the great water debate

[Daniel Madar]

Perhaps this poll will illustrate the pointlessness of debating the existence and nature of chi.

Merciless is Mercy.

[Fish of Fury]

did you know that if every person on the face of the planet lay down head to toe in a long line circling the earth...

...most of them would get wet?!

__________________________________________________ _________________________ "I'm just trying to lull you into a genuine sense of security!"

[prana]

is this a fish joke :) :D

Om Namo Bhagawate Bhekanzyai
Guru Bendurya prabha randzaya
Tathagata arhate samyaksam buddhaya tayata om Bhekanzyai Bhekanzyai Maha Bhekanzyai Randza Samudgate Soha

[Daniel Madar]

It's a demonstration of the impossibility of actually establishing an effective dialog on *any* physical phenomenon, even an established one.

Conversations on the nature of qi, whether it exists and how to define it are both frustrating and stupid. Even with an experiental framework to place it in--ie, you've felt, used, seen, eaten, photographed....--you can not encompass it fully within words. Qi is Qi.

Here's another example. Remember the first time your parents told you not to touch something because it was hot? I do. I just reached out and grabbed it, because I had no idea what hot was. I sure as heck learned though. Up until that painful experience though, I had no framework within which to conceptualize heat. All physical phenomenon are the same. You can not understand it until you've experienced it.

I used water as a further example because, like qi, it exists in a variety of states, and is encountered within all of them almost daily. It can be a gas, a solid, and a liquid. It is vital to life. It is endlessly changing...

And that's today's rant.

Tune in tomorrow when I go off on push hands!

Merciless is Mercy.

[Guandi]

bute where is the option

- water does not exist

?

Guandi

[Kevin Wallbridge]

I would have chosen gravity rather than water for an example. Water can actually be easily isolated and quantified by reductionism, hydrogen and oxygen after all. Gravity is a concept that cannot be demonstated to exist, it acts as a useful conceptualization to explain something reductionism hasn't isolated.

I have noticed that discussions of Qi tend to line up along two main lines. Pragmatists who say show it to me and I'll believe, and pragmatists who say something is going on that we don't have an explaination for so why not Qi?

There is a verbal shorthand that has led to Qi being discussed as if it a thing in itself. If you look at classic writings that mention Qi you can see that it always a quality between two opposing forces.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> Between heaven and earth is Qi and its laws, between Yin and Yang is Qi and its laws
[/quote]

To take Qi out of the context of Yin and Yang is completely pointless, just like a discussion of gravity divorced from the masses whose interaction we are trying to understand. To take the discussion from the context of the classical Chinese paradigm to the paradigm of reductionism and science is like trying to play Chinese music with a western scale. Ultimately the ideas have to be so altered that they bear no resemblance to the original.

In martial arts we are largely discussing Qi in the context of internal development. Human Qi is the Qi of mind/body interactions. Have you ever changed your body consciously with your mind, ever blushed? Then you have worked your Qi. Have you ever had a buzz from alcohol or other drugs? Then you have experienced the Qi of your body affecting your mind. No big mystery in the proper context. But when someone says "I can measure blood chemistry so why not Qi flow" they miss the first step which is to measure consciousness. What? Can't measure consciousness? Then how do you know it exists?

Its a pity that science is still so bound by its roots in Christian dogma that it can only accept an all or nothing stand. Either use science or be a heretic. By the same token its a pity martial arts are still so locked into symbolic language and myth so that real knowledge is frequently clouded by medieval mysteries.

"The heart of the study of boxing is to have natural instinct resemble the dragon" Wang Xiangzai

[Fish of Fury]

i like both analogies.
good work
:)

__________________________________________________ _________________________ "I'm just trying to lull you into a genuine sense of security!"