oral traditions vs. written traditions

September 21, 2003

Ken Rose wrote on 7/24/03:

My sense of obligation emerged more

or less in full bloom one afternoon in

1971 or 72 at Cal Arts in a push hands practice

with Martin Inn. He was talking about

a line from the taiji classics that

says, to enter the door and be shown

the way you must be orally taught.

He explained that the notion of " orally

taught " here includes being tactilely

taught. He pointed out that in taiji,

the gift that the teacher gives the

student comes in many forms and that

of paramount importance is the sensory

impression or, in other words, the

correct touch.

He didn't say much more than that,

and then we spent an hour or more

just doing push hands.

Later I was mulling over the day's

lesson, and it dawned on me that

one of the implications of what

Martin had been saying and doing

was that a lineage in taiji consists

of generations of teachers and students

who had all been in touch with each

other. This is the part that I'm not

sure I can adequately describe, because

it was a sensation more than anything

else.

Ken

Ken,

Since you so genuinely and deliberately express oral traditions here, I wanted

to " punctuate " your thread on yin and yang with this bit of notation.

Holger asked why you were asking the question. You answered. Implicit in your

answer, I believe, was the above sensibility. As we exercise our keyboards

here, we also may have to join up for some taiji or walks on the beach to have a

more complete interaction.

In gratitude for beach walks,

Emmanuel Segmen

September 22, 2003

Ken,

This is truly beautiful, and makes an enormous amount of " sense " to me. Thank

you for sharing it.

Ken Rose wrote on 7/24/03:

My sense of obligation emerged more

or less in full bloom one afternoon in

1971 or 72 at Cal Arts in a push hands practice

with Martin Inn. He was talking about

a line from the taiji classics that

says, to enter the door and be shown

the way you must be orally taught.

He explained that the notion of " orally

taught " here includes being tactilely

taught. He pointed out that in taiji,

the gift that the teacher gives the

student comes in many forms and that

of paramount importance is the sensory

impression or, in other words, the

correct touch.

He didn't say much more than that,

and then we spent an hour or more

just doing push hands.

Later I was mulling over the day's

lesson, and it dawned on me that

one of the implications of what

Martin had been saying and doing

was that a lineage in taiji consists

of generations of teachers and students

who had all been in touch with each

other. This is the part that I'm not

sure I can adequately describe, because

it was a sensation more than anything

else.

Ken

September 22, 2003

Emmanuel,

I agree that we need to get together

beyond the cusp of cyberspace to

walk and talk and otherwise exchange.

I'm now doing some planning that

will hopefully lead to an ongoing

series of such get togethers that

will take place in various locations,

but beginning with Northern California

as that is where the wind seems to

be blowing this particular thought.

Some of the topics I hope to take

up are:

Yin, Yang, and Qi

Jing, Qi, and Shen

Daoist Sexual Alchemy

The Wordless Teaching

The Dao De Jing as a Manual of Consciousness

The Application of the Principles of Taiji

to the Development and Cultivation of

Clinical Expertise in Diagnosis and Therapeutics

for both Acupuncturists and Massage Therapists.

Anyone interested in joining in on such

gatherings should let me know. And

as quoroms convene, the get togethers

will proceed.

One thought about the questions raised

and answered concerning a numerical

equivalent of the taiji diagram:

I find that as frequently as not when reading,

hearing, looking at ancient or classical

Chinese artifacts (including texts, poems,

paintings, and other works of the imagination)

that what is meant is never said.

As Lin Yutang put it, it was a language

(and therefore a way of thinking) that worked

through suggestion and association of ideas.

Based on this understanding, I have come

to think of qi as a fundamental element of

yin/yang theory that would have to be accounted

for in any " summing up " of the elements of

that theory. Thus another " reason " why

the interpretation of yin/yang theory as ancient

or primitive binary computation is inadequate

in my view.

As the cosmological/ontological sequence

contained in the Dao De Jing suggests,

the path from the void through 1,2, and 3

constitutes an irreducible minimum with

respect to accounting for the existence of

things.

And has been pointed out here and elsewhere

for thousands of years, the key to developing

the gong fu and hence the understanding of

this way of thinking (and its proper application)

lies in looking straight into the heart and

acting on what one finds.

This process of in(tro)spection is rooted

in developing precise verbal definitions

of our most inarticulate thoughts.

Standards are not the point, when it

comes to words and language.

Clarity and precision, however, matter

immensely.

Ken

September 22, 2003

Ken,

This is truly beautiful, and makes an enormous amount of " sense " to me. Thank

you for sharing it.

Ken Rose wrote on 7/24/03:

My sense of obligation emerged more

or less in full bloom one afternoon in

1971 or 72 at Cal Arts in a push hands practice

with Martin Inn. He was talking about

a line from the taiji classics that

says, to enter the door and be shown

the way you must be orally taught.

He explained that the notion of " orally

taught " here includes being tactilely

taught. He pointed out that in taiji,

the gift that the teacher gives the

student comes in many forms and that

of paramount importance is the sensory

impression or, in other words, the

correct touch.

He didn't say much more than that,

and then we spent an hour or more

just doing push hands.

Later I was mulling over the day's

lesson, and it dawned on me that

one of the implications of what

Martin had been saying and doing

was that a lineage in taiji consists

of generations of teachers and students

who had all been in touch with each

other. This is the part that I'm not

sure I can adequately describe, because

it was a sensation more than anything

else.

Ken

September 23, 2003

Hi Ken,

Your final point regarding clarity is the indeed the bottom line. Liu Ming, Nam

Singh's taoist teacher, makes the same point. Standards are about transcendence

which really means nothing. Acting upon what is clear and present is where the

work is.

When you're looking for a quorum, I'll be there .... in Northern California,

that is. I'm all about oral traditions ... their practice and carrying them

out. Tactile and sound traditions, too. Everything that happens in the clarity

of the present moment.

Emmanuel Segmen

Emmanuel,

I agree that we need to get together

beyond the cusp of cyberspace to

walk and talk and otherwise exchange.

I'm now doing some planning that

will hopefully lead to an ongoing

series of such get togethers that

will take place in various locations,

but beginning with Northern California

as that is where the wind seems to

be blowing this particular thought.

Some of the topics I hope to take

up are:

Yin, Yang, and Qi

Jing, Qi, and Shen

Daoist Sexual Alchemy

The Wordless Teaching

The Dao De Jing as a Manual of Consciousness

The Application of the Principles of Taiji

to the Development and Cultivation of

Clinical Expertise in Diagnosis and Therapeutics

for both Acupuncturists and Massage Therapists.

Anyone interested in joining in on such

gatherings should let me know. And

as quoroms convene, the get togethers

will proceed.

One thought about the questions raised

and answered concerning a numerical

equivalent of the taiji diagram:

I find that as frequently as not when reading,

hearing, looking at ancient or classical

Chinese artifacts (including texts, poems,

paintings, and other works of the imagination)

that what is meant is never said.

As Lin Yutang put it, it was a language

(and therefore a way of thinking) that worked

through suggestion and association of ideas.

Based on this understanding, I have come

to think of qi as a fundamental element of

yin/yang theory that would have to be accounted

for in any " summing up " of the elements of

that theory. Thus another " reason " why

the interpretation of yin/yang theory as ancient

or primitive binary computation is inadequate

in my view.

As the cosmological/ontological sequence

contained in the Dao De Jing suggests,

the path from the void through 1,2, and 3

constitutes an irreducible minimum with

respect to accounting for the existence of

things.

And has been pointed out here and elsewhere

for thousands of years, the key to developing

the gong fu and hence the understanding of

this way of thinking (and its proper application)

lies in looking straight into the heart and

acting on what one finds.

This process of in(tro)spection is rooted

in developing precise verbal definitions

of our most inarticulate thoughts.

Standards are not the point, when it

comes to words and language.

Clarity and precision, however, matter

immensely.

Ken

September 23, 2003

Andrea and Ken,

This is one of those ineffable " Ken expressions " that I saved in my in-box, so

that I could savor it from time to time. I posted it again because I wanted to

keep alive the thread that tells us that CM is a living thing (or series of

things) that has arisen from oral traditions. As a written tradition it should

not be expected to have coherence with anything, including itself. So " to hell

with coherence " is, in my opinion, a well considered remark by Unschuld. Thanks

for that one, Ken.

My main training in internal cultivation is an oral tradition ... and it is oral

in the sense of sound. I've worked with practices with sound for 27 years ...

sound which is intended to have a profound effect on the human body, mind,

emotions and spirit. One of the sayings of my many living teachers is that

" sound existed before humans " . Which is to say that tuning into the eternal is

possible in the present moment. Thus, I want to join others in tipping my hat

and smiling a heartfelt smile to Dean Lloyd for his presentations on sound

healing. Using sound from the human voice is such a fundamental practice for

health and healing. I personally feel it's as basic as food and breath.

In gratitude,

Emmanuel Segmen

-

Cc: Chinese Traditional Medicine

Monday, September 22, 2003 12:03 PM

Re: oral traditions vs. written traditions

Ken,

This is truly beautiful, and makes an enormous amount of " sense " to me. Thank

you for sharing it.

September 23, 2003

Emmanuel,

Well, I think that spontaneous gatherings

should begin to erupt right about now.

People will be getting together and talking

about precisely these things and no doubt

they'll let us know what happens.

Other than that, I'm not sure what the future

holds; but I believe what my grandfather

taught me, that things'll stay the way

they are for a little while and then

they'll get worse.

If there is a rationale for posting

this kind of traffic here, it is

to emphasize the fact that there are

enough peculiar characteristics of

Chinese medicine...whatever that is

taken to mean...to warrant special

care being given to identify and

become familiar with them.

And I think it's also important to

recognize the role that the group

exchange of ideas and information

has played throughout the subject's

history and no doubt will continue

to play as time passes.

At some level, individual patients

connect to and are either healed or

hindered by the depth of the discussion

in which their caregivers engage.

Ken

September 23, 2003

Andrea,

You're very welcome. I was a little

surprised to see it, as I have no

idea when I wrote it or why. It seems

to be part of a conversation which

I must have been having here or

maybe with Emmanuel, who posted it

recently here.

It was a very cool moment and one

that has sustained me through more

than three decades. I'm not a very

clever student and have to do things

very slowly in order to be sure that

I'm getting it.

But the contents of that one moment

cut a deep groove that my practice

ever since has been trying to fill

and empty.

It's one of the things I always think

about when anyone uses the word " teacher " .

Ken

Chinese Medicine , Andrea Beth

Damsky <> wrote:

> Ken,

>

> This is truly beautiful, and makes an enormous amount of " sense " to

me. Thank you for sharing it.

>

September 24, 2003

Hi Emmanuel,

I have long been interested in sound healing! As a singer, I have been told by

many that they have felt " healed " by listening to me sing, and have been

encouraged to bring my singing into my visits with patients. I worked and

apprenticed with a cantor in Berkeley for some years, and it was in the context

of singing liturgical music that I received these observations from members of

my community. In my own life, I know that when I am not feeling well, singing

always helps me feel better, and it doesn't seem to matter what the complaint

is. I believe there is magic in song, and singing seems to bring my

frequently-dispersed shen back to my body. I have no formal voice training;

rather, I sing with the intention of interacting with the strange, often

unpredictable beauty of all that is.

To date, I have not integrated my singing into my practice, except for the rare

occasions where I hum a bit. Any thoughts on how I might do this?

Andrea Beth

(By the way, Andrea Beth is my full first name)

Emmanuel Segmen <susegmen wrote: