The Way through Baguazhang - 八卦掌道

On the one hand this episode could be another one about Mopai. But in the end I went back to what is really important: Baguazhang. It starts off with that age old question of how a person can measure qi? And the it goes somewhere else. Hey! It’s a Saturday and the garden path leads to where it wants to go. So sit back and relax into it. Enjoy ☺️

Let’s get real: Are the 72 levels of Mopai achievable? And how do you you know you have achieved any one of those levels? 🧐 Hmmmm….. ☶

Now this is an important question: Is Mopai a martial art? It reads like one in the book. And it is the source of much of the “qualified” criticism about it. Of which… I answer the question. The problem most people have and don’t want to admit is that they are seeking something that blinds them to the obvious. Something which all the internal martial arts (including Baguazhang) struggle with. ☵

Recently I read the book ‘The Magus of Java’ by author Kosta Danaos. It is a book about Mopai and its then grandmaster John Chang a.k.a John Baharudin a.k.a. Dynamo Jack from Ring of Fire fame. In part 1, I give a basic description of the difference between Baguazhang and Mopai in how qi is cultivated. ☳

While in Hong Kong I wanted to do a bit of exploring and eventually I got myself, sort of, lost. Well, not really in the larger scheme of things… but it made for an interesting day out and in the end I managed to score myself a nice new black jade pendant to assist me with my Qi 氣 cultivation while doing Baguazhang 八卦掌.

So why black jade?

Black jade behaves energetically like a spiritual well. It draws a deposit from all the hard work put into one’s self cultivation through the internal martial arts i.e. neigong 內功, ready to be drawn upon when needed as an extra source of inner vitality.

Hello from Hong Kong 香港.

In this episode I am recording from my wife’s home town and the birth place of Bruce Lee 李小龍.

It’s been an interesting experience thus far doing Baguazhang 八卦掌 and focusing on cultivating my Yin 陰修.

I know that most Taoist cultivation practices focus on Yang 陽. But that is for people who’s qi 氣 lacks inner strength.

But Baguazhang as an internal martial art is

👉 1) naturally yin focused, and
👉 2) people who do martial arts are already usually full of Yang.

Anyway this is a light episode talking about this and that while I am here. So enjoy 😉

PS. If you want to see my pictures of the PakTai temple (Xuanwu Shangdi temple) I visited in Wan Chai 灣仔北帝廟, link up with me on Instagram 📸 👉 baguazhang_ 👈🙂

So recently I started my own personal journey of translating the Tao Te Ching 道德經 as part of my own Taoist experience because 1) I wanted to, and 2) because I have noticed discrepancies between what the typical English version says and what the Chinese version says. And it can get frustrating. But do not worry, I won’t be publishing it. But what would like to share in the text is this…
While we have essentially two branches of Taoism to choose from:

👉 道家 Taojia (Tao Philosophy) ☳
👉 道教 Taojiao (Tao Religion) ☶

Neither of these two are mentioned in the Tao Te Ching. The term used in the book is Taoji:

👉 道紀 Taoji (Tao Discipline, practice) ☵

And the term used for a Taoist is Tao-Er.

👉 道者 Taoist, Tao person or Tao expert.

Taoji is about practicing it as part of your ordinary everyday life. In the here and now with our lives in whatever situation we find ourselves in. Good and not so good. Okay, maybe your situation is worse but you know what I mean.

Ok… So in this episode titled: How not to do Baguazhang 如何不做八卦掌, I’m letting you know about Neidan Master Damo Mitchell’s audio by the same name. Listen to it. It’s in-depth and worth its weight in gold. It’s about an hour long but if you try to rush it and skip sections, you will miss a great deal of important stuff that will either boost your practice or stop incorrect practices that are holding you back. And before you ask, this is not a team-up with Mitchell.

Question: What is it like to be a baguazhang Taoist?

The answer to that question on the daily life of being a Taoist 道者 or a Baguazhang master 八卦掌大師 is… (drum roll, please) is this: You’re a fucking weirdo. Most people have no idea what you are. Or why you would bother chasing a goal that leads to nowhere. Maybe in Asia somewhere, with its exotic locations, people and spices, it would all make sense. But in the Western world. Not so much.

In this podcast I talk about how in daily life nothing much changes. I’m not sure who this podcast is for, but as they say in this city… It is what it is.

The urban environment is a tough place to practice, cultivate and master Baguazhang 八卦掌. No matter what people say. And for the most part, it is a lonely path 😩. But here’s the thing: Are you ready to become a Living Tao 活道? Are you ready to become the living embodiment of your craft as it’s ultimate personification? Even if none of us truly knows what that means. 🤔 …It’s time to enter your Wu 無!

The way of the Taoist Bagua master is one of resilience. It isn’t for everyone. It’s a lonely 😩 path filled with a lot of hardships. A lot of people think 🤔 that once they become a Taoist or a Baguazhang master, life will be enlightened bliss. Sadly, this not the case. But as my podcast reveals, sometimes while we are down, our trained body just says ‘fuck’em!’ And we keep on doing Baguazhang. I keep forgetting that. With my mind and heart playing havoc with my psyche, my body (on autopilot) simply yet calmly continues with the bagua until the bullshit has passed. 👉 道教八卦大師的方式是韌性!

I finally did it and talked about some weird shit involving Baguazhang - environmental cultivation (of the self). And no, I don’t care that to some people it’s total woo-woo! I know my shit and it’s grounded in experience.

After cultivating 基 Ji, 精 Jing, 氣 Qi, 神 Shen and the 心 Xin (heart-mind) the next cultivation stage is 德 Te (inner power).

With the Tao Te Ching 道德經 it is usually referred to as virtue but this a Confucian ideal. And when read as such, it leaves a lot of people confused 😕 !

Te 德 or inner power, as it is more commonly referred to in Taoist language, is a kind of spiritual investment or savings which a person accumulates over time. And the way you grow it is very similar to taking care of your investment portfolio i.e. wealth creation.

Anyway, to get a stronger sense of what I’m on about, I strongly recommend the trilogy “Street Cultivation” by fantasy author Sarah Lin. If there was ever a person who instinctually understood it in a modern way, it would be her 😉! It is a very modern take on the wuxia/xianxia genre.

Do you want to be a baguazhang immortal?

Do you want to be a baguazhang xian?

1. 仙
2. 僊
3. 仚
4. 㒨
5. 僲
6. 屳
7. 佡

Above are the 7 Chinese characters in which to write the word: Xian.

Xian means immortal. And then so much more. In this podcast #288 I discuss their different “deeper” meanings in relation to the #taoist #internal_martial_art #cultivation path of #baguazhang

#xian #道 #八卦掌 #八卦 #仙

For those of you too impatient to listen to my #baguazhang #八卦掌 podcast, yi 意 is your will or intention. That’s it. For the rest of you, I finally delve deeper into the mystical side of baguazhang. This is a stage of Taoist cultivation that’s rarely openly discussed because it’s usually a very private and/or personal journey that a practitioner has to confront alone. I have also added a special message to Frank regarding Bruce. And while I normally don’t get involved in other people’s issues, this one involves Baguazhang directly, so that makes it an ongoing concern for me. Not the issue itself, but rather as part of cultivating their Tao 道…

My first episode on the Taoist Heart-Mind of Xin 心 (episode 281), doesn’t fair too well with listeners because it’s not the rosy blissful description that people want to hear or experience. But if you are a baguazhang 八卦掌 practitioners or cultivator, you’d be wise to listen because without facing certain experiential truths, it will be nigh impossible to cultivate one’s Yi 意 or come to grasp the full significance of Wu 無. That’s what this episode is about!

Tonight I’m keeping it short and discussing the mysteries of Wu 無 or nothingness. And in particular I will discuss this Taoist concept through the lens of baguazhang 八卦掌. While in this podcast I provide a few real life examples of what it looks like experientially, the sad fact is for most people those examples are what people try their darnedest to avoid. And that is what makes it so hard as a stage to cultivate.

Again and again, it is a repeated comment that in order to cultivate the Taoist path, a practitioner of the way must have virtue or Te 德, or it is all for nought! But what is Te and how do I get some? Is it the same Te as in the Tao Te Ching 道德經？ Yes it is. And as a baguazhang 八卦掌 practitioner I will explain it to you in a way that the urban mind can know it (because you already do) and do something useful with it, without becoming a hermit in the woods.

True Baguazhang 八卦掌 cultivation can produce in the body, over time, trauma in the mind and body. The ritual of practicing Chazen 茶禪 is about more than just mindfulness. Without a way to cleanse ourselves and consolidate our “gains” we can get stuck in our progression in self-cultivation, especially if our Tao 道 is more or less locked into an urban environment. By listening to this podcast, hopefully, the listener will get a better appreciation of my earlier podcasts around the art of making and drinking tea.

Well, I’m finally doing it and I’m gonna talk about Baguazhang master Sun Lutang 孫祿堂 (1860 – 1933). Disciple of master Cheng Tinghua 程廷華. Master Sun is important because he was the first to produce baguazhang manuals (which are still available today):
Baguaquan xue (A study of eight trigrams boxing) published 1916;
Baguajian xue (A study of eight trigrams straight sword) published 1927.

Whether you are a traditional Taoist cultivator or you are ascending through the baguazhang path, there is a stage that must be confronted in order to truly grasp the true significance of what you are doing. And that is the stage of Xin 心. In Taoism it is traditionally referred to as the heart-mind or mind-heart, and is sometimes interchanged with either the stages of Shen 神 or Tao 道. But that is because not everything in Taoism is universally agreed upon. So in this episode, I will talk about my own experiences and how Xin 心 relates to Baguazhang 八卦掌.

Revision of the 5 baguazhang cultivation stages of Ji 基, Li 力, Qi 氣, Yi 意 and Shen 神. Actually there are other levels, but for most Baguazhang practitioners these are the most important and exist like a alternative path or version to the Taoist one. Here I discusss the similarities between the two…

Before a person even attempts to cultivate the three Taoist treasures of Jingqishen 精氣神, there is the beginning of Xing 形 or form/shape. The baguazhang equivalent is called Ji 基, and it is the foundation of all that is to come next. In this podcast I introduce the listener to this much neglected stepping stone.

Taoism has its self cultivation path of the three treasures: Jing Qi Shen 精氣神. And sometimes they add a fourth level of Tao 道. The internal martial art of baguazhang 八卦掌 also has its parallel equivalents of Li, Qi, Yi and Shen 力氣意神. In this podcast I will be discussing (lightly) what they are and how they match up to the Taoist version of things.

For the final podcast episode of 2022, I ask this simple question: Is doing Xingyiquan the same as doing Baguazhang internal martial arts? Both styles are Taoist in origin and both styles fall under the category of internal martial arts, but are they the same? And the answer to both questions is NO! While FaJin 化勁 may be a Xingyiquan and Taichi concept, it does not exist in baguazhang philosophy or training. What we have is called Jingong 勁功, and you can learn all about it in my book: The Baguazhang Jin of War.

In this episode I answer the question: Must I be or do I need to be a Taoist to do or practice the internal martial art of baguazhang? Listen to it, to learn further on what you signed up for. Some of you already have your answer but for others it may be enlightening, even if only in a tiny hum-drum sort of way. 🙂

What’s the difference between having rituals and having habits in Baguazhang? And does it affect my neigong practice?

Both are internal martial arts styles, but is doing baguazhang the same as doing taichi? And the answer is… NO! A lot of people, who don’t know any better, make this mistake all the time. If you are listening to this podcast, you probably already know the difference but it doesn’t hurt to go over it again.

The biggest question I get asked repeatedly is: Is the story real or true? And that’s a good question to ask and it all depends on what you are actually wanting to experience. Let the Tao 道 be your guide.

Last night I finished reading the biography ‘The Chronicles of Tao’ by author Deng Ming-Dao. Whom, some of you on the spiritual Taoist path, would already be familiar with. This book is supposed to be a loose biography of his spiritual teacher Kwan Saihung.

As a lesson in Taoist spirituality and in what the followers of the Huashan sect did to attain immortality, I enjoyed it thoroughly. And it was for me a kind of revision of my own journey: How far I have come and how far I still have to go.

As a book on martial arts, basically chronicles how much martial arts in general has changed with the modern times. What we are learning now sometimes feels like we are all just a bunch of overweight middle-aged men with delusions of by-gone grandeur.

And for those of you wondering where the baguazhang fits into this book? It only really appears as a brief style of fighting Kwan Saihung’s own spiritual teacher uses to defeat a Xingyiquan master.

This book is not really a book about martial arts and most people will find it either boring or implausible. But that line of thought is for the skeptics.

For someone like me, however, I got to cross-check events in the book with my own weird shit!

And if you are a person who is keen to walk the path of an immortal, you are just going to have to accept that there are somethings in this world that do not and will never fit into the current version of reality that modern civilisation holds so dear.

While at the same time to be fair on ourselves, from a western background, some ideas in the book are not really Taoist, but are coming from a typical Chinese mindset of what Taoism is without really knowing the full scope of Chinese civilisational history.

For example, if you go back to the Zhou Dynasty, there was essentially no such thing as Taoism as we know it because “all” the Chinese schools of thought were natively Taoist. Lao Tzu 老子 and Chuang Tzu 莊子 only professed one particular version of it. The main difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius, was that Confucius tried to bring order out of perceived chaos while Lao Tzu accepted that chaos was already a form of order in itself.

Most of the other ancient sages tended to specialise their Taoist ways towards the particular field of study that they were expert in.

Since then Taoism had been shaped and reshaped many times by outside influences. Internal Alchemy or Neidan 內丹術 developed during the late Han Dynasty with the arrival of Buddhism. Meditation, reincarnation and karma are all Buddhist ideas. Before Buddhism, Taoism was (and still us based upon) a mix of shamanism, animism and Chinese folk beliefs.

And then during the Tang Dynasty – Christianity arrived in China. Called the religion of Light 景教, it is the reason why in Taoism there is now a Chinese hell presided over by the Ox headed devil. And that the Goddess of Mercy is the Virgin Mary with Chinese characteristics. The Three Pure ones are a reworked version of the Holy Trinity. And that the last supper with the holy grail is essentially the Elixir of Immortality, that if one is holy enough, the Jade Emperor can bestow on them.

But I don’t bring all this history up to shock anybody. Rather it is to enlighten the baguazhang practitioner that baguazhang is not just a martial art, but a form of being in church and being in communion with the Divine.

I give this book 5 stars out of 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
CHRONICLES OF TAO - The secret life of a Taoist Master
By Deng Ming-Dao, author of ‘365 Tao’
HarperOne ISBN: 978-0-06-250219-3

The proof is in the pudding. As they say. So you say I’m full of shit with my stories, even though the Genchitaofu Baguazhang was my proving ground as a baguazhang master. Rather than dismissing what I am about, I challenge others to go and have their own Baguazhang adventure and prove it to themselves what it means to be a master of this art. In this episode, I discuss how far I still have to go before I even remotely can say my life has been awesome.

When’s the best time to learn baguazhang? Well, not 5 minutes before you to go out and fight. As a martial art it takes years to master it. It looks s unrealistic to think you can learn it over night.

We have all asked the question: When is the best time to practice baguazhang? And typically you’ll get an answer that the Shifu wants you to follow. But few people ask why, and fewer still know why.
But it is important to know why if one truly wants to progress further. In this podcast you will hear my answer to this question. You may have heard it before but I strongly suspect that a lot of baguazhang practitioners have only a surface comprehension of when.

Further baguazhang ramblings inspired by sifu Neil Ripski’s book: Secrets of Drunken Boxing in the Eight Shadow Style.

In this episode I answer a qood question that I get asked a lot: Is a bagua master (八卦大師) the same thing as a baguazhang master (八卦掌師傅)? And the answer is a yes and a no, and it depends…

I thought I would take tonight’s baguazhang episode in a new direction and just bullshit my way through it. I am surprised that I’m not on ‘Bullshido’ yet, but I’m hoping that this podcast makes the grade. Anyway, let me know if there’s anything about my arts you would like to know etc, otherwise I may continue with this kind of talking!

For those of you who listened to podcast #263, you will be surprised 😯 to learn that I missed out 1 very important injury that a baguazhang practitioner may experience. It is a difficult one to explain but I hope this podcast episode will hit home!

Usually if you are doing baguazhang correctly, you should not get any injuries because baguazhang is a healing art at its core. Having said that, it is still possible to fuck things up. And people being people, no system is prefect. And so now I present to you a short list of the major types of injuries and their causes that can be sustained while doing baguazhang.

How does a baguazhang master pursue the Tao?

That’s a very good question. And the answer is…

A baguazhang master does not pursue the Tao. A baguazhang master walks the Tao.

That is what walking the circle is all about. Like a road or pathway, the Tao is a thing and not a thing at the same time. And just like the bagua circle, it only exists when the practitioner walks the circle.

But even without the circle, the Tao still exists.

I do not know how many times, but because of daily life, I have forgotten this fact. And I do not know how many times I have had that same realisation reminding me of how profound and yet how simple the Tao is.

To understand this, it requires no preaching and it requires no rituals. But they can help in giving meaning to our habits.

For me, according to my wife, I do baguazhang as if it is a full-time job. I don’t see it that way. I don’t get paid to do baguazhang, nor do I get paid to run a podcast in the subject. I do baguazhang because it is in my nature to do so. What you hear and see from me is the real-deal.

For the people who still require proof, it is for them to go out and find their own proof. For too long these people have sat on their arses rejecting everything as fake without ever once attempting to experience it for themselves. They join all the martial arts groups and then slowly start tearing it down in the so-called noble pursuit of finding the real amongst the fake.

But the real does not come from rejection.

The real comes from doing and in the process experiencing the Tao or path of whatever martial art you are doing.

And it does take a lot of gongfu or hard work to get there. If you can come to some sort of personal understanding for yourself that when your life is shit, it is a sign that you are developing your own gongfu as in becoming a gongfu master, you will find your journey a smoother ride.

And please try to stay focused on what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you call yourself a baguazhang master then you should be doing baguazhang in the baguazhang way and not something else. Stop messing around with the style! Do it like you mean it.

And the Tao will become as clear as daylight to you as it is to me.

And so I finally did it.

After months of procrastinating and going nowhere, I have finally received a call from a fellow martial artist with a simple request: When am I going to publish a gongfu book?

What?

Yes. When am I going to publish a gongfu book?

I thought I did already. But no. I have not. What’s been missing is a manual with pictures and instructions and shit on how to do baguazhang.

I said no. I’m not going to that. And why would I, when you can already get books on the baguazhang pre-heaven palms, post-heaven palms, changing and fixed palm sets, the swimming dragon form and countless other versions depending on which style of baguazhang you want to learn. I’m not bringing anything new to the table.

But then, as if nobody’s listening to me, I got asked to do a manual on one of my forms created in Australia. Again I said no because of the potential backlash from those who don’t like change.

To which the response came as: Fuck’em! Baguazhang is all about change. If they don’t get that, then they’re in the wrong house. We’ve seen what your forms can do and it’s time to come out of hiding.

So apparently now is the time, and after much further ribbing at my expense, I did it. I published the gongfu manual both as an ebook and as a paperback on Amazon.

It is called “The Baguazhang Living Tao GONGFU EDITION”. If you do go looking for it, make sure you add the phrase ‘gongfu edition’ to get the right version. It contains an entirely new form. I don’t say much about it – in fact hardly anything because it is in the practice of doing the form that a practitioner becomes one with nature.

Just a day ago I posted on social media a picture of my new 3D puzzle of a Chongqing streetscape featuring a spring festival dragon dance.

Now, because I totally suck at gluing things together, which in turn makes modelling stressful for me, I prefer not to them. However, because this puzzle has a clip together system that avoids gluing, I was all for it.

And I enjoyed putting it together with my wife very much. And before you ask, I am a LEGO fan. I just don’t have room in my home for displays, hence I gave all my LEGO to a die-hard friend of mine.

So then, what’s with this 3D puzzle of Chongqing 重庆市?

Well, the thing that really got me to get it was that it was designed to fit in a bookshelf in between books. And that is what you see in the picture: The puzzle slotted in between my collection of I-Ching 易經 books. I think it adds a nice little bit of fairy touch to an otherwise Ho-hum bookshelf.

And then I posted it to the world. The likes came in and I got my social media fix of communal acceptance. Oh joy. Happy happy joy joy! Until, of course, I go and make the cardinal sin of reading one of the comments.

Actually it wasn’t that bad. The comment was a question and the question was: Who do I think we’re the most important I-Ching masters of the past?

Honestly, I’d never thought about it nor when I think about it now do I care.

The question feels a lot like the question of who was the greatest martial arts master of the past or which style is the best?

Whatever answer is given, it will always, and mean always, be highly subjective and highly personal.

What matters when it comes to the I-Ching is how you use it and why you are using it. If I was a rapper or hip hop artist, I would hope to god that my version or copy of the book had been written by RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. Shit! I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s using it quietly on the side right now. I mean, he does practice kungfu and he has studied on the mountain itself.

Anyway, the point is the masters of the past were concerned with warfare and being good advisors to rulers, and so the I-Ching for them was both a war manual and a treatise on the Art of Leadership and Management. While ultimately guiding the user towards Taoist immortality. The past masters are only relevant if what you seek is similar…

It has taken a decade or so, but I am now coming to the realisation that I have committed myself to the baguazhang path toward enlightenment. Which from the Taoist mountain summit, it is sometimes called being an immortal.

Immortality as it is defined in Taoism is a very broad concept that needs the clarity of having deep internal knowledge of one’s martial style and the knowledge of who you are speaking with in regards to internal alchemy.

I know that there will be people out there listening to this podcast and mocking my shit, but if a person insists on baguazhang being just a form of fighting art, then their understanding of this art will be extremely limited. For baguazhang as a defined martial art in its own right is a very recent historical development. Before anything else, baguazhang is and always will be a form of walking meditation that underpins a highly active form of qigong 氣功 cultivation. That will in turn lead to the development of a baguazhang practitioner’s jingong 勁功.

You can learn more about it in my book: The Baguazhang Jin of War 八卦掌戰勁.

Now, getting back to the topic of baguazhang immortality, in the West it unfortunately seems to mean just one thing: Living for ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever, without end. While being usually framed as a kind of curse that must be avoided. Even when the hero of the story, who becomes an immortal as a reward or blessing bestowed upon them by a divine being, it tends to be coupled with some sort of burden that only they can bare.

Which is really sad, because over in the East, the idea of being an immortal is a positive attribute. Because it implies that you are generally fitter and healthier than most of the people around you. Which in turn, relatively speaking, tends to also make you appear younger than your age and as a result, it will usually mean that you will outlive most people.

Nowadays, however, outliving others is harder to experience because modern science and medical advancements have caught up. Allowing ordinary people to also live truly long lives. But remember: This development has only been around about one hundred years.

Now let’s just assume that outliving the people around you is a bit rich. Being an immortal amongst Taoists is also a kind of rank or title. And at the very least a term of respect that implies that you have reached the highest summit of whatever mountain your particular martial art spiritually resides on. While on a more practical level, it means that you have become the living embodiment of the art itself. And that you know pretty much all there is to currently know about it: You have become the proverbial ‘Old Man on the Mountain’ 仚.

And…

Even if the title still seems to be still too much for you, the third real life implication of being an immortal means that your life compared to ordinary people is unrelatable. From your perspective you are just doing what you do and living your life the way you want to live it. And you can see no reason for there to be anything wrong with it, but to ordinary folk, who don’t do what you do, you might as well go live in another country. You’re just too far out there with your weird shit. It’s one of the reasons Taoists have a habit of becoming ‘mountain men or fairies’ 仙.

And so now you must be wondering: What about me?

But the real question is: What about you and your own ascension?

Where are you along your own baguazhang journey?

I am betting that by listening to this podcast, the idea of becoming an immortal is no longer just a distant fantasy but is now a serious consideration. Something which will evolve over time.

So recently I wrote and spoke about how rare the internal martial art of baguazhang (八卦掌) is. And I have even used some rough numbers to support my claim. But, no matter what, it is always amazing how many people do not actually dig deeper into things and would prefer to argue that the martial art is one of the most popular styles out there.

I never said that baguazhang was not popular. What I said was, that relative to other styles it is quite small. And as some of you who have been to Asia know, sometimes being small is beautiful. You may not be into small things, but the thing you are chasing is! It is all a matter of perspective.

One thing, though, that is a non-negotiable fact about pretty much any martial art is that the higher you climb up your particular metaphorical mountain, the fewer and fewer participants you will find. And you will, like those Saturn V rockets that took astronauts to the moon, leave in stages a lot of your fellow martial artists behind. You can’t bring them to where they are not ready to go.

As I study more and more about the Immortal’s Path (仙人道), reading between the lines that seems to be a common feature: Many take it as a physical fact and do pack up their things and disappear. But for others, it simply means letting go of the things that do not serve us, but for which our continued interaction with, will actually hurt us.

For example: Debt, as in owing money to other people and organisations.

Money isn’t actually a real thing. It is a work of external alchemy. And because it isn’t actually a real tangible thing, the numbers around it can swing wildly (Note: Cash, as in paper money, is a form of IOU underwritten by government to give it legal worth in a given jurisdiction, which basically states that you can exchange the paper money for bits of metal in the form of minted coins). By comparison, qigong (氣功) and jingong (勁功) are results of internal alchemy. A lot of times, the two paths of alchemy intersect each other, so that a person with strong positive qi will also have a positive financial portfolio.

I mean, have you ever noticed when a money debt is finally paid off, your own inner qi cultivation gets a boost and that doing baguazhang has more ‘flow’ to it?

Now I am aware that some of you will say that money isn’t important (which we all know is a blatant lie if you live amongst other people and partially true if you have gone bush), but there are certain beliefs and faiths that do incur a kind of spiritual debt called sin. This debt called sin, you are usually born into it or it is sold to you as a way to salvation. Paying off this debt is next to impossible because the terms are unknown. And for a lot of people, they don’t even know what the sin was. Now, you may go on about a concept called ‘The Original Sin’ and let us just say that it was a real event. The question you have to ask is: What was your part in the event?

If you can answer that question with all sincerity that you were there and did ‘X’, then you, my friend, are enlightened. Unfortunately most of our fellow human beings are not. Their financial debts match their spiritual debts, which in turn match their qi indebtedness.

All is one.

And so now you may be wondering: Where does this sit with jingong (勁功) and my book “The Baguazhang Jin of War” (八卦掌戰勁)…?

Well? If you have read it, then you will kind of know. But if you are still humming and hah-ing on whether to read it, then I will not tell you. The mere fact that the real host of this podcast is going over your head means that you are not there yet.

Recently at work, while it just so happened that I was pondering on the baguazhang path to Taoist Immortality, I got asked by a coworker what type of martial art do I do?

It had been a difficult night of standing at the front door requesting for the 200th time for an adult customer’s Covid vaccination passport. Most customers are really good about it and we try to fold the rules in such a way so that everybody wins, including the government regulators. But every now and then, there will come a customer who will deliberately try their luck and they discover that they can’t come in. And it is my job to convey it to them as nicely as possible.

So when I got asked what my martial art was called, I kind of loudly replied that it was called The Art of Bitch Slapping!

We both had a chuckle at that one like Austin Powers purring on the revolving bed: Oh behave Baby!

Anyway, after the laughter had died down, I told him that it was actually called ‘Baguazhang’.

“What’s that?” He asked.

He genuinely didn’t know – he’d never heard of it. And so I proceeded to explain that we are the crazy fuckers who walk around in circles as our main kung fu thing.

“Walk in circles?” He asked.

And just like that without thinking I did a single palm change and walked the circle. And then, we were back to checking vaccine passports. I must say that the shop Lino tiles felt rather nice on the sliding footwork compared to the grippy outdoor tiles that I usually train on.

It also felt really good to get a quick reality on how rare the style of baguazhang still is. Social media and the internet is really good at tweaking the numbers so that it appears to us that we are well known and popular. But I have heard time and again from martial schools and shifus on the lack of bite for it.

But that’s just it: Most of us who picked it up and love it, is partially because it is so rare. We take it for granted because of what’s out there in popular culture, that people will know.

But it just isn’t so. Just because the internet is flooded with porn, it does not mean everybody has joined the local swingers club or even know what it is.

And don’t rely on the Chinese numbers for proof. Their government institutions will say millions practice an internal martial art like Tai Chi or Qigong, but when the facts from the practicing Taoists are brought in, reality shows a more realistic figure of around fifty thousand.

So if you are feeling lonely, there’s your answer.

And if you don’t feel lonely, these numbers also give clarity on why, at any given time, there are so few Taoist Immortals…

At some point in the baguazhang practitioner’s journey along the Tao, there comes a moment when the practice of baguazhang loses its glamour and the practitioner will quit.

This isn’t a case of things getting too hard, but rather it is becoming too easy and in a sense it loses its challenge. When this happens it is because deep down inside the baguazhang practitioner has been persisting in trying to learn the style as if it were an external martial art, where all the physical experiences come from the outside in.

Now, just to be clear, this does not happen to all baguazhang practitioners. Only to those not wishing to face the truth of what baguazhang is, and sometimes to those who have learnt a bagua form as part of a martial family or clan style.

For a real baguazhang practitioner, getting to the place where the physical movements become easy to do is just the start of what lies ahead for them, because now they must confront a world in which those same skills will be tested in ways usually not foreseen by the practice itself.

Most baguazhang practitioners will go into this situation blind, but a few will study the I-Ching 易經 and the Bagua 八卦 for guidance on what comes next.

While someone may disagree on what I have just said, the reality is that baguazhang is underwritten by the eight elements known as the Bagua. It is these eight elements and their relationship to each other, which is usually for baguazhang in a circular pattern, is what powers the bagua forms.

In order to align itself further to more traditional Chinese martial training techniques, in baguazhang the eight elements have been transmitted into eight totemic spirit animals that give a visual guideline of what the moves are supposed to look like, and in a certain sense be a key to what the given action is supposed to do.

Now, here, I must put in a special note to remind the listener that each style of baguazhang has its own variation on how a move is supposed to be done. There is no true perfect style. That idea is a myth. What matters is that the style chosen is in alignment to one’s body shape and temperament. And that the would-be practitioner realised that each style has a history to it based on the baguazhang master who created it.

And that history is only meant to take the practitioner so far and no further. At that point has been reached, it is now time to walk their own bagua path and to create in its wake a new history that others can learn from. Which means taking all that training and practice and applying it to real life.

For example: Lockdown because of the coronavirus…

How many of you stopped training because you were told to stay home?

How many of you stopped practicing because you got overwhelmed by all the news or simply wanted to be like your neighbour?

And how many of you adapted to the changing circumstances, kept on training and saw it as an opportunity to advance one’s own understanding and comprehension of this fine art?

Judging by the dwindling numbers out there, the answer is a pitifully low number. Mind you, the technicians of the arts are nearly always out of touch with practical reality, and blaming Millennials for everything is just a poor excuse. And Chinese numbers are nearly always exaggerated by the numbers of school children doing it at school as a wushu elective.

And the feeling that baguazhang is a dying art is also an illusion.

The martial art of baguazhang is not dying. It has always been a niche style, where it is just a fact of life that you are going to lose people as you get better and better at cultivating your inner alchemy or neigong 內功 as part of your drive toward your Shen-hood 神方向.

Today is not one of my better days. The humidity is up and it is reminding me of why I do not live in the tropics. Everything else I can reasonably handle but just not the humidity.

And so, just before the humidity really started to hit at around 9am, I made sure I had already done most of my baguazhang sets.

But there is still one form I still must do, but I am wavering on it because on the days that I do it, I have committed myself to doing 15 sets per day. So it is 15 sets or nothing, and my willpower is slowly crumbling.

On the upside of all this humidity is that I am slowly getting a craving for Malaysian or Singaporean food. But, then again, to go out and get some would require a bit of effort on my part that would drain some of my energy beyond what I am willing to accept.

But (and yes, this is another counter but…) I am also willing to adapt to the changes brought on by the weather, and just see where it takes me on my baguazhang journey: What I cannot do physically, I will do mentally with a bit of baguazhang revision.

Even I don’t know everything. There is a lot of theory around baguazhang that requires a practitioner to sit down, open a manual and study.

Traditionally in China, martial arts was a gentleman’s pursuit. And as such, it meant it had scholarly endeavours attached to it. Without it, martial arts in the wrong hands would degenerate into nothing more than thuggery.

Every baguazhang master taught this. If not through theory, then through technique. And if that didn’t sink in, then through the legends about them.

With me, I do it through my podcast, qigong class, and publishing six easy-to-read books around the topic of baguazhang.

And now I am learning how to transmute this wisdom through just being in close physical proximity to me. This skill is something I allude to in my sixth baguazhang book about jingong titled “The Baguazhang Jin of War”.

👉 (八卦掌的戰勁)

I won’t go into further details about it, because if you are not there yet, you will reject it outright as total bullshit. But if you are there then you will understand and move on to wherever it is you are going. And that for me means moulding my true Dan Tian in harmony with this humidity so that I can go out and get my Roti with Kuri Ayam!

Some of you may have noticed that The Baguazhang Art of War series has recently gained a new member to the family: The Baguazhang Jin of War.

Of the six books on baguazhang I have published thus far, this book has been the most challenging.

And it has been the most challenging because in order to get anywhere with this book, I have had to confront who I am, and what I am as a martial artist and where it will be taking me.

It has also meant as a martial artist, I have had to let go of other people’s opinions on what baguazhang is and accept the baguazhang path I am on, as it actually is. Which, if you have read any of my books or listened to my podcast, will know that when it comes to internal martial arts, I don’t do plain vanilla.

The Baguazhang Jin of War is about jingong 勁功, the external manifestation of a person’s internal qigong as it is usually experienced through baguazhang.

What it is not, is jinggong 精功.

Even though, with my accent, the two words sound the same, they are not the same. Although it can be confusing. Jinggong 精功, spelt with three G’s, refers to the first treasure of Taoist internal alchemy of Jing or essence as in a person’s sexual bodily fluids.

My book deals with Jin and is spelt j, i, n, and has no g.

And it is a topic I will keep mostly to my book. It is a topic that I know you will only seek out when you are ready for it. Which is usually through self-experience. Or you’re getting that sense that you are on the path. What that path is, only you will know, but if you are still trying to appreciate the Tao through the mediums of conflict: Fighting, arguing and debating like it’s a case in law, then you are still not there.

Anyway, I digress from the main point, which is to let you know that I have a new baguazhang book on Amazon called The Baguazhang Jin of War.

Since my most recent podcasts about jingong 勁功 came to air, I have been requested to give a practical example of how jingong 勁功works; for the less spiritually inclined.

For the briefest of moments, this got me thinking. And I got the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I might be overthinking it a bit.

And as it turns out, I was overthinking it. Because after I received the request, it just so happened that on social media there is a video clip going around that shows jingong 勁功 clearly.

And get this: The rebuttal video that is also circulating around, also is a very good example of jingong 勁功.

The first video shows a person trying to blow out a candle flame using either their palm or fist from a few inches away with a straight forward thrusting motion. It looks a little like the one-inch punch, but the palm or fist never touches the candle flame.

This exercise, if done correctly, teaches the mind to focus on a small target that has the ability to shift its station (by flickering). In other words the flame can move about. One’s qi in this case, is literally the pocket of air between the candle flame and the person’s hand. When the hand moves forward, it pushes the air in front (of it) forward, which in turn snuffs out the flame.

It seems easy to do, but it is actually quite hard to master because if the mind dithers, the hand wavers, and the air in front goes everywhere except where it’s supposed to. Which is to blow out the candle flame.

The jingong 勁功 part is the air moving in the right intended direction towards the target to have an effect on the situation.

If you are practicing with one of those magic birthday candles that never seem to go out, this exercise is even more difficult to master.

And the rebuttal video?

Well, it basically just shows a guy blowing out the candle the old-fashioned way: inhale air into the mouth and then exhale! And wallah, the candle flame is blown out. Again, if qi is just air and breathing, the sucking in and out part would be qigong, while the air moving to its intended effect will be jingong 勁功.

What people fail to appreciate is that blowing out a candle flame is a practiced skill, that most people started doing since they had to make a wish and blow that damn birthday candle out. Now it should be at our age easy-peasy, but there is always that someone who upturns our assumptions because they can’t blow out a simple little candle.

And, while these two examples given, may seem like a simple case of basic ‘cause and effect’, only the air being pushed forward or blown out is the cause and the candle flame blowing out is the effect. In baguazhang, a true master of jingong 勁功 will understand before any action has been undertaken, that once the candle is blown out, the final environmental state will be darkness. (Most people will only comprehend the darkness because they are in the moment of experiencing it. They will not know that the darkness is just an after-effect of the candle going out. This is why it is vital to get one’s intention straight. With a clear intention a practitioner will be able to sense which their qi is progressing and in turn come to understand better how their jingong affects the world around them.)

The hardest parts to grasp regarding jingong 勁功 is:

1. It is for most martial artists uncharted waters. While it appears to be the external side of the internal workings of qigong, it is not the same thing as training in a hard or externally focused martial art. And;
2. Depending on your style of martial art, your path towards understanding jingong 勁功 will be completely different to somebody schooled in another style. I do baguazhang, so that means my comprehension of it will be through baguazhang.

My role as a “Living Tao” (活道) is to give enough insights, so that if you come across this podcast or one of my books, you will get a sense of where you are headed.

Your own experience of it is vital if you want to master it. So don’t dismiss or discount your own personal martial history because your naysayers don’t want the same thing.

Actually, it’s not even that. What is really happening is reality is catching up with them, when it comes to you, and suddenly they are getting that nagging feeling that they are being left behind.

For you see, while a person is doing qigong or an internally focused martial art, it is easy to dismiss it all as just fooling around, no matter how serious the practitioner may be. It’s like they can only see the toddler in the sandbox playing with his Matchbox cars, even though the toddler is a teenager surfing around on the beach. That so called toddler has moved up and is about to leave the beach for the desert. And his toy car is now a real Toyota Landcruiser.

Jingong 勁功 is a massive scaling up from qigong. It has to be. Because in a strange and weird sort of way, it’s no longer just about the self. It is about the self in context to its surroundings. In other words: Fengshui.

A person with jingong 勁功 can move to an alien environment and within a very short period of time, that environment will start changing to reflect them in subtle ways. Even if the whole process can be denied, if their jingong 勁功 is strong enough, the people around them will start to notice the changes. And they will usually have people around them comment like this, “How come, or why is it, that whenever you go somewhere, XYZ starts appearing around you?” Or, “Where’d all these XYZ people come from? We never had them, but now you are here and they’re everywhere — it’s like you bought your whole damn tribe with you?”

If something like this has ever happened to you then, firstly, congratulations. You got strong jingong 勁功. And, secondly, that so-called tribe isn’t your family as in blood relations. No. They reflect the ancestral lineage of the martial art you have been marinating in.

At the same time this is going on, things that are not aligned with your qi start disappearing from your life. I know some of you will want to nervously laugh and mock, because it is touching on one’s self identity. But this is the meaning behind Pak Tai 北帝, the Dark Warrior washing his guts clean in the river (before ascending Wudang Mountain 武當山).

For those of you, who need a monotheistic explanation: Qigong is the process by which the martial artist uses the body to burn off the sins polluting their soul. While baptism and holy water works for some people on an external level, the process of qigong is internal and goes much deeper. It acknowledges before God that this process of cleaning one’s soul is the same as walking and breathing. Nobody can do it for you. You have to do it by yourself. Amen.