If you just want to improve Fa Jing, and body, we don't call this neigong.
Some Martial arts define it as neigong when there are excercises that improve the lungs, heart etc. But as I said before there tend to be 2 major schools. One which only practices the body, one which practices the mind.
Neigong can be practised independant of martial arts.
ALso, there is no use quoting TCM as it is not the same thing.
Neigong is about changing your awareness and perception of things. First by understanding your minds link to your body. Letting your mind better understand its unconscious element (Xin Yu Yi He).
There is no real spiritual reason to be poor, vegetarian or celebate. This is clearly demonstrated in the Vimalakirti Sutra.
Vimalakirti was a wealthy householder with children and we may presume he also ate meat.
The Vimalakirti Sutra is one of the sutras the foundation or Ch'an was built upon. The themes of the Vimalakirti Sutra are found within the earliest Ch'an writings.
To be preoccupied with with such things is just another form of clinging. To believe one is BETTER for being a vegetarian, or another is worse for eating meat is just another form of clinging!
This principles is demonstrated in one of the earliest Ch'an writings:
Master Yuan and a friend were walking down a butcher's street. Master Yuan's companion commented to Master Yuan, "Do you not see these butchers?" (Monks were supposed avoid even the sight of the killing of animals!) Master Yuan responded, "You are seeing on top of seeing!"
Master Yuan's companion, clung to rules/teachings. Master Yuan clung to nothing, therefore walking down the street of butchers was not walking down the street of butchers.
For his companion, every street is a street of butchers because of his clinging mind!
Maybe it can help someone focus. If you're willing to live in a hut that just barely keeps out the rain, eat the simplest food and give up physical affection... well if you can do it, your practice must be giving a lot in return.
The only one of those I'm even close too is diet, and my food is still luxurious compared to Stonehouse's diet if you read Red Pine's translation of his poems. (amazing amazing book btw)
He preferred to gather pine pollen to eat in the early spring before his garden got going over going down the hill and begging from the farmers.
If anyone gets the chance I'd also like to recommend the film Amongst White Clouds about hermits in the mountains near Xi'an. Maybe everyone already knows about it, but it's worth giving it another plug.
I realize my interest in this stuff is a kind of larping and that it involves forms of ego and fantasy. But I still like it. Having a feeling of purpose in life – even a little – makes a lot of extraneous stuff seem totally unimportant. Living in commercialism mainstream with that mindset would feel like prison. And I'm sure there's a long way left to go.
Last edited by rett; 07-21-2011 at 07:09 AM.
Living in a cold wet hut always being hungry and absent human interaction creates just as many distractions to overcome as living a normal life.
Whether any of these things are distractions or not is all in the mind. The mind will create its own distractions out of nothing because that is the nature or the mind.
When we see distractions as non-distracting and non-distraction is not distracting, we are distracted by nothing! This is one of the earliest Ch'an teachings!
Really? When did you do it and for how many years?
Also, I believe as in am pretty sure, that the most usual hermit life is a period of intensive practice for a set number of years. Then they go back to living in the monastery or in the cities as before.
Even in the mountains there is some community among the practitioners. It doesn't have to mean being entirely isolated all the time.
Speaking of ancient Ch'an teachings... how long did Damo live in the cave on the mountain?
Last edited by rett; 07-21-2011 at 07:22 AM.
Both sides have something here.
Yes eliminating all other elements from your life means fewer distractions. No responsibility and no stress means you are free to work on your abilities.
But at the same time it doesn't help you in any other way than freeing you from your distractions. When it comes to the great work, the meditation, the focus it doesn't matter what you have where you are... Nothing matters except what is in your mind.
It goes back to what I said before about cause and consiquence. Becoming a hermit won't increase your spiritual ability, it just gives you more oppertunity to work on it. One who is not a hermit can just as well become as skilled.
Once people have reached this level they may become like a hermit because many things will no longer be important to them, but the act of becoming a hermit will not give them this level.
If you have never been cold, wet and hungry in your entire life you are indeed fortunate!
All three can be just as distracting as anything else in life, if not more!
Just because damo was reported to have lived in a cave for 7 years does not mean everyone needs to do it or would benefit from it.
Vimalakirti was a wealthy householder, with a wife and children, yet he schooled all the bodhidsattvas!
The point is, any INSISTENCE that ANYTHING is necessary is merely another form of clinging. You cannot make a mirror out of a brick by polishing it with another brick!
This gets complicated really quickly for anyone who practices Chan/Zen. It can easily be tantamount to tossing the baby out with the bath water. One of Bodhidharma's major teachings was to avoid attachment, but that can evolve into immorality in the blink of an eye. One only needs to recall the impact of Zen upon Nazism, or just read Zen at War by Brian Daizen Victoria, to see where that path might lead. It's an intellectualist's argument, preying on an intrinsic paradox of non-attachment. Certainly, for some, abstinence is not a pre-requisite. But for most, these disciplines are very useful for killing delusion.
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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Let me see if I understand your argument here:
If a Ch'an practitioner eats meat, it will turn them into a Nazi?
In all seriousness though:
When stating these disciplines are useful for killing delusion, one must be so deluded to begin with they do not recognize that these disciplines "themselves" are delusions one is using in order to cleanse their self of delusion!
Using delusion to kill delusion is no different than rubbing two bricks together in order to make a mirror.
While it is true that all things are delusion, one does not throw out all arbitrarily created rules with the bath water. Being free from delusion, and the clinging mind, does not mean one does not live in a delusive world and live by the rules of that world, It merely means, one is not attached to the delusion, not that they don't use the delusion as one might use paint and brush to paint a picture, or hammer and nail to build a house.
The world does not change, our perception and the reason we do things changes, when we become free from delusion and the clinging mind.
Last edited by Scott R. Brown; 07-21-2011 at 09:27 PM.
That sounds like California zen. Be careful.
The iconoclastic statements in the old Ch'an books came from a monastic environment where people practiced very hard and believed teachers unquestioningly. Maybe they needed to be shaken up or something.
If anything, Californians need the opposite: to be encouraged to strive hard; simplify; revere parents, teachers, monks; be ethical; do without.
Context is key.
If the teachings are meaningless delusions and my own mind is the path therefore when my mind tells me to smoke crack, pimp hos, punch kittens and engage in bestiality with all manner of ruminant quadrupeds that is enlightenment.
Debauchery is my asceticism. A very focused, one pointed debauchery.