Closed Door Martial Arts

[Ming Fai]

Well, time will tell if it is genuine or not. At least the doctor convinced me and I'm planning to take my brother to the clinic to be treated.

Now, I agree with you that Western science and medicine are at many fields superior to that of the East. But even western physicians are convinced that Traditional Chinese Medicine works and in some cases where Western medicine fails, TCM will have effect. Many Western doctors now take courses on TCM just to know more about acupuncture, tuina, Chinese herbology etc. Now, Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on the Existence of Qi. So, if TCM really is effective, then Qi does exist. Furthermore, Qi has always played an important role in the Chinese martial arts, because Chinese martial arts are in fact a blending of classical forms of combat with traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, Qi must be relevant for kungfu-training.

I am aware of the fact that there are many frauds out there but that doesn't mean all Qigong practices are mumbojumbo. There are many people in Taiwan who were cancer patients and they were all cured after intensive practice of Guolin Qigong.

By the way, in the Forbidden City Museum you can still see the first seismograph build by Zhang Heng around 100 AD. The Ancient Chinese were quite sophisticated but it's a shame that they did not made an effort to further development.

[PlasticSquirrel]

a little late on this reply to you, ego, but to clarify:

i meant YOU, not 'you' as in everyone besides me. i can, some others on this board can (some very well), but you can not. if you could, you wouldn't speak so ignorantly.

i don't need to defend myself from you. i am more than capable of fending for myself. i need to defend others who don't know any better than to listen to your nonsense.

note: this is for the records. i don't expect people to read this post, be interested, and keep this god forsaken thread going any longer...

[Ego_Extrodinaire]

Plastic squirrel,

if you're the only one who could feel it, taste it, see it, experience it, you could be insane.

Remembering for science to work it does not require a belief.

[BSH]

I have listened to this quietly for a long time. Proof works both ways. If you can prove something is true, then that is the best option. However, until you can disprove something, it is still considered theory.

As soon as you can disprove the internal aspects of Kung Fu, you are just barking louder than you can bite. It is a weak mind that dismisses something because of doubt. The problem is that the MA community is 95% fraud when they claim internal.

With your attitude, it should be your life's goal to find an authentic Internal Kung Fu that will change your opinion. Keep looking and looking until you have searched your entire life and failed to find it. Then, if you have truly spent your life searching, you can claim victory, but only for yourself.

I was once like you. My problem was that I found a path that had too many coincidences. My doubts turned into faith when I could no longer explain them away.

Best wishes for you in your life's path.

[Ego_Extrodinaire]

"I have listened to this quietly for a long time. Proof works both ways. If you can prove something is true, then that is the best option. However, until you can disprove something, it is still considered theory."

That's incorrect, the onus of prove is purely on the person who presents the theory. In terms of chi, you don't even have a hypothesis let alone a prove. Let me ask you to define chi in 100 words or less. Chi is.....

"As soon as you can disprove the internal aspects of Kung Fu, you are just barking louder than you can bite. It is a weak mind that dismisses something because of doubt. The problem is that the MA community is 95% fraud when they claim internal."

If your prepared to entertain a weak mind, then lets just say that in a room of 100 so called internal art practitioners selected at random. I remove 5 of them at random. How confident are you in varifying the validity of the 95 practitioners with a 97.5% success?

"With your attitude, it should be your life's goal to find an authentic Internal Kung Fu that will change your opinion."

Let's just say most biologist do not go chasing after the Loch Ness Monster and I will not go chasing after the Big Foot of kung fu. But it looks like you did. Why?

"Keep looking and looking until you have searched your entire life and failed to find it. Then, if you have truly spent your life searching, you can claim victory, but only for yourself."

There're better things to do in life and the onus of prove is on the person who presents the theory.

"I was once like you. My problem was that I found a path that had too many coincidences. My doubts turned into faith when I could no longer explain them away."

You are absolutely right. Until you place a chi kung practitioner under lab conditions and have that su*ker prove his worth your working on circumspecs. Remebering that science operates on observations and not on faith! My advice to you is look harder - there're also a lot of shonky used car sales people out there.

"Best wishes for you in your life's path."

I hope you found my lesson enlightening. Good luck!

[EAZ]

I do not want to get into the discussion of levitating sifus and Immortals.

However I do want to add an ange to the discussion.

It has been my experience that:
0. The objective of Buddhisme and Taoism (and I think in reality Western religion by a more convoluted fashion) is to perceive reality as it is.
1. Analytical reasoning is insuficient alone (although very handy at times) to comprehend reality, as reality exists independently of analytical reasoning.
2. That beleiving we actually control our destiny, that our merit is built soley on our well thought out actions is pure HUBRIS.
3. That Asians built up another method of reasoning to apprehend reality, which made them discard certain analytical pathes in favour of other pathes. Hence their slower development in the field of technology.

I give as a good example for these three points the Yi King. I do not really think it is important to criticize the Yi King on the basis of whether it is a good fortune telling device. If this were your angle of attack you are like Don Quichotte fighting the windmill.

The Yi King is actually a complete method of perception of reality (read annexes as well if you have not already, very important).

I am not saying that it is necessarily closer to reality, but certainly a refleshing view from our point of view.

Your desire to subject Asian metaphysics (if there is such a thing) and more particilarly the system described by a canon of litterature as internal energy to Western canon, is kind of a waste of time.

If I said to a girl:
"I love you"
"I have a feeling of blood rushing and and my eyes are watering and I feel all tingly"
"My level of testosterone has now reached .08% of my blood content",
we all agreee that option one is probably the most appropriate to describe what I am experiencing.

If you absolutely maintain that option 1 is an illusion because in reality it is option 2,3, I think you are probably deficient in life experience.

There are of course points of intersection. Eastern medecine has somehow stumbled upon some pretty cool therapies to cure people of a LOT of things, which Western medecine, let's face it, is really quite ill equipped to deal with.

Of course talk about vacinations, heart transplant etc, to an Asian doctor and they will tell you to go elsewhere.

Your refusal to acknowledge that reality exists outside of a Western anthropomorphic viewpoint is really the crux of the issue here.

Understand that I can dish out at least equal criticism of Asian civilisation, and I prefer living in my own, but 15 years of steady contact with Asian culture have only served to show me the relativity of my viewpoint.

You say science = repeatable experiments that are condusive to establshing universal laws valid throughout the world. This is a goal in itself.

I say: I am happy that we have proven that gravity exists, etc.... but my subjective experience of reality is not really enriched by this. The only type of experience that is valid is fleeting moments, in combat or forms, of reality as it is, ie the pracice of Kung Fu. It is not through tools or the encyclodepia Britannica that I will learn how to live a better life.

Discussing the issue of internal energy is simply a moot point.

[Ego_Extrodinaire]

I don't dispute that there are other branches of philosophical studies besides science. Maths is one of them.

So what is love? you described it as a feeling as well as biochemical interactions within your bloodstream. both are valid but only one would be useful for a biochemist at least within the context of the office hours.

So what is chi? If its a belief then it may form some basis of philosophical discussion. However, in the context of combat which is what kung fu is all about, it is not so much as to whether you belief you can stop a punch but rather can you stop a punch. Please describe how a chiful person can stop a punch better than a chiless person.

[guohuen]

The person with more chi is a heck of a lot faster.

[BSH]

Although I may be quicker than others, let's forget about that. Let's say I can't stop a punch better than anyone else. What I can do is take a punch better than almost anyone out there.

How do you respond when you get hit? Ouch or oof. If someone hits me and I don't feel it, I can better respond. If I feel it, it distracts me and keeps me from performing my next strike. If a strike doesn't affect me, I'm that much quicker at hurting my opponent.

You will agree with that, but you will disagree that it has anything to do with internal. That's where our opinions differ.

As always, you try to defend your opinion by saying it hasn't been proved. I, on the other hand maintain that, until I can disprove something, it has the potential of being true.

I am a simple mathmetician in my non-Kung Fu life. That means that I am an analytical person filled with doubts. Each time someone tells me something, I try to verify it. That is very similar to you. However, when I am unable to prove something, I still hold the belief that it may be true until I can positively disprove it. It is a fool who does otherwise.

I never state that something is true without proof. However, I likewise won't say it isn't true without proof. The burden of proof works both ways. Open your mind.

As to the two potential points you made responding to my previous post:

1) That's incorrect, the onus of prove is purely on the person who presents the theory. In terms of chi, you don't even have a hypothesis let alone a prove. Let me ask you to define chi in 100 words or less. Chi is.....

The onus of the proof (not prove) is on the person only if he claims something as fact. I don't. I am not so ignorant as to say that Ch'i doesn't exist because I can't explain it in 100 words or less. I also can't disprove it in 100 words or less, therefore, its existance is still plausible. I don't claim that it is absolutely a fact. I believe it because I can't disprove it and too many things are happening that I can't explain away as coincedence. I keep trying to disprove it though. I won't give up questioning until I can prove or disprove it.

2) If your prepared to entertain a weak mind, then lets just say that in a room of 100 so called internal art practitioners selected at random. I remove 5 of them at random. How confident are you in varifying the validity of the 95 practitioners with a 97.5% success?

IF YOU REMOVE 5 OF THEM AT RANDOM, THE VALIDITY OF THE REMAINING 95 REMAINS 95%. My specific emphasis of my math major was statistics. Trust me. I can prove this unless you can confidently state the validity of the 5 removed. BTW, I know I was yelling using all caps.

I had hope for you and still do. Scientists are constantly looking for ways to disprove theories as am I. But, until they can disprove a statement, they still respect the possibility that it may be possible. How about you?

[Ego_Extrodinaire]

"Although I may be quicker than others, let's forget about that. Let's say I can't stop a punch better than anyone else. What I can do is take a punch better than almost anyone out there."

That is the natural result of training. Nothing to do with chi. Through training, your reflexes should improve and there should be less chance of being hit square on the chin so to speak. You'll probably be stronger with more muscle covering. That's your logical explanation as opposed to your mystical one.

"As always, you try to defend your opinion by saying it hasn't been proved. I, on the other hand maintain that, until I can disprove something, it has the potential of being true."

Sure theres a potential to be true, just like some one claiming to having been visited by extraterrestrials or perhaps these people have mental disorders. You then got to ask yourself, if its so prevalent, why hasn't it been proved. Again I'll ask you Chi is.....

"I never state that something is true without proof. However, I likewise won't say it isn't true without proof. The burden of proof works both ways. Open your mind."

Then to you, if chi is neither true or false then what is it. The burden of prove is always on the person who presents the concept. In either case, it is uncecessary to look at things from the pespective of chi.

To satisfy your curiosity, why don't you conduct scientific experiments on people who claim to have chi. You claim to have looked had and tried to disprove chi, what exactly have you done?


2) If your prepared to entertain a weak mind, then lets just say that in a room of 100 so called internal art practitioners selected at random. I remove 5 of them at random. How confident are you in varifying the validity of the 95 practitioners with a 97.5% success?

"IF YOU REMOVE 5 OF THEM AT RANDOM, THE VALIDITY OF THE REMAINING 95 REMAINS 95%. My specific emphasis of my math major was statistics. Trust me. I can prove this unless you can confidently state the validity of the 5 removed. BTW, I know I was yelling using all caps."

Yes that's right, so if I know the 5 to be genuine while you don't and I remove them from the sample, how confident are you in picking out the 95 to be fake with 97.5% success?

"I had hope for you and still do. Scientists are constantly looking for ways to disprove theories as am I. But, until they can disprove a statement, they still respect the possibility that it may be possible. How about you?"

Yes, but fist you need a theory. Chi is not even that. It is not even a hypothesis. Once again what is chi supposed to be besides some mystical power eminating from humans and trees.