From Heaven to Thunder

[Anonymous]

I’m losing interest in writing so I’m going to write this in more of a pseudo code fashion.

Ultimately the Bagua is about change and how to transform from any trigram to any other trigram. But in the beginning you start simpler – you might explore how to transform from the Heaven form to any other trigram.

I a previous post I used neigung and the three tan tiens to illustrate one possible way to manifest the change from Heaven, ☰, to Wind, ☴, by changing the lower line or in that example by changing the lower tan tien from yang to yin.

In this post I wanted to propose that you could get from Heaven, ☰, to Thunder, ☳, in two ways. The first is the most direct – you change the upper two lines from yang to yin. The second is less direct – you change from Heaven, ☰, to Earth, ☷, to Thunder, ☳.

It may be counter-intuitive but the latter is easier to pull off than the direct method. Understanding why creates an interesting set of observations about the progression in learning how to use the tan tiens, why the trigrams are unique energies, how every change contains the idea of stability and chaos, the role of balance and emptiness, how this really distinguishes Bagua from Tai Chi, why Bagua is a superior art, why trigrams (1,3,5,7) are related and why (2,4,6, are related, another interesting interpretation of the single and double palm change methodologies, etc.,etc.

I gotta go. Hopefully I’ll get back to this

P.S. I’m leaving these trigrams here: they make it much easier to grab the unicode symbols.

Heaven, ☰,

Earth, ☷,

Thunder, ☳,

Wind, ☴,

[Anonymous]

I wanted to elaborate more on the second, less direct method – you change from Heaven, ☰, to Earth, ☷, to Thunder, ☳.

Let’s say you don’t have any idea how to access the upper and middle tan tiens, but you can work with the lower tan tien. What do you do?

Effectively you are only working with the bottom line and the lower tan tien simply opens, closes, and then opens. Sound familiar? It should. Bruce has taught this in a bunch of different contexts. This is what most good Tai Chi practitioners are trying to pull off. If they are really good, they know how the open and closings work with emptiness.

I’d argue that without the middle and upper tan tiens there is a significant glass ceiling governing what is possible. In this way Bagua seeks to be inherently more complete.

[Anonymous]

My primary interest in seated meditation /shikantaza, standing meditation, taiji and bagua is to experience how the feeling of fading into emptiness changes and becomes one with everything.

In sitting this happens in the instant at the end of an exhalation when the gate swings the other way to allow the following inhalation.
(40 years of daily practice.)

In taiji this happens at the end of exhalation, after the Yi guides the Qi (Daoyin) to the heel of the empty leg and the yang in the root below the foot can condense no further and rebounds back up the yin surfaces.
(22 years of daily practice)

In bagua I haven’t felt this happen.
(only 5 years of daily practice.)

Teachers/books/DVDs seldom touch on this.

James, only you have touched on this.

(I’ve worked through Bruce’s Bagua Mastery Program and am working through week 8 of Bruce’s Old Yang Style Long Form online course and haven’t seen Bruce explicitly address this. He certainly addresses the 16 neigong in the practices, which all facilitate this phenomena. This should be the 17th neigong.)

So, first thing this morning I sit in zazen; Ahhhh, there it is!

Next I do the 108 Yang Long Form: Ahhh, there it is!

Then I walk the bagua circle: it’s not there yet.

Of course, as in taiji, I find it in four-part mud-walking
after I drive Qi to the heel of the back, empty leg to move the hips forward.

Does bagua do more than this?

So for me bagua has not become “a superior art.”

But you have shown that it might become superior–
constant movement in stillness, stillness in movement.

While standing still I can see the space of emptiness between Heaven, ☰ and Earth, ☷
It happens at all 3 levels of the tantiens at once.
Each yang line of Heaven changes to a yin line for Earth.

However, I get no sense of this when I walk the circle.
I use the energy posture of “Holding Up the Heavens” for Heaven and then switch to the energy posture of “Holding the Lower Tantien” for Earth.
Kinda sorta happens.

Your “indirect” change from Heaven, ☰, to Earth, ☷, to Thunder, ☳, seems even more obtuse.

In my scheme,
to change from Earth, ☷ to Thunder, ☳,
I have to get to Wind, ☴, from Heaven, ☰, by changing the lower line of the Heaven trigram of the lower tantien from yang to yin.

That gives me Wind, ☴.

Earth balances with Heaven.
Change Heaven to Wind.
Wind balances with Thunder.

So I have to look at the opposite side of Wind, ☴, (NE is opposite SW) to pick up Thunder, ☳.
Here the 3 levels have to flip-flop:
the lower yin of Wind has to change to yang and the 2 upper yangs of Wind have to change to yins.

This gives me Thunder, ☳.

Earth balances Heaven.
Heaven changes to Wind.
Wind balances Thunder.
Between Wind and Thunder I should find the space of emptiness.
From which springs the power of the oneness of everything.

Wow. In science, theories have to be simple and elegant.
This machination is neither simple nor elegant.

Daoyin requires that all these yin and yang energies be integrated.

In bagua it doesn’t work for me in practice.

Maybe if I keep after it I’ll see it.

P.S.
Thanks for the unicode symbols.

[Anonymous]

All of this is very tricky to describe with words.

I think we’ve jumped ahead a few steps. The discussion went from mapping a specific neigung element to a specific line of a trigram all the way to a full blown discussion of change.

Fundamentally this is very simple – it all boils down to yang changing to yin and yin changing to yang which Bruce says you can’t truly understand until you understand emptiness: “unless the space from which it is born becomes a reality”

You don’t need a complete understanding of it, just a real experience of it that you can work with.

So, moving from one form to another is metaphorically just a matter of changing lines from yin to yang or yang to yin, but in my Bagua practice I start making choices about what those lines represent.

That’s neigung.

When I start to talk about the energies of the trigrams, now I’m talking about how I change those yang lines to yin and yin lines to yang. There are different ways to cause transformation.

That’s change.

[Anonymous]

If you want to talk about the trigrams from the perspective of transformation, than I’d talk about transforming Earth, ☷, to Thunder, ☳.

You can’t do that unless you can create the energy of Earth and you can’t create the energy of Earth unless you can create the energy of Heaven, ☰, which is learned in the single palm change.

But let’s just say you can create the energy of Earth and sustain it. From there you need to take the yin force to its extreme and have it begin to change to yang. This is exactly like moving from Heaven, ☰, to Wind, ☴. In that change the energy shifts from extreme yang to yin. In the transformation from Earth, ☷, to Thunder, ☳, extreme yin begins to change to yang. I don’t think it is more complicated than that.

But pulling it off in your entire field inside and outside the body isn’t so easy.

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