Usa Healing dao in light of Chia

The restraint of other mental activities so that everything will appear to be manifestation of bliss and emptiness is the practice of withdrawal, probably so-called because manifestations of bliss and emptiness appear to the sixth consciousness, the mental consciousness, dominating the sense consciousnesses and causing them to withdraw. Through withdrawal, one’s mind is so permeated with a feeling of bliss that all appearances are affected. Concurrently, recollection of meditation on emptiness makes phenomena appear to be light, ephemeral, and like illusions. Everything appears to be “sealed” with bliss and emptiness.
This type of imagination is a similitude of a Buddha’s actual mode of perceiving phenomena at all times. To Buddhas, phenomena are always sealed with bliss and emptiness. This means that there is a sense in which consciousness viewing the world as sealed with bliss and emptiness is not faulty, not contradicted by valid cognition.
-DANIEL COZORT, Highest Yoga Tantra

QUESTION I have read Taoist books which all urge the development of the light in the original cavity or centre of spirit at the start of the practice but I do not see why. All Taoist school regard this as the aim of the cultivation of essential nature without giving details. Will you please tell me where true nature actually manifests?
ANSWER The centre of the brain branche out into two minor channels on it’s left and right; the left one stands for supreme ultimate and the right one for immaterial spirit; they are linked with the heavenly valley centre above them and the bubbling spring centres in the soles of the feet after running through the heart in the chest.
The Tan Ching says: ‘Nature is in the heart and manifests through the eyes; life is in the lower abdomen and manifests through genital organ.’
Essential nature is spiritual vitality in the heart that manifests through the two channels from the centre of the brain. So when seeing is contcentrated on the spot between the eyes, the light of essential nature manifests and will, after a long training, unite with eternal life to become one whole. This union is called seeing the void that is not empty and he who is not awakened to this union will achieve nothing in his practice.
-TAOIST MASTER CHAO PI CH’EN/ LU K’UAN YU, Taoist Yoga-Alchemy and Immortality

The Iga/Koga area thus formed a bridge between the main trade routes from the capital and the vast and wild mountains of the Kii Peninsula to the south. These mountains amaze one even today by the solitude they present for a region so close to the urban sprawl of Osaka and Kyoto. Within these mountains were villagers who lived their entire lives in one tiny valley community shut off from the rest of Japan until comparatively recent times, and visited only by the wandering yamabushi who traversed this wild country on their pilgrimages. Several accounts refer to these mountains as the haunt of bandits who acted highwaymen along the Togaido or as pirates on the sea coast of nearby Ise Province. Many of the ninja myths, such as that of the legendary outlaw Ishikawa Goemon who was supposed to be adept in ninjutsu, no doubt have their origin in the elobaration of the exploits of very un-magical gangs of robbers.
-STEPHEN TURBULL, Ninja AD 1460-1650

…Klein tells the curious story of the physicist Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner, who about 1870 took the idea that knots could be undone through access to a higher dimension as a challenge to be resolved by spiritualist experiment…
-PETER PESIC, Introduction to ‘Beyond Geometry-Classic Papers from Riemann to Einstein’

Is this Spinning Dragon some kind kind of level which makes other earlier formulas less important?

If it is a level, is any other system of formulas as good if one arrives to that level? So if for example one is practicing Chao Pi Chen system, presented in 16 chapters in the book, and one is able to (through effort) achieve certain energy mechanism which works by itself without active effort from the part of everyday mind-is it as valid realization or is it completely different phenomena?

HOWDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alA8sjIejRk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLQhLcKyGs8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMQ7xGxI3ME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1F4GwFtQgU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYEl4EaCPJs

Hello Howdy:

Chinese culture and philosophies often communicate in poetic ways, often in metaphor. Serious practitioners are trained in three dimensions: physical, mental and spiritual. I would like to offer some thoughts on your questions.

QUESTION I have read Taoist books which all urge the development of the light in the original cavity or centre of spirit at the start of the practice but I do not see why.
****************
Taoists believe in building a strong foundation, from the center, from the root. To be grounded is essential in taoist arts. Original cavity is the original of creation, the womb, the lower tan tien, this is the center of the body. In football one grabs and tackles from the waist, because which ever way you fake, your waist does not move much.

In basic chinese medical theory, in the original cavity the ming men fire/gate of vitality cooks jing to create yuan qi, the first qi. This process is essential to our health and vitality. This area must be working properly. Orbit and Steaming in lesser kan and li is working in the area.

Formulas are just ways that may assist in the unfolding of your life, they are like training wheels, some day you let them go. They are ways to clear the blockages formed from pre-natal and post-natal influences. Tao is essentially about simplicity, reducing each day not adding each day is a key to living in the tao. Its an essential aspect of the tao the ching.

If the tao practices do not lead you to following your own way, connecting to and living from your own spirit, let them go, they are not assisting you. Books, formulas, dvd and tapes are ways that should point to your life, your energy and the realization of who you are. Learning to enjoy our existing life is the tao way; not dreams of other worlds, other dimensions, endless transformations.

If the practices do not change your every day life: how you feel, how you interact with other people and how you live your daily life, they are not working. We need to find practices that assist us in building stronger bodies, maintain emotional balance and spiritual realization.

What is your goal? A healthier body? Emotional balance? More passion and fun in your life. Or dreams of being an immortal, talking to deities or beings, learning more and more methods?

Lao Zi seems to be about letting go, not adding more. Do formulas help you let go or accumulate? Which guide will you pick? In chinese culture Lao Zi is deified, higher than any of the eight immortals.

Hello Howdy:

Chinese culture and philosophies often communicate in poetic ways, often in metaphor. Serious practitioners are trained in three dimensions: physical, mental and spiritual. I would like to offer some thoughts on your questions.

QUESTION I have read Taoist books which all urge the development of the light in the original cavity or centre of spirit at the start of the practice but I do not see why.
****************
Taoists believe in building a strong foundation, from the center, from the root. To be grounded is essential in taoist arts. Original cavity is the original of creation, the womb, the lower tan tien, this is the center of the body. In football one grabs and tackles from the waist, because which ever way you fake, your waist does not move much.

In basic chinese medical theory, in the original cavity the ming men fire/gate of vitality cooks jing to create yuan qi, the first qi. This process is essential to our health and vitality. This area must be working properly. Orbit and Steaming in lesser kan and li is working in the area.

Formulas are just ways that may assist in the unfolding of your life, they are like training wheels, some day you let them go. They are ways to clear the blockages formed from pre-natal and post-natal influences. Tao is essentially about simplicity, reducing each day not adding each day is a key to living in the tao. Its an essential aspect of the tao the ching.

If the tao practices do not lead you to following your own way, connecting to and living from your own spirit, let them go, they are not assisting you. Books, formulas, dvd and tapes are ways that should point to your life, your energy and the realization of who you are. Learning to enjoy our existing life is the tao way; not dreams of other worlds, other dimensions, endless transformations.

If the practices do not change your every day life: how you feel, how you interact with other people and how you live your daily life, they are not working. We need to find practices that assist us in building stronger bodies, maintain emotional balance and spiritual realization.

What is your goal? A healthier body? Emotional balance? More passion and fun in your life. Or dreams of being an immortal, talking to deities or beings, learning more and more methods?

Lao Zi seems to be about letting go, not adding more. Do formulas help you let go or accumulate? Which guide will you pick? In chinese culture Lao Zi is deified, higher than any of the eight immortals.

Is there any hope of this happening to us? Is it likely that there are 4-D beings who, if summoned by the proper sequence of actions, will lift us out of our cramped three dimensions and show us the “the real stuff”? A lot of people used to think so at the time of the Spiritualist movement around 1900. The idea was that spirits were 4-D beings who could appear or disappear at any point, see everything, and so on. A fairly reputable astronomer, a professor Zöllner, even wrote a book, ‘Transcendental Physics’. describing a series of seances he attended in an attempt to demonstrate that the “spirits” were actually 4-D beings. He seems, however, to have been hopelessly gullible, and his book is totally unconvincing. In general, the idea of a fourth dimension seems to precipitate authors into orgies of occultist mystification, rather than to lead to clear-sighted mathematical inquiry. The fact that something is difficult does not mean it has to be confused.
-RUDY VON BITTER RUCKER, Geometry, Relativity, and the Fourth Dimension

I wanted to say more to build my argument, but a strange feeling overtook me. It was an actual physical sensation that I was rushing through something. And then I rebuffed my own argument. I knew without any doubt whatsoever that Don Juan was right. All that is required is impeccability, energy, and that begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise, and sustained. If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else. If that is accomplished the road is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential…after a moment’s thought he whispered in my ear not to worry about procedures, because most of the really unusual things that happen to seers, or to the average man for that matter, happen by themselves, with only the intervention of intent…I fought desperately not to be sick. Don Juan patted me on the back and said that I was an old pro at playing an innocent bystander. He assured me that I was not consciously refusing to let my assemblage point move, but that every human being does it automatically…”something is going to scare the living daylights out of you,” he whispered. “Don’t give up, because if you do, you’ll die and the old vultures around here are going to feast on your energy.”
-CARLOS CASTANEDA, The Fire from Within

SanFeng Primeval 13 Posture Tai Chi Chuan:
It was introduced to public by great Kung Fu master Wan Lai Sheng when he was 80 years old. What do the 13 postures mean, people may ask. In fact, postures as shed, catch, shove, press, poke, swing, elbow and lean against shall well match the eight trigram of Qian, Kun, Zhen, Dui, Xuan, Kan, Gen, Li. Step forward, step backward, look leftside, look right side and hold onto center compose that well matching 5 elements. So, adding them together we can get the total number of 13. Based upon the 13 postures, Zhang San Feng develop it further and thus gave arised the San Feng 72 Posture Tai Chi Chuan.
-http://www.damo-qigong.net/wudang/workshop01.htm

My opinion is still that not being afraid at all is dangerous, because then one might learn to to use it as a weapon (against anything that hinders one’s movement forward).

But from the point of practices most important ones seem to be Iron Shirt, hatha yoga type of system of stretching & trataka and right kind of energy formulas.

Next question is about Mantak Chia’s first Iron Shirt book. Is there somewhere all those other postures with movement or without which comprise the whole system? Over 50 postures or was it exactly 72?

By the way I must admit that I don’t know higher formulas of neither Universal Tao or Healing Tao (or how these might differ from each other), but I see it reasonable because there is available so much information right now that it’s more important to take care that one is advancing with that what one already has within one’s grasp. Because of this for example this Chao Pi Chen system seems quite impressive. But already for that one would need to study Chinese civilization in general (Joseph Needham for sure and for example ‘The Imperial Guide to Feng Shui & Chinese Astrology: The Only Authentic Translation from the Original Chinese’ by Thomas F. Aylward for characters, some Chinese Medicine and so on).

HOWDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lutg8HJTQ8A

My masters Liao Jan and Liao K’ung once said: ‘When beginning to cultivate (essential) nature and (eternal) life, it is necessary first to develop nature.’ Before sitting in meditation, it is important to put an end to all rising thoughts and to loosen garments and belt to relax the body and avoid interfering with the free circulation of blood. After sitting the body should be (senseless) like a log and the heart (mind) unstirred like cold ashes. The eyes should look down and fix on the tip of the nose; they should not be shut completely to avoid dullness and confusion; neither should they be wide open to prevent spirit from wondering outside. They should be fixed on the tip of the nose with one’s attention concentrated on the spot between them; and in time the light of vitality will manifest. This is the best way to get rid of all thoughts at the start when preparing the elixir of immortality.
When the heart (mind) is settled, one should restrain the faculty of seeing, check that of hearing, touch the palate with the tip of the tongue and regulate the breathing through the nostrils. If breathing is not regulated one will be troubled by gasping or laboured breaths. When breathing is well controlled, one will forget all about body and heart (mind). Thus stripped of feelings and passions one will look like a stupid man.
-CHAO PI CHEN/LU KUAN YU, Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality

“What do you mean, Sifu?” I asked.
“I mean that a typical spirit is basically like our unconscious mind. He cannot think deliberately, make decisions, or create. He is subject to whatever he has brought with him.” John was silent for a time, then caught my eye and held me with his gaze. “For example,” he said, “your father can remember everything about you. He knows that you are his son. He remembers holding you in his arms when you were born. What he cannot remember is what it was like to love you.”
We were shocked, all of us.
“They have only yin,” he continued softly, “so what defines their continuation is simply their karma, good or bad. That is why it is so important to have yang to take with when your time comes.”
“Because that way you retain your humanity,” I whispered. John nodded approvingly. “Does having yang ch’i in our dantien somehow lessen the effects of karma?” I asked.
“No. You still have to pay for what you have done-or be rewarded. But having yang with you makes it easier all around, and more deliberate either way.”
“Heaven and hell,” Andreas said.
“Not really,” John answered. “None of the conditions I described is permanent. After a time all spirits return to God.”
And there it was: the big question that I had danced around since I had come to know him. I could not resist. “Sifu,” I dared, “tell us about God. You mention Him frequently.” And mentioning God was not very Taoist, I thought; perhaps this was distinction between John’s teaching and mainstream Taoism.
John leaned back and looked at us one by one. “All right,” he said. “Before I went up to the mountain, in my heart of hearts, I did not really believe in God. Oh, I used to go church every Sunday, for I am nominally a Christian, but I had no faith; I went to church matter-of-factly. When I was up in the mountain, I wanted to experience God for myself, to see if he was real or not.”
“I prayed and I prayed for weeks, asking God to reveal Himself to me. Finally I sat down in deep meditation and sent my awareness out as before. Every day, every moment, I kept asking, ‘God, please tell me the truth about afterlife; which religion is correct? Please, Lord tell me.’ I received no answer, but I kept at it with persistence.”
“Without warning, one day a voice boomed in the air above me. It was like a thunderclap, and it said to me: Religion is like a walking stick. When you are young, you need help from your parents to walk. When you are old, you need a cane. When you are a healthy adult, you have no need for cane; if you try to run, it will only hinder you. All religions are like that; touch God directly, and you will have no need of them.”
-KOSTA DANAOS, The Magus of Java

Maybe John Chang could learn something from Buddhadharma. I mean avoiding these ultimate questions in theistic terms.

I by the way received a text message to my mobile phone one week ago which told that The Tao of God(: A Restatement of Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching Based on the Teachings of the Urantia Book) by Richard S. Omura had arrived. I will fetch it but somehow I’m now more interested about those Dover books which I have also ordered or will order in near future (Undergraduate Topology by Robert Kasriel, Introduction to Vector and Tensor Analysis by Robert C. Wrede, Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction to It’s Present Usage by Volker Heine and so on).

My opinion is that use of imagination and right kind of visualizations are somehow lacking from Taoist practice. For example Hans Reichenbach (a philosopher not scientist) might not have made it, but from him one can learn very much, I mean if wants to learn imagine some of the scientific stuff.

Also Buddhist Tantra seems to have some basic things to start with with their Generation Stage/Completion Stage practices, but mandalas and mantras as such are not very useful. Advancing from the coarse towards the subtle seems to be what really counts.

But maybe that’s not Taoist practice any more anyway.

>>>Chinese culture and philosophies often communicate in poetic ways, often in metaphor. Serious practitioners are trained in three dimensions: physical, mental and spiritual.>>>

I think there is nothing wrong with poetry or aphorisms. For example Carl Gustav Jung, who clearly has been initiate with many things, put Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, Goethe’s Faust and even Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the same Western alchemical continuum, but I at least don’t find some old poetry or sagas satisfying enough. Without serious spiritual/inner practice as well as bodily conditioning there is not much meaning in life. But what comes to mind, I would prefer to have my mind stuffed with all that information that guy like Carl Sagan has had.

HOWDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkFYM56Qf4

My masters Liao Jan and Liao K’ung once said: ‘When beginning to cultivate (essential) nature and (eternal) life, it is necessary first to develop nature.’ Before sitting in meditation, it is important to put an end to all rising thoughts and to loosen garments and belt to relax the body and avoid interfering with the free circulation of blood. After sitting the body should be (senseless) like a log and the heart (mind) unstirred like cold ashes. The eyes should look down and fix on the tip of the nose; they should not be shut completely to avoid dullness and confusion; neither should they be wide open to prevent spirit from wondering outside. They should be fixed on the tip of the nose with one’s attention concentrated on the spot between them; and in time the light of vitality will manifest. This is the best way to get rid of all thoughts at the start when preparing the elixir of immortality.
When the heart (mind) is settled, one should restrain the faculty of seeing, check that of hearing, touch the palate with the tip of the tongue and regulate the breathing through the nostrils. If breathing is not regulated one will be troubled by gasping or laboured breaths. When breathing is well controlled, one will forget all about body and heart (mind). Thus stripped of feelings and passions one will look like a stupid man.
-CHAO PI CHEN/LU KUAN YU, Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality

“What do you mean, Sifu?” I asked.
“I mean that a typical spirit is basically like our unconscious mind. He cannot think deliberately, make decisions, or create. He is subject to whatever he has brought with him.” John was silent for a time, then caught my eye and held me with his gaze. “For example,” he said, “your father can remember everything about you. He knows that you are his son. He remembers holding you in his arms when you were born. What he cannot remember is what it was like to love you.”
We were shocked, all of us.
“They have only yin,” he continued softly, “so what defines their continuation is simply their karma, good or bad. That is why it is so important to have yang to take with when your time comes.”
“Because that way you retain your humanity,” I whispered. John nodded approvingly. “Does having yang ch’i in our dantien somehow lessen the effects of karma?” I asked.
“No. You still have to pay for what you have done-or be rewarded. But having yang with you makes it easier all around, and more deliberate either way.”
“Heaven and hell,” Andreas said.
“Not really,” John answered. “None of the conditions I described is permanent. After a time all spirits return to God.”
And there it was: the big question that I had danced around since I had come to know him. I could not resist. “Sifu,” I dared, “tell us about God. You mention Him frequently.” And mentioning God was not very Taoist, I thought; perhaps this was distinction between John’s teaching and mainstream Taoism.
John leaned back and looked at us one by one. “All right,” he said. “Before I went up to the mountain, in my heart of hearts, I did not really believe in God. Oh, I used to go church every Sunday, for I am nominally a Christian, but I had no faith; I went to church matter-of-factly. When I was up in the mountain, I wanted to experience God for myself, to see if he was real or not.”
“I prayed and I prayed for weeks, asking God to reveal Himself to me. Finally I sat down in deep meditation and sent my awareness out as before. Every day, every moment, I kept asking, ‘God, please tell me the truth about afterlife; which religion is correct? Please, Lord tell me.’ I received no answer, but I kept at it with persistence.”
“Without warning, one day a voice boomed in the air above me. It was like a thunderclap, and it said to me: Religion is like a walking stick. When you are young, you need help from your parents to walk. When you are old, you need a cane. When you are a healthy adult, you have no need for cane; if you try to run, it will only hinder you. All religions are like that; touch God directly, and you will have no need of them.”
-KOSTA DANAOS, The Magus of Java

Maybe John Chang could learn something from Buddhadharma. I mean avoiding these ultimate questions in theistic terms.

I by the way received a text message to my mobile phone one week ago which told that The Tao of God(: A Restatement of Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching Based on the Teachings of the Urantia Book) by Richard S. Omura had arrived. I will fetch it but somehow I’m now more interested about those Dover books which I have also ordered or will order in near future (Undergraduate Topology by Robert Kasriel, Introduction to Vector and Tensor Analysis by Robert C. Wrede, Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction to It’s Present Usage by Volker Heine and so on).

My opinion is that use of imagination and right kind of visualizations are somehow lacking from Taoist practice. For example Hans Reichenbach (a philosopher not scientist) might not have made it, but from him one can learn very much, I mean if wants to learn imagine some of the scientific stuff.

Also Buddhist Tantra seems to have some basic things to start with with their Generation Stage/Completion Stage practices, but mandalas and mantras as such are not very useful. Advancing from the coarse towards the subtle seems to be what really counts.

But maybe that’s not Taoist practice any more anyway.

>>>Chinese culture and philosophies often communicate in poetic ways, often in metaphor. Serious practitioners are trained in three dimensions: physical, mental and spiritual.>>>

I think there is nothing wrong with poetry or aphorisms. For example Carl Gustav Jung, who clearly has been initiate with many things, put Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, Goethe’s Faust and even Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the same Western alchemical continuum, but I at least don’t find some old poetry or sagas satisfying enough. Without serious spiritual/inner practice as well as bodily conditioning there is not much meaning in life. But what comes to mind, I would prefer to have my mind stuffed with all that information that guy like Carl Sagan has had.

HOWDY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkFYM56Qf4

>>>but somehow I’m now more interested about those Dover books
>>>which I have also ordered or will order in near future
>>>(Undergraduate Topology by Robert Kasriel,
>>>Introduction to Vector and Tensor Analysis by Robert C. Wrede,
>>>Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction to
>>>It’s Present Usage by Volker Heine and so on).

Kasriel’s book is probably the best intro book on Set Topology
there is, in my opinion (assuming one has a basic background
in proof theoretic techniques / beginning analysis).

Vector and Tensor Mathematics is probably my favorite
non-research area of math. Sidenote: I am presently writing
a book on the subject, and have about 300 pages written thus
far. Upon completion, I expect it to be more than 1000 pages long.

>>>My opinion is that use of imagination and right kind
>>>of visualizations are somehow lacking from Taoist practice.

Depends on what you mean by “Taoist practice”; the Healing Tao
alchemy formulas can get quite complex and powerful, depending
on what you are looking for.

S