Michael,
Thanks.

Bolo,
I am on the mat between 6 and 8 hours a day, but that includes teaching time as well as personal training time. I train an average of three hours a day for myself. Most of that time consists of conditioning and sparring.

Tim, do you feel like you are improving a you get older, or that you have already reached your peak?

I feel like I'm still improving.

I am a practicing daoist and train chen taiji, Bagua and wing chun. In response to a previous post my wing chun is as daoist as my taiji or bagua because I am daoist. The mind set and how you train in an art has a real impact on what your art looks and feels like to train against. Erle's mind is obviously stuck in this technqiue or that technique is effective mindset. He obviously has a lot of knowledge on point striking and other areas of interest. He may or may not be able to fight having never crossed hands with the man I would not like to say. The fact that he does not move like a bagua man or a taiji man is probably due to him not thinking like one.

As to your comment on Erle; I would suggest that it is rarely a good idea to decide how well someone moves from "hearsay" and whether or not they are internal by comparison to what you have seen and done. We're not always right in our estimation of how well we train and how "authentic" it is.

It is easy to be a big fish in the pond if all you ever see are minnows; but the ocean is a "different kettle of fish"...

Go practice more. I don't think a daoist would proclaim that he is a daoist.

Pay attention

"Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself.
Even the finest name is insufficient to define it."

Since dao means way is not everybody on a path or journey. Practicing the dao mearly means anything you do is in a natural way and not forced. Since dao does not and can not mean that principle for which it stands, saying you are doaist does not mean you claim to have attained the way, only that you follow principle expounded by chinese guys from long ago.

Ah...so Now please go ride on your ox and be gone. There is no way...following a way as the way is not the way.

"Even the finest teaching is not the tao itself."

If it can't be defined how can it followed? If you're defining the way based on what someone else said how do you know it's the true path? The way is a pathless. There is no way. What you think is the way exist only in your own mind. How can your mind be truly objective? It's not.

There is simply being...do what your nature intends not modify your nature based on what you've read or what someone else has done. You're already lost.

a true taoist would never expound a principle.

Bob #2

Chuang tze once said while walking by a river dont those fish look happy. His freind another sage said how do you know they are happy you are not a fish. Chuang tze said I may not be a fish but you are not me so how do you know what I do or dont know about.

If a true daoist would never expound a principle... is it safe to say the I Ching was written in error? Does that mean Dong Hai created Bagau in error. I am pretty sure those are daoist ways being expounded. How many people have bought a book on daoism, to have it expounded upon. Qui Chu Ji... you have the right idea. The thing about the fish... good one. I have one. Two monks are walking by the river and see an elderly lady that can not cross, one monk picks her up and carries her across. Later in the day... the other monk asks, why did you pick up that elderly lady and carry her? The monk replies... why are you still carrying her? =0)

the IChing was written by a deciple of Lau Tsu (who had given up on helping people and wanted to die because of idiots like you)

Dong Hai- who the heck was Dong Hai, your life-partner? If I was queer you could call me 'Dong Loe'.

I've got one for you- One old lady is standing beside a river- she sees another old lady on the opposite side of the river- "HOW DO YOU GET TO THE OTHER SIDE?" she yells.
"YOU ARE ALREADY ON THE OTHER SIDE" the other replies and they both attain enlightenment.

Bob #2... if ignorance is bliss, you must be one happy person. P.S. Funny how the first thing you could think of was homosexuality in re to Dong Hai. I suppose you did not realize I meant Dong Hai Chuan.

By Happy Days (Unregistered Guest) on Thursday, May 13, 2004 - 12:45 pm:

Silly Rabbit,
The Yi Jing (I Ching) is not a Taoist text. It first appears as a tangable work in the Jou (Chou) Dynasty 1180-720 BCE, while it is assumed to have been created eariler, due to a lack of evidence it is a gray area. Lao Tsu, the founder of Daoism and Confucious don' show up until the Warring States Period 480-220 BCE and yes it is believed the Yi Jing influenced the philosophies of Lao Tsu as well as Confucious, but it is incorrect to call the Yi Jing a Daoist philosophy, since Daoism doesn't exist until it is invented and later added to by the Neo-Daoist (who add the concetps of Qi development and eternal life, etc).

There are two things to consider; _ _ and __ everything else is just a combination of the two. How events flow from a combination of these and how you can seize the opportunity during the change is the acme of skill. Timing to seize the moment when the crooked becomes the straight and straight becomes the crooked in the fray is the acme of skill. That is all.

What kind of drugs are you on Mr. Cervantes?

Happy days,
the I ching traces back to shang oracle bone divination. Chou dynasty took many principles from the shang to legitimize their assention. as the divination was a practice of the 'Wu' who still had a lot of power over the minds of the han people. religious daoism is a mixture of different practices like the yellow emperor/lao tze cult the philosophical and the peng li cult who were interested in prelonging life through medicine/food/daoyin. so daoists have always used Yi jing (I ching) as a tool. there are many comentaries on the Yi jing but there exact source is unknown some daoist some confucian. Unless you belive it was written by the chou emperor if you belive that next you will be telling me lao tze wrote the dao de jing.

who cares?

not me, just some moron trying to make people think he has half a brain quell