You’ll Know

I hate leaving this post this way. Although the jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao progression can be broken down this way, it is important to know the phase can be applied to other progressions as well. But there is a simpler way to look at the progression that is the real meaning behind the phrase. I’ll try to explain.

If you just take jing as physical, Chi as mental, and shen as awareness – this will make more sense. If you do this, wu (emptiness) simply becomes the negative definition of something.

Bruce used to say there are two ways to define something. 1) You can define what it is and 2) you can define wasn’t it isn’t.

So, consider wu as a negative definition. It is what the thing isn’t. We want conscious awareness, conscious shen, spirit. Emptiness isn’t meant to be some surreal state of mind. It is simply the absence of shen.

Shen or our spirit is capable of surreal states, but emptiness is failing to achieve consciousness. Think about it. In martial arts we try to lead the opponent into emptiness. We aren’t trying to lead them into heightened states of awareness. We want them to blank out so they are defenseless.

This also make sense when you consider that jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao is often shortened to mind, body, spirit. Because that’s really it. So why the full phrase and where does tao fit in?

In Taoism they take awareness to its full potential. They can use awareness to be aware of their etheric, emotional, mental, psychic, karmic, body of individuality, and finally everything, the tao. This progression is really meant for meditation not martial arts. By the end of the Lake Palm Change, you are supposed to start understanding how they make the jumps to subtler bodies and then go back around the circle again and start clearing each body methodically one by one. That’s the real progression of jing, Chi, shen, wu, tao.