Ghosts and Demons!

As I said yesterday, perhaps our most defining characteristic as human beings is our ability to make commitments. But such an observation brings with it the reality that we can make commitments to things which are not real, or not true. At one extreme we can make vague wishy-washy commitments, and at the other extreme we can swear an oath in blood to repeat and maintain a lie.

Enter Yin Spirits.

A clear strong commitment can't be made when a previous commitment is in conflict with it. If the previous and now conflicting commitment is vague, irrational, or desperate, Daoists would call it a ghostly commitment. Lingering ghostly commitments tend to dilute new commitments and thus create more ghostly commitments over time.

Where do weak commitments come from in the first place? What is a ghost or a demon? To answer those two questions I'm going to have to ask another question first.
What happens when we die? From a Daoist point of view there are five possibilities; we become a god, a ghost, a demon, an immortal, or a supportive ancestor.

At the moment of death everything which is subtle and light rises upward to join with heaven; and everything gross, heavy and thick sinks downward and becomes one with earth. The only problem is that this de-polarization can take a while to complete. The stuff that makes us what we are does not disperse immediately.

Usually when a person dies they still have a few things they wish to do, they still have a desire that is unfulfilled, or a fear that lingers. Most of these wishes quickly fade as the person dies, but not all.

A desire like, "I want to sit in my favorite chair and look out the window," would likely fade fast after death. But we've all heard the story of the unfulfilled woman who sat waiting at the window for a lover to come, only to hear a false report that something terrible has befallen her man. The woman commits suicide just at the moment her lover returns! What is left is the type of feeling that can hang around for a while after death. We don't know why this happens, but we do know that the intense feeling and lingering commitments tend to be carried forward through those who were emotionally close to the person who died.

A vow like, "I want my sons and daughters to avenge my murder," has a good chance of continuing on in some form through the living. This is true even if the sons and daughters realize that vengeance is a mistake and choose not to seek it. The fact that a parent died with such a potent unresolved will has a real effect on the children. It has the potential to interfere with their ability's to make strong clear commitments.

A behavior like a craving for a cigarette usually fades shortly after death, but in some circumstances it will be carried forward by ones descendants. This is especially true for those quirky behaviors we inherit from our families which have vague or unknown origins.

When parents experience extreme trauma it is not unusual for them to keep the details of that trauma hidden from their children but to pass on quirky or frightened behavior with out explanation. For example, the child of a Holocaust surviver who acts overly cautious about food, as if he were afraid of being poisoned, but he isn't actually afraid of that.

The Daoist definition of a ghost is a weak nagging commitment. A commitment which doesn't have enough qi to complete itself. Gods and Demons are not so different from each other. A god lower down in the Heavenly Hierarchy tends to get his start as a human who decides to keep his commitment even though he knows it will kill him.

Demon births tend to start with humans who have made very strong commitments to fantasies which spread terror and lies. After such a person dies, people who have inherited weak commitments sometimes make offerings to such a person. They collect amulets and symbols of the dead man's life and thus magnify the will of the dead over time. Hitler is a good example of a demon who lingers on through the weak commitments of the living.

It matters not at all whether you or I believe in ghosts or demons, they are real!

What Do Daoists Believe?

This is part of a series of posts I'm doing on Daoism. I put the first post on its own page (see side bar). As I create more material about Daoism, that page will become a summary with links for all the major posts on Daoism.

When English speaking people first hear that Daoism is a religion, they want to know what the basic tenants of the faith are. They ask, "What do Daoists believe?"

Immediately we have a problem: The standard definition of religion, "A set of Beliefs," doesn’t apply well to Daoism or for that matter any religion which does not encourage conversion and does not proselytize.

A Way of Life
Daoism is not well defined by asking the questions, "What are it’s basic tenants? What are it’s beliefs? " Daoism is a tradition with sacred scriptures, rituals, precepts, a pantheon of gods and demons, and sacred places that inspire great devotion. Daoism has ancient training centers for the study and performance of secret and public ritual. It also has monasteries where people dedicated to meditation and other forms of inner cultivation go to live communally. There are also family lineages, some of which are secret. Daoism’s ever changing tradition stretches back into history, at least to the first century CE, but Daoist’s say their way of life has always been an option, and always will be, though in different eras and different lands it may take many different forms.

Contracts & Commitments
Daoism’s definition of religion emerges from asking the question, "What is a human being?" The simple answer is, we haven’t found the limits of humanness yet. But one thing that is clearly true of all humans is that we make contracts. We make agreements about who we are responsible for, and what our duties are. We make agreements about what a word means, and what is a good place to sleep. We vow allegiance to the righteous, and pledge vengeance upon our foes. A significant part of what constitutes our life as humans is defined by our commitments. Whether they are big or small, subtle or obvious, weak or strong, fleeting or pervasive, our commitments make us what we are.

Cosmology
Daoists take this formula about what defines our humanness to the cosmic level. A human is a temporal agreement between everything in us which is subtle and rises, a category we call Heaven(Tian), and everything in us which is solid and sinks, a category which we call Earth (di). A human being is a contract between Heaven and Earth to stay together, in a polarized state, for however long a person lives. When we die, hopefully the contract ends. However sometimes when a person dies, the duties, contracts, vows, and commitments they have made during their lives linger on even after they have given up their bodies. A simple and common example of this is that when a parent dies, the children often still feel the expectations of the parent for years, sometimes even for the rest of their lives. Our final will or intentions can live on for a time after our death.

One of the most popular expressions of Daoism is the making of talisman. These usually take the form of pieces of paper with words and symbols written on them, but can also be cast in bronze, written in the air, printed on food, or worn as clothing. The word talisman in Chinese is Fu, which literally means a contract. One of the oldest forms of Daoist Healing is the making of contracts which clarify the relationship between the seen and the unseen worlds. These Fu are usually between men and the invisible worlds of gods, ghosts, and demons.

Becoming an Immortal
The ultimate goal of a great many Daoist practices, precepts and rituals is to see to it that commitments resolve easily. Or stated in a more personal way, we seek to live in such a way that the unresolved desires and pledges we have made during our lives do not linger on and torment the living after we have died. This concept is key to understanding Daoist concepts of freedom and fate. This is sometimes understood as the process of becoming a Daoist Immortal (Xian); it has innumerable forms and unlimited possible expressions. It is very hard to define.

Orthodox Covenant
That being said, there is also a Daoist orthodoxy. It is what one might call a collection of ‘best practices studies’--suggestions for how to cultivate Dao. This orthodoxy traces itself back to the founder of religious Daoism, the immortal Zhang Daoling who lived in first century of the Common Era. He was the first Daoist Priest, or Daoshi meaning an Official of the Dao. He is the founder of the Orthodox Covenant of the True Way (Zhengyidao), which later became known as Celestial Masters Daoism (Tianshidao).

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.

Rabbit Love

Chinese popular religion is pretty dynamic. This article talks about how a local cult to the Rabbit God got started and how it is serving a local population.
The guy in the picture is a Fashi, a master of methods. He is not a Daoshi (Daoist priest), but as the creator of this temple/shrine he is in charge of managing the offings people make, the amulets people take away, and the way in which the Rabbit God is addressed.

Daoist priests are also called Tianshi (Celestial Masters) because they are responsible for determining, managing and updating the hierarchy of gods. The Rabbit god falls under the control of the City God. The shrine to the City God was likely the focal point of martial arts training during the Song Dynasty, and is the context from which the word gongfu (Kungfu) got its meaning. Gongfu means "meritorious action," people training martial arts on behalf of the community did so as part of their participation in the cult of the City God.

Zhenwu, the Icon (or god) we talked about yesterday is currently (since about 1650) the center of the Chinese hierarchy of gods. Before that it was the Jade Emperor (he is now retired). All gods deal with questions of fate and freedom. Daoist morality is not concerned with stopping behavior, it is concerned with finding one's place. Gods have a place, Demons have a place, even Starbuck's has a place.

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.

Contest

If it is true that, at the time the various taijiquan postures got their names the main people practicing taijiquan were pirates, then the names should actually have salty meanings.

I know most of you out there have at one time or another made fun of the silly sounding names of the taijiquan postures. My guess is that who ever came up with those names had a sense of humor and was also a bit of a dandy.

The posture "Lazy About Tying One's Coat" probably means, "Forgetting to tuck in your shirt (after a quickie)."

What do you think the posture names/metaphors actually mean? Can you unlock the indoor secret (salty) teachings?