Two Images Worth Thinking About

I noticed these two images in the San Francisco Examiner last week.

The first one is of the creepy Chinese police training to kill unarmed civilians on Segways. It would have been simple enough to construct bullet proof shields on the front of the Segways if there was any intention to use them against people with arms.

The second is of the latest competitive format for showcasing masculine prowess. Five bouts of boxing interspersed with a game of chess. I don't know what the head phones are for. Seems like it would be more interesting if they had to concentrate on the chess game with a crowd of unruly boxing fans screaming, "Take his knight, you big oaf."

Here are the rules!

Six Harmonies

To practice any style of Chinese martial arts one must align with the Six Harmonies.

Six Harmonies can be divided into the three fundamental categories of all Chinese cosmology, Jing, Qi and Shen.

The jing category of Six Harmonies is usually expressed like this: Wrists match ankles, elbows match knees, and shoulders match hips.

The jing category is easy to see in many orthodox martial arts postures because each of above pairs (wrist/ankle etc.) line up vertically. But it is important to understand that the postures are not static, they are not held. The postures must have this alignment in motion, constantly. So if you think of a particular posture, say for instance Single Whip in Wu Style Taijiquan, the alignment must be felt not just in the posture but while entering it and while leaving it.

So the jing category is often simply thought of as correct alignment. But the jing category in Chinese cosmology cuts across generally conceived categories of Western thought. Jing is not simply one's underlying structure, it is also the origin of that structure. In other words, one's alignment must follow its own developmental pathways. It must come out of, and be informed by, the way we are made--the way we grow and develop form a single cell to a fully formed adult.

Thus the rules for correcting alignment are not rooted in the simple pairing of wrist with ankle, elbow with knee. They are rooted in kinesthetic awareness of the most fundamental patterns of a person's growth.

The qi category of Six Harmonies is like falling through the doors of perception. A joint can not be seen as a joint. It must be seen as a dynamic animated force. A force which is animated simultaneously in six direction, three planes; up/down, left/right, forwards/backwards. (George Xu calls this Space Power.) When a person animates a joint simultaneously in all three planes, spiral power will naturally emerge. But it is not really the individual joints which take on this quality, it is all the joints simultaneously, it is the whole body as one thing.

The ability to differentiate jing from qi emerges effortlessly from the aggressionless feeling of the whole body traveling between movement and stillness as a single thing. Once this differentiation is made, we can move just the one qi, or in better English: move the qi as one.

The shen category of Six Harmonies is the process of revealing one's true nature. It is the simple quality of finding one's place. In Daoism we call this returning to the source.

The shen category of Six Harmonies is usually described like this: One's mind, body and spirit align with Heaven Earth and the Ten Thousand Things. I hesitate to unfold this one because each of those six terms is a potencial hang up. Should I define them one by one? Will that help?

The method is this: Practice the jing category until it reveals your origins. Practice the qi category until your qi moves as one. Then, look and perceive outwards, allow your sense of space to feel limitless. Next, simultaneously feel the ground supporting, solid and expansive in all directions. And finally, let go of your person hood, that which makes you think/feel you are separate from all other things:

"To be preserved whole, bend,

upright, then twisted.

To be full, hollow out.

What is worn out will be repaired.

Those who little, have much to be gained--

having much, you will only be perplexed."

-(from the Daodejing.)

More Trouble

While I get excited when I figure out how to do something new on the computer, that excitement is usually overridden by all the problems created by that same new development.

Here is what I got right.

1. Updated version of Wordpress (from 2.0.1 to 2.5.1).


2. New theme with widgets.


3. Changed header image and colors (not finished yet).


4. Added the most recent comments section to the sidebar.

Here's what isn't working.

1. When I get a new commenter, I have no way to approve them...error of some kind. (I think I found a temporary fix: I think I can approve comments remotely through email.)


2. My sidebar links/pages are in the wrong order and don't seem to have the flexibility I thought they would, of course it is better than what I was doing before which was...experimentally cutting and pasting php code. (I put "A1" in front "Classes & Videos" so that it would come before "Blogroll" in alphabetical order...silly, I know.)


3. I pretty sure I messed up the wp-config.php file but most stuff seems to be working.


4. My sidebar issues may be caused by my failure to delete certain files. I only found out about this through troubleshooting, so now I'm wondering if I should start over.

These errors and imperfections are probably things I can live with until I can find someone to help me. Wordpress Camp in San Francisco Aug 16th?

All this took way more time than it should have, but at least I got to see Hellboy 1 and 2 this weekend. Fun stuff. Mix Martial Arts watchers will notice the choreography style and moves used in the Hellboy 2 Troll Market Scene are all taken from inside the MMA Cage. That scene ends with a "ground and pound." La-la-la.

Themes

I have been planning a whole series of posts on mind and the martial arts but I've also been trying to improve the look and function of my blog for the last 6 hours.
Therefore, you may have noticed that I failed, and I've been trying different themes, and sidebar functions.  My mind is now completely wacked.  I was going to sign up with BlueHost and re-do everything until I read their terms of service and the guy told me they were based in Utah and would be searching my pages for inappropriate material.  No thanks.

So...more work tomorrow.

What Makes a Man a Man?

Looks like my homey Sasha Barron Cohen is up to his old tricks again. If you're not familiar with him, he is the voice behind the kid's song, "I like to move it, move it" the title track of Disney's rather entertaining gay agenda movie--Madagascar.

Now, last year I was sitting with my mom out in front of a cafe in the Castro District, the self-described gayest neighborhood on earth. Since gay identity came out of Hippie identity, gays love flowers. So naturally next door to the cafe, was a flower shop. And in the flower shop, mounted on the wall, was a television set. Now, I've noticed that a certain pizza shop on the next block also has a television mounted on the wall which plays gay porno 24/7 (the pizza's ok). But in the flower shop, that would be too much. No, the flower shop uses their mounted television to plays Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

Why might you ask? Because being yourself is beautiful.

So click on the link and check out what Bruno is up to. And make sure you click though the extra pages because there is some funny stuff. I seems like the fighters really came to fight! Is there a lesson here about letting go of what we think we are?

UPDATE: film info:

Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt.

Daoism and Sex (part 3, or Why you should trust Me)

I'm 40. During the sexual revolution in San Francisco, my family was ground zero. I was the kid in school everybody came to when they had questions about sex. Every single aspect of the sexual revolution was active in my home and the places my family took me.

My great grandparents were suffragettes in New York. My grandmother and her brothers and sisters grew up in a sexually liberated environment. In fact, my grandmother was an advocate for anatomically correct sex education in the schools-- and she occasionally bragged about sex orgies in the 1920's.

During the 1970's my father started the first public class on sex (erotica) for adults. The idea for the class was that anyone could ask any question they wanted and if the answer wasn't known, it would be researched for the next class. That class eventually became the Sex Forum, which eventually became the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality--which gives out doctorates and has been the source of Biology 301 (Human Sexuality) course in nearly all modern universities.

Just to pile it on, he also started the first Sex Information hot-line, the Yes Book(s) or Sex (he is featured in the one on masturbation), and helped run C.O.Y.O.T.E. (Come Off Your Old Tired Ethics) also known as the prostitutes union. I could go on.

As a kid I was surrounded by sexual experimenters. The one word that I never heard around the dinner table was "pervert." When the second wave of sexual liberation started in the 90's I got a chance to go to sex rituals and consensual sex parties (instead of orgies). I've seen it all.

Sexual liberation has positive psychological and physiological effects. However, if you are having a lot of sex you are going to need extra qi in the form of food, more rest and more sleep. Otherwise you'll become deficient. [In Chinese medicine deficient is a diagnosis which is sub-medical (because all you need to fix it is food, sleep and rest) but which is a contributor to many medical problems.]
I've been listening to sex jocks all my life. More experiements in sex have been done in the last 40 years in San Francisco than were ever conducted by Tantrics or Daoist. History is simply not a good resource for good sex.

Imagine you are still a virgin and your parents have set you up on a blind date in which you have agreed in advance to have sex! Sound crazy? It's called arranged marriage and it was the norm in India and China. It's no wonder that they created the Kama Sutra and various Chinese Pleasure Manuals. These kids needed basic sex education. In most cases, an alliance between two families (the marriage) was riding on the hope that that first date would go well.

The idea that Tantra or Daoism has something to teach modern internet competent people about sex is far fetched indeed. Folks, all those Tantric and Daoist Sex classes and books are just modern experiments with an oriental gloss-- they aren't magic, they aren't particularly honest, and the health benefits are nil if you are already liberated.

But I will say this, some people are making a lot of money selling couples sex education vacations with an Oriental Mystic. Nice.

Daoism and Sex (part 2)

In my previous post I didn't get as far as discussing the history of Sex and Daoism or misunderstandings resulting from that history. Instead I focuses on what Daoism understands sex to be.

The brilliant young scholar Liu Xun has written about two person Daoist practices from the ~1600's generally undertaken by two people of the opposite sex. Unfortunately it looks like his writing on this subject remains unpublished at this time. Perhaps he will read this and correct me. My recollection is that it is often difficult to tell from textual sources whether sex of any kind was involved because most of it is written in metaphoric language. There probably were some practices involving sex and meditation, but they were by no means widespread and it is questionable whether they should be called Daoist at all. (More on this below.)

Others have tried to say something about early Celestial Master (~200 CE) sex practices, but the truth is we don't know much about them. It seems like there was a short period in which teachers would pick two people of opposite gender from among their disciples and guide them through some sort of private marriage ritual in which the teacher and the two disciples were all present. Because the practice was discontinued, I think it is fair to conjecture that it didn't produce the best results.

Judging only from the precepts followed by Celestial Masters at the time, I think it is safe to say they were not engaged in anything they thought would increase desire. Most likely they were practicing not getting excited. Or, as I describe in the previous post, perhaps they were engaged in some type of physiological awareness which had as its goal, limiting the production of jing in the form of eggs or sperm, so that it would be available for some other practice. Generally speaking, sexual desire causes our bodies to produce more sperm/semen and more warmth excitement and lubrication.

I have heard that some Chinese Emperor's may have practiced getting an erection with out any desire. Supposedly it is possible, through extreme discipling of the mind, to get an erection, have sex, and neither ejaculate nor feel any desire. Presumably one doesn't feel much pleasure either, but I don't know. This kind of practice makes a little sense if you are an Emperor and have 800 concubines who are bored. It is important to remember that while some Emperor's were no doubt sex addicts, each and every concubine represented a political alliance which had to be maintained. If you never had sex with them, you might cause more trouble that it was worth. I can't imagine why anyone would want to try those practices today.

Now on to the misconceptions (no pun intended). The Daozang, generally known as the Daoist Cannon, has been complied by order of various governments into different additions over the last few hundred years. It is an enormous collection of texts (≤5000). No Daoist could study or use more than a fraction of these texts in a lifetime. Which would lead one to ask, "Are there texts in the Daozang which no Daoist has ever used?" And the answer is, probably. Compared to Buddhism, and Confucianism, Daoism has been a lot more lax about condemning what other people do. Practices which were outside the norms of Confucianism or Buddhism, were openly rejected by these two traditions. But Daoists have been more likely to respond, "Maybe it is Daoist, I don't know." So there is a trend that whatever no one else wanted, got stuck with the label "Daoist" simply because Daoists didn't reject it. Daoists have generally held precepts encouraging discretion and even secrecy, so it's likely that individual Daoists would not know the details of what other Daoists were doing.

That being said, there have been lots of books written about Daoist sexual practices. For the most part these have been invented out of whole cloth, or deal with issues your average sex advice columnist could handle better. But we also have the problem that people have intentionally limited (and therefore mis-translated) the meaning of the term jing to mean simply semen. Thus, we have been treated in some books to the disgusting image of semen traveling up the spine to nourish the brain.

And yes, of course, there are Daoist precepts against wasting jing. But folks, that is meant to refer to jing before it goes into sexual reproduction. There are many ways you could interpret this precept. For instance, I would say push-ups and sit-ups are a violation of the "don't waste jing" precept because the day after you do them your body will start using jing to regenerate your injured muscles, which is a waste because push-ups and sit-ups serve no purpose (except perhaps vanity).

[Note to readers, my updated position as of 11/17 is that people should practice Maximum Vanity. There is not enough true vanity in the world.]

The crazy idea that an average Joe, like me, would get an erection, make-out for twenty minutes and then have sex and not ejaculate, is the stupidest idea ever!

Man, just shoot!

Let it out, it's too late to save it, might as well clean out those pipes.

On a slightly different note.

Over the years, many people have come to me wanting to study qigong because, in their own words, "I want more energy!" After a couple minutes of interviewing it inevitably turns out that they are deficient either because they do drugs, don't get enough sleep, work too many hours, have a poor diet, or don't exercise enough. All of these problems are solvable with out qigong, so they never stick around. (A couple of times the problem has been they exercised too much, in which case the problem was easily solved by suggesting they do less.)

However, there are some weird power accumulation exercises out there falling under the category of sexual qigong. None of these are good for your longterm health, because like taking drugs, they mess with your endocrine system (In TCM language they use up yuan qi). They are also completely unnecessary because you can get the same amount of energy from proper diet, sleep and exercise. My guess is that these practices were originally invented for people who were starving in times of famine, when such practices might have served a real purpose.

Daoism and Sex (part 1)

Daoism's doctrine on sex and sexual practices is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Daoism.

I recently dove into the debates about gay marriage on some political blogs. I'm not going to link to them because I was just goofing around. But in the process of considering some of the strange and desperate arguments put forward against gay marriage, it suddenly struck me that many people actually don't know what sex is. Wow, what a shock.

So I thought I would try to shoot two pheasants with one arrow, and exposit both subjects.

The Daodejing has a phrase,

"If Heaven has a reason, nobody knows it."

I think this is a good place to start. We don't know why life exists. We are capable, however, of recognizing that there are two categories, "alive" and "not alive," and that we belong to the category, "alive." (I have talked about the blended categories of ghosts and other such "part alive, part not-alive" entities in previous posts--so I'll skip that part of the argument here.)

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the "alive" category is that we are capable of reproducing ourselves. The substance, force, and function which reproduces itself in all life is called in Chinese: Jing. The word therefore includes English words like, sperm or eggs, and underlays English functions like scabbing, and regenerating.

All living things ingest qi (air/water/nutrients/light) and transform some of it into jing. Plants and animals which reproduce themselves sexually also differentiate themselves (to some degree) into male and female genders (or parts of themselves in some cases such as worms and slugs). Sexual reproduction requires that the two genders of a particular species combine their jing.

All living things produce way more jing than they actually need for sexual reproduction to be successful, and way more jing than ever gets used in the sexual reproduction process. In other words, sex is very inefficient, A plant or animal can be extremely potent in its production of jing, and still not produce offspring.

Here are some examples. Some chickens lay eggs everyday. Cockroaches and mosquitoes produce eggs in the millions, with very low survival rates for individual eggs. During certain times of year, the grass and trees are constantly trying to have sex with my eyes and nose (pollen). Dogs hump people's legs.

You can fit a million sperm on the tip of a pin.

The process of transforming qi into jing has two basic routes it can follow:

1. Qi can transform into jing which regenerates and heals the individual living entity.
2. It can produce sperm, eggs, pollen or ovules.

Some Daoist practices seek to gain some volition over this process so that less qi will go down the sperm and egg producing path and more qi will go towards producing jing used for regeneration or healing.

Many plants produce beautiful flowers which take advantage of animal desires to help them combine their jing (pollen with ovules). Animal behavior which can lead to the combining of the jing of two animals of the opposite gender is, like jing production, incredibly inefficient in every species.

According to Joseph Needham in Science and Civilization, the three basic sex hormones were recognized and isolated into pure substances in China during the 5th century CE.

Daoist practices aren't concerned with hormones directly, but they recognize that certain foods, exercises, activities and even uses of the mind, can effect how much a person is concerned with or even obsessed with sex. More importantly, they recognised that no matter what we do, we are likely at any one moment to be transforming way more qi into jing than we actually need for producing a few viable offspring.

This natural inefficiency is inseparable in animals from the thorny issue of desire. Daoist practices can be divided into two categories.

1. Leaning how stop ovulation so that you ovulate only when you have decided to attempt reproduction.
2. Reducing or limiting desire.

Desire is a physiological part of our survival apparatus. It is also incredibly inefficient. When desire builds we become totally focused--to the exclusion of other information. To quote the huainanzi, "We run rough-shod over subtlety."

Thus, for Daoists, the physiology of efficiency takes on a moral dimension. Inappropriate behavior is not considered unnatural, it is simply excessive or deficient--misdirected or too strong.

The primary methods through which Daoism engages with desire, are the making of commitments and the refining appetites.

This always begs the question: How can we tell an appetite from a desire? There isn't a simple answer. Appetites generally include assessment and evaluation phases, they are more reflective and experimental-- less driven.

However, it would be a mistake to think that either appetites or desires are somehow rational. I guess you could say that appetites are to desire what reproduction is to sex.

Since all human sexual activity--from putting on lipstick to bumping chests with your male competitors, to vaginal intercourse itself--is naturally inefficient and rarely results in offspring, the desire to have sex with someone of the same gender, with a tree, or with a consenting gorilla, is all just part of this wild inefficiency and abundance we call life.

But if you've ever contemplated a rushing river pouring over a cliff, you already know this.

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Yelp* Reviews

A few years ago some inexperienced internet people came up with a great idea. They created a search-able review site for local businesses called Yelp*. Any business owner could list and describe their business and anyone else could write a review about it. Brilliant, they should have become billionaires by now.

Would that it were.

Yelp(ers) were the first people to get a site up and running, and they quickly cornered the niche, but they have had such poor business sense that years later they are still having problems.

First of all let me encourage you all to check it out. Secondly, if you've ever studied with me please write me a review. Lots of people in San Francisco use Yelp* to decide what businesses to patronize.

But...be forewarned...(because they won't tell you) if you only review one business or service, they will erase your review after a few days. Why? Because they are loony. They have some theory about the ethics of single-reviews. Whatever, if you take the time to write me a review (for which I will be deeply appreciative) also write one about a sushi restaurant, or a bed and breakfast, or a dentist.

I first found out I was dealing with amateurs three years ago after I wrote a review of Mao's Village Restaurant, which used to be an annoyance around the corner from my house. The next day I got a call from a guy at Yelp* who sounded like he rides his skateboard to work (nothing at all against skateboards, he just sounded young and unprofessional). We talked for about half an hour. His reason for calling me was that he didn't think I had actually eaten at the restaurant, which was true and obvious from my review. I commented on the Chang Kai-Shek's Wife's Chicken on the menu as well as many Mao and Zhou Enlai references that just made me think about starving babies. I mean would you buy an oven from a store called Hitler's Stoves? I commented about the mess around the cash register and the fact that hardly anyone ever eats there. In fact, I was pretty sure that it was a mafia money laundering scheme. A restaurant which has no customers can invent cash receipts, then pay taxes on them, which makes the money clean. The only people I ever saw in there were partying and drinking whiskey late at night.

Anyway, they took my first review down off the site.

Then, last year they called me to say I had some pretty glowing reviews, perhaps I would like to have my business moved to the top of the search for a fee of $300 a month. They worked really hard to sell me on this, obviously having no idea how my business works. I mean, look, if I was in a competitive business like a restaurant, and I had 20+ customers a night, $300 might look like a good price. But heck, I'm happy if I get 2 new students a month! Their business model made no sense at all.

So just the other day I (and nearly every small business person I know) got this message from Yelp*

Hello,

I'm writing to let you know about our decision to close your account. Your user account was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Customer Service team has determined that your account has violated Yelp's Terms of Service (http://www.yelp.com/static?p=tos).

Specifically, the Terms of Service state that:
> "You shall not: create user accounts by automated means or under false or fraudulent pretenses."

We have determined that you have been using Yelp to improve your business' and your friends'/other small business owners' ratings on Yelp through review trading. We have determined that review trading does not reflect unbiased customer opinions which violates the spirit of Yelp.

We review every situation with detail and care and take account closure very seriously.

Regards,
Kris
Yelp Inc. User Support
San Francisco, California.

Did you notice that Kris spells his name like the spirit capturing daggers of Indonesia?

Don't worry, they didn't take down my business description itself, just the reviews I had written for others and my personal ability to comment on other people's businesses--Oh, and all of the reviews people had already posted about me, except for one.

See, by Yelp* Logicâ„¢, if I write a review for someone in my business network it must be fraud! Thus all my students and former students who have their own businesses are automatically disqualified from sharing their opinions because they might be biased in my favor.

Get a clue Yelp*! The majority of my clients/students run small or even one-person businesses. This is San Francisco! A whole host of technologies, starting with the answering machine and now including Yelp*, have made it possible for individuals to run their own businesses. The possibility of the one-person business is the greatest single institutional change in the direction of freedom in my lifetime.

I was prepared to ignore the whole thing and move on but then this article made it into the San Francisco Chronicle, and someone started up a site called Yelp-Sucks.com

Sweet.

UPDATE: My honey tells me that not only do you have to review some other business in addition to mine, you also have to add a picture--otherwise they'll just toss your review in the cyber-trash.

Distinguishing Jing and Qi (part 2)

Musicians must learn to distinguish between jing and qi.

Most of you don't know that I studied Indian Classical Tabla drumming.  You can hear me playing on a few of my Youtube videos, but don't go back and listen to them for that reason alone, because I never got especially good.  I did, however, approach the study of Indian Classical music the way I approached everything in my twenties--that is, I practiced like crazy (four hours a day for several years).

In Indian music there is a virtuoso  rhythmic pattern which repeats three times called a tihai.  Tihais can be long or short, they come in many different types and they are amazing to hear.  But at the highest level, the level of the greatest musicians, there are actually only two types of tihais, ones from the heart and ones from the mind.

Both of these two types of tihais are improvised.  Tihais from the mind blow you away with their perfect blend of structural precision and complexity.  Tihais from the heart are more difficult for me to explain, they are more relational, emotional, and transcendent.

Zakir Hussein said that when he plays tihais he is actually making and seeing multi-dimensional geometric patterns in his mind.  Ali Akbar Khan said that he is playing with pure light.

When we really play music, our mind is not on the notes, the time signatures, beats, or scales.  When we really play music we want to express mood, sentiment, and emotion.  It's not usually raw emotion either, it is what we might call a crystalline form of emotion--Emotion which has already been explored, plumbed, completed or even resolved.

One's mind must not be focused on the musical details of technique, composition, or if I understand the Indian master's explanations above correctly--our minds shouldn't be on the music either.
In music as in internal martial arts, one must separate jing and qi--the physicality from what animates it.