Sunday, May 24, Memorial Day weekend Livestream of Qigong For Health Class #9 with Terry Dunn
Taoist Elixir Method 31 Basic Meditations + Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong Combined Qigong Practice
“Calmness (meditation) and wisdom are like a lamp and its light.” — Hui Neng, 6th Patriarch of Chinese Buddhism and founder of the Ch’an (Zen) School of Sudden Enlightenment
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND TO EVERYONE, and welcome to this FIFTH edition of our Newsletter for Qigong for Health and Tai Chi for Health! And my apologies for this issue coming so late this week! (Your humble qigong and Tai Chi teacher has been tirelessly working with students in private online sessions while preparing for this next edition, and of course, sharing the resulting insights that are the fruits of the practice.
Exoteric vs. Esoteric Teachings—very seldom are the two in one place, Part 2
I'd like to expand upon my comment from last week on the above famous quotation of Hui Neng, which is found, btw, in the “Platform Sutra” (or “Altar Sutra”) which is the seminal work of Chan Buddhism or the Southern School of Sudden Enlightenment (later translated in Japan as Zen). His simile provides us with an inspirational reminder that whenever we practice deeply calming meditative arts such as Taoist Elixir Method and Flying Phoenix Qigong that we practice in our Sunday series, that is an opportunity for us to easily and very consistently attain the first goal and benchmark of any form meditation or yogic practice: calmness—which also means bodily stillness and mental quiescence.
To understand how calmness or tranquility is achieved through meditation and what criteria we can use to know when calmness attained, and then to understand what greater wisdom benefits come from attaining mental quiescence, we only need to refer to Chapter 52 of the I Ching, or “Book of Changes” (the famous Taoist almanac and manual of divination and augury—and, yes, the practice of Chinese Yoga— that has influenced China and Asia for the past 2.5 millenia and parts of the western world for the past 90 years):
THE JUDGMENT
KEEPING STILL.
Keeping his back still So that he no longer feels his body. He goes into his courtyard And does not see his people. No blame.
True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life. The hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement. The back is named because in the back are located all the nerve fibers that mediate movement. If the movement of these spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.
THE IMAGE
Mountains standing close together. The image of KEEPING STILL. Thus the superior man Does not permit his thoughts To go beyond his situation.
The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart-that is, a man's thoughts-should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore. (*in classical Chinese, what we in the west call “mind” is the “heart-mind”; thus the heart can “think”; the mind can feel.)
<end of Wilhelm/Baynes translation>
Another translation of the Image of this hexagram is:
“Joined mountains. Stilling.
A noble one reflects, and does not come forth from his situation.”
So to make perfect our meditation, we visualize not just two mountains, but joined mountains. Or, as interpreted by Wilhelm/Baynes throughout their translation of th I Ching: the lower trigram is “inside” the upper trigram. So the meaning of “Keeping Still” can be imagined as “Mountain Within Mountain”: inner stillness joins with outer stillness: reflecting in silence, staying in seclusion, and NOT ‘coming forth.’ Even if we do come forth and go into “rooms” or the “courtyard,” we do not see “our people.” Two meanings here:
(1) one remains in stillness/meditation: separate, unengaged emotionally (hence, “A Separate Reality” by Carlos Castaneda); (2) while in (high) meditative state of consciousness (MSC), one sees his people but no longer sees them in the same way as in the past—hence, the sad revelation expressed in “Doctor, My Eyes” by Jackson Browne, Carl Jung’s truism, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain,” and the bittersweet mood of Castaneda’s warrior as he encounters “phantoms” on the road to Ixtlan.
The primary goal of any and all meditation and yogic arts is to attain “stillness within stillness”—or mountain within mountain. And once that supra-mundane consciousness is attained, the ancient Taoists teach us to go further and attain “stillness within movement.” And to cultivate “stillness within movement”, the ancients sages devised classical arts of moving meditation such as Tai Chi Chuan, Six Harmonies/Eight Methods (Liu He Ba Fa), the Taoist Elixir Method Qigong, or the Flying Phoenix Qigong moving meditations such as “Wind Through the Treetops,” “Wind Above the Clouds,” “Moonbeam Splashes on Water,” and the capstone exercise known has Flying Phoenix Heavenly Healing Qi Meditation shown here (taught on Volume 4 of the CKFH DVD series):
Sedentary yogas and meditation train one to still the body and the mind by focusing on one point. In moving meditation, that one point of focussed concentration is moving, along with the entire integrated body in perfectly natural coordination. The cultivation of stillness-within-movement is no easy matter. It normally takes decades of practice of Tai Chi Chuan, Liu He Ba Fa, Shaolin Kung Fu, plus their core Qigong arts to achieve it. But the health benefits that come forth from attaining stillness-within-stillness and then striving properly towards stillness-within-movement are many and profound and begin to accrue with one’s first steps on this path to calmness and wisdom.
• May 24 Stream Session
Our ninth Livestream session is set for this Sunday from 4pm to 6pm Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada), with 30 minutes of discussion and Q&A immediately following. Each class immerses you in—not one, but—two authentic and powerful ancient Taoist Qigong systems that will improve your health: Taoist Elixir Method Qigong and Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong:
A. Warm-up: The class will begin as usual with our healthful warmup practice of “the Silkweaver’s Exercise”, which you can learn beforehand by practicing to this video I made in 2017: https://www.facebook.com/236579434951/videos/10154646296514952/
(If you do homework and get part or all of this choreography memorized, you’ll hit the deck running at each Sunday during our practice and attain deeper levels of relaxation, mind-body integration, and mental concentration/jhanic absorption.)
B. After warming up this manner, we will do an hour of Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations—usually the “TTP Short Form Power Yoga” consisting of 5 of the 31 Meditations. New meditations will be added from each week until we cover all of the 31 Basic Meditations of Tao Tan Pai—15 standing exercises and 16 seated meditations.
• Eight of the Tao Tan Pai Basic 31 Meditations (“TTP-31”) are seen on this video, including the all-essential first of the 31 Meditations known as “Circling Palms”, which is traditionally practiced by doing four sets of 8 repetitions:
FACT: Just like one can never practice enough of “Wave Hands Like Clouds” (an outward circling pattern done in the bow stance) in Tai Chi, one can never practice enough of “Circling Palms” (an inward circling pattern) in Taoist Elixir Method Qigong.
C. After our hour of practicing the Tao Tan Pai “Short Form Power Yoga”—that is easy to do and good for all ages— we take our excellent body mechanics, mind-body integration, newly cultivated “shen” energy (from our mental and visual concentration on movements synchronized with breath cycle) to use as a strong foundation for our second hour’s practice of “Flying Phoenix Celestial Healing Qigong”. This is what one of the intermediate FP Qigong standing meditations, “Moonbeam Splashes On Water,” looks like:
Both the practice of the Basic TTP-31 Meditations and the Flying Phoenix Qigong involve standing and seated, moving and sedentary meditations. Both are complete and powerful health-enhancing and consciousness-tranforming systems of Taoist hygienics in and of themselves. But as explained in an earlier issue, I discovered about 6 years ago while teaching at Emperors College in Santa Monica that the TTP-31 Basic Meditations just happens to work as a superb foundational catalyst that enhances the sublimely restorative effects of the Flying Phoenix Healing Qigong. Hence the format of every class in this series is one hour of Taoist Elixir Method Qigong followed by one hour of Flying Phoenix Qigong.
• Joining the Stream Session
If you wish to expand your holistic health horizons and explore these rare and authentic Taoist monastic systems of Qigong, and join a lively worldwide community of students dedicated to health, personal growth, self-empowerment, inner peace and world peace, sign up for the next session!
The Zoom Meeting ID is: 826 9142 8096
FEE: $35 per class or $240 / series of 8 classes
• Please send tuition via Paypal to zenbearinc@gmail.com (well before noon on May 24) —or send an email to zenbearinc@gmail.com asking to be sent a Paypal money request that you can use any credit or debit card to pay.) You will then be sent the Meeting Password by 2pm on Sunday.
All participants must register in advance for this meeting at this URL:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYrfuisrDMqE9LRI_FvLKsuEyUIvIFFzaaQ
•• PLEASE ALSO NOTE: class fees will increase to these rates starting June 1:
$40 / single class (2 hours); $280 for 8-class series; $480 for 16-class series: $480
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See you all this Sunday as we systematically use Tao Tan Pai and Flying Phoenix Qigong’s sedentary meditations to perfect ”stillness with stillness” and then their moving meditations to develop “stillness within movement.”
Have a very happy, healthy, and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.
Sincerely,
Sifu Terry Dunn
• SONG PICK OF THE WEEK:
As this is Memorial Day weekend in America, our song pick is a solemn and reverent commemorative prayer:
“Mansions of the Lord” performed by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point Glee Club.
To fallen soldiers let us sing
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord
No more bleeding, no more fight
No prayers pleading through the night Just divine embrace, Eternal light
In the Mansions of the Lord
Where no mothers cry and no children weep We will stand and guard though the angels sleep
All through the ages safely keep
The Mansions of the Lord