Yang Family Tai Chi Discussion Board

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Pamela:
<B>Chi it sings the inner song,
and is grateful to be sung.
Vibrations of the minds intent,
humming with the spirits tongue.

Chi it bows and bends to will,
of the beings conscious strike.
Resonating like the gong,
what is thrumming in the psyche.

Chi is formless energy,
imbued by spirit, mind and heart.
Biding in these cloaks of ash,
these entities never apart.

"Chi shi shi gudang"
it is grateful for smooth passage.
To manifest the spirit, lo~
to resonate clear message.

</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Pamela, be careful. Hundreds years from now, scholars may try to decipher Tai Chi Classics from the 21st century where "Qi is grateful to be Sung."

Nice poem! That line is verged on brilliant, I think, with the double pun of being Sung (past tense of Sing) and Sung (relax with intention). The only thing that makes it not work with the 2nd pun 100% is "to be..." Anyway to make it work differently?

Thanks for nice imagery all around though.

Xie Xie ; for the Mandarin speakers
// richard

Yes...anthromorphizing...

Thanks Richard!

"Pamela, be careful. Hundreds years from now, scholars may try to decipher Tai Chi Classics from the 21st century where "Qi is grateful to be Sung." "

LOL...indeed. Somehow I never considered my little poems as ever being included in the Classics...but you are right...what if the world is blown to bits and the only thing left is little scattered pieces of scorched "Tao Te Tai Chi"...oof...heaven help us all!

"The only thing that makes it not work with the 2nd pun 100% is "to be..." Anyway to make it work differently?"
Ahhh...yes....I see that now Richard, thanks for pointing that out. Hm, I'll see what I can do to remedy that, you're right~ Thanks for your help! For your smiles..and for smiling

All the best,
Pamela


[This message has been edited by Pamela (edited 07-20-2006).]

Hi Louis,

As I said, I understand and on some level can applaud the rendering of "The qi is roused and made vibrant according to the configuration."

[nitpick mode on] From another angle I don't like it so much because basically it requires a footnote for comprehension. We cannot fault an ordinary reader for asking: configuration of what - the stars? the bones? the breath? etc. It's nice to try to achieve a similar tone when you translate and suishi is a very ordinary, non-esoteric phrase in Chinese, but 'configuration' in the sentence quoted above requires further explanation and translates a prosaic phrase with a technical one. [nit off]

Possibly if you added 'of the body' or some such..

[This message has been edited by JerryKarin (edited 07-21-2006).]

'Circumstances' is actually a pretty good fit, in the context here. 'Circum' from circle, surrounding, and 'stance', which sounds a lot like shi.

Greetings,

Here is a (very rough) draft translation of the paragraph containing the gudang phrase, from the daoist document that Yuri linked. It concerns meditative practice, using Chapter 6 of the Daodejing as a key to somatic/physiological approaches. I translated gudang here as “oscillation.”

~~~
The first level is the “door of the profound female,” also called “getting the knack.” The “door of the profound female” come from Laozi:

“The Valley Spirit does not die, and is called the profound female. The gate of the profound female is called th root of the heavens and earth. Continuous, seemingly there, its use does not exhaust it.”

The knack of proceeding from being (you) to non-being (wu) is thus the profound female. The myriad happenings and phenomena all rely on the function of non-being (wu). Non-being is the wellspring of creating and birthing. In the human body this being must return to non-being, so it must pass through the door of the profound female. Since human life is linked to the lower abdomen, we must return to the wellspring of life, therefore refinement (liangong) begins in the lower abdomen. Associated with the lower abdomen are the mingmen (gate of life), the qizhong (umbilicus), the qihai (sea of qi), and the guanyuan (key source), then, the dantian (cinnabar field), and so on, which are all related to the root source of life. We use “youwei” attainment, holding and contemplating in the dantian, initially giving rise to a puff of warm current. Then from “youwei” we transform to “wuwei,” concentrating the spirit and focusing the thoughts (ningshen silu). Then arriving at the “entering tranquility” stage, it seems to span being and non-being (you hai wu). Then, reaching “the door of the profound female, consciousness melts into a trance state. Indeed, it seems as though there is both consciousness and unconsciousness in the ossilation between being and non-being.
~~~

Comments? Jerry, your Daodejing scholarship is richer than mine, so please chime in.

Take care,
Louis


[This message has been edited by Louis Swaim (edited 07-21-2006).]

The rendering which I threw out rather casually above, "qi is stimulated according to the context of the move" is not very literal but does a better job of conveying what this means to someone who does not read Chinese. I think if you read that out to a typical American taiji student she would have no doubt about what the sentence means and what she got from that would be reasonably close to what the Chinese says. Read out the one with configuration and there is some question left hanging, the student cannot be entirely sure of what is being said without further explanation.

Hi Jerry,

Re: 'The rendering which I threw out rather casually above, "qi is stimulated according to the context of the move" is not very literal but does a better job of conveying what this means to someone who does not read Chinese.'

Consider my nit picked. I like your rendering very much! My mind works a strange architecture, navigating odd hiking trails and fields of configurative energy.

Take care,
Louis

Starting from where Louis has 'in the human body':

For this 'existence' of the human body
to return to 'non-existence' requires
passing through the gate of the mysterious
female. Because human life is attached to
the abdomen, if we want to return to the
origin of life, we must begin our practice
from the abdomen. The abdomen is comprised of mingmen,jizhong, qihai, guanyuan, dantian, etc which all have a relationship to life; We use the practice of doing something (youwei), placing our thought in
the dantian, first producing a type of
warm flow, then switching from doing something to non-doing, we condense the spirit (shen) and stop thoughts, proceeding
to the stage of 'entering fixity' and at
this time we seem to return to non-existence
arriving at the 'gate of the mysterious
female'; consciousness from here melts
into a kind of nebulous state, which is
to say there seems to be consciousness
and yet seems to be no consciousness, oscillating between existence and non-existence.

Many thanks for the translations! As always I am grateful that can improve my understanding of Chinese due to such occasions.


//proceeding to the stage of 'entering fixity' // this Jerry's variant looks to me as more correct.


Unfortunately, after all of this I still don't thoroughly understand what "door of the profound female" is. It seems that it's one of the taoist secret "know-how"




[This message has been edited by Yuri Snisarenko (edited 07-22-2006).]

If we for one second assume that you (presence) relate to qi, wu (absence) relate to shen, and on the certain stage you and wu kind of come through each other with gudang, then we get something that might relate to "qi yi gudang" and "qi suishi gudang, shen yao neizhong lian" phrases.

Please don’t take my assumptions too seriously. As Louis put it, my mind "moves through odd hiking trails"




[This message has been edited by Yuri Snisarenko (edited 07-21-2006).]

Greetings

Thank you for translating that passage Louis...this is very interesting to me~

"If we on one second assume that you (presence) relate to qi, wu (absence) relate to shen, and on the certain stage you and wu kind of come through each other with gudang, then we get something that might relate to "qi yi gudang" and "qi suishi gudang, shen yao neizhong lian" phrases."Yuri

I think you make a great distinction here, Yuri...the energy of qi and energy of shen as being two different energy vibrations...at least it is a keen one to me.

I did a drawing recently...art is oft a kind of a spiritual experience...or at the least a subconscious (more knowing) one than the conscious mind...for me, at least...I oft hunt down my answers through the products of my half minded artwork.

Well in the drawing, the dantian was the source of power and there was an umbilicus sort of filament reeling from that point upward which spiralled round the body to delve into the middle eye...the triangle of meditation...which allows us to open the door to deep "meditation", wuwei, nothingness...profound yinness.

There is probably more than one manner (or degree of depth) to meditatation ...one by simply entering, directly, through will simply using the shen energy...the other by first gathering the energy in the dantian before doing so, and thereby bringing along the 'awareness" of qi...(brilliant taoist technique)

I would deduce, by considering Yuri and Louis explanations, that by doing this, then one would be acheiving the "door to the profound female"...which seems to bring along oscillation of consciousness/non consciousness into the meditative experience.

The shen energy and the qi energy?...body awareness and spirit awareness, combined.

Jerry...great summary. I seem to be simply agreeing with what you have said already, here. Just adding some weight...

Pamela

[This message has been edited by Pamela (edited 07-21-2006).]

[This message has been edited by Pamela (edited 07-21-2006).]

Greetings Yuri,

Re: //proceeding to the stage of 'entering fixity' // this Jerry's variant looks to me as more correct.

I'm pretty sure that ruding is a Buddhist term. The document you linked is most likely from the Quan Zhen school (complete reality), which is somewhat syncretic, pulling freely from Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.

Re: "Unfortunately, after all of this I still don't thoroughly understand what "door of the profound female" is."

It's the vagina, and as such the opening to all capacity and creativity.

Take care,
Louis

Louis,

Re: "Unfortunately, after all of this I still don't thoroughly understand what "door of the profound female" is."

It's the vagina, and as such the opening to all capacity and creativity.

Was that what was scribed directly in the text you translated?
Or is that your interpretation?

Makes me think of "The DaVinci Code"...

Pamela

I was thinking the same thing about ruding sounding like a Buddhist phrase for samadhi. Aside from the quotes, the language is modern Chinese.