Drawing the Moon: Is it a myth?

[Zhang Wuji]

Yep, I am with Antonius and Mark on this one. Maybe when some people get things for free, they treat those things and those who provide them as trash. Like my ex-boss used to say, "no one owes these people a living". In the same way, no one owes answers to people who demand them, least of all answers on their terms.

On the other hand, the responses received have benefitted those who may have wanted to ask the same question only in a nicer way.

My own experience: this exercise is very much like Zhan Zhuang. It is all too easy to tense and use brute force to keep the feet up. Relaxing into the pain is the key to getting this done as a qigong exercise. And that's all there is to it.

I personally do not practice this on a daily basis because i have no problems with a big belly. In my culture, round people are seen as prosperous.

[Augustsum]

No disrespect was intended either for you or for anybody else on this forum... The questions were meant to be asked in a respectful matter.

There is nothing wrong with the name of my thread. As someone who does not understand Chi Kung yet, I was asking people if the exercise indeed works as it appears to be only a physical exercise on a surface.

It is my way of asking questions. This way is taught in law schools. However, it it not necessarily a rude way or a disrespectful one as I am not insulting anyone.

I think as someone who is new to this and who wants to derive benefits, it is only natural to ask many questions.

Best Regards,


Augustsum

I do not understand why people cannot just ask questions in a respectful manner. It should not be that hard.

The title of this thread is bad enough, but your first post was amazingly disrespectful. You asked a question while simultaneously dictating the parameters of the response. Despite your tone, people were generous enough to try to help you, and yet you continue to respond with disrespectful comments like the one above.

[Augustsum]

Good response indeed.

That's a good question, and I'm really not the best person to answer. But I think mind is the key to chi kung practice. Sihing Joko said it best: "Once you have the skill, you can do any other exercise as chikung". I can vouch for that.



How to breathe, how to focus... It's all explained in the instructions, although you may have missed it.

The problem (i.e. that which makes it 'hard') is that every exercise (physical, energetical, mental or spiritual - doesn't matter) has some prerequisites: skills, equipment, environment, knowledge, certain level of attainment etc. You can't learn how to ride a bicycle if you don't have a bicycle (a prerequisite of equipment).

Chi kung exercises have prerequisites, too. Knowledge is easily gained from a book, but it's not that easy to transmit necessary skills through them (alhtough I've never tried myself ). For example, most chi kung exercises require that the practitioner is relaxed and in a chi kung state of mind. These are skills that most people don't have, even though they may think they do.

Let's have an analogy: you want to learn to do a backflip with a twist. You have a book that describes a method for this purpose: first you do a normal backflip, then you do it again with an added torso movement. Now, what if you are not able to do a normal backflip? Are you going to learn to do it with a twist? Of course not. A normal backflip is a prerequisite, you have to learn to do that first.

I you want results, you have to practise correctly. For example, if the instructions say that you must not be tense, and you are, you are practising incorrectly. If the instructions say that you must be in a chi kung state of mind but you're thinking how demanding the exercise is, you are practising incorrectly. In this case, the problem doesn't lie in the method, but in the practitioner.

Of course, a genuine master can easily transmit these skills in a very short time, if you learn from him or her personally.

I hope that helps, and I apologize if I only confused you further.

Best Regards,
Tapio

P.S.
For instructors and older students: please correct me, if there's anything suspicious in this post.

[Augustsum]

In any event, please pardon me if my style of questioning seems disrespectful. Believe me I am grateful for all responses, and I appreciate all of them!

[Maxime]

Dear Augustsum,

Thank you for your last posts.

Obviously, you are welcome to ask honest and sincere questions, and we will be happy to help you the best we can.

It is my way of asking questions. This way is taught in law schools. However, it it not necessarily a rude way or a disrespectful one as I am not insulting anyone.

Nevertheless, as you already know, the Shaolin Wahnam School is not a law school, but a Shaolin one. And a Shaolin School has its own way of dealing with questions. Your comments might not be disrespectful from one perspective, but they were from another.

If you study laws, I am sure you know about the importance of adressing properly --people and subjects-- in their respective fields, especially since you are a guest.

Kind regards,

Maxime

[Charles David]

Dear Augustum

Shaolin Greetings!

I will address your last post in an effort to clarify.

You wrote

No disrespect was intended either for you or for anybody else on this forum... The questions were meant to be asked in a respectful matter.

Your intention to be helpful will help you if you couple it with learning more about Kung Fu culture.

There is nothing wrong with the name of my thread.

In fact, the implication of your thread is that our Sifu is, perhaps, lying.

It is my way of asking questions. This way is taught in law schools.

If you have learned this way of questioning in order to conform to the rules, mores and laws of the court, then you will be able to learn Kung Fu culture quite simply.

However, it it not necessarily a rude way or a disrespectful one as I am not insulting anyone.

You are, as Anthony pointed out, insulting us. Insisting otherwise is not at all useful. We appreciate your efforts to be respectful and would like for you to be able to derive some of the benefits that we have from this art. The first prerequisite is to respect the Master..

I think as someone who is new to this and who wants to derive benefits, it is only natural to ask many questions.

Quite right. Far better still if you ask the right number ofgood questions.

I look forward to our continued correspondence.

With Kind Regards,

[Mark Blohm]

There is nothing wrong with the name of my thread. As someone who does not understand Chi Kung yet, I was asking people if the exercise indeed works as it appears to be only a physical exercise on a surface.

And you never will understand Chi Kung if you keep beng disrespectful like this.

It is my way of asking questions. This way is taught in law schools. However, it it not necessarily a rude way or a disrespectful one as I am not insulting anyone.

You're assuming that you know better than us. That's rude and disrespectful.

In any event, please pardon me if my style of questioning seems disrespectful. Believe me I am grateful for all responses, and I appreciate all of them!

Better to apologize and change rather than give an excuse and keep on doing it.

Mark

[Michael Durkin]

Dear Augustum,

First of all, welcome to our forum, I do hope you benefit from your time here.

I would like to shed a little more light on 'respecting the master' as Charles (cha muir) mentioned above.

Showing respect is a prerequisite to create the right mental frame for the best learning.

Some new comers to this forum don't know how to refer to a master, or to what standard they are showing respect in asking a question. Which is forgiven, because were all human after all, were learning all the time. I didn't know about showing respect to the master before I started here, I had to learn too.

When some new members come to this forum that don't know about the appropriate respect and courtesy, then accordingly have the appropriate respect and courtesy pointed out to them, some take offence and start debating the issue of respect. Shaolin Wahnam doesn't crave respect, we recommend it to benefit you, not us, to create the right mental frame work so that you are in the best position to get the best/most benefits. It isn't a control device, or some way of dominating that we enjoy. But sadly for some, it seems that way. I ask myself, would I want to just get on with things and learn so I could test it out for myself, or just spend my time arguing/resisting?

I think as someone who is new to this and who wants to derive benefits, it is only natural to ask many questions.

Natural to ask many questions, yes, and please keep asking questions, we all had questions when we started. Respect, all depends on your understanding. Disrespect doesn't always mean that you use nasty words, be hurtful or intentionally stir up trouble. Disrespect can be as simple as pressing your assumptions upon others, for example :

Please do not tell me that this exercise harmonizes and balances energy the way other Chi Kung exercises do. There is absolutely nothing in this exercise that has this effect on one' body.

Especially when you later admit yourself that you don't understand chi kung yet! How can you tell us how our methods work when you don't know chi kung yet? You came here seeking answers, the least you can do, for yourself, is show us the courtesy and respect to let us respond before denying us. And also, sometimes its not what questions you ask, or even the number of questions, but how you ask them.

In any event, please pardon me if my style of questioning seems disrespectful. Believe me I am grateful for all responses, and I appreciate all of them!

Good to hear, I hope you can see where 'we' are coming from

If you do not know about eastern or Shaolin customs and ways of respect, which not everyone does, I recommend (not demand ) you read this webpage on 'Showing respect to the master'. Whilst you may not be entering and leaving a class, physically, the principles are very useful and transferable to every day life.

I'm sure we can get this thread back on track, I'm very impressed with Joko's results. I missed that discussion thread and Joko's pictures, so was pleased that it turned up in this discussion. So thanks Augustsum for starting this thread or else I might not have seen it, and thanks Tapio for linking in that thread.

All the best,

[Augustsum]

Dear Sifu Durkin and the rest of you who responded to my last comments,

People begin to argue and debate "respect" as you pointed out because they take offense in what you are telling them. Most new comers do not adhere to Shaolin principles. In fact, this forum is not Shaolin. It is electronic exchange of information. Most of us are not in Asia, and we are not in Shaolin.

I am sure even Sifu Kit would not have approved of your comments (not necessarily your comments, Sifu Durkin) as well. He would have chosen to respond to them probably once. After that, he would have simply ignored the user if he did not like the message. This is what I believe he would have done based on his book teachings.

Suprisingly, I found that people on this forum are more eager to participate when I post comments. This is a good thing. Otherwise, the forum would have been boring. By the same token, we all do not want to make this forum a religious cult.

You need all new comers here- those who respect and those who you "assume, " which is not always right, do not respect. All new comers, regardless of their beliefs, are needed here because they will stir up much needed discussion.

Lastly, may I propose one thing you do to make sure everybody is welcome here. If you do not like what a person is saying, then simply ignore the user. May be, point once to him that he is wrong. One time would have been enough!

However, never try to make this person conform to your set of beliefs or principles. it will never work and people just get more angry on "both sides of equation."

If you are going to preach Shaolin principles to new comers, please try to live by those principles yourself first.

[Antonius]

Unbelievable.

[Grimlock]

Let's take a step back

Hi Augustsum,

I am normally one of those people who just ignores noise on the forum and only pays attention to what I find meaningful (the boring stuff ), such as the Aims and Objectives thread. I'm taking the time to write this because I hope you have just misunderstood what is happening here.

Looking back over this thread, this is what I see.

You started this thread by giving it a title that could be considered rude (although everyone gave you the benefit of the doubt that it was unintentional) and by asking a common-enough question then insisting that Drawing the Moon is a purely physical exercise.

We generally raised our eyebrows at the last bit (and most of us, including me, skipped on to the next thread), but some of my brothers took the time to help you anyway.

You realized that you were doing the exercise on the physical level only, then asked questions continuing mainly on the external side (how do I breath? what do I focus on?). Then you started to go in the right direction by asking about the mind.

Sifu Joko gave you an excellent reply. Actually, it's the same reply that Tapio gave you that you said "Good response indeed" to, only Sifu Joko's answer was more concise -Tapio was nice enough to spell it out for you. But instead of replying to Sifu Joko asking for more clarification, that you didn't understand how his advice helped you, you essentially berate us for not answering your breath/focus question ("It should not be that hard."). What's the point in asking us about anything if you don't trust that our answers provide you with the best guidance? Not to mention that we are not required to answer your questions. We take our own personal time to do so if we choose.

At this point, my brothers started to point these things out to you. They could have very easily done what I initially did and just ignore you and any further questions you may have had, leaving you to wonder why no one would answer your questions.

The first line of your post #17 and your post #19 are nice, and the apologies are appreciated. My brothers began advising you on how to better ask your questions and communicate with us (since your way tends to rub people the wrong way) so that you would derive better benefits from our answers, be more likely to get answers, and not make rude comments in the future.

Perhaps you felt personally attacked. But instead of asking how you offended us so you could learn from your mistakes and not offend us in the future, you just insist that you don't think you said anything offensive. What does that matter? Taking this stance that "you say I offended you but I didn't" is like the ostrich burying its head in the sand -just because it can't see the lion doesn't mean the lion isn't there.

I'm going to largely leave your last post alone for now and treat it as a mulligan. I really hope you can see the error in the stance you are taking here. You seem to feel that you are doing us a favor by making our forum less boring, that we should be grateful to you for creating a "popular" thread, and that newcomers are exempt from following Shaolin principles.

The truth of the matter is that you have gotten so many responses on this thread because you are new and likely don't know better than to post in the manner you have. It is in spite of your actions, not because of them. And if you wish to get the most out of your time here, you should follow our rules, not just claim exemption from them and carry on as you wish.


Sincerely,

Chris

[Molly]

It is my way of asking questions. This way is taught in law schools.

Yeah and people have such high regard for so many lawyers out there, don't they now?

[Mark Blohm]

I've learned something from what has happened on this thread. Augustum's first post should have been all the warning we needed to say 'come back when you've learned some manners. Then, maybe, we can talk'.

Mark

[Antidote]

Augustsum

If you want to practice and benefit from Shaolin arts you must follow Shaolin principles, especially the 10 shaolin laws.
We never try to convert new comers to shaolin principles, nobody is forced to be here. If you choose to be here, you must follow the house rules, if you don't like it, you are free to leave. If go to the law school and wanted to learn something, it's only logical that I follow the standard principles of the school.

Tiago

[Charles David]

Now you know better than myself and my seniors what our Sifu would think of our comments. Totally ridiculous. You don't even know how to refer to him properly. Next thing you'll be on here trying to tell us how to do Lifting the Sky.

I will second my brother Mark on this one. Come back later when you've learned some manners. Don't forget your hat.

Pointing at the door,