Prowess

I've been thinking a lot about prowess lately. The dissertation Martial Gods and Magic Swords, by Avron Boretz got me going on it. This is a difficult work to review, especially since I had to return it to inter-library loan a few days ago.

The classical explanation of the basic gongfu bow or greeting is that you are covering your right fist, which represents maximum explosive power, with your left hand, which represents the commitment and ability to control that power.

Wen, the left hand, culture, writing, government, civility; juxtaposed with Wu, the right hand, raw power, martial, chaotic, military.

Historically governments, and scholars generally had an interest in having us believe that Wen naturally dominates Wu, and that we should fear the opposite situation. Certainly, the Daoist pantheon gives hierarchical precedent to gods in civil roles and lower status to gods in military or punishment roles, and even lower status to demons and chaotic forces.

But reality on earth is not always so simple, nor should it be. There are no true earthly hierarchies.

Avron Boretz is, I think, the first martial artist to really dive into the blended subject of ethnology and history. As a martial artist and a scholar, he managed to get himself joined up with a cult dedicated to The Dark Lord (I kid you not, but in Chinese it would be Xuandi) in a small town in Northern Taiwan. All the inner cult members were martial artists and many of them were involved in crime, like smuggling and prostitution, fringe of society stuff. They were a brotherhood of sworn allegiance, prone to occasional fighting with other brotherhoods.  In other words, small time gangsters.
The book takes a hard look at the role of rituals in creating feelings of prowess in men who are otherwise kind of marginal. Because he got quite close to these guys, he writes about many different aspects of the cult. They all go out together to do exorcisms dressed up in costumes as demon generals. Sometimes they get possessed by the demon general they are representing. They all wear thick make-up and go into trance, but they only occasionally become possessed.

One of the ways they determine if a possession is authentic is that the person who was possessed has no memory of it.

The second to last chapter kind of surprised me. It is all about partying with the boys. Heavy drinking nearly every night, women, money, status-- all ways that men demonstrate their prowess.

The only time I have done things I have no memory of was after drinking large amounts of alcohol. I wonder if that is what it is like to be possessed. My experience of it was just the opposite of prowess, it was extreme embarrassment. But I have met people who are proud of their black-out moments, perhaps for some rather desperate people, blacking out could be a form of prowess.

Martial arts and alcohol, seems like a bad combo, but so do sports and alcohol and we all know those games used to be played by very drunk individuals.

These martial dances are not martial arts, but they are displays of prowess and they do have many similarities to the martial arts I practice.

One interesting example is the Big Dipper step, or Seven Star step. When a group of demon generals approaches a house or a business they are about to do an exorcism on, they approach it doing the Seven Star step (chixing bu). They then stamp on the ground and run across the threshold into the building.

I realized that everyone of my Northern Shaolin forms begins with a Seven Star step.  In Northern Shaolin, first we stamp on the ground and sink into cat stance, which is like stepping over a threshold. Then our hands shoot out and break apart, as if we were breaking through double doors or the opening in a curtain, and we run three steps, as if we were running into a building or onto a stage, and we do the "monk clears his sleeves" action. I counted it out and it is exactly seven steps. Cool huh?

UPDATE: This is now a book! Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters!

Placebo vs. Placebo

Here is an article about placebo trials that acknowledges ritual may be the decisive factor in a lot of healing, and side effects too.

After 10 weeks, subjects taking sham pills said their pain decreased an average of 1.50 points on the 10-point scale. After 8 weeks, those receiving fake acupuncture reported a drop of 2.64 points. In other words, not receiving acupuncture reduces pain more than not taking drugs.

Homeless Shelter for Impotent Deities

The flexibility of Chinese religious convictions is food for thought. This story suggests an interesting blend of confidence and reluctance.

YILAN, Taiwan -- Bulletins are going up in the western part of Suao, a fishing port near Yilan on northeast Taiwan. Put up by a temple of land gods or tu-di-gong, they complain it now has been burdened with too many unwanted images of local deities, including the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.

"Please take them back," the bulletins urge.

Too Many Unwanted Deities

And on a different note, here is a link about a Daoist Dancer:

Dance of a Sage.

And since I mentioned it yesterday, here is an article about Japanese Tea Ceremony that at leasts credits Daoism, even if it fails to explain that connection.   Briefly, Japanese Tea Ceremony claims roots in Chan Buddhism and the particular way that Chan was adopted by the Samurai warrior class.  Chan Buddhism, in its competition with Daoism for patronage, developed a simplified version of a Daoist ritual in which local officials were asked to received a bowl of tea as representatives of all human life.

Orange Juice and Hermits

I grew up arguing every night at the dinner table. For the most part it was an edifying and respectful experience. This kind of intensive educational model is pretty rare world-wide (except in Israel where it is the norm).

We also drank orange juice with our dinner which is a real "no-no" in Chinese medicine, mainly because your spleen will reject all the highest quality nutrients in favor of the simple sugars. The rejected foods still get digested but your body needs to create more heat to digest these higher quality nutrients once they have been passed on to the large intestine. The result is that your body takes on fluids in order to insulate the other organs from all the heat. Orange juice makes most people gain body weight in water, edema. (After years it becomes the syndrome known as "damp heat.")

However; I don't think drinking orange juice had a negative effect on my health, most kids are pretty resilient as long as they are getting enough food.

But there was one strange effect. Now if I drink orange juice with a meal, even breakfast, I'll get in an argument. I become completely posessed by my ancestors. Generally I believe things like this can be overcome with will power, but in this case I have no control. If I'm alone, I'll argue with a chair.

One of my students sent me this email:

I wrote down what we just talked about because I didn't want to forget it. Then I wondered if I'd really understood correctly. So if this does not look like what you meant, could you let me know.
-H

My Question: Should one practice differently on different days? For example should some days be longer, more in-depth etc?

Your Answer: There are two Wuwei approaches:

1) Practice at the same time, same place, same duration, same stuff. The difference will still be there; it will be made apparent with a backdrop of sameness.
2) Hermit method: move with the qi of the moment. Practices will vary significantly.

There are also two De or "virtuous perfection" approaches:

1) Urban – Do many discrete experiments with one's practice so that you will achieve certain and specific fruitions. This could include the calendar (tongshu), food, intensity, etc. But it will include record keeping of some sort, as experiments involve constant evaluation and recalibration to produce fruition.
2)Hermit method: Could involve calendar, detailed seasonal correspondence. Embodying and exploring the qi of various events (like grass sprouting or mushrooms coming up). Records will also be kept for the same purpose.

Follow up question: Is the difference between the hermit and urban methods, the level of detail and in-depth relation with natural environment?

Now in my family, if after a long discussion someone were to restate my argument in crystal clear and respectful terms, there is a good chance that they would be on the verge of delivering a fatal blow.

But putting that possibility aside, this question shows the difficulty of communicating Daoist view and practice with words.

The key thing to digest here is that the wuwei view does not require analysis. By asking the question you are already in the de (perfection, integration, improvement) camp. [note: De is often translated "virtue," it is the de used in the title of the Dao De Jing.]

The wuwei hermit method is called "The Wandering of the Mare." Living around other people means having to coordinate with their schedules and that is antithetical to constant spontaneity.

The wuwei view suggests that practice is self-revealing, it doesn't require any discipline other than trusting your appetites.

Yes, the difference between the urban and the hermit models of de (perfection) is one of detail and depth. But it is also a difference of scale.

The urban perfection seeker is very playful and creative. The fact that I spent many years doing a 20 minute Japanese Tea Ceremony in my elevated gold-painted elixir-dedicated Quiet Room before leaving the house, means that now when I walk into Starbucks I'm getting an enormous hit of mythic transcendence--office furniture and paper cups are not obstacles.

The hermit version of perfection studies is so big, complex, and refined that I'll have to save it for another post. (That's a joke.)

Liver Cleanse?

It seems like I'm surrounded by people doing various things they call a seasonal liver cleanse. Inevitably these people are thin. The project varies from simply taking a purgative every other day for a week, to not eating for 10 days.

As winter turns to spring we become more active. There is more sunlight and more qi available for getting things done (whether we exercise more or not). As the weather warms we also eat less. The combination of eating less and being more active actually slows down our digestion/metabolism.

Thus, toward the end of spring people start feeling overworked and stagnant, they want to "detox."

The Daoist approach to Spring is to conserve while simultaneously taking advantage of the extra qi available. Ones diet should have lots of watery soup, lots of liquid, fresh greens. Less grain, smaller portions of meat, fruit only between meals. But it is still important to eat enough food for the type of activity you are doing. Then go to bed early.

It's not the season's fault that people have problems, and it is not really the type of food or how much. The problem is that people want to stay up late, they skip their afternoon naps and party right on through.

What most of these fasters and liver cleansers have is a miniature version of anorexia. But don't get exited. To paraphrase the Daodejing: It's not that people get dealt a bad hand, it's that they take a situation of excess and make it more excessive; they take a deficient situation and make it more deficient.

Already strong vigorous athletes, sign up for Iron Man Triathlons. Skinny people who aren't hungry, decide to fast.

There is nothing new here. Spring festivals everywhere are some version of dancing and drinking all night and waking up in the bushes with somebody else's partner.

After a night like that, purification is sure to keep you on the roller coaster road to redemption.

When you fast for 10 days you may drift in and out of transcendent bliss, wandering, day dreaming your way through conversations. By the end of 10 days your sense of smell will be heightened as will your sensitivity to breezes and changes in light. You will be prepped for doing exorcisms. Even the subtlest ghosts will be brought out of hiding--by your acute weakness--where they can be captured or transformed. (Ghosts are unresolved commitments which linger because they don't have enough qi to move on.)

Kids this time of year scream more. They also beg for food. They can't seem to stop talking and they "accidentally" chop, punch, and crash into each other. So that's my seasonal advice to all of you.

Cleanse your liver with loud sounds, laugh, sing, grunt.

Make yourself eat enough. Of course, don't over eat! But don't try to get through the day on a granola bar and a cup of coffee just because there seems to be enough qi "in the air."

And if you practice gongfu, get a little rougher. Make those "accidental" slaps sting. Then take a bath and go to bed early.

After thought: Sometimes people who are overweight from too much rich food in the winter, try to lose weight with a "liver cleanse." If you are really taking off a significant portion of weight through purging and fasting, you are also putting your heart at risk. This kind of up and down with your weight every year will likely shorten your life. Do it once; then use extraordinary discipline throughout the year to make sure you don't gain the weight back again.

Gangster Gongfu

I've been reading Avron Albert Boretz's 1996 dissertation: Martial Gods and Magic Swords: The Ritual Production of Manhood in Taiwanese Popular Religion. I got it through Inter-Library Loan, but it looks like it can be purchased on-line here.
It is really good, and I really hope it gets published someday. I just finished it, so I'm not quite ready for a review. This I'll say, it makes an enormous number of connections between gongfu and popular Daoist ritual cults to various martial deities.

Just briefly, the inner circle of these exorcistic cults are sworn brotherhoods, gangsters if you will. They are all into gongfu, and gongfu deeply informs their trance/possession routines. Some of them claim historic roots in local militias too.

One cool part of the book deals with a particular ritual called Handan Ye. In this ritual a prominent gangster is carried around on a sedan chair by other gangsters. The locals line the streets and throw firecrackers at them. The gangster is allowed to wear goggles and shorts, but that is it. He is in trance the whole time, possessed by a god. When it is over he is covered from head to foot in burns.

It seems like this it a chance for the locals to help him clean up his demerits in the Book of Life, while getting even with him for terrorizing the community. This raises a lot of questions, which I shall go into later, but I think it is worth saying that this is an extreme form of martial conditioning. It demonstrates actual prowess and creates a theatrical performance image of extraordinary potency and danger.

Watch it on Youtube!

Journal of Daoist Studies

There is a new publication coming out in June called the Journal of Daoist Studies, it looks really good, and I'm really excited, and that's not just because my 17 page essay is in the first edition!

The editorial board is a list of very respectable Daoist Scholars:

Shawn Arthur, Stephan-Peter Bumbacher, Yi Hsiang Chang, Shinyi Chao, Chen Xia, Donald Davis, Catherine Despeux, Jeffrey Dippmann, Ute Engelhardt, Stephen Eskildsen, Norman Girardot, Jonathan Herman, Adeline Herrou, Jiang Sheng, Paul Katz, Sung-Hae Kim, Russell Kirkland, Louis Komjathy, Liu Xun, Lu Xichen, Victor Mair, Mei Li, James Miller, David Palmer, Fabrizio Pregadio, Michael Puett, Robert Santee, Elijah Siegler, Julius Tsai, Robin Wang, Michael Winn, Yang Lizhi, Zhang Guangbao

As it happens, and as I'm told happens to writers all the time, they are not using my title. I'm so spoiled by the independence of blogging. My title (which I submitted late, after the first edit) was a hip reference to the 3rd century Daoist alchemist Ge Hong's writings: "To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth, or Not." Pretty catchy huh?

The title I ended up with is, "Portrait of an American Daoist." That's Life! Order your subscription today!

Indolence

Indolence literally means "freedom from pain," but it has come to mean: the rejection of obligation, difficulty, or even honor or class. Since most of us have neither honor nor class to reject--those meanings are rare. Indolence is a synonym for laziness, but honestly if you are going to exert all the effort it takes to call someone else "lazy," are you really going to go the extra mile and call them indolent? I mean, you might have to explain it.

The question of whether indolence in its literal sense can be a virtue in martial arts training arose last month on Formosa Neijia and on Dojo Rat, but I'm too...you know...to find and link to the exact posts.

On Formosa Neijia the subject was raised in a rather contentions way, through the suggestion that Yang stylists might not work as hard as Chen stylists. Naturally, the comments concluded that it is individual practitioners, not styles, which are variously lazy or hard working.

However, some people did conclude that to avoid pain in ones practice can have positive results. Does this really work?

Diligently practicing to avoid pain won't work. We actually need to practice what is painful, and we need to practice each and every painful thing until we understand exactly how and why it is painful. I'm not saying you need to injure your wrist on the left side and then do it again on the right side. That would be dumb.

You can certainly extrapolate that if a practice causes injury to one part of the body it will do the same to another. The more quickly you learn what truly hurts, the more quickly you will progress. Learning, in this case means learning not to do what hurts.

But....

I've been teaching kids some short Shaolin routines called Stone Monkey. One of the characteristics of the Stone Monkey is that you bang your elbows and knees on the ground and even grind your fist into the ground with your entire body weight on it. If you do it right, it doesn't hurt. But it always hurts the first few times you do it and if you have a case of blood stagnation from too much time on the cough watching Kungfu movies, it will continue to hurt until you improve the quality of your blood and your circulation. That could take a while.

Good martial arts training works backwards.

About 80% of the people I teach habitually slightly dislocate at least one of their hips. While they are young it hardly matters, young hips are juicy and forgiving. They just develop protective muscles which limit range of motion. But if one of these students takes a lot of weight in a slightly dislocated hip they can have pain. As people age the slight dislocation of the hips becomes a bigger and bigger problem.

The key to training is to notice the dislocation, notice that it causes a tiny bit of pain. The pain is usually so small it quickly turns to numbness if you ignore it, but don't ignore it! Understand exactly how and why it occurs. Then stop doing it. And when I mean stop, I mean STOP!

You have to take these sorts of mis-alignment-pain seriously enough to re-teach yourself how to walk, how to run, how to climb stairs, how to get in and out of a car, just about everything.

At one point (years ago) in my standing practice, about 40 minutes into standing still, my foot would start to hurt. I'm talking about, "I want to scream," type of pain. The first 1000 times I felt this pain, I wiggled, and jiggled until it stopped. Finally one day I stuck with it. When I was done standing I didn't shake out, I moved very slowly and carefully through my taiji and bagua and even while doing push hands. It hurt really badly the whole time. At some point I fell into trance and lost the pain.

But I had held onto it long enough to know that it was a problem I was re-creating with the inefficiency of my movement on a daily basis. So for the next week or so I stood until it hurt and I stayed with the pain until I could identify its causes in my daily behavior.

You won't really understand what is hurting and why it is hurting unless you push your body through the difficult parts of training. If you want to transform yourself through martial arts, you've got to hold low stances, do extreme power stretching and high kicks, get bumps, bruises and twists, and slowly and methodically unravel the bad habits and old injuries--pain is part of the whole package.

That being said, don't eat an 800 pound bag of potato chips. If something is hurting and you understand how and why, than stop already. There is nothing wrong with potato chips, as long as you don't eat more than five.

I might add in passing that pains of the heart and mind work the same way; the experience of intimacy is linked to betrayal, and abandoning rigid thinking is linked to cognitive dissonance.

___________________________________________

Note: I got the picture of people doing taijiquan in wheelchairs from United Spinal. Apparently taiji is of benefit for people with MS.

Best Products

Occasionally I do product reviews. Lately I hear people worrying about the "economy," which I think is silly. If the economy slows down, it's like it's doing taijiquan. We notice where we're wasting energy, we discard excess, our appetites readjust and become more refined, we redesign our interactions for the space and things we use everyday-- generally we simplify our lives.

That being said, of course, most of the people reading this blog will not be effected in any significant way by the Economic Tai Chi Effect.

In fact, since I'm getting between 1 and 2 thousand hits a day, by my rough calculations, there are about 20 people reading this blog once a week who make more than 50 million dollars a year. One man's economy, is another man's splurge.

There are a few products I have purchased over the years which out class all the others for their sheer usefulness and contribution to my simple life.

The first is my skateboard, and I make no brand recommendations.

The second, my weapons, which will each get their own reviews at some point.

The third is my programmable rice cooker which has a setting for porridge (jook, congee). I've got a Neuro Fuzzy.

The forth is my Japanese warm spray toilet. I love that thing. I love it so much that when I go camping I now bring a hand held high-pressure squirter. (Saves money on toilet paper too.)

The sprayer I bought was cheap ($72 on Craigslist), but heck, if you're saving money by moving to a smaller home or something, you might consider spending $13,000 on this new toilet by Inax!

The blog where I saw the toilet also has an Auto Healther--massager that would be a welcome addition at most schools. In fact, it would be nice to have one handy to put my Kung Fu students in when they are acting like monsters.

Update: After posting this, my reader numbers suddenly dropped suggesting that perhaps my calculations were wrong.  200 Americans made $50 million last year. That number could be almost doubled if we include the whole English speaking world.  So I was assuming that 1 in 20 were reading my blog, and that is probably too high.  It is probably closer to 1 in 200-- which comes out to 2 very wealthy people.  It would be safer to say that there are 10 people with assets of 50 million or more who practice taijiquan, have an interest in Daoism, and sometimes read my blog.

Jade Maiden

Jade Maiden Works the Shuttles is the name of a taijiquan movement/posture. What does it mean?

The full title is a constellation in the night sky. Like all stars, they are connected metaphorically to fate, in this case we have the image of a maiden weaving the fabric of fate.

A Shuttle is the part of a loom that scoots back and forth as the warp and weft are opened and closed. It is like a card or a stick that you throw. It is wrapped in yarn symbolizing, I believe, infinite time.

So each time you do the form you are weaving another thread in the fabric of time.

But what is a jade maiden?

By definition they resists being defined. Even the gender of a jade maiden can be hard to pin down, they are sometimes called jade lads. By the time I finish explaining this, the meaning may have changed.

A jade maiden is like a muse, because it comes to you bringing inspiration. It is also a type of intermediary. Unlike a Chinese god or a ghost, they no birth.  They can deliver messages back and forth from the gods, even take you to visit other realms. The Queen Mother of the West (Xiguanmu) has and entourage of jade maidens pulled by dragon chariots.

Jade maidens also play the role of intermediaries in the Daoist elixir practice known as jindan. They are simular to dakinis in Tantric Buddhism in that they only show up if you are completely and utterly desireless and free of aggressive intent. However, if you get even a flicker of desire, a dakini will go from being the hottest, most intelligent babe-olla you have ever seen in your life, to being a scary filthy hag with sharpened teeth. Jade maidens, in contrast, simply disappear. (Which tells you something about the difference between Buddhism and Daoism.)
Jade maidens are in one sense the opposite of ghosts. Instead of being lured in by dangerious, violent, chaotic, energy draining or destructive behavior; they are attracted to those people who are pure of heart--people whose living hearts have become like cold dead ashes. They are attracted by non-aggression.

Daoist poets like Li Bai (Lipo) would sit perfectly still in meditation with a brush, ink, and paper for hours waiting for a jade maiden to show up. When they come, they come to tease and test, whisper and giggle. They never stop moving and they dance the most alluring and inspiring dance there is. They are beauty itself. They peer around corners and then suddenly disappear.

They sometimes carry copies of the books which hang from the trees on the moon. These sacred texts known as jing, are true for all time, they can appear in any language in any era. Occasionally a jade maiden will hold one of these books and turn the pages for you as you read. This, of course, can only happen if you are completely open to experiencing things the way they actually are, without preconception or agenda.

(The term jing, so often translated "classic," actually means weft, as in warp and weft! In that sense it is a distant cousin of jin and jing, power and essence, because all of them refer to some underlying structure.)

Is Taijiquan a jing?  Was it originally taught by jade maidens?  If we truly let go, and practice the form without any preconceptions or aggression will a jade maiden show up to dance with us, or whisper instructions in our ear and correct our postures?  Are we the "shuttles" being worked?