12-06-2010, 12:00 AM
Yes, I have more to add today. Yesterday I could not get around the word consensus. So decided to wait on that part. I can give you a perspective of the North Eastern region. And soon I will travel to South Western region. I have a feeling that will be very differnt on chi there...they are more rural and have kept probably more ancient practices alive.
Here where I am at is very modern. But, compared to western environments, chi does figure more prominently into daily life. TCM is based on balancing Chi, as you probably know, by harmonizing yin and yang energy, heat and cold. Yang is heat, Yin is cold. I have seen much faith put in a TCM doctor, his instructions have to be followed to a T. If he said crush the medicine do that, boil it for so long, do that. The idea is to do everything as prescribed, even if its time consuming. He may say things like "eat mostly yellow vegetables, drink only hot water"...advice based on heat/coolness, damp and dryness...all affect chi flow. Thanks for the link, I will read it after I post this.
I forgot to mention art and calligraphy. Calligraphy is a great meditative practice of flowing chi in how the strokes are executed. When I visited Beijing I saw empress Cixi's character of "tiger" on a scroll in Summer Palace...there are lots of such examples but this one stands out. The calligraphy artist is intending the energy into the character as s/he performs the strokes. Cixi did Tiger and the energy and exuberance of tiger was her aim. When you look at the character, you should feel something of that essence, that lifeforce of chi the artist intended into it. Compare this with western culture, we have not quite that same approach, we use alphabetic letters, so a t is a t is always a t. But the charcter for Tiger in mandarin is a unique shape, organic in many ways (as are all characters), lends to the imagination and the belief one can actully intend chi into it.
And this is true for the Chinese people. Case in point, when at a governer's mansion also in Beijing there is preserved a very famous scroll of the character for luck. Chinese characters have a left and a right (they actually have meridians making up four quadrants) and, long story short... there are many minor characters that form a whole one...the meaning of the left and the right (once separate characters in themselves) when combined make a new and more complex meaning.
Back to story...the artist who did this specific scroll did it so well that a magic was unleashed...again, long story short, the mother of the artist, I think, was supposed to die and it was believed the scroll brought her back to health (I'm telling this from memory). Since then it was believed to be truly a lucky scroll and would bring fortune to all who touched it (I think more miracles were attributed to it). They have it behind glass now, and the tourists, mostly Chinese walk by and run their hands across the glass hoping the get that chi. Again, in the west, when we write the work "luck" its not believed we actually imbue the word itself with such lifeforce, in China it is, and this is the art of calligraphy. And of course in their drawn art is the same idea.
Feng Shui is another practice that is less popular than it was but it still is practiced. And when a building is completed here they set off loud firecrackers to cleanse the chi, send away negative influences, of the building.
And ancient style of design I saw again and again in the older palaces had a wall structure at the entrance of an important room, this was to block bad chi...deflect it away. So if you were approaching the room and as you could normally see into the room through the doorway, you would instead see this wall. Once passing through the door way, you could go either to the right or left of the wall to finally enter the room and see the full view of the room. The idea was, the person entering the room would be humbled by being first in contact with the wall...the wall worked like a sentry to say "you are entering sacred space, be mindful" and the act of having to go around the wall made one aware of how to proceed and what was expected. The wall also prevented those on the outside, who had no intentions of even entering the room, from even seeing into the room at all.
Nowadays I have not seen these walls used as often, only in maybe a hotel, and its questionable if it was there for anything other then design of ancient style.
Here also one must be mindful of the chi in gifts they give. Giving a clock as a gift is considered bad chi, with some exceptions I imagine. So you are not supposed to give clocks as gifts...means the person has little time left, lol. When one is sick, good chi enters the house if you bring them fresh healthy fruit. In a business, having fish is good chi, it means prosperity. I worked for a Chinese man a few years back, I remember he bought some small goldfish, except he did not consult the buyer on water to use. He used untreated water and the fish developed lesions and all eventually died. I remember he did not like this or to talk about the fish getting ill, beacsue if fish bring good chi (prosperity) to business, dying fish bring...a dying business or dwinding profits? lol. His business did fine, that is, he didn't go under. But I felt it was a touchy issue to discuss the fish. Which brings up the fact that there is a lot of superstition in such beliefs. And once some idea is adopted as a way to harmonize chi, people have a hard time of letting it go.
Even a calendar you buy at any store here has a list of what to do or not to do based in the energies of that day (drawn up by a chinese astrologer). The astrologer uses the 5 elements of wood, fire, water, wind and earth, along with the 12 signs and other aspects to determine things. So it may say something like "today is a good day to visit friends, a bad day to buy a house." Chinese follow these things. I noticed once that it said something like, "today is a good day to throw things out", and everyone was putting stuff by the garbage cans.
So people here still strive to live in harmony. But having lost a more tangible link to chi perhaps, they operate many times on superstitious beliefs. Still, its more then is done in western societies were most don't even consider energy flow in their daily affairs.
Here where I am at is very modern. But, compared to western environments, chi does figure more prominently into daily life. TCM is based on balancing Chi, as you probably know, by harmonizing yin and yang energy, heat and cold. Yang is heat, Yin is cold. I have seen much faith put in a TCM doctor, his instructions have to be followed to a T. If he said crush the medicine do that, boil it for so long, do that. The idea is to do everything as prescribed, even if its time consuming. He may say things like "eat mostly yellow vegetables, drink only hot water"...advice based on heat/coolness, damp and dryness...all affect chi flow. Thanks for the link, I will read it after I post this.
I forgot to mention art and calligraphy. Calligraphy is a great meditative practice of flowing chi in how the strokes are executed. When I visited Beijing I saw empress Cixi's character of "tiger" on a scroll in Summer Palace...there are lots of such examples but this one stands out. The calligraphy artist is intending the energy into the character as s/he performs the strokes. Cixi did Tiger and the energy and exuberance of tiger was her aim. When you look at the character, you should feel something of that essence, that lifeforce of chi the artist intended into it. Compare this with western culture, we have not quite that same approach, we use alphabetic letters, so a t is a t is always a t. But the charcter for Tiger in mandarin is a unique shape, organic in many ways (as are all characters), lends to the imagination and the belief one can actully intend chi into it.
And this is true for the Chinese people. Case in point, when at a governer's mansion also in Beijing there is preserved a very famous scroll of the character for luck. Chinese characters have a left and a right (they actually have meridians making up four quadrants) and, long story short... there are many minor characters that form a whole one...the meaning of the left and the right (once separate characters in themselves) when combined make a new and more complex meaning.
Back to story...the artist who did this specific scroll did it so well that a magic was unleashed...again, long story short, the mother of the artist, I think, was supposed to die and it was believed the scroll brought her back to health (I'm telling this from memory). Since then it was believed to be truly a lucky scroll and would bring fortune to all who touched it (I think more miracles were attributed to it). They have it behind glass now, and the tourists, mostly Chinese walk by and run their hands across the glass hoping the get that chi. Again, in the west, when we write the work "luck" its not believed we actually imbue the word itself with such lifeforce, in China it is, and this is the art of calligraphy. And of course in their drawn art is the same idea.
Feng Shui is another practice that is less popular than it was but it still is practiced. And when a building is completed here they set off loud firecrackers to cleanse the chi, send away negative influences, of the building.
And ancient style of design I saw again and again in the older palaces had a wall structure at the entrance of an important room, this was to block bad chi...deflect it away. So if you were approaching the room and as you could normally see into the room through the doorway, you would instead see this wall. Once passing through the door way, you could go either to the right or left of the wall to finally enter the room and see the full view of the room. The idea was, the person entering the room would be humbled by being first in contact with the wall...the wall worked like a sentry to say "you are entering sacred space, be mindful" and the act of having to go around the wall made one aware of how to proceed and what was expected. The wall also prevented those on the outside, who had no intentions of even entering the room, from even seeing into the room at all.
Nowadays I have not seen these walls used as often, only in maybe a hotel, and its questionable if it was there for anything other then design of ancient style.
Here also one must be mindful of the chi in gifts they give. Giving a clock as a gift is considered bad chi, with some exceptions I imagine. So you are not supposed to give clocks as gifts...means the person has little time left, lol. When one is sick, good chi enters the house if you bring them fresh healthy fruit. In a business, having fish is good chi, it means prosperity. I worked for a Chinese man a few years back, I remember he bought some small goldfish, except he did not consult the buyer on water to use. He used untreated water and the fish developed lesions and all eventually died. I remember he did not like this or to talk about the fish getting ill, beacsue if fish bring good chi (prosperity) to business, dying fish bring...a dying business or dwinding profits? lol. His business did fine, that is, he didn't go under. But I felt it was a touchy issue to discuss the fish. Which brings up the fact that there is a lot of superstition in such beliefs. And once some idea is adopted as a way to harmonize chi, people have a hard time of letting it go.
Even a calendar you buy at any store here has a list of what to do or not to do based in the energies of that day (drawn up by a chinese astrologer). The astrologer uses the 5 elements of wood, fire, water, wind and earth, along with the 12 signs and other aspects to determine things. So it may say something like "today is a good day to visit friends, a bad day to buy a house." Chinese follow these things. I noticed once that it said something like, "today is a good day to throw things out", and everyone was putting stuff by the garbage cans.
So people here still strive to live in harmony. But having lost a more tangible link to chi perhaps, they operate many times on superstitious beliefs. Still, its more then is done in western societies were most don't even consider energy flow in their daily affairs.