Question for Michael and others, too on THOUGHTS………….

… find stillness in movement, and movement in stillness?

Interesting discussion, though I`m not sure if I understand everything right. 🙂

Hehe, maybe I mixed up something. So then maybe finding stillness in movement, and “seeing” movement from the stillness? 🙂

You think the root is stillness?

Max,
I was just commenting on that particular article, not suggesting that every buddhist advocates such a position. But I found it a bit perverse preceding a detailed analysis of inner alchemy. And it certainly contradicts what Fajin is saying about his own experience (thank Buddha).

I agree with you, some Buddhists are very grounded and focused on integrating with the world. But there are plenty I’ve met that do ignore what their body is telling them, even while they raise their awareness in meditation.

Let’s agree it is stupid to generalize about large scale movements that move through different cultures and involve hundreds of millions of peoples.

People often just take what they want from a religion or particular teaching, and ignore the rest. I think most religions are powered by insecurity, people joining a group to find acceptance and support, and willing to parrot the dcctrines in order to have community. And each group will make different demands.

peace,
michael

I think that’s something I keep forgetting –

>>People often just take what they want from a religion or particular teaching, and ignore the rest. I think most religions are powered by insecurity, people joining a group to find acceptance and support, and willing to parrot the dcctrines in order to have community. And each group will make different demands.<<

Buddhism *is* a religion after all. Sometimes people who join a religion start saying its precepts just to see how they sound and what they might mean, before they have gone anywhere towards understanding anything – that's very different from people like Max or Fajin who have actually got the thing that is behind the words. I think that maybe there is ignorant parroting of beliefs in all walks of life from people who know no better, but truly finding something washes all that away. Perhaps I've listened too much to people who don't actually 'get it', and developed a reflex dislike… shame on me!

I still do not understand why, because there is a thing between exhaling and inhaling, some Buddhists insist on saying that inhaling and exhaling are somehow wrong or impure. That though is the *religious* attitude – I'm relieved that not all people who work with 'zen' will say something like that. It is the same with calling physical life 'illusion'. It puts me off *very* much when people speak that way! Of course human beings can use physical life as a *means* to fall into illusion – but the illusion is their own, physical life itself remains real.

NN

… even though I can now see what these Zennists are talking about, I don’t really understand why they feel the need to say it yet! Maybe in time I will.

When Fajin, for example, he says:

>>Zen only works with stillness because that is the final goal.<>The alchemists will pick it apart, because they break each component down and in doing that they play with the separation and individual aspects of the pieces and then correct/shape/harmonize, restore them to the “original” conditon and after doing all of five then their integration. SO they will isolate and distinguish in their discussions, in a sense they polarize.<<

– I simply don't understand! It isn't the alchemists who polarize towards the multiple, but the life force itself, Tao itself, the Primordial itself… the 10,000 things are not unnecessary distinctions, they are necessary disctintions! We all have left and right sides, we have organs in certain patterns… The fact that we have twos and fives inside us indicates the fundamental nature, not only of the one from which we descend, but of the way that one divides into many, which is equally natural and necessary. It reminds me that Isis had to unite the scattered fragments of Osiris long enough to make love to him, in order that Horus be born (sorry to bring in Egyptiana, but they're doing it on the 'General' page anyhow…) That legend is precisely similar to the alchemical process of the HT as I now see.

This is why I say it is puzzling to me. It seems obvious to me that life is not an illusion, obvious that there is health and sickness in the body, and obvious that balance is important. There is no disconnection between yin yang and yuan (or Mem Shin and Aleph for the kabbalistically inclined). It is all one great meaning.

So alchemists don't 'play with the separation', Tao does! In the correcting/shaping/harmonizing that you are talking about the body and life are healed. Is this insignificant? Only if one believes physical life is also insignificant!

Maybe the reason I prefer Taoism is that it keeps contact with shamanic roots and pagan roots. Then again so does Hinduism, so what do I know? Perhaps I'm just playing semantics here. But I don't think so!

NN

Hi Nnonnth,

I will help you and others to understand. But this is something that must be practiced to be understood. This is beyond intellect.

>>I simply don’t understand! How can the ‘stillness’ of the primordial be ‘final’? ‘Final’ implies something inside some kind of sequential time, which the primordial certainly is not. It cannot be any more a ‘goal’ than it is a ‘starting point’… if there is no time when it is not, how can it be final?<<

*We have primordial, postnatal, and prenatal. Yuan means original, which refers to prenatal as in prenatal qi. This is the one thing of Michael's model that I do not agree with because he refers yuan to neutrality, ie. the line in the Tai Ji. That is Wu Ji, not yuan.

Yuan is yin or prenatal. Postnatal is yang. Primordial is Wu Ji, or stillness, the void (macrocosmically), yuan shen (microcosmically). In the microcosmic sense, ie. ourselves, we attempt to return to our primordial nature. That is the final goal of Daoist and Buddhists.

In Daoist nei dan, the shen to wu stage is the return to nothingness. So it is final because it is beyond time, or transcendent. It is the moment. To understand how to experience the moment, you have to practice Zen.

Do you still not understand, or do you get a better picture?

About what Bagua said,

Daoists work with yin-yang to achieve Wu Ji, does that clarify what I mean about using movement to achieve stillness? It is a working process, whereas Zen is about keeping up with consistency all the time. That way yin-yang moves into a balance by itself.

Smiles,
Fajin

Hi Dog,

i can’t give you an online lesson on Zen, but if you find a teacher and read good books on it, I’m sure you’ll find the answer.

Good luck,
Fajin