Philosophy of Fear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labor Day Weekend

I'm working on some posts about fear, but they aren't finished yet.

I'm being pulled away to go play, so no blog today, but I have been leaving comments on the last few post of FormosaNeijia that readers may find interesting, like this one below:

Well, yes, you should know and train every technique in the form with an active partner, preferably one that is better than you and starts nice but gets rougher. I was taking that for granted.
Still, I’m starting to think the Bridge idea is in conflict with Taijiquan theory. My training in Chinese martial arts, in general (Northern Shaolin, Lan Shou, Xingyi, Bagua) taught me not to defend. In taiji theory every centimeter of your being is in the fight, if you dedicate some part of your body to defense at the moment of contact you might as well put your neck out and offer it to your opponent as a snack.

Three Schools of Chinese Medicine

I have said before that most medicine comes from war.

Why? because that's when famine and pestulance are most likely to happen. That's when injuries, trauma, infections and disentary can be treated on mass. Infectious diseases have a habit of spreading quickly through troops living in close proximity to each other.

Knowledge about womens health, pediatrics and degenerative illness is more likely to be advanced during times of great wealth and prosperity.

Chinese village doctors were often part of a "big family," which meant that they were treating most of the descendants of known lineages. Because of this they were likely to see all the hereditary expressions of a particular genetic line. This made it possible to accumulate great knowledge about weaknesses and diseases which are inherited.

While medical knowledge in China was often past down father to son, and too often was secret. There is also a long tradition of publishing best practices.

Starting in the Tang Dynasty (600-900 CE), Chinese governments gave exams, and officially certified competent doctors.

The two dominant metaphors of Chinese medicine are the circulation system and the digestive system.

Circulation is associated with the North and acupuncture. It conceives of health in terms of a complex plumbing system, clogs, narrowing, pooling, not enough pressure, etc....

Digestion is associated with the South and herbal formulas. It conceives of all parts of the body in terms of digestive function, assimilation, elimination, appetite, fermentation, purification, etc....

A third metaphor, which tends to be associated with martial arts, is a well integrated structure. It conceives of every part of the body as having it's own optimal shape and way of moving. Each part contributes to a complete, well integrated whole moving form. If one part of the body is not moving the way it is supposed to, it will effect all other parts of the the structure. For instance, a liver that doesn't move like a jellyfish when active, will slowly, over years, change the shape and alignment of the bones. An injury to the neck will effect the dexterity of the hand.

Kuo Lien-ying's Diagram

The T'ai Chi Boxing Chronicle, Compiled and Explained by Kuo Lien-Ying, translated by Guttmann, (1994, North Atlantic Books), contains this diagram.

The top third and the bottom two thirds are two different diagrams. I find the bottom two thirds the more interesting of the two. Stand yourself at the top where it says "Centrifucal force." The 'wiggle' below the word Peng is, I think, meant to represent "An jin" or hidden power, just below that is the bridge to your opponent.

There are lot's of things here for all you push-hands players out there to think about. For instance, notice that Pivoting and Grabbing are almost out side of the picture, far beyond the opponent's center.

I believe he intended us to see Ji, Lu, and An (I can't bare to translate them) as contained in the words: Open, Close, Give, Empty Receive, Adhere, Evade, Connect, and Stick.

The Bridge as a Metaphor

I often hear the bridge metaphor in martial arts talk. It has a number of different meanings. Zhang Xuexin used it to describe what he called the bridge stance. His metaphor was a rainbow bridge, probably bamboo, which was a brilliant Chinese structural innovation of the Sung Dynasty.

The idea is that your legs are like huge bundles of bamboo stuck in the ground at angles leaning over a river. These bundles then have more and more bundles tied to them at progressively lower angels until the two sides of the bridge meet in the middle. By staggering the bundles you create many triangles in the structure and it becomes a self supporting woven structure, which is both strong and quite flexible.

In other words, he was saying that the two legs are a connected structure which is constantly redistributing the weight of the torso.

Luo Dexiu and the gang over at formosaneijia are using the metaphor to mean the act of crossing over. If you are going to have a fight at a bridge and you meet your opponent in the middle, you both have equally limited space to maneuver. Step back and you are below your opponent, step side and you're in the drink.

However; if your opponent decides to cross the bridge first you can gain an advantage by attacking him just as he is exiting the bridge, at the moment where his maneuverability is limited and yours isn't.

This complex metaphor is used to talk about how we enter a fight and close the gap between us. Speed, power, technique, and the use of timing all change dramatically as the two fighters get closer and closer together. (Basically we move through this approximate progression in an instant: Kicks, jabs, stomping, slaps, hooks, throws, knees, elbows, shoulders, more throws, grappling.)

Thus the bridge is often the movement or technique one uses to get in closer. If you "cross the bridge first" your technique should compensate for that moment of vulnerability just as you "get off the bridge." For instance, someone will often step in fast faking with the back of their hand outstretch, if this is met by the opponent's hand, one can can sense the opponents intentions, direction, and power at the moment of contact and spontaneously use that information to inform the next part of their attack.

Others, like the Blacktaoist, are, by extension, using the term bridge to mean one's arm. If the arm is the first contact with the opponent then it needs to have extraordinarily good structure, so that it can take all the heavy traffic that is going to be traveling over it!  More traffic, more power.  If you have a weak bridge (that can't handle much traffic), it doesn't matter how good your techniques are, your opponent's bridge will send more heavy traffic (o.k. how about troops then?) to dominate your side of the the bridge.

Strength vs. Weakness

Many people find that the idea of "strength in softness" challenges everything they've ever been taught about how to be. When I say "experiment with cultivating weakness and not controlling outcomes," I really mean it. Embodying this may change your experience of the world and all the little things you do, like opening doors, picking up spoons, and brushing your teeth. I am not asking you to take what I am saying on faith, do your own experiments, trust your own experience.

That being said, it is not easy to communicate the "reason" we do certain practices, like standing still. I'm glad I didn't ask a lot of questions about the purpose of standing still when I first learned it. The truth is I made a bunch of assumptions, some of which were actually wrong. Fortunately in my case, I got help and figured it out. Most people hang on to their false assumptions (or their teachers misleading explanations) and end up disenchanted. (And here I mean both definitions of disenchanted.)

I'm not convinced that someone can understand the reasons for standing still until they have done it without fail for at least a year. Understanding would at that point emerge spontaneously in conversation. Perhaps I can sit here and type out a brilliant explanation of standing, but the truth is, it's too simple for that. The purpose of standing is that it reveals what we actually are.

Four Types of Teaching

The Daodejing (Tao Te Ch'ing), the central text of Daoism was written at least 2300 years ago. It is understandable to us today because around 2000 commentaries have, over the years, been written to explain it. Many chapters refers to a type of person called a Shang. In many commentaries this is often understood to mean a ruler or a king, but it could also be a Shaman-king, or simply a wise person, a sage, or even an adept or a teacher.

So in Chapter 17 (of the Wangbi edition) I take the liberty of translating Shang as Teacher.

The best teacher is one you don't even know is a teacher,

the next best is intimate and kind,

after that is the type that inspires fear,

and lastly the one that cuts you off.

Now Tom Sawyer painting the fence comes to mind immediately when I think of the first kind of teacher. Yes, but we're also talking about someone who is just a presence. They teach by example but they aren't even obviously teaching a method, their just making you a cup of tea and hanging out with you.

The second type of teacher is everybody's favorite, they praise us, we feel like they're really helping us. We believe in their goodness.

The third type of teacher uses fear to teach. They rile you up, they intimidate you, they inspire outrage, they make you push back and stand up for your ideas, your reasons for learning, and who you think you are.

The fourth type of teacher inspires revolt. If you won't leave on your own, they'll kick you out. Their gift to you is that they hack you off. They know that in certain situations the best relationship is complete disassociation.

All four types of teachers are actually four types of teaching and all good teachers use all four.

Appetite and Discipline

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perfection

There is a line from the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) that goes:

The purist white is easily soiled.

or sometimes

The purist white appears soiled.

From earliest times, Daoism has played with the paradoxes inherent in the human quest for purity and perfection. During the Sung and Ming dynasties the Chinese government gave out official titles to Orthodox Daoists. (Actually, even at times when the government had an anti-Daoist outlook, Daoshi, invested priests, had the status of "prince" if they were dragged into a magistrate's court. When the British won capitulation at the end of the Opium Wars, one of their demands was that Christian Missionaries be given the same status in court as Daoists. This was later one of the grievances of the Boxer rebellion.)

Anyway the titles were funny like: The Perfected Immortal of the Purple Mist, or The Most Perfected Immortal of Mysterious Moon-light.

I lectured on perfection to this mornings class and at the end one of my students said, "My problem with perfection is that it is boring."

I've said before that Daoism is not a self-improvement scheme. But Daoism also doesn't reject self-improvement as an experiment. If a person has an "appetite" for self-improvement, Daoism has many methods for exploring that "appetite."

The problem with perfect alignment is that it is so easily disturbed. If your alignment is really perfect, you'll be totally thrown off by a little kid who crashes into you screaming and crying, "Help me rescue my dolly!"

For years I've practiced regulating my diet. One of the methods I used was to eat rice porridge (jook, congee, baijou) every morning as my main meal of the day. I'd look at my tongue, take my pulse and feel my appetite. Then I'd select different ingredients to go in the porridge, everything from mustard greens and beef stock, to chestnuts and pork-ribs. Still the base was the same and the additions were always based on bring me back to balance, really a type of purity.

My digestion was spectacular, and my practice really benefited from it. But I couldn't travel, or go out to eat. I went to stay at my sister's house for a few days. She made some fancy fried thing one morning and my tongue turned black. The variation was too much of a shock.

So after that I kept the same porridge diet, but twice a week I would spontaneously have something weird instead; like eggs, granola, or a cheese danish. This created a kind of syncopated jazz rhythm in my diet that allowed me to travel, eat-out, and experiment further afield.

The Daoist concept of "Perfection" is really about experiencing and accepting what we actually are.

Talisman (Fu)

Formosa Neijia posted the last two paragraphs of this article by the Author of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, Brian Kennedy.

The Dark side of Talismans
It was March of 2006. A pregnant woman and her unborn baby had been murdered. The Taiwanese police had narrowed their suspects down to one person, the boyfriend. A police raid is conducted on his house and the police find a most eerie thing when they burst through the doors.

The murderer has plastered hundreds of Taoist talismans over every square inch of his apartment. His purpose was obvious, at least to Taiwanese observers, and that was to protect himself from the ghost of his murdered girlfriend and their unborn murdered child.

Although Taoist priest and pundits were quick to try and distance "legitimate" Taiwanese Taoism from the dark evilness of the murderer, nonetheless folk belief in Taiwan is that such talismans are, for better or worse, "morally neutral," meaning they will work regardless of the motive or personal morality of the users. It is noticeable to any observer of Taiwanese Taoism or any observer of Taiwan's criminal element that the two things often go hand in glove. For example Taiwanese gangsters often wrap their illegal firearms or knives in Taoist talismans.

First of all let me recommend a really great Horror Movie on the subject, Double Vision (Taiwan, 2002) [review].

Kennedy is right that Talisman (as a whole category) are "morally neutral," but so are Emergency Rooms, Technology, and the Law. An emergency room will take anyone who bleeds.

Confucius listed four categories that he would not discuss. One of them was random/domestic violence. His reason was that it is so common, it happens everywhere to all types of people. The horrible scene above is all too common, a young man, probably in a possessive rage, kills his pregnant girlfriend. If the story is like so many others, he was instantly filled with unbearable guilt.

Kennedy says the Talisman are Daoist. It would be more accurate to say "Red-Hat Daoist," sometimes referred to as Wu, and in this blog what I have been calling Trans-mediums. However, there is no central authority in Daoism, so if someone puts on a black hat and calls themselves at black-hat-orthodox-Daoist, they may be able to get away with it, especially where people are uprooted from their traditional communities.

The Chinese term for Talisman is fu. Fu means contract. A fu, in this case, is a contract between the living and the unseen world. Those talisman he put up around the murder said something. Probably not "I'm sorry" and also probably not, "burn in hell," they were likely an attempt to protect the man from his own intense feelings of guilt. He was afraid, as anyone in that situation would be, that he was going to carry feelings of guilt for every minute of the rest of his life. The newly dead, had in a very real and even physical way, implanted themselves in his body.

These fu were likely a request that the dead be resolved as quickly as possible. When people die, especially young people, and especially people who die violently, they often leave intense unresolved problems, and feelings behind.

Does ritually creating and hanging a contract asking for resolution actually bring about resolution? I don't know, but I'll bet he is going to do some time behind bars.

footnote: The ad photo for Double Vision at the top, has a slogan for the English speaking audience about belief. It ain't in the movie.