Ghosts, Demons and Immortals

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween, hah, hah, haaa!

There are five basic types of human death; either we become a god, a ghost, a demon, an immortal, or a supportive ancestor.

Most people die and are forgotten, even their descendants forget them in a generation or so. Most people are mostly forgotten in seven years. People who die young, or die with a lot of unfulfilled potential may linger a bit longer. People who lived long fulfilling lives are generally remembered by their descendants simply as supportive ancestors, the more time that passes, the more generally we feel their support. I don't know how my deceased grandparents would feel about me writing a blog, they didn't live to see the internet, but they loved books and innovation, so I feel fairly sure that they would be regular readers if they were still alive.

But it is also safe to say that my grandparents are not completely resolved. I still wonder what they would think, and thus they live on through me and the many other people that knew them.

All ghosts, gods, demons, and supportive ancestors eventually become immortals--they become one with Dao-- they become undifferentiated from the totality of everything known and unknown. The Hindu God Shiva is one of the oldest gods, but eventually he too will be forgotten.

As you may have gathered, Daoism has a vast cosmology which is capable of incorporating new material, new world views, and also subsuming older cults, and mythologies. One of the "cults within the cult" is the quest for Immortality, called Xian in Chinese.

The cult of Xian is extremely diverse. While there are some general suggestions about how to go about becoming a Xian, even manuals and programs to follow, there really is no method that works every time. Even though there are routes by which one may become a xian, like "Rising up in broad daylight with one's dogs and chickens," every process of becoming Xian is truly unique for that person, time and place.

One thing I can say however, is that to become a xian, one must leave behind no unresolved entanglements, no lingering or unfulfilled commitments. An Immortal in that sense is the opposite of a ghost.

Going a little deeper into the subject, it is possible to be still alive and to have begun taking on a ghostly presence. Poor diet, drugs and aggressive behavior, all lead to what we call in Chinese Medicine, "deficiency." Deficiency, as a key concept in Chinese Medicine, takes many different forms, for instance it effects each organ differently and may only be noticed in one organ. From a Daoist point of view, "deficiency" is a draw for ghosts to feed and eventually take up residence in one's body. Ghosts if you remember, are weak commitments; commitments too "deficient" to follow through.

Thus we have one of the most basic connections between Chinese Medicine and Daoism. But don't think I'm letting you gongfu people off the hook. Gongfu, at its most basic level, is about establishing strong commitments. In Chinese Medicine the most potent way to "tonify" (the opposite of deficiency) the spleen and kidneys is through routine exercise. Health in this sense, completes the incomplete, it transforms ghosts into immortals.

The Era of Conditioning

I want to announce that we have officially entered the Era of Conditioning.

Conditioning has now become one of the primary ways we think about the world. It is not enough to learn good habits, we have to make them permanent. People ask questions like: How can we condition people to put their garbage in the trash? To not over eat? To work more productively? To not run red lights? To get on an airplane efficiently? To smile?

Sports, physical therapy, and parenting are all dominated by theories of conditioning. I did some boxing yesterday with gloves and mitts, issuing combinations of punches as the trainer calls them out. The whole idea is to condition a response in a cycle that is intense for 3 minutes and then rests for 1 minute. Release a combination when you see an opening, get your body out of the way when you are attacked.

Medicine is moving fast in the direction of conditioning. Like drugs that condition a particular response from the body. And more shockingly, we now have genetic engineering and stem cell research predicated on the idea that we can grow people the way we want them.

People are even trying to condition their hair!

I'm anti-conditioning. I believe in doing things form the inside out. If I said, "I believe in beginning from the heart," you could accuse me of being a silly romantic. But it's not because I want to bring out genius, or preserve mystery, I just prefer spontaneous unconditioned responses.

I try to teach people to have unconditioned responses. For me, teaching Shaolin to kids is about meeting completely self possessed human beings and presenting them with a tool they can use to keep their bodies unconditioned. A tool for countering or side-stepping conditioning. When a student enters the room the first thing they do is bow. The act of bowing is a declaration that only completely self possessed acts will happen in this room. Students are not permitted to say the words "I can't" because those words mean "something outside of you is in control." Teaching is not something one gives away, it is too difficult for that. It is something students must take for themselves.

In Chinese the term ziran means unconditioned and is often used to describe great art. It means: natural, so-of-itself, and spontaneous. There is even a style of gongfu called Ziranquan (Natural fist) famous for its loose light stepping. (Sun Yat-sen used a Ziranquan guy for his personal bodyguard.)
There is a fine line between super-high-level internal martial arts conditioning and a completely unconditioned, spontaneous, ziran response. It is the same fine line I have talked about before between "perfection," and "wuwei."

For instance, there are three approaches to jindan, the Daoist golden elixir (meditation/alchemy).

1. We could have the embarrassing idea popularized by Mantak Chia that we are moving qi around the micro-cosmic orbit (up the back and down the front), for no particular reason except "orgasmic power." That would be a type of qi conditioning, an act of inviting external forces to possess you.
2. Or we could have the perfection model of jindan, where through perfect visualization and embodiment of various deities and their attributes we become acutely aware of simultaneous movement and stillness. Here specific pathways of qi circulation become the measure of that swing between movement and stillness. That would be transcendent conditioning.

3. Or we could just naturally trust being still.

American Qigong Ethics (part 3)

Here are a few more American Qigong Ethics.

2. Know the actual history and cultural context of your qigong methods. Are they part of a larger system or tradition? What inspired them? Don't exaggerate your knowledge or experience--or that of your teacher.

3. Be explicit about what your qigong methods are supposed to do. Being honest here may be counter intuitive. Because kinesthetic learning is characterized by continuously changing cognitive understanding, my best explanation of what a method will do is the one catered to the kinesthetic knowledge of the listener. In other words, this will not lead to pigeon-holing. More likely it will lead to complexity with some ambiguity.

For example, in In Erle Montaigue's book Power Taiji (Which by the way I like because his writing has the flexibility of a conversation.) he lists the Taijiquan posture/movement "Repulse Monkey," as being good for the Gallbladder. While I have a clear and distinct perception of my gallbladder and can evaluate "Repulse Monkey's" direct effect on my gallbladder, most people can not. I also happen to know that in classical Chinese the term "gallbladder" is not only technical but highly metaphoric, it means to open into a springtime of revitalization that will re-inspire and give support to your decision-making capabilities. In contrast, in English the gallbladder produces bile.

If you understand the statement "Repulse Monkey is good for the gallbladder" the way I do, than you also understand that it is not referring to a remedy. It is an engaged process of complete embodiment. My regular readers will recognize this statement as being in tune with a world view that encouraged long-life, slow motion, continuous and consensual exorcism.

4. Help your students understand their own motivations. Don't encourage people to practice for silly reasons or reasons which will eventually leave them feeling disappointed.

(For instance, regular practice of taijiquan will make your calf muscles smaller, so don't expect to look better in These boots!)

American Qigong Ethics (part 2)

Recently I was having an informed and thoughtful conversation about schools with a woman who has a high level job in statewide education when she casually mentioned that she studies qigong with a real master.

"Oh great," I say, "tell me more."

She tells me he leads a cancer group at one of the local Integrative-Medicine hospital clinics. "What makes him a master?" I ask, explaining that Qigong as medicine is a pretty new idea, and that taxi drivers in China are awarded the title "Master" (Shirfu) as well.

"Oh he's amazing." She said, "We do a style of walking Qigong around a small park and one day a drunk homeless guy stood up and moved imposingly toward our path shouting insults. My master just waved his hand and the guy promptly went over to a bench and fell asleep."

"O.K." I thought to myself, "Obe-Wan Kenobi did that in the Star Wars movie too!" "That's an extraordinary claim," I say. "Are you learning how to do that? What other sorts of claims does he make?"

"Oh, he is very modest. He would never make such a claim himself. I just do it everyday because it makes me feel healthy."

Now, eye rolling aside, I'm not a truth junkie. I don't want to pop this woman's balloon. I don't know what he is personally claiming, but she has apparently talked herself into exercising everyday. Who am I to get in the way of that?

Still there is a significant chance that I have been practicing qigong longer than her "Master," who I suspect invented a lineage and an improbable training history. It diminishes me in two ways. First, some people will assume I'm not very knowledgeable because I don't do these sorts of amazing feats. Second, other people may associate Qigong with these improbable claims and disregard my knowledge altogether. Both of these things happen all the time.

Does her master have some ethical responsibility to clarify his powers of agency?  How different is this from Jerry Alan Johnson who wrote a dictionary sized book on Qigong that I wouldn't even use as a door-stop?  Johnson uses the "sword-fingers" mudra to do "needless" acupuncture, and one of his students is the main Qigong teacher at a Berkeley Acupuncture School.
I acknowledge that charismatic Qigong teachers get disciplined health commitments from their students or clients that I don't get. If you tap into a client's insecurities, or their desire for power, by convincing them that they will be freer, or happier, or stronger, or more preceptive, or even more intuitive, if only they quit eating fried chicken and do some groovy breathing exercise--who am I to get in the way? Those commitments are legitimately good for one's health. Other people are free to subordinate themselves to people and ideas.

The first American Qigong Precept that I propose is this (I know, it's a little long for a precept):

When you don't know, admit you don't know! Teach your students to do the same.  Do not make claims about healing properties that you can not substantiate.  Clear explanations are O.K., anecdotes are not unless you say, "This is an un-substantiated anecdote!"

Good storytelling can be a useful teaching method because it has the power to make metaphors memorable.  When you present stories as history, go ahead and give the good-guys white hats and the bad-guys black hats--but beware, your are walking a fine line--make sure your students are sensitive to the presence of ambiguity.
If your knowledge comes from intuition admit that, and don't cross the line of claiming to know with certainty.

American Qigong Ethics (updated)

As Americans we have always come face to face with cultures different from our own. Multi-culturalism is an ethic based on our sense of what is right and good and desirable in a society. Unfortunately multiculturalism often gets conflated with cultural relativism.

We acknowledge that people from other cultures have different rituals and customs, as well as different narratives (historical perspectives) and priorities.
Multiculturalism is the idea that we can all benefit from a cosmopolitan environment where there is tolerance for gatherings with culturally distinct attributes and which nurture traditional or historic world views and practices. This is because such an environment leads to a greater good. Through hybridization and cross-cultural integration, we can incubate creativity and innovation.

This idea grows out of a more primitive one, "Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water." An expression which reveals the tension between innovation and tradition found in cosmopolitan environments.

Cultural relativism is the simple idea that what seems real or true to people from one culture may not seem so to people from another. A further corollary to this idea is that the methods people of a particular culture use to test or measure whether something is true or real are often different than those of another culture.

The idea of cultural relativism opens the possibility that we may be wrong about how we decide what is right. Why? Because when we cross a cultural boundary the measure or test which determines what is real or what is true may have changed. Such boundary crossing can happen in a cosmopolitan environment, but multiculturalism as a value stands clearly in my culture, which also happens to value personal freedom and commerce.

Where cultural relativism and multiculturalism become conflated a kind of reluctance or hesitancy to make ethical decisions can lead to a weakening of ethics all around. Fertile ground for cultural and social fundamentalists.

How do we know when subordination of someone else is wrong? How do we know if, indeed, subordinating ourselves is wrong?

This is all pretty relevant to qigong because there really are no qigong traditionalists or qigong conservatives. Everyone is an innovator because qigong as a distinct concept is a new invention. It is a creation of cities. Mainland Chinese cities had explosions of Qigong in the 1980's and 90's, imagine a thousand people all practicing together in a park. The government felt that Qigong was out of control and dangerous so it instituted certifications and regulations. Some teachers went into exile, some went to jail, some styles were made illegal, some went underground, but most found a way to work with the government.
The ethical issues that arise teaching Qigong in America (and elsewhere) are different from those in China. We don't need certifications or oversight. We do need good cross-cultural communication and ways to assess the value of a particular style or teacher.

Historically speaking, it is safe to say gongfu (one of the roots of qigong) has been practiced for a thousand years, and probably longer. People could study and practice movement or meditation or martial arts routines within their families or villages. The Chinese word for village is "cheng," which actually means "wall."  All the people within the city "wall" shared the same body of  ethics.

China also has a long history of itinerant performers, healers and religious teachers. Most often these were also associated with a family and a village. Even a traveling Gongfu-Opera-Circus likely had a home, a family and a particular religious association. The historic conflation of performers, healers, ritual experts and religious teachers makes it difficult to create ethical standards for teaching modern qigong. It has all of these roots.


If you are teaching "qigong healing" and just happen to pull a rabbit out of your hat, is it ethical to say "My qi is feeling jumpy today?" I think not. I think you should say, "I will now attempt to pull a rabbit out of my hat," do the deed, then say, "Ta-Dah!" and take a bow.

The ethic of multiculturalism requires us to tolerate some weird blending of performance and healing, but those same ethics also require us to hybridize by drawing some dotted-lines between, for instance, performance and healing, or stretching and kowtowing.

In trying to understand and practice qigong and gongfu ethically, we should be aware of the religious meaning in these practices, and the relationship our style has to various healing, performing and devotional traditions.

Meditation Muscle

In an earlier post I talked about the invocation of Zhenwu (The Perfected Warrior) as a preliminary stage of all meditation. In the secular world, which includes Zen, Yiquan, and Vipasina among others, the invocation of of the Perfected Warrior becomes just "the discipline to be still."

Particularly in the Soto School of Zen (Chan) the posture itself is the central teaching, the method and the fruition. Zen has the Zhenwu preliminary stage, it just isn't given any attention in the teaching, except to say, "sit still."

In Yiquan, Zhenwu becomes a barely active body. Thus students are instructed to wrap their arms around an imaginary tree and try to move it. This constant vigilance could also be called "stillness ready to pounce."

While it is entirely possible to just start practicing meditation with no instruction save a posture; meditation does require a certain kind of strength. Let's call it meditation muscle.  Generally the Zen tradition helps people build this meditation muscle by having new students join a daily group of people who have already established a committed practice.

Willing oneself to "be still" by constantly resisting the urge to move has the same effect as the Yiquan approach of "stillness ready to pounce." Both approaches develop this meditation muscle. They are both pulling on the same "rope."

Since we are not actually Zhenwu (a permanently meditating war god ready at any moment to leap up and charge off into battle), all these methods give-in to something softer and weaker, they reveal our true nature--they are non-productive.

Chansi Jin (Silk Reeling Power)

I dropped by to see George Xu yesterday and he gave me this great list of the seven levels of chansijin.

1. Like a Three-Section Staff.


2. Like a Rope.


3. Like a Snake.


4. The Dantian becomes a perfect ball that rolls in all directions.


5. The Outside and Inside move together.


6. Sense of space moves the body.


7. The mind spirals. (Only the opponent feels the spiral.)

Chansijin is closely associated with Chen Style Taijiquan, but the idea of spiraling is common to most internal martial arts. Chen Style has spun-off its own qigong system called chansigong (silk reeling work). The metaphor here is the act of transferring a silk cocoon to a spool by pulling just a single filament (strand) of silk out of the cocoon. The filament is gently attached to the spool and then the spool is slowly and continuously turned. Once you have many spools of filament silk, they can be spun together into a very strong thread, which can be made into fabric.

When I studied with Zhang Xuexin he liked to call this same practice "making noodles" which mixed the metaphors of pulling and twisting with the resulting looseness.

The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang (last chapter)

The last chapter of The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang, is titled "A Moving Yi Jing." The meat and potatoes of this chapter are two great lists.

The first list is a paragraph for each of the qi transmissions associated with each of the eight "mother palms" and gua (trigrams) of B.K. Frantzis's baguazhang system (which has no form).

The qi transmissions are supplemented in the applications section too. The authors clearly and succinctly describe the feeling of each palm change; how it moves and what makes it distinct. They also explain that the best way to develop these qi transmissions is through the practice of Soft-hands, Roshou (a dynamic moving and slapping version of push-hands).

I plan to do a video for each of the Baguazhang qi transmissions with in a year.

What is a Daoist Body? 

The second list is this:

1. The Physical Body


2. The Qi Body


3. The Emotional Body


4. The Thinking Body


5. The Psychic Body


6. The Causal Body


7. The Body of Individuality


8. The body of the Dao

The authors give very short descriptions of what each category might mean, calling them energy bodies. Beyond that what they say is embarrassing for it's lack of connection to anything real.  (Baguazhang is not a self-help program, and neither is the Yijing.)
Religious Daoism conceptualizes a human being as not just one body but many bodies. Calling them "energy bodies" is misleading. Your house is a body that you share with everyone else who lives there. You can clean, remodel, or move to another house, but the fact that you have such a body is a given. All bodies relate to other bodies. If you live in a damp shack for a month your physical body will start to creek at the joints and your lung capacity will decrease (effecting your qi body).

The way religious Daoists conceptualize it, we share a body with everyone who reads this blog or speaks English. More importantly, we share a body with everyone who makes the same commitments we do, thus Christians all share a body, Muslims all share a body, and everyone who worships Guanyin shares a body.

Ghosts have very weak bodies, demons and gods very strong ones (we give them our strength).

Horror movies are so visceral because as you watch them your various "commitment bodies" are being contorted, poked and exploded. (Obviously, I love the horror genre.)

This is a list used to train Daoist exorcists. In order to do an exorcism you must be able to recognize all the different types of possession in other people and in yourself.

1. Physical possession is pain. In it's lesser forms we recognize it as tension or even "strength." Physical possession causes people to lash out and to blame.


2. Qi possession is associated with controlling the breath, it amplifies feelings, creates excitement and it can lead to transcendent states. (Godlike or "I can't feel my body" types of disassociation.) Mania.


3. Emotional possession translates perfectly into English. Possessed by fear, anger, love, etc...


4. Thinking possession is like believing that the oceans are going to rise because we drive to work. Or that everything that happens in the Middle-East matters. You know, "Global Conspiracy," "The world is in crisis, dude."


5. Psychic possession is believing you know what someone else is thinking, or what is about to happen next.


6. Causal possession is like schizophrenia. When you think objects or icons or voices in your head are the cause of something in the real world. Profound disassociation.


7. The body of Individuation is supreme ego-mania. There are a number of narcotics that can bring about this near-death experience. It is when you feel/believe that you are the cause and purpose of everything.


8. The body of the Dao is a complete death. Sometimes call immortality. It is experience without any limits or conceptions.

Baguazhang is a dance form that explores all the different ways we can become possessed.  It is dancing with what it is to be alive.  Perhaps we could think of it as a personal, daily exorcism, although that certianly isn't traditional.

In case I lost you-- and you don't see the connection to martial arts-- notice that I just made a really good list of what might cause someone to attack you.

Ergonomic Crime

Not long ago I read somewhere that Martial Artists are left handed way out of proportion to their presence in the general society. At the time my morning class was 70% lefties.

Is this because us lefties have some advantage in fighting? Or do we just have more inner torment because deep down, we know we don't belong? In Italian left hand is "mano sinistra", the sinister hand.

When children in American schools are at their fastest rate of growth they are forced to sit in chairs that are harmful to their alighnment. The problem is doubled for lefties with long legs. Not that I ever accepted my victim hood; I refused to sit in these types of chairs in high school. If the classroom had them I brought along a foam backpackers mat and sat on it against the wall in the back of class.

The claim that sitting in one of these uncomfortable chairs staring at the back of someone else's head is actually good for learning and taking notes is worse than negligence. It is an ergonomic crime.

Yang-Chu

If you haven't read Yang-Chu, I recommend it. Yang-Chu is considered one of the early voices of Daoism (300 BCE), a voice for wuwei.

His ideas are recorded in the seventh section of the Leizi (Lieh-Tzu). It's a short section and you can read it on-line here.

Yang-Chu said, all we are is a body and a story. It isn't much but applying his minimalism is useful for cutting through hype.

Yang-Chu didn't reject qi, or wealth, or pleasure--to him these are just relative ways of describing experience. He seems a little anti-fame, but that's because he sees freedom in the possibility of changing our story and fame has a tendency to lock us into our stories. We definitely have a body which moves around, thinks, and changes. And we tell all kinds of stories.

It is hardly ever the body that stops people from developing great martial arts skills, it is usually the story that gets in the way.

Most modern people find discussions of fate kind of silly. Like dude, I'm free, right? Yang-Chu cuts through all that. You do have a body, and it does have limitations. Those limitations are not always known, but they do shape our life and our experience of life. Our body does have a fate, or put another way, our fate does have a "shape."

Our story also has limitations, fate. Tell too wacky a story and you'll get yourself locked up. But even if you are walking around with a bad reputation, you are still pretty free to change your story. That freedom to change our story also suggests that we might be able to discard our story or cut it down to a nice manageable size.

The book Blink talks about a guy in Oregon who studied couples on video and developed a scoring system based on observations that could tell him with 90% accuracy if a given couple would still be together in 15 years. When I first heard this I was in shock for a few days. Why was I bothering with all the little details, like doing the dishes and "communicating" if almost all the significant data was in a 15 minute video interview? Is it possible that we really don't have free will?

Anyway, I would really like to get a video scoring system to determine whether or not a student is going to practice everyday, or if they will still be studying gongfu in like 10 years. Heck, I'd like to score myself!

We should definitely be offering discounts to people who have the FATE to practice everyday. What is your fate?