[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]it will be interesting to see what comes of the whole chinese mma thing… its only a matter of time before kungfu works its way in there, more than it already has anyways…[/QUOTE]
it wil happen; china is good at jumping on whatever bandwagon is playing the oudest and mst popular tune (e.g. - Olympic sports - I mean, they went from nowhere to world class in diving)
[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]mahayana at first, it was my first experience with meditation, learning about chakras etc… but then my reading went all over the place… at first it was just interesting… then alot of it started making sense… [/QUOTE]
yeh, I kno that feeling, lol
[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]i dont consider myself a buddhist tho… i dont have a label in that respect… always learning… [/QUOTE]
if u took refuge, u r a Buddhist; if u didn’t, then you are, technically, not; it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, of course, it’s just a clear cut way of delineating things; I mean, this is their own internal qualification, but they certainly don’t treat u better or worse one way or the other
[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]you could draw paralells between yoga and qigong forsure… [/QUOTE]
considering how much stuff in TCMA was ripped off from yogic practice? sure thing!
[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]i dont like how some people view chi as something magical… [/QUOTE]
some people are not very good Buddhists, and as such need to change reality to suit their projections…
[QUOTE=Syn7;1036822]has anyone read the tao of physics??? its a great jumpoff point for anyone interested in physics and chi… although it goes into alot more than chi…[/QUOTE]
<groan>; TBH, I blame Kapra as much as I do anyone for the misue of “qi” by people who have no idea about physics or taoism - problem is, his book legitimized the viewpoint of “oh, particle physics? yeh, the Taoists had that all figured out 3,000 years ago and did it without any fancy experiments, and also do a better job of describing it”, which many people use as justification for dismissing contemporary scientific thot as either incomplete, derivative or both as compared to Taoist practice, without actually knowing much about either! fact is, the Taoists had NO IDEA about quantum physics per se; what they did “know”, based on how they observed the natural world around them, was that from a morphogentic perspective, there was repetition and redundancy across the spectrum in terms of macro reflecting micro - which is really nothing more profound than looking at a piece of broccoli, a human lung, a tree and a river delta and going, “gee, those all kinda look alike…hmmmmm” (and now we have fractal geometry to explain all that); in other words, quantum theory is visually described using models based on our experience of the physical world, what we “know” - but in “reality”, it is a theory of probabilities, that can really only be explained mathematically - in “reality” at the level that quantum theory operates, u actually can’t use concrete imagery to describe it - so the description becomes a metaphor; and since a lot of Taoist practice is also based on metaphor, and because human experience is pretty uniform across cultures and time, in terms of how we experience the physical (and in a sense finite) world, you are going to get a lot of similarities - for example, when we look at “natural” movement, we see a lot of 3-dimensional movement - essentially, spirals; and when people move spontaneously, such as in Taoist shamanic practice, u see a lot of spirals - like in sea shells, and in tree growth and in DNA - so wait - the Taoists MUST have known about DNA as well, because of all those spirals they danced in! see what I’m getting at here? the “truth” of life is this: spontaneous rediscovery of fundamental principles, of things such as they are - and there is your applied Buddhism 101; in other words, correlation and causality are two different things - but Kapra drew the parallels and then drew conclusions based on his own internal subjective issues (if I recall correctly, it’s been over 15 yrs since I picked that book up) - so while the comparisons are cool, the conclusions do a disservice to both Taoist practice and particle physics: I mean, have u ever looked at some of the equations, or the machinery, the level of technical complexity involved in atom smashing? how could some guy 2,000 yrs ago, living in a hole up the side of a mountain have ANY concept of what that involves? at the same time, he did experience the same world as a physicist living today, so of course there will be similarities, as both of these men were / are by their nature looking into the fundamental nature of things! and as such, the way the ask the question and frame the answer will be based on that common human experience on a certain level;
just my 2¢…
