David Johnson argues, impossible to form an adequate idea of traditional Chinese society without a thorough understanding of village ritual. Newly discovered liturgical manuscripts allow him to reconstruct North Chinese temple festivals in unprecedented detail and prove that they are sharply different from the Daoist- and Buddhist-based communal rituals of South China.
Introduced and moderated by Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor of History, and Director, Institute of East Asian Studies."
--I'm going to go hear this talk tomorrow, I haven't seen the book yet but it looks interesting. Join me if you've got the time and you're in the area.
a new book by David Johnson, Professor, History Department, UC Berkeley
DATE: Wednesday, January 27, 2010TIME: 4:00 PM
PLACE: IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor, Berkeley, CA
FORMAT: IEAS Book Series: New Perspectives on Asia
SPONSORS: Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Chinese Studies
"In the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China, temple festivals, with their giant processions, elaborate rituals, and operas, were the most important influence on the symbolic universe of ordinary villagers and demonstrate their remarkable capacity for religious and artistic creation. UC Berkeley History Professor David Johnson's new book describes the great festivals as their supreme collective achievements, carried out virtually without assistance from local officials or educated elites, clerical or lay.
Chinese culture was a performance culture, and ritual was the highest form of performance. Village ritual life everywhere in pre-revolutionary China was complex, conservative, and extraordinarily diverse. Festivals and their associated rituals and operas provided the emotional and intellectual materials out of which ordinary people constructed their ideas about the world of men and the realm of the gods. It is, David Johnson argues, impossible to form an adequate idea of traditional Chinese society without a thorough understanding of village ritual. Newly discovered liturgical manuscripts allow him to reconstruct North Chinese temple festivals in unprecedented detail and prove that they are sharply different from the Daoist- and Buddhist-based communal rituals of South China.
Introduced and moderated by Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor of History, and Director, Institute of East Asian Studies."
--I'm going to go hear this talk tomorrow, I haven't seen the book yet but it looks interesting. Join me if you've got the time and you're in the area.
Daoist Gate
/I happened upon the Daoist Gate website because someone over there wanted to be my friend on Youtube. Looking at their sight leaves me with a feeling of optimism. The descriptions and explanations are simple clear and honest. I really appreciate that. The world of Wudang martial arts has a strange and probably pained relationship to the past. I want to call this the "new daoism." It's links to the past seem tenuous, often frayed, sometimes blocked, or even devastated. Yet what they are producing today has promise. 
Weak Legs
/
A 9 year old student asked me during class the other day if I did any strength training. I did my teacher thing and screwed up one side of my face while bulging out my eye on the other, "No," I replied, "Do you do any strength training?" This kid admitted that he didn't but I could see by the way he looked at the ground that someone had been trying to breed a feeling of deficiency in this kid's head. Now we aren't talking about just any old 9 year old, this kid can walk across the room on his hands and he can do a press handstand from a straddle position on the floor. So I said, "OK, you stand in a low horse stance and I'll put all my weight on your shoulders and you try to lift me up." I leaned down on his shoulders and lifted myself up on to the very tips of my toes so that he had about 150lbs on his shoulders. He then stood up with out even a second thought, lifting me into the air. "That was easy right?" I asked. "You could lift two adults couldn't you?." "Yeah," he said, looking a little brighter. "So you're strong enough already right?" He just looked at me, unsure what to say. "Now you have to figure out how to transfer the force of your legs to your arms. That's what you need to work on." And then we got back to the two-man form we had been working on when he asked the question.If any of my readers doubt the above anecdote I challenge you to do the experiment yourself. Find a small healthy kid, 5 to 8 years old. Show them how to do a horse stance and then try putting all your weight on their shoulders. As long as the kid's back is straight and her legs are aligned to take weight she should have no trouble lifting you up.
Why is this relevant? Why now?
On my last trip to China I wandered all over Ching Cheng Shan mountain in Sichuan. The "trails" are mostly steep stone stair cases that wind up into the clouds. If you are lazy and have a little cash, you can hire two guys to carry you up three miles of stairs in a litter made with some cloth and two bamboo poles. The guys who do the carrying all day long during the tourist season have pencil thin arms and legs. They are skinny enough to be run-way models at a fashion show. Their leg muscles do not bulge.
Likewise, I studied twice with Ye Shaolong, the second time I trained with him everyday for three months. He is probably the world's greatest master of what George Xu calls "the power-stretch." He uses low, slow expanding movements to develop explosive and suddenly recoiling power. In his 70's, Ye Shaolong is one of the skinniest people I have ever met. He has no muscle.
In my early twenties, with ambitious winds blowing, I took to standing still in a low horse stance with my arms horizontal to the ground out to the sides, for one hour. I did this everyday for a year. (20 years later, I still stand for an hour everyday but not all of it in a horse stance.) For the first few months, my thigh muscles got bigger, but then a funny thing happened. As my alignment and circulation improved, my thigh muscles, my quadriceps, started to shrink. After a year of this kind of practice my thigh muscles were smaller than they had been when I started. And by the way, I wasn't just standing, I was training at least 6 hours a day and I didn't have a driver's license so I was also riding my bicycle up steep San Francisco hills as my sole form of transportation. I'll say it again, my muscles got smaller.
Ouch! That's got to hurtMost people who practice martial arts actually never learn this because they don't have the discipline to pass through that first gate. At the time, I was just like everyone else, I believed that I needed to improve my strength. I now understand that strength itself is an obstacle to freedom.
The internal arts of Qigong, Daoyin, Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, and some of the the mixed internal-external arts like Eight Immortals Sword, all have ways of training that do not require building strength. Some Shaolin schools have these methods too. In fact, under the proper guidance of a teacher, with a natural commitment to everyday practice, anyone can use these arts to reveal their true nature. A true nature which, like that of your average 7 year old, is already very, very strong.
On this blog I have explored many justifications for the cultivation of weakness. For instance:
--it makes you more sensitive,
--you need less food (making it possible for more people to eat in times of food scarcity),
--you need less energy to exercise leaving more energy available for other pursuits,
--it's better for circulation in times of less activity (which is what we are doing most of the time anyway),
--your movement is less conditioned to a series of set responses (spontaneously agile),
--and you don't need to wear spandex.
But the number one reason for not developing strength is that healthy human beings are already strong enough. Even 5 year old children are very strong. The problem is that normal human beings have disrupted the integration of natural, untrained strength, into their everyday activities. This happens first of all in the arms, which develop both fine motor coordination and repetitive patterns, both of which leave the arms disconnected from the natural strength of the torso. Also, adult hormones, particularly male hormones, produce muscle really easily if we prime them with lots of food and reckless exercise. By reckless exercise I mean games or athletics that cause injuries. Small injuries to the legs will instantly cause a healthy male to develop big thick quads, it can happen overnight. Once these arm and leg problems are established they become habits. But natural strength doesn't go away, it's waiting for us just under the surface. The real problem, the only real problem, is the fear that we need to be strong to face life's challenges--the notion that we need strength to prevail.
The likelihood of injury from strength training, by the way, is the reason that people who do strength training have to create all sorts of schedules to "cross train" the various muscle groups. These people are now arguing that all training is actually in the recovery! Weird.
And don't get me started on core strength.... OK, it's too late. Core strength is just a marketing scheme, like Green architectural-design-dog-walking-nanny services. It just sounds good or something. It plays on peoples feelings of insecurity and guilt. There is no core that needs strengthening to begin with, but even if such a core existed, the market is saturated. Every type of movement training from Yoga to tiny-tot-tap-dancing now claims to be good for your "core."Here at North Star Martial Arts we specialize in Core Emptying!
That's Right! All negativity is stored in the inner "core"--known traditionally as the mingmen or "gate of fate." Sign up for this once in a lifetime offer of 12 classes for only $99 (that's a $1 discount) and you will get a bonus "card" to keep track of your first one hundred days of Cultivating Weakness! Empty your Core Today! (Say the words "relax your dantian," or Tell them you heard it here at W.W.A.T.)
Like aggressive advertising, strength obscures our true nature.
Martial artists who try to develop strength are preparing themselves for some future attack, the nature of which is yet unknown. I'm not against strength, heaven knows people love it, I'm just against the argument that we need it. Anyone who says Chinese Internal Martial Arts require a person to develop strength is confused about the basic concepts.
note: (If you are a bit of a sadist and want to watch some people squirm, I'm about to post this at the unhinged Internet forum Rum Soaked Fist! check it out.)
Martial Theater
/This article from Kungfu Magazine is a great overview of the total overlap of Triads, Kungfu, Theater, Religion and Opera. It dips into the relationship between Theater and the Taiping Uprising, the Opium Wars, and the Triads. Reading it you get that sense that Chinese Theater was nurtured in a violent world. The authors keep their focus narrowly on Red Junk Opera, but what they say is likely true for many other styles of Theater and Martial Arts. (hat tip: Jianghu)
_________________
Here is a quick interview where Xingyi master Song Guanghua explains:
__________________________
Also:
Has a great overview of Popular Religion in China!
______________________
And if you haven't checked out Marnix Wells site it's worth a look!
_________________
Here is a quick interview where Xingyi master Song Guanghua explains:
Another interesting comment that M Song made is that the 5 element fists can be practiced in different ways depending on the context. Specifically, he stated that, for each element, there is a performance version, a training version and a combative version. Thus, when comparing the performance of the 5 elements across styles, one must know which version you are seeing, otherwise the comparison is meaningless.
__________________________
Also:
 |
| Popular Religion in China Stephan Feuchtwang |
Has a great overview of Popular Religion in China!
______________________
And if you haven't checked out Marnix Wells site it's worth a look!
Mish Mash
/This was my day to blog. After teaching 5 and a half hours this morning, 3 and a half of it in the cold, two indoors, I was ready for a nap. I slept from 1pm until 5pm. Whoops that was my day to blog. Well, never fear. I have a bunch of small crunchy bits for y'all to chew on.
_______
I love this picture series of Liu Fengcai doing Baguazhang.
In these pictures he is emphasizing polarity in his body created by the combination of "monkey doesn't want to go to school" and "effortlessly floating the head upward." The two forces create extraordinary external wrapping of the soft tissue around the torso and the backs of the legs-- this is evident in the shape of his hands. Sweet. (The artist's sketch underneath is an unnecessary distraction, but notice he added the drawing 4th from the left which breaks several baguazhang rules. The arrows are misleading too.)
____________
Only Comics and Dogs Wiggle their Head!
For all the hemming and hollering I’ve heard over the years about the importance of keeping the head upright as well as contrary opinions in favor of practicing dodging and ducking with the head, I am delighted to let everyone know that the controversy was created entirely from the denial of gongfu’s theatrical origins.
Here is a video of me doing an 8 part warm up that came from Kuo Lien-ying which I have been doing for 30 years. After reading Jo Riley's book Chinese Theater and the Actor in Performance. I've changed three of the movements slightly (I'll have to make a new video). I'm very sure that I've been doing the exercises slightly wrong for all these years because I was limited in my view and simply didn't understand the original instructions.
Number 2 in the series is for training the basic heroic stance and should be done with the chest lifted more than you see here.
Number 3 is the basic comic stance and should be done with the tailbone back, the belly out, the arms straighter, and the head lifted. In this position it is OK if the head wiggles because that's what comics and dogs do to show their lower statues. It's so much better this way.
Lastly the 8th stance, usually called "chin to toe," is used as a mind clearing exercise by performers back stage immediately before they perform. It should be done with the kidneys forward, not back as I've shown in the video. Thanks Jo, that tiny bit of information unlocked a lot of secrets for me. (Yes, there are secrets.)
__________
Disheveled and in disarray...
is a good description of all of my Daoist studies, as well as all my “progress” in martial arts. I have followed my teachers in trying to transmit brilliant structures, orders, and systemizations in my writings. However; the reality is a lopsided, languid, sometimes choppy, sometimes flowing, unwieldy beast.
Occasionally I pick up a comment saying I'm too organized. Reality doesn't fit in boxes. Thanks for pointing that out. All systemizations are also limitations. All stated orders are incomplete. The truth is always available in completely undifferentiated chaos (huntun), just waiting for you to stick your head in there and pull it out.
Occasionally I have received friendly comments here and on various forums which describe my thinking as mystical. While I realize it is silly of me to take umbrage at this, it does rub me the wrong way. I’m not personally interested in a mystical journey. I’m not declaring that everything I say is a concrete metaphor, yes, my metaphors are sometimes misty or even foggy; but I am not on a mystical journey. Sometimes looking in at something new or foreign from the outside creates a mystical feeling in the observer, that's fine, but please tell me if you think I’ve become rooted in anything less than what is absolutely real.
___________
Chinese Martial Arts are a treasure...
but they are a changing treasure. The Daodejing mentions three unchanging treasures, hold and preserve them!
The first is compassion. (We're talking predator drone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the thick-of-it, compassion-- not moral platitudinous, bumper-sticker yoga compassion like, "Do no harm.")
The second is conservation. (No not greenness people! I’m (in the) black and I’m proud! Business is the most effective social mechanism for conservation ever-- cut your costs, improve your efficiency-- now let excess, laziness, misty eyed romantics, hysterical greenies, and inferior products and services die.)
The third is not imagining yourself to be at the center of the world. (Duh!)
The three treasures do not lend themselves to fame, or charisma, or even claims of authorship. Each person, or family, or community, or nation, or institution can find its own way to express these treasures. But it's not hard to see why one might be inspired to live like a hermit.
____________
Cold! Lively!
I love being outside this time of year! When the temperature drops the surface of my body cools down, but the inside stays hot. This is an ideal condition for cultivating the Daoist elixir practice (jindan) and martial arts in general. Why? Because jing and qi differentiate more easily. Our structure, the heavy stuff we are made of, jing, is easier to feel and therefore relax because it is cold on the surface. And our qi, the activity, the motion, the animation, is more obvious on the inside. It hums and vibrates. Explosive power is more available. In stillness the qi wiggles deeper into the bones, making whatever it is you practice irreversible. People who get lazy about their practice in the winter months miss out on the best season. THE BEST!
_________
Here are some websites I found interesting:
http://www.chinesewudangboxing.com/aboutus.htm
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701773/sessions.html
http://www.nexthomegeneration.com/Han_Dynasty#Eastern_Han
OK my home-slices, keep it real.
_______
I love this picture series of Liu Fengcai doing Baguazhang.
In these pictures he is emphasizing polarity in his body created by the combination of "monkey doesn't want to go to school" and "effortlessly floating the head upward." The two forces create extraordinary external wrapping of the soft tissue around the torso and the backs of the legs-- this is evident in the shape of his hands. Sweet. (The artist's sketch underneath is an unnecessary distraction, but notice he added the drawing 4th from the left which breaks several baguazhang rules. The arrows are misleading too.)
____________
Only Comics and Dogs Wiggle their Head!
For all the hemming and hollering I’ve heard over the years about the importance of keeping the head upright as well as contrary opinions in favor of practicing dodging and ducking with the head, I am delighted to let everyone know that the controversy was created entirely from the denial of gongfu’s theatrical origins.
Here is a video of me doing an 8 part warm up that came from Kuo Lien-ying which I have been doing for 30 years. After reading Jo Riley's book Chinese Theater and the Actor in Performance. I've changed three of the movements slightly (I'll have to make a new video). I'm very sure that I've been doing the exercises slightly wrong for all these years because I was limited in my view and simply didn't understand the original instructions.
Number 2 in the series is for training the basic heroic stance and should be done with the chest lifted more than you see here.
Number 3 is the basic comic stance and should be done with the tailbone back, the belly out, the arms straighter, and the head lifted. In this position it is OK if the head wiggles because that's what comics and dogs do to show their lower statues. It's so much better this way.
Lastly the 8th stance, usually called "chin to toe," is used as a mind clearing exercise by performers back stage immediately before they perform. It should be done with the kidneys forward, not back as I've shown in the video. Thanks Jo, that tiny bit of information unlocked a lot of secrets for me. (Yes, there are secrets.)
__________
Disheveled and in disarray...
is a good description of all of my Daoist studies, as well as all my “progress” in martial arts. I have followed my teachers in trying to transmit brilliant structures, orders, and systemizations in my writings. However; the reality is a lopsided, languid, sometimes choppy, sometimes flowing, unwieldy beast.
Occasionally I pick up a comment saying I'm too organized. Reality doesn't fit in boxes. Thanks for pointing that out. All systemizations are also limitations. All stated orders are incomplete. The truth is always available in completely undifferentiated chaos (huntun), just waiting for you to stick your head in there and pull it out.
Occasionally I have received friendly comments here and on various forums which describe my thinking as mystical. While I realize it is silly of me to take umbrage at this, it does rub me the wrong way. I’m not personally interested in a mystical journey. I’m not declaring that everything I say is a concrete metaphor, yes, my metaphors are sometimes misty or even foggy; but I am not on a mystical journey. Sometimes looking in at something new or foreign from the outside creates a mystical feeling in the observer, that's fine, but please tell me if you think I’ve become rooted in anything less than what is absolutely real.
___________
Chinese Martial Arts are a treasure...
but they are a changing treasure. The Daodejing mentions three unchanging treasures, hold and preserve them!
The first is compassion. (We're talking predator drone, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in the thick-of-it, compassion-- not moral platitudinous, bumper-sticker yoga compassion like, "Do no harm.")
The second is conservation. (No not greenness people! I’m (in the) black and I’m proud! Business is the most effective social mechanism for conservation ever-- cut your costs, improve your efficiency-- now let excess, laziness, misty eyed romantics, hysterical greenies, and inferior products and services die.)
The third is not imagining yourself to be at the center of the world. (Duh!)
The three treasures do not lend themselves to fame, or charisma, or even claims of authorship. Each person, or family, or community, or nation, or institution can find its own way to express these treasures. But it's not hard to see why one might be inspired to live like a hermit.
____________
Cold! Lively!
I love being outside this time of year! When the temperature drops the surface of my body cools down, but the inside stays hot. This is an ideal condition for cultivating the Daoist elixir practice (jindan) and martial arts in general. Why? Because jing and qi differentiate more easily. Our structure, the heavy stuff we are made of, jing, is easier to feel and therefore relax because it is cold on the surface. And our qi, the activity, the motion, the animation, is more obvious on the inside. It hums and vibrates. Explosive power is more available. In stillness the qi wiggles deeper into the bones, making whatever it is you practice irreversible. People who get lazy about their practice in the winter months miss out on the best season. THE BEST!
_________
Here are some websites I found interesting:
http://www.chinesewudangboxing.com/aboutus.htm
http://www.fathom.com/course/21701773/sessions.html
http://www.nexthomegeneration.com/Han_Dynasty#Eastern_Han
OK my home-slices, keep it real.
Empty Like a Puppet
/
I have written elsewhere about martial arts forms being an inheritance from the ancestors of that art. That practicing a particular tradition is a process of reanimating the movement of the ancestors who created it. I have also written about how practicing a form may correct the errors in the form you inherited, in effect healing those in the past. And I have also written about how practicing a form can heal your parents, your genetic ancestors, through gongfu as a conduct correcting process. Gongfu can be understood as a process of developing efficiency which rectifies the inappropriate, aggressive, and wasteful movement (jing) and breathing (qi) habits which we learned from our parents.All of this is akin to a daily personal exorcism. I have also argued that traditionally it was understood as an exorcism, which goes a long way toward explaining why, when itinerant beggar-monks and priests wanted to ask for money, they would perform martial arts-- demonstrating the merit-worth they had accumulated and shared through this process.*
A common criticism of Chinese Martial Arts is that it is full of empty forms. Most schools make an effort to teach "applications" for each movement in a form. Applications are demonstrations of how a conflict might transpire. But applications themselves don’t really work. Gongfu is what works. Gongfu is a quality of movement which has efficacy regardless of the techniques employed. If you have gongfu, you have it when you are taking out the trash or setting the table--or even when performing an exorcism.
Conceptualization of the underlying metaphors of Chinese art and culture is key to understanding the arts in greater depth. Because people generally bring their own concepts and metaphors to the arts they inherit, it is very easy to lose sight of the vision which created the art in the first place. That loss of vision leads first to frustration and then to either radical modification or outright destruction of the arts.
But I'll come back to that later. Here is a quote from History in Three Keys:
Some of the conclusions derived from the serious study of Chinese popular culture in the postwar decades are relevant to our understanding of the embeddedness of Boxer religious experience in... [Northern Chinese] culture. One such conclusion is that, at the village level, the sharp boundaries between the "secular" and the "sacred," to which modern Westerners are accustomed, simply did not exist. The gods of popular religion were everywhere and "ordinary people were in constant contact" with them. These gods were powerful (some, to be sure, more than others), but they were also very close and accessible. People depended on them for protection and assistance in time of need. But when they failed to perform their responsibilities adequately, ordinary human beings could request that they be punished by their superiors. Or they could punish them themselves. "If the god does not show signs of appreciation of the need of rain," Arthur Smith wrote toward the end of the nineteenth century, "he may be taken out into the hot sun and left there to broil, as a hint to wake up and do his duty." This "everydayness" of the gods of Chinese popular religion and the casual, matter-of-fact attitude Chinese typically displayed toward their deities doubtless contributed to the widespread view among Westerners, both in the late imperial period and after, that the Chinese were not an especially religious people. It would be more accurate, I believe to describe the fabric of Chinese social and cultural life as being permeated through and through with religious beliefs and practices.
But not always with the same degree of intensity and certainly not with equal discernibleness in all settings. This is another facet of Chinese popular religion that, because it does not entirely square with the expectations of Western observers, has occasioned a certain amount of confusion and perplexity. Sometimes religion appears to recede into the shadows and to be largely, if not altogether, absent from individual Chinese consciousness. But at other times it exercises dominion over virtually everything in sight. Thus, the martial arts, healing practices, and the heroes of popular literature and opera often inhabit a space in Chinese culture that seems unambiguously "secular." But it is not at all unusual, as clearly suggested in the accounts of Boxer spirit possession transcribed at the beginning of this chapter, for these selfsame phenomena to be incorporated into a fully religious framework of meaning.
Confucianism is founded on the idea that we inherit a great deal from our ancestors, including body, culture, and circumstance. We also, to some extent, inherit our will, our intentions, and our goals. The Confucian project is predicated on the idea that we have a duty to carryout and comprehend our ancestors' intentions in a way which is coherent with our own circumstance and experiences. In practice, it is entirely possible that we have two ancestors who died with conflicting goals, or an ancestor who died with an unfulfilled desire, like unrequited love, or an ancestor who wished and plotted to kill us. Our dead ancestors have become spirits whose intentions linger on in us to some extent in our habits and our reactions to stress. It is the central purpose of Confucianism to resolve these conflicts and lingering feelings of distress through a continuous process of self-reflection and upright conduct--so that we may leave a better world for our descendants. The metaphor is fundamentally one of exorcism. We empty ourselves of our own agenda so that we might consider the true will of our ancestors (inviting the spirits), then we take that understanding and transform it into action (dispersion and resolution). Finally we leave our descendants with open ended possibilities, support, and clarity of purpose (harmony, rectification, unity).As gongfu practitioners we are emptying our practice of the inappropriate conduct of our ancestors and our teachers. The forms should be empty. That is part of the original vision of what they should be.
The theatrical exorcistic traditions (Nuo) which I have been reading about in Jo Riley’s book Chinese Theater and the Actor in Performance, begin with a ritual emptying of the performers/exorcists bodies. They remove the three hun and 7 po (together ten spirits, which polarize in our bodies and which disperse at death, hun up, po down) and using protective talisman they put the hun and po in vessels for safe keeping. They can then perform the exorcisms while possessed by martial deities, spirits or powerful allied demons, without fear of harming themselves.
Jo Riley explains that the physical training of jingju (Beijing Opera) begins with a process of emptying. The movements of Northern Shaolin form the basis of jingju basic training. She posits that the actors have a duel role as exorcists and as performers who must be empty in order to fully embody the theatrical and religious rolls they are playing. My experience studying Noh dance/theater in Japan directly parallels this. My Noh teacher taught us two forms and two songs to go along with them. When we were performing we were instructed to be as empty as possible. It was explained to me that a great performer is sometimes empty enough that the actual spirit of that particular dance will descend the tree painted at the back of the stage and enter the performer.
Daoist Meditation takes emptiness as it’s root. All Daoist practices arise from this root of emptiness. The main distinction between an orthodox Daoist exorcism and a less than orthodox exorcism is in fact the ability of the priests to remain empty while invoking and enlisting various potent unseen forces (gods/demons/spirits/ancestors) to preform the ritual on behalf of a living constituency, or the recently dead.Calligraphy was historically understood in the same way. To learn calligraphy was to copy the exact calligraphic movements of a righteous accomplished ancestor. First one would empty themselves and meditate on the ink and the blank piece paper, then on the writing to be copied. Through the brush, one would execute movements which would manifest on the page while simultaneously transforming (zaohua) or rectifying ones heart (zheng xin). In the mature expression of Calligraphy both as an art and for talisman making, potency is a direct result of the artist or priests ability to first empty, and then manifest the characters internally as well as on paper. That potency (qi) is then transmitted to those who see the writing; transforming, inspiring, protecting, purifying or healing them.
Music, medicine, and cooking can all be understood this way too.
Puppetry performances,--according to my informants in Taiwan, as well as the writings of Kristofer Schipper, and Jo Riley-- are sometimes considered the most potent of all forms of ritual exorcism. This is because puppets are truly empty.
Emptiness is a key metaphor of Chinese culture. A culture which favors actions over explanations. Actions become polysemous, embedded with layers of meanings, meanings which can even seem contradictory. There is rarely an orthodoxy of meaning. The meaning of a particular action, in this case "emptiness,” can change as it traverses through strata of society, time, region, gender, family, or identity. Emptiness is a key metaphor in a “realm of action” which is operative in a very wide and varied set of contexts.
In martial arts, particularly the internal martial arts, emptiness is the basis, the ground, the root of action. We should expect the forms to be empty. We should expect to feel nothing, taste blandness, see darkness, and hear silence. When you do your forms and routines, be empty, like a puppet.
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*It's probably also true that people would donate because they thought the monks were entertaining. It's a lot less likely that they would donate because they thought the monks were ruffians.
Scratching The Uncarved Block
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The Uncarved Block is one of the primary metaphors for the concept/anti-concept known as wuwei. The Daodejing suggests that we be like an uncarved block of wood. The implication is that once a block of wood is fashioned into something, it loses it’s potential to be something else. Once we make a decision, it cuts off certain options. In other words, it is often good to wait. But the Daodejing isn’t telling us to be indecisive. It doesn’t say, “in difficult situations--waver!” It also doesn’t say be slow, like a tree; or “be inactive,” like a log or a stump. It says be like a partially processed block of wood. Since the Daodejing doesn’t give us any idea how big this block of wood might be, or what it might be for, we can speculate. Our block of wood could be carved into any sort of deity or icon, or perhaps a boat, a cabinet, a ladle, or a coffin. The Daodejing is using this metaphor to point to a process which takes place when we make something. It is not saying, “Don’t make stuff.” Sometimes a decision can position us for more possibilities, sometimes a decision can limit us. Is this better than that? Be comfortable with ambiguity, but have a few uncarved blocks hanging around in case you need them.There are a couple of other ways to look at this too. A block of wood is simple, a block of wood has no preferences, a block does not calculate it’s advantages. A block of wood can be an image of innocence, and of embracing the unknown.
The process of carving a block changes our nature as human beings. It changes the carver. Carving is a skill which requires particularly fine motor control, and a very specific sense of three dimensional mental imaging. It is a sort of trance. A sharpened focus. It creates patterns of conditioning in our bodies and habits of mind.
Thus, the concept/anti-concept of wuwei is not a method. It is a challenge to the type of thinking which looks at everything as a method.
Yes, this type of method might be better than that one. But methods are just vehicles for transforming a vision into an experience--a result...in process. A method always comes from something, like an uncarved block, and always gets discarded in the end. Making and measuring is an aggressive mind-set which easily causes us to loose sight of the bigger picture.
Internal martial arts can be understood as a vehicle for discarding methods.
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I’ve been reading Tabby Cat’s blog irregularly and I noticed that he has been ranting against any other blog which describes or promotes a method which involves alignment, structure, or anatomical and physiological analysis. He even dismissed my reluctant post on the three big muscle groups, and hinted that I might be an Posture Nazi. What is this all about? It seems our little Tabby wants to be like the uncarved block but just can’t seem to pull it off.
His Taijiquan tradition is all gush, gush about Ben Lo, and gushy, gushy about Ben’s teacher Chen Man-Ching (the "Professor"), and, of course, ultra gushy wushy about Chen’s teacher, Yang Chenfu. All that gushing is a form of Shamanism. I define Shamanism as: Making contracts or alliances with powerful unseen entities in the hope that one will acquire that entity’s powers. A word to the wise, do not get in the way of other people’s contracts with unseen forces.
In that school there isn’t much teaching. There isn’t much attempt to create methods which will help people develop. There is an emphasis on relaxing. Do the form a lot, get the postures just the way you’re told, with out explication or modification. If you lose a bout of push-hands to a senior student, it is because you aren’t relaxed enough. Now, honestly, there is nothing wrong with discarding methods. --Remember the uncarved block!
Taijiquan really can be practiced as a revealing of our true nature without any inquiry or experiment. Heck, who needs the form? Who needs a teacher? Just stop carving! Stop making and measuring, stop calculating and stop seeing everything as a method! I concur!
Readers may be thinking, oh, yeah, I could move to a cabin in the Montana wilderness and live a life of quietude and leisure and then my every movement would become Taijiquan, right? Maybe. Maybe not. If it isn’t working for you right here, it isn’t all that likely to work for you out there either. But so what? Wuwei is the idea that a return to simplicity is always an option. Always a possibility. Everywhere. Always.
The moment I start writing a blog post, or you start reading one, the danger that we will lose sight of wuwei increases. Because reading and writing is a form of carving. The moment we put pen to paper we risk crossing over into the land of methods.Does embracing a method mean we have lost sight of wuwei? Maybe, maybe not. This is one of the essential questions the Daodejing asks. Some people have translated Dao-De-Jing as "The Classic of the Way and It’s Power” (Dao=way, De=power, Jing=text) meaning that it is a book of ultimate methods. But Dao and De resist definition. We could say there are Dao style methodless-methods, and De style methods which perfect us back toward simplicity. The two together are one, Daode.
Our true nature is without limits. Sometimes we go into survival mode and make contracts with the unseen world in hope of getting an advantage, a leg up, or accumulating power (Shamanism). Other times we are content to explore, inquire, and experiment--wandering at ease (De). And sometimes we find ourselves without an agenda at all (Dao). These three categories of human experience, Shamanism, De, and Dao, are practiced to some extent by all humans.
If Tabby Cat ever stops scratching his post and decides to come down from his anonymity and share a bowl of milk with me--we might find ourselves together with no agenda. (Yes, I’m offering!) He certainly makes a habit in his blog of purring in the direction of methodless-methods: “Just Rrrrrelax, it’s just Mmmmind, nothing but Eeeeenergy.” But then he hits himself with his own bludgeon. He goes to Ashtanga Yoga for alignment, and thinks Boxing is the perfect method for learning to hit. Au contraire my fair kitty, I surmise from this that he has become trapped in a method. He believes that Taijiquan works through using sensitivity to find an opponent’s weakness and channeling energy/power effortlessly up from the ground to uproot his opponent. This is a perfect description of a water woman reverting to an ice woman. This would also explain why he thinks he can’t hit someone using Taijiquan. At that level he gets some power from weakness, but using sensitivity for power and advantage is a form of aggression which will block further fruition. Power (jin) and energy (qi) have limits, weakness has none.
Steamy Woman, Watery Woman, Icy Woman
/The practice of Taijqiquan push-hands is a feminine art. Even when practiced by men, it unleashes feminine qualities. For the fun of it, we could compare it to ballet. Even though most people are familiar with a few famous male ballet dancers like Nijinsky, Nureyev, and Baryshnikov, everyone thinks of ballet as a feminine art.
The first level of practice is called "Icy Woman." At this level we develop a root so that when pushed the opponent's force is directed through our body down to the ground. As the Icy Woman's structure improves she is able to keep this rooted quality continuously during dynamic movement. If played as a game, both people will try to keep even pressure on their opponent's root. The moment the pressure is broken either partner can move to sever their opponent's root. The game can also be won root-to-root. In this case each person uses a blend of twisting, wrapping, expanding and condensing to improve the integration of their root. Root against root, the better root will win.
There are two side tracks many teachers take with the Icy Woman. The first side track is technique. 90% of the push-hands on youtube is a demonstration of this. Techniques include tricks, grappling, striking, pushing, plucking martial applications and so on. The other side track is trying to develop sensitivity. This confusion arises when an Icy Woman has a broken or ineffective structure or an inferior root, and yet still wants desperately to win. Sensitivity does not need to be developed. Sensitivity is innate, we are born with it, no assembly required. The only way to reduce sensitivity is with aggression. The Daodejing makes this point on the first page, (the concept is called wuwei).
The second level of practice is called "Watery Woman." At this level it is necessary to become weak. If played as a game, the goal is to try and find some ice in your opponent. Ice is either structure or rootedness. The Watery Woman does not attempt to compete structure-against-structure nor does she try to uproot her opponent. She gives up rootedness and structure for fluid movement and weight. The Watery Woman sloshes her weight in and around her opponent, she only wins when her opponent makes a mistake--the mistake of becoming icy.
The Watery Woman is not hard to achieve, because it is also an innate human quality. Many people get stuck with the Watery Woman because they try to fall back on Icy Woman skills and techniques when they are losing. A heavier Water Woman has a huge advantage over a waifish one. A half-frozen Icy Woman can beat a half-dried Watery Woman. Being an Watery Woman is not an advantage in and of itself. One can get stuck at this level by developing very effective mixed ice and water techniques, including vibrating, bouncing, or shaking oneself. If it only moves fast, it isn't water.
When the Watery Woman becomes comfortable, lively and uninhibited-- the pleasure of the experience becomes steamy.
The third level of practice is called "Steamy Woman." At this level her body becomes cloud-like. Empty and full at the same time. When the Steamy Woman meets ice or water in her opponents she simply floats them out of the way. Her mind is not on her body at all, but all around it at play with the elements of volume, momentum, and density. Inside a steam-like feeling moves around freely without regard to purpose or concept. Like a cloud, it has no agenda. Outside the game is played by the shifts and swirls of presence.
For those of you who have been following my discussions for sometime, you will probably see the three Daoist "views" permeating the practice of push-hands: Wuwei (effortless, natural, return), Transcendence (perfection, enlightenment), and Shamanism (contracts with, or sacrifices to, powerful allies,--in this case female super hero allies.) Push-hands is a method which can be practiced using any of these views, but each view will produce a unique type fruition.
No doubt, some of my readers are thinking, "Where did you get this Woman thing from." Here, I must admit that the Chinese term I'm referring to is ren, or "human," and it has no gender. However, when George Xu, for instance, explains these three types of people, he makes the opposite mistake and calls them Ice Men, Water Men, and Steam Men. I chose to use the female pronoun because it's consistent with Daoist thinking and practice. Another key idea of the Daodejing is the centrality of our feminine nature. (Chapter 6)
I have been told there is a Fourth level, the "Void-like Woman." It is effortless, and innate, it happens automatically with a completely resolved death. Perhaps it is possible to reach this level while one is still breathing?
OK a little off topic, but pretty Icy!
The first level of practice is called "Icy Woman." At this level we develop a root so that when pushed the opponent's force is directed through our body down to the ground. As the Icy Woman's structure improves she is able to keep this rooted quality continuously during dynamic movement. If played as a game, both people will try to keep even pressure on their opponent's root. The moment the pressure is broken either partner can move to sever their opponent's root. The game can also be won root-to-root. In this case each person uses a blend of twisting, wrapping, expanding and condensing to improve the integration of their root. Root against root, the better root will win.
There are two side tracks many teachers take with the Icy Woman. The first side track is technique. 90% of the push-hands on youtube is a demonstration of this. Techniques include tricks, grappling, striking, pushing, plucking martial applications and so on. The other side track is trying to develop sensitivity. This confusion arises when an Icy Woman has a broken or ineffective structure or an inferior root, and yet still wants desperately to win. Sensitivity does not need to be developed. Sensitivity is innate, we are born with it, no assembly required. The only way to reduce sensitivity is with aggression. The Daodejing makes this point on the first page, (the concept is called wuwei).
In innocence we can feel the subtle essences.
When possessed of desire we can feel only the yearned-for manifest.
The second level of practice is called "Watery Woman." At this level it is necessary to become weak. If played as a game, the goal is to try and find some ice in your opponent. Ice is either structure or rootedness. The Watery Woman does not attempt to compete structure-against-structure nor does she try to uproot her opponent. She gives up rootedness and structure for fluid movement and weight. The Watery Woman sloshes her weight in and around her opponent, she only wins when her opponent makes a mistake--the mistake of becoming icy.
The Watery Woman is not hard to achieve, because it is also an innate human quality. Many people get stuck with the Watery Woman because they try to fall back on Icy Woman skills and techniques when they are losing. A heavier Water Woman has a huge advantage over a waifish one. A half-frozen Icy Woman can beat a half-dried Watery Woman. Being an Watery Woman is not an advantage in and of itself. One can get stuck at this level by developing very effective mixed ice and water techniques, including vibrating, bouncing, or shaking oneself. If it only moves fast, it isn't water.
When the Watery Woman becomes comfortable, lively and uninhibited-- the pleasure of the experience becomes steamy.
The third level of practice is called "Steamy Woman." At this level her body becomes cloud-like. Empty and full at the same time. When the Steamy Woman meets ice or water in her opponents she simply floats them out of the way. Her mind is not on her body at all, but all around it at play with the elements of volume, momentum, and density. Inside a steam-like feeling moves around freely without regard to purpose or concept. Like a cloud, it has no agenda. Outside the game is played by the shifts and swirls of presence.
For those of you who have been following my discussions for sometime, you will probably see the three Daoist "views" permeating the practice of push-hands: Wuwei (effortless, natural, return), Transcendence (perfection, enlightenment), and Shamanism (contracts with, or sacrifices to, powerful allies,--in this case female super hero allies.) Push-hands is a method which can be practiced using any of these views, but each view will produce a unique type fruition.
No doubt, some of my readers are thinking, "Where did you get this Woman thing from." Here, I must admit that the Chinese term I'm referring to is ren, or "human," and it has no gender. However, when George Xu, for instance, explains these three types of people, he makes the opposite mistake and calls them Ice Men, Water Men, and Steam Men. I chose to use the female pronoun because it's consistent with Daoist thinking and practice. Another key idea of the Daodejing is the centrality of our feminine nature. (Chapter 6)
The Valley Spirit is Deathless it is called the Dark Feminine.
The door of the Dark Feminine, is called the root of Heaven and Earth.
Subtle, it seems only tenuously to exist, and yet drawn upon it is inexhaustible.
I have been told there is a Fourth level, the "Void-like Woman." It is effortless, and innate, it happens automatically with a completely resolved death. Perhaps it is possible to reach this level while one is still breathing?
OK a little off topic, but pretty Icy!