Henri Maspero, Wilhelm Reich & Katherine Dunham

Wow, it was fun putting those three names together.

Actually they don't fit so well together, but what they have in common is that they all crossed metaphorical bridges that make this blog possible.

Henri Maspero was the first sinologist to recognized the scope of Daoism as a religion. Of course there were a bunch of sinologists that preceded him, but I think he was the first to think about Daoism outside of a Christian framework. He was murdered by the Nazi's at Buchenwald in 1945. Scholars of comparable depth didn't surface again until the 1970's, mostly in France (probably do to his influence there), and not until the 1990's in English.

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Sigmund Freud. He is such a weird character in history that most people are reluctant to credit him as a significant force in the development of ideas. But he is also hard to dismiss. He was the first scholar to try to prove that sex is good for you. Perhaps I should be crediting Oscar Wilde instead, or someone else who said such things but used humor as a cover. But Reich was the first person to use the expression body armor (and character armor) as a metaphor for explaining physical tension. He was the first person in Western Civilization to say that emotion can be stored in the body as tension.

Reich is also extraordinary because he was probably the first to say that Nazi's and Communists are the same. His reason was also way ahead of his time: They both used the same repressive physicality to perpetuate fear of self-awareness; a fear which makes people want to be told what to do.

Most people agree that when Reich came to America he went off the deep end. His coolest invention in that regard was the Cloudbuster. But when you read his writings on Orgone Energy you are going to think, "Oh, he means Qi." I believe it is highly likely that Reich was reading some kind of Chinese cosmology. So in that regard he represents the very worst part of Modernity; the habit of an taking an idea from another culture and pretending like you invented it!

Katherine Dunham was the great antidote to that lame habit of Modernity. She invented Dance Anthropology (or Ethnology if you prefer). She made the serious study of movement and physicality both central and indispensable to the process of understanding culture. Because of Katherine Dunham we can laugh at all the scholarship by stiffs who think that they understand something because they saw it or even read about it, and at the same time we can treasure the voices of those who actually join the dance.

I don't know much about the earliest film documents of martial arts, but 1936 was pretty early. Dunham caught some great stuff!

Daoism in San Diego

Here is an article from SignOn San Diego about a Dragon pacifying ritual and academic conference at the University of San Diego.

When the dragon was complete, the priests began an elaborate ceremony replete with drama, dancing, music and even some martial arts. As about 200 people watched the colorful scene unfold in a courtyard at San Diego State University, the dragon was consecrated and blessings were sought.

The article gets a sound bite from Charles Taylor who wrote The Ethics of Authenticity. Since I didn't like the sound-bite, but did like his book, here is a sound-bite about his book by another great thinker, Richard Rorty.

London Review of Books : The great merit of Taylor's brief, non-technical, powerful book...is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social...Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people...The core of Taylor's argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that 'respect for difference' requires you to respect every human being, and every human culture--no matter how vicious or stupid.
--Richard Rorty

Heat or Ice

Yesterday, having just gotten into my warm car after watching the latest Stephen King movie and nearly freezing to death talking to a fellow movie goer in the wind, I saw a small group of high school girls crossing the street. Very sort pants, low socks, t-shirts. One of them had big lumps of plastic wrap around her knees and ankles. I suddenly registered that they were athletes and that the plastic wrap was holding large amounts of ice on the unfortunate young womans legs.

Many people think sitting in an ice bath after a workout is a good way to train. Most people who would be reading my blog know that Chinese medicine almost never uses ice.

There are a whole bunch of theories about why ice is good, but my experience tells me that mostly it is terrible. It is better than nothing on burns, but if you have burn cream, it is better. There is no question that ice can bring down swelling after an injury. For a really bad injury I would put ice on it right away. But as part of a training ritual, it is barbaric. It develops bad, tense, stiff, muscle quality and in the long run it probably leads to arthritis.
I love hot tubs and steam baths. When I was young and road my bicycle at high speed over steep hills to all my appointments, swam in the freezing cold ocean, did kungfu and dance for 6 or even 8 hours every day, and sat still (or slept) in stupid classes at school--a nice hot bath once or twice a week was very close to Nirvana. Still, as a training method it contributed nothing. I was tired and stiff because I was training too much of the wrong thing. It would be better just to train right. Too much hot drains the qi.
Cleaning and scrubbing the surface of your body every time you sweat is really important to maintaining good muscle and joint quality. This is why internal martial artists, especially when they get older, try not to sweat most of the time. If at the end of your practice you aren't near water and a place where you can be naked, at least towel off and change some of your clothes.
A short little dip in hot water, a one minute ice massage after a sprain, fine; Don't make a habit of it.

Daoist Shoes

I've been looking for information on Daoist ritual shoes. I was sure that somewhere I'd seen special Daoist ritual shoes which are 3 inch high stilts. These shoes make it impossible to put weight on the toes or the heel since the stilt post goes down from the center of the foot. Since the base the the stilt is thicker at the bottom, kind of like a mushroom, there is a plenty of space to balance. The problem is I have been unable to find these shoes (so no picture). Did I dream them? How embarrassing.

Dream or not, these shoes represent ultimate shamanic power. The symbolic steps Daoists take in ritual cover huge distances. They circumambulate the empire, the world, and they traverse the distances between stars in the sky.

It gets confusing. Daoists are not shaman, but there is a part of Daoist ritual in which they take on the role or the position, or more accurately, the qi of all shaman. This is done by taking on the physicality of the Chinese prehistory shaman the Great Yu, and acting out key parts of his life. The difference between normative shamanic power and a Daoist embodying the Great Yu is the difference between power and potential power.

There is a direct parallel with taijiquan and other internal arts. First a taijiquan student develops the ability to clearly and unambiguously demonstrate and replicate peng jin , lu jin, an jin, and ji jin (ward-off, rollback, etc...). To get these types of power one must know exactly which part of the foot to use. Then he or she strings peng-ji-lu-an seamlessly together so that these types of power are part of a continuous circle. To achieve this one must be continuously shifting from the ball of the foot to the heel. Once this jin level is achieved the student then moves on to the shi level. Shi roughly means potential, it implies a strategic position, a drawn bow, and having ones hand on a lever.
The jin level is like shamanic power. The shi level leaves power unexpressed, unused.

Shaman get power through covenants with spirits, deities, or even natural forces. The physical "fear and trembling" necessary for summoning shamanic power requires engaging the "pushing and pulling muscles" of the legs which involves pressure in the balls of our feet or in our heels. With these Daoist ritual shoes on, our legs would easily stay in a weak potential state. At the shi level of taijiquan we do not push from the balls of the feet or the heels. Our power remains potential.

UPDATE 12/21/07: Here is a picture of the shoe, it's called a Manchu Shoe. I have now written more on this subject!

More American Qigong Ethics (part 4)

If you are making offerings or commitments (bowing, praying, sacrificing, burning incense) to a teacher or an idea or a deity, or any unseen force--be explicit and upfront with your students. If they are expected to make the same commitments make that clear at the beginning. Do not include students in your commitments or covenants with out their permission.

The above paragraph is a rule.  But I've been having trouble pinning down a rule with regards to subordination and pain.

What makes qigong work is unknown.  Pain is so utterly un-transferable to others that we can not measure change in another persons pain level.  Pain is highly subjective, but fortunately, subjectively felt pain is what matters.
How can I say people shouldn’t subordinate themselves to something if in the process they end up reporting less pain? or more friends? or deeper bonds? I know I’m not half as good as some teachers are at getting students to change their behavior. Are some teachers lying to people for ‘their own good?’

The Gate of Fate

The Chinese term for the lower back kidney area is mingmen which means "the gate of fate." The name implies the Chinese notion that prenatal qi, yuanqi, is stored in the kidney system. The kidneys regulate fluids in the body and they also produce jing. Jing is that aspect of qi which comprises the self reproductive quality in nature, it is stored in the kidney system where it is available both for making babies and for making repairs. Jing produces new tissue when we are injured, bone, muscle, scabs, etc. It is our ancestral memory.

The number one purpose for studying martial arts is to not have a rigid fate. I wish more schools explained this up front. This idea is closely linked to the area known as the mingmen. When the lower back is stiff and deficient we literally have a rigid fate.

How is it possible that a person gets stuck on an idea in their twenties and despite heaps of evidence which accumulates during their lifetime which contradicts that idea, they still cling to it. Traditionally these rigid ideas or notions or ideologies have been conceived as hungry ghosts or wandering demons that are invisible to us but slowly eat away at our kidneys whenever we "check out." By "checking out" I mean staying up too late, forgetting to eat, taking drugs, or unleashing political rants. The day after we become food for little hungry demons, our lower back gets stiff and starts to hurt.

I don't think there is a perfect correlation between physical rigidity and a person's inability to freely make choices based entirely on what is real. There is some correlation, but I've met some amazing people with pretty screwed up bodies. Still, sit-ups are dumb. Six-pack abdominal muscles are O.K. against a boxer with gloves on and that's it. Like the "core-strength" fad, sit-ups break the unity of a person's body, they restrict the freedom of the torso and they tighten the breath. Why choose a rigid fate?

Why I'm Unbalanced

Several years ago, one of my advanced Baguazhang students said to me, "My ankles are wiggling all the time and I'm completely unstable on my feet." It was a break-through for her. She was experiencing things as they are, ziran. This is high level gongfu, this is the purpose of cultivating weakness.

A person standing on two feet is an unstable structure.

There is no such thing as balanced movement. There is only unbalanced movement. The feeling of balance is the result of an unconscious process in which we are constantly readjusting. Fear of falling causes us to develop foot and leg muscles which are constantly at work to keep us feeling balanced. What most people call "rooting" in martial arts is simply a continuation of this process.

One of the reasons the higher levels of martial arts are so hard to achieve is because we are afraid to give up this unconscious reliance on our legs for balance.

Toddlers balance by moving their torsos while their legs remain soft and springy. In Taijiquan we say, "Move from the tantian," but most people use their leg muscles for balance and power which limits the expression of the tantian. To achieve the higher levels of martial arts the legs must be part of the movement of the "tantian," not a separate force. If toddlers can do it, so can you!
The way I learned Baguazhang, I was told to always be "on balance," and to always be able to "turn on a dime." Thus forward motion was propelled by twisting and pulsing the legs. There is a Yin style Baguazhang school in San Francisco that teaches the opposite. They teach that one should always be leaning so that one's spirals will be driven by the momentum of falling. Both these ideas are missing the mark.

Weakness, Security, and Something I Can't Live Without

Chris at Martial Development asked people to try their hand at self-criticism. But gee, isn't calling my blog Weakness with a Twist enough for you?

I'll admit to this: I'm behind on my blogging schedule because while going through security at the Airport I accidentally traded laptops with a woman from New Jersey. Our laptops looked identical on the outside and I guess the security people were re-viewing things randomly. We got on different planes to different parts of the country. She didn't notice until she was on the plane, and I didn't notice until I got her call six hours later.

The lesson: Put a cool sticker on your laptop.

I'll admit to this too: I have a Japanese style spray toilet. I am not a hairless wonder. After using a spray toilet at home for over a year now, I am at a loss to understand how other "people of hair," cope with just toilet paper. The spray toilet comes under the general purview of the Toilet God. I believe that the slow adoption of the spray toilet worldwide means that it is our duty to ritually promote the Toilet God to a higher rank in the Daoist Pantheon in recognition of the higher level of technology involved and to speed the spread of this wonderful devise.

The Celestial Masters: Tianshi

 This is a continuation of my series on basic facts about Daoism.

All Daoist’s recognize Zhang Daoling as the first Tianshi, which means Celestial Master.  The title Tianshi was first given to Daoist priests by the emperor during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE) in acknowledgment their ritual mastery (shi) of the Celestial (tian) realm.   The title was then applied retroactively one thousand years, all the way back to Zhang Daoling.  Zhang is the founder of religious Daoism who met with Lao Jun (Lord Lao), the source of the Daodejing, on mount Heming (Heron Call) in the Year 142 CE and formed the Covenant of Orthodox Unity.  (See article Zhang Daoling.)

There are many Tianshi lineages but there is one individual in each generation who is the central Tianshi.  This person comes from a continuous family lineage going back to Zhang Daoling.  During the Dynastic eras of China the Tianshi had a palace at Dragon Tiger Mountain (Longhushan).  To get a sense of the importance of the Tianshi it helps to understand that all building and construction in China has always been regulated by the government.  No building was allowed to be built larger than the Emperor’s palace.  We get a sense of how important the Tianshi was by noting that the Tianshi’s palace was specifically built (roughly) six feet smaller than the Imperial Palace.  Needless to say, the role of Tianshi was central to the religious life of the country and the functioning of the state, and because of this, the Tianshi is sometimes called the Daoist Pope.

When the Communist government took power in 1949 it banned all religion, and as a consequence the Tianshi fled the country.  During the Cultural Revolution in China (1967-1977) the Tianshi’s palace was completely demolished.  Recently the Tianshi’s palace has been rebuilt and Tianshi Daoism is making a tenuous recovery.

The Priesthood
The Tianshi  priesthood is the oldest Daoist movement.  Its primary activity is the performance of ritual. Rituals are performed in private on behalf of a cosmic, national, or local constituency.  To be a Tianshi of the highest rank one must be married to another Tianshi.   Both men and women are equals, the difference between them has more to do with society at large than any doctrine within Daoism.  Male Tianshi have historically been the ones who interact with the public.

Tianshi are required to keep precepts.  These precepts are from three overlapping categories.  First they are derived from Daodejing and are consistent with its teachings.  Secondly, they regulate appropriate social conduct related to one’s priestly role or position.  And third, they support ritual purity and transcendent practices.

Becoming a Tianshi
Most Tianshi lineages are passed down within families, but it is also possible to be adopted into a lineage.  Each Tianshi gets a name which is taken from a line of a secret lineage poem.  Every member of a generation in the same lineage has a name chosen from the same line of poetry.  Since the Tianshi tradition is very old and has spread wherever Chinese people have settled, this secret lineage name allows Tianshi to identify each other.

The process of becoming a Tianshi usually begins with investiture.  Investiture entails the taking of precepts, the passing-on of ritual vestments and ritual implements, receiving and copying sacred texts (which are usually also committed to memory), and the receiving of registers, which are secret documents used in ritual to regulate the gods, ghosts, spirits and demons of the Daoist Pantheon.

Rank
The type and number of sacred texts a Tianshi is invested with determines his or her ritual rank.  This list is absolutely secret, it is shown only to other Tianshi in specific ritual circumstances.  For example the list could be shown when a new text is transmitted or at the beginning of  a new course of study.  Thus the rank of a  Tianshi is not a personal achievement and all Tianshi are considered equals--there are no true earthly hierarchies.  That being said, there are indeed heavenly hierarchies.  A Tianshi’s role as ritual master is intrinsically about the recording of meritorious acts on earth,  in heaven and in the unseen world.

Zhengyi and Tianshi
The terms Zhengyi and Tianshi are somewhat interchangeable.  The designation Zhengyi  literally means Correct One; it is the name for the original covenant made between  Zhang Daoling and Laojun (Lord Lao) on mount Heming in the year 142 CE.  In English we refer to it as the Covenant of Orthodox Unity.  All Tianshi are also considered Zhengyi.  Zhengyi is perhaps better understood as the category of orthodox  practices, which are in contrast to all practices which are unorthodox (Buzheng).  It can be applied to other Daoist movements and lineages as well, such as Quanzhen or Shangjing.  The trend has been to include Daoist movements and practices under the designation Zhengyi as they are understood to be in conformity with the Original Covenant.

The picture above came from here.

Just say "no" to Turkey, Dog, and Eel!

There are quite a few Daoist precepts about food. Food precepts are one of the more flexible categories of precepts, firstly because humans are so dynamic and secondly because so many other precepts can trump food precepts.  After all, if you are starving eat!

On the other hand, most of the precepts have some solid reason behind them.  Monastic Daoists often followed their Buddhist roots and went with vegetatianism.  While hermit Daoists usually had more limited food choices, so more flexibility.  However, if you have a choice and you are practicing meditation, the category of "hot" or 'heat producing" foods is to be avoided because it has a tendency to make you alternately horny and sleepy. 

Sexual fantasy and sleepiness make it difficult to stay still.  But in my experience, being with extended family is even more disturbing to a meditation practice.  Family quirks that you have managed to escape for most of the year, screaming children, an annoying conversation--these all have a tendency to make us squirm.

So a piece of advice, if you are just starting a meditation practice (meaning less than five years of practice) avoid the turkey.  Turkey is called Huoji in Chinese, Fire Chicken.  It falls in to the category of "hot" foods along with dog and eel. 

Besides being "hot," dog was used (and probably still is) as a blood sacrifice.  Black dogs specifically were used to replace human sacrifices in an earlier era.  Daoists are of course forbidden from participating in blood sacrifice as any deity which drinks blood is by definition demonic.

Eel is also "heat producing," and I believe that fresh water eel somehow competed with rice cultivation in traditional Chinese villages. 

If there is a lot of pressure on you to participate in the turkey ritual, perhaps you can limit your precept violations by compromising with just a little Wild Turkey.  While it is "heat producing," it may dull the influence of extended family entaglements.