Wednesday, January 7, 2009

2006 - Cross the ocean to see my teacher.

I went to Beijing in July. A friend said, "Let's go to see Master Wang." A great idea, I had already planned to see Master Wang on this trip. The last time I saw him was in September 1998, it had been 8 years since I last saw him in person. Even though we talked on the phone regularly, that can't be compared to seeing him in person.

My friend suggested that we take the water route to get there so that we can enjoy the scenery along the way. We got on the boat at the nearby port to our destination. Master Wang was as compassionate and caring as before. In the following three days, I had many complex emotions since it had been 8 years since I last saw him in person. During that period of time, I have tried many things according to my own ideas. Some of those I did well and Master Wang was very supportive; some of those perhaps should have been done in a different way but Master Wang didn't explicitly mention it ; some people had slandered and caused great troubles to me and Master Wang and which he had dealt with for me. I sincerely apologized for the troubles I caused him and he was happy to accept it. He was also supportive of my idea of a Health and Wellness Center.

2005 - Meridian Taijiquan

In 1991 when I was hired as the assistant instructor to Master Wang for the first time, he taught a practice of people with people, in one case, when the two persons got into trance, they started spontaneous movement with their eyes closed, it looked as though they were sparring with other. Each movement was as precise as if their eyes were opened. I thought at that time: maybe that's how Taijiquan was invented.

From my own experience of helping other to archive Channel SHO, those who has practiced Taiji before usually have a much easier time of attaining it and once spontaneous movements appear, the movements are elegant and nice to look at. I thought: perhaps Taijiquan is the external part of dandao. Henceforth, I paid particular attention to the progress of students who practiced taijiquan after they had attained Channel SHO, three of them had revealed partial answers to this puzzle.

The first person had practiced Taijiquan for more than 40 years, he was 80 years old. I taught him the methods and things to watch out for when trying to open up the Channel SHO. He had a very good foundation. He could sit in full-lotus for three hours or more. The first day we went up to Taoyuan, he sat on his own in the morning and his abdomen vibrated strongly. He used the method taught by me to open his own SHO. Absolutely amazing for an 80-year-old man. I was amazed by his achievements and this showed me that Taijiquan is definitely one of dandao's foundational practice.

The seond person has practiced a different lineage of Taijiquan for more than 10 years. After he had attained Channel SHO, his progress was rapid, he had 36 mudras spontaneously appeared. Master Wang had said before that there are 36 mudras associated with Ling Bao Bi Fa and he had publicly taught only 4 of them! We analyzed and concluded that these mudras appears when the qi move in and connecting the 12 regular meridians.

The third person has also practiced various forms of Taiji for 10 years or more. After she had attained Channel SHO, she can clearly felt that qi was moving in her various meridians. We used one year to investigate and conclude that in Yang's Style Taiji, when doing each external form, there is a corresponding internal movement in the channel. We took it one step further and inverted the problem: for each of the 12 regular meridians, we extracted all the forms that stimulate that meridian and reorganize and modify them. We took out the 12 restructured and modified forms that stimulate and most accurately correspond to the 12 regular channels and created the "Twelve Forms of Meridian Taijiquan". We recorded it and sent the video to Master Wang for appraisal. After Master Wang had seen it he said, "There are many people who are currently researching on this topic but none of them had a result that's comparable to yours. Also in these form, you are missing *****. You should publish this as your own work." Actually we already knew that ***** is missing but we didn't have any way to overcome it at that time. This is another example of the amazing depth of knowledge that Master Wang possess. If one does not completely understand the structure of the 12 meridians, one can not know that which parts of our taijiquan are correct and which parts are missing. A Great Teacher! A true Master!

2004 - Third revision of Yin Xian Fa

After I had mastered the techniques for SHO, I had a deeper understanding of the part "Refining the body to accumulate qi" in Yin Xian Fa, it led me to examine that portion of the practice again. I reexamined the Yin Xian Fa technique for the third time and wrote three reports on it "Analysis of the Techniques in Yin Xian Fa", " Analysis on the verifications of Yin Xian Fa", "Analysis on the results of Yin Xian Fa". The objective of these reports is clear, to completely deconstruct every detail of Yin Xian Fa in order to define step by step the methods and the corresponding results. The goal might be difficult to archive, but from my experience, working through a difficult problem always bring unexpected results. The are two parts to this problems:

(1) When one has accumulated enough experience so that each method and the its result is clear, then one has developed a set of techniques. When we apply the same principles to dandao, what would happen? This is a question of technique refinement.
(2) Since "Yin Xian Fa" is so great, how can one popularize it? This is a question of mass transmissions.

2004 - An emergency call for help.

In August, a group of us went up to Mt. Xing Long again. We did the Star Formation Practice one day. One person did this star practice for the first time and he didn't follow the rule exactly, he just stood up when the practice has not been properly ended, this is strictly prohibited. As an analogy, let say 4 persons are lifting a heavy object together and one of the person abruptly let go of his hand, what would happen to others?

Unsurprisingly, an older gentlemen told me that "It's broken, the balance is lost." He was working on the level "Refining the Form with Golden Liquid", we tried many different ways to "repair" to no avail. As the last resort, I called Master Wang for help. I told him what had happened and then he asked me, "How old?" "60" I said. Master Wang then said, "This is because of this and that, you should look up so and so book, there is so and so passage and that's the way to fix it." I was on the mountain and didn't bring that book, so I called a friend and luckily he has that particular book. I asked him to look up the particular passage and read to me. Once he was done, I immediately understood what's wrong. We tried it immediately and it worked!

Cultivation happens in your body, if you weren't careful problem will arise and you would need to face the condequences. Troubles don't usually occur under normal circumstances but there are always exceptional time. Therefore one must find an accomplished teacher otherwise when problem occurs, you won't be able to deal with it yourself. I was only an assistant instructor, I am more than capable to teach the foundational materials but to teach the more advanced stuff, it's a more difficult question to answer.

2003 - A breakthrough

In August, I went on a retreat with a group of friends on Mount Xing Long. When I was practicing in front of a tree one day, I felt that my body was swaying. After some careful observation, I realized that my Channel Small Heavenly Orbit was circulating rapidly like a wheel and the feeling was great. It was spinning when I was sitting, it was even spinning when I was sleeping. This showed that I have completely recovered. I helped everyone present to open up their orbits, later on, a few other came up to mountain, they all have their orbits opened except one. When other students in Lanzhou got hold of this news, they all immediately came up, at that time I was very excited and happy, so I helped everyone with their SHO. Of course this has caused me problems later as mentioned in an earlier post.

From that time on, I had developed a complete program for SHO that is simple, convenient, safe and reliable. Those who have experienced it were amazed, those who hasn't can not believe it. One need to know that for all these, I had investigated and researched for eight whole years. A difficult but rewarding eight-year period.