The Gods We Hold Dear

I recently read a snippet of something in the popular press where Carl Jung was quoted as saying that as one ages one should spend more of their time reading fairy tales, myths and legends. This makes sense to me as I tend to find this sort of reading increasingly appealing. (Indeed, I've been working my way through Grimm's Fairy Tales recently.) I don't really completely understand the appeal, though. The only theory that makes sense to me is that after a lifetime of experience people cease to surprise and instead end up as examples of a limited number of archetypes. (I find myself classifying people that way---such and such person reminds me of so-and-so from my youth, and so forth.) If you see people are following a limited number of patterns, perhaps it makes more sense to accept this and revel in the formal interactions afforded. Civilizations seem to be like this---as they age they become more stylized and formal.

So, to cut a long story short, I agree with Jung but would like to add some other observations through a particularly unfocused and rambling post.

Years ago I had a meditation teacher who said that he had gone to meet some exiled Tibetan monks who were staying in a friend's summer cottage. When he drove up to the place he was surprised to see a bunch of fellows in monkish robes sitting at a picnic table drinking beer and reading comic books. They explained to him that the beer reminded them of Tibetan tea and the comic books were like the stories of the Tibetan gods and goddesses.

At the time I found this very hard to believe. But I eventually got some Tibetan-style tea. Surprise, surprise, it is flavoured with roasted barley (it even includes the odd barley-corn that has popped like popcorn.) The strong barley flavour does remind one of the old-fashioned Canadian beer (which traditionally had very little corn in it---unlike American beer.)

While reading more mythology I have also come to understand the point about comic books too.

I started thinking about this after trying to analyze why it was that I was so interested in watching the movie "Ironman". Many of my friends simply cannot understand why someone like me would waste their time watching "junk" movies like this. I found it hard to justify myself until I came across that quotation from Jung and I thought back to that anecdote involving those Tibetan monks. Then it occurred to me that the comic book superheros are not just "like" the ancient Gods and Goddesses of Olympus and the Jade Emperor's court---they are those ancient Gods and they fill exactly the same role in our society.

What could that be?

As I see it, I do not think it is possible for people---especially intelligent ones---to live in a world without archetype and metaphor. If I might be a little obscurely recursive here and use a story from the modern gods and goddesses to illustrate the need for gods and goddesses, I hearken back to an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation: "Darmok".

Two civilizations want to "make contact" with each other, but are having a terrible time understanding each other because the two cultures lack the set of common metaphors and archetypes that are needed to be able to understand each other. In pursuit of this, the alien engineers a situation where he and Picard (the human) have to live out the defining mythos of their civilization. After doing so, the humans and the aliens have the beginning from which to build communication from. The alien captain dies in the process but as he does so, Picard recites out loud the equivalent myth from humanity: the Story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In the last encounter with the aliens, the first officer of the ship refers to Picard's encounter as being a new episode that they are using to build a new part of their language around. (Just as I am using the episode to try and articulate a very complex phenomenon to you, gentle reader, hence my comment about this example being recursive.)

If this all seems a bit far-fetched, I would draw people's attention to the experience of an old flame of mine. She had grown up in India where English was her first language. Yet when she immigrated to Canada she found it very hard to understand the people around her because the culture was so very different. For example, on the way to Canada her airplane had to do a stop-over in England and the airline gave everyone free restaurant meals. When she looked at the menu she said that she didn't recognize a single item on it except the "meatballs" part of "spaghetti and meatballs". She said that when it was presented to her she didn't have a clue about how to eat the pasta, so she ate the meatballs and went away hungry. (All her co-passengers were eating expensive steaks, because the meal was free.) Later, when she arrived in Toronto she joined some church youth groups to learn the culture, but she had a very hard time figuring out all the nuances of "cool", "groovy" and "out-of-sight". (It was the sixties.) (I have had other friends from places like Russia and Israel make similar comments.)

The similarities between the stories of ancient mythology and modern comic books hasn't been missed by the people who publish comics. Ancient Gods have been recycled as comic heros---such as Thor and Heracles.

The thing that people forget about the ancient myths is that these were not religious icons so much as popular literature. We forget this because the only exposure that most of us get to them happens in school, where people are supposed to bring a certian "respect" to the process and all the ribald humour is removed. But the myths were passed on in drinking halls and around hearths by men and women who were trying to pass the time in an era without electric lighting and when the "dark nights of winter" actually were dark, cold and very boring.

And because these stories were specifically popular in nature, they were not approached with the sort of reverence that scholars bring to Mount Olympus. (Those stories are still exist, but only as scientific cadavers preserved in formalin.) The myths are great not because they were written by brilliant, god-intoxicated seers but rather because they evolved through a process of endless retelling where bits that "spoke" to ordinary people were added and other parts that were no longer relevant were sloughed off. And the minute a society starts to "revere" a story, it dies because this evolutionary process ceases. That means that the minute a myth becomes recognized as being a "myth"---thereby warranting some sort of preservation process by either academic or ecclesiastic---it ceases to be a real myth and instead starts becoming a quaint fairy story.

So if we want to look for a real modern myth it will not exist in either the University or the Church. Instead, it will reside in the cheesiest of popular culture. And I would argue that one of the most important current gods is Iron Man Why? Well the obvious answer would be that he is the lead character in a very popular movie. But that begs the question of why it is so popular. And I think that this is because he is an archetypal figure who is dealing with very important issues that modern humanity has to deal with.

For those of you who do not know the Iron Man "myth", the man in the iron mask is (at least originally) a man named Tony Stark. Mr. Stark is a brilliant technical wizard who is very rich and very good looking (a combination of Bill Gates and George Clooney.) The only fly in the ointment is that Mr. Stark makes his money building weapons of war. One day he gets captured by the enemies of the USA (originally it was the Vietcong, but in the movie it is an Islamic extremist group.) He is wounded in the heart and the only way he can stay alive is through a piece of technology that replaces his heart/keeps his heart going (depending on the version of the myth.) This "new heart" is the creation of a fellow captive, who found Stark dying and saved his life through this piece of miracle medical tech.

This fellow captive is an interesting figure. He is a man from the third world, a small-time, background figure who remarks that he once met Stark at a conference. Tony says that he doesn't remember him. He says this is hardly surprising as Tony was very drunk. He said that he was amazed that someone so intoxicated could give such a brilliant lecture. Obviously, this is a man who is just as smart as Stark, but one who has never had his opportunities. Indeed, not only is he a "nobody", but it comes out that his entire family has been killed in the war that led to his imprisonment.

These two men are being held captive and ordered---on pain of death---to build new and terrible weapons for the enemies of the USA. Trapped, Stark decides to trick his captors by building a weapon that he will use to escape. This is how he builds his first suit of high-tech armor that he uses to escape. In the process, however, his friend---the one who built him a new heart---dies while buying Tony enough time to bring his plan to fruition.

After he escapes, Stark is a changed man. He has seen the carnage of war in front of his very face, knows what his weapons do to flesh and bone, and gains a new appreciation of personal responsibility because he owes his very life to the sacrifice of another man. This leads him to give up his life as an innocent playboy technical wiz, and instead become the "Invincible" Iron Man.

I put the word "Invincible" in scare quotes because Tony Stark is actually an incredibly vulnerable man. He is always one heart malfunction away from death, and in his world he is often thwarted by a low battery or a villain who has figured out how to use this Achilles heel against him. Moreover, Stark is vulnerable. Over many issues of the comic he has battled alcoholism---at one point he actually gives up his suit to another man and becomes a hopeless drunk. (This is referenced in the movie through his constant tippling. I suspect it will be a theme in the inevitable sequel.)

Both of these are important metaphors. Stark's problems are the same as those of the modern, Western world. Our weak hearts keep us from feeling the pain and misery that our actions inflict on others. This comes about because we are, quite literally, drunk with power.

So when you start to appreciate what is really going on in this story, it begins to look just like a story from the Germanic legends or the Mahabharata. A wealthy, foolish wizard is captured by his king's enemies and forced to create evil weapons of war. A good, yet poor wizard who is captured with him saves his live and gives him a new heart. Together they build a new body for the foolish wizard to use for his escape. But the good wizard sacrifices his life to save him. And afterwards the foolish wizard must learn to live with the consequences of having a new heart and a new body---both of which no longer belong to him but to the memory of the dead good wizard.

And for my part I think that this is a very important story for modern people. Insofar as we participate in the modern world of wonders, we are like those wizards. (At least anyone who is technically literate enough to be reading this blog.) And we have to constantly remind ourselves to not become drunk with the power that comes from this wizardry. We need to strengthen our hearts and rebuild our bodies (both physical and mental) in order to use this power for the betterment of the world around us. We do this not only in order because it is what we must but also because we have an obligation to the memory of all those others who are not able to fight on their own behalf. The privileges of wealth and education---the trappings of Tony Stark---only have value if we use them to become defenders of all the people in the past and present who have not been the recipients of such largess.

Name Change

I've changed the name of my blog to Diary of a Daoist Hermit. Primarily, this is because it was recently pointed out to me that I am more accurately described as a Hermit than a Recluse. The difference is that a Hermit exists outside of an ecclesiastic organization, but he still interacts with people. A Recluse, on the other hand, is someone who renounces any interaction with people and tends to live in the wilderness, isolated from all other people.

The Hedonism of Old Age

I just recently turned 49 and at the same time I have been thinking a lot about what it means to get past middle-age.

A big part of what it means to get to this age is a sense of exhaustion. Our bodies get older and aren't as resilient, but I don't think that this is the issue at hand. Certainly in my case I am probably in better shape than I have ever been since my teenage years. (All those Daoist gymnastics, don't you know.) Instead, I think that it is more a question of all the commitments that I have made in my life are eating up my time. I mentioned this to a co-worker who is my age and she said that this resonated completely with her. Indeed, she said that she had broken down just that day into tears just thinking about how little time she has in the day.

Most of us lead busy lives and our careers, interests, homes, families, etc, each take little bites out of our existence. None of them seem huge in themselves, but add together enough mouse nibbles and you get a tiger bite. Added to this is one of those mysterious aspects of aging that everyone mentions: the way the passage of time speeds up. When I think back to how long summer seemed when I was a child and compare it to the way years seem to race by now, it almost seems like a objective, physical phenomenon.

This issue emerged out of the background and entered the foreground last night. I got home from work and even contemplating the fact that I had seven days of vacation ahead of me didn't do much to move me our of my amorphous funk. Oddly enough, what did help was to sit down and watch an escapist movie. When I asked myself why, I thought of a couple things I had read by Leo Tolstoy.

The first was a parable that he had come across somewhere. It involved a man who was walking across the steppes when he was set upon by a pack of wolves. There were no trees in sight and the only refuge he could find was to jump over a cliff and hang by a small tree that was growing out of the rocks. He looked beneathe his feet and saw that at the base of the cliff a tiger was staring up at him. (The Siberian tiger lives in Russia.) As he looked at the sapling he was hanging from, he noticed that mice were gnawing away at the roots holding it to the rocks. In the midst of the predicament, the man noticed that a beehive above him was leaking honey down the rocks in front of his face. He reached out and touched it with his tongue. Nothing he had ever tasted was so sweet!

Another vignette comes from War and Peace where some cavalry men are riding off to battle. One of them has never been in a fight before and he is obsessed with it and especially concerned that he will prove himself to be a coward. Another one is an experienced veteran who has learned a very important trick of ignoring the future and focusing on the here-and-now. The only thing in his mind are the beautiful flowers on the apple trees that they are riding through.

It strikes me when I think about these venues that young people labour under an illusion of immortality. They have yet to end up hanging from that sapling on the cliff. I say "labour" for a reason. Because with that sense of immortality comes a sense of profound obligation. They have to "do the right thing" (if they are altruistic) or "get theirs while they can" (if more selfish.) But when a person gets to a certain age and gains a little wisdom it gets harder and harder to think about the big picture. Instead, the things that really seem to matter are the smell of the apple blossoms, the sweetness of honey and a cheesy Hollywood action flick.

That is why I think that old age is about developing a certain hedonism---.

One of the Problems With Christianity

I had a visit today from an old friend who has gone mad and descended into the very depths of destitution. In respect of her privacy, I won't go into any details, but she is completely incapable of taking care of herself and our much vaunted "social safety net" is totally inadequate for her needs.

It got me thinking about and contrasting the messages of Christianity and Daoism. When I was young I went to Sunday School and we were taught a song who's lyrics went

God sees the little sparrow fall,
It meets his tender view,
If God so loves the little birds,
I know he loves me too.

When I grew older I spent a lot of time studying the Christian message and I went to the trouble of looking up the New Testament passage that this song refers too. Actually, the passage in question is more than a little weird.

"What do Sparrows cost? A dime a dozen? Yet not one of them is overlooked by God. In fact, even the hairs on your head have been counted. Don't be so timid: You're worth more than a flock of sparrows." (Luke 6-7, The Complete Gospels, Annotated Scholars Version.)

It is odd because Jesus is asserting that because God is looking out for these birds, people shouldn't be worried about him looking out for them. But the birds in question are trussed up in a market to be taken home, killed, cooked and eaten. This is hardly something that I particularly find reassuring, let alone something to make into a kitschy song and teach to children!

In spite of this fact, the vast majority of Christians have the belief that in some sense or another God is looking out for each and every human being. I had this come home to me when I was asked to sit in a panel discussion at a school after the 9/11 attacks on the US. One of the other participants was a Catholic priest who assured the children that even though it might not seem that there was a loving God looking out for them, there really is a purpose that will be revealed eventually.

I thought about that when I saw my friend. What possible purpose could a "loving God" use to justify scrambling my friend's thoughts into a porridge of paranoia? And as if that wasn't enough, to then consign her to grinding, absolute poverty? If I met such a God I would give him a real talking to, that's for sure.

Ultimately, this is why I gave up on the Christian enterprise. It seemed to be based on a vision of God that ultimately made him into the sort of person who would lower your property values if he bought the house next door.

I think that Laozi is far more accurate when he says that

"Heaven-and-Earth is not sentimental,
It treats all things as straw-dogs."
(Chapter 5, Dr. John C.H. Wu, trans.)

This isn't to say that I gain any consolation from this point of view. I wish I could believe that there was some sort of smiling God in the Clouds that was looking out for my friends and I. But my experience would indicate that we are the only force of compassion that really exists in the universe.

Vows and Precepts

I came across a site on the Web that lists a set of "Daoist Precepts" that are drawn from a poem titled "The Song of Ch'an Dao Chia". They aren't bad in a "pop-psychology" sort of way, but I don't think that they are traditional in any sense or even terribly perceptive. But they did get me thinking once again about Vows and Precepts in general.

Vows

Vows are public declarations that a person takes when they find themselves inspired to follow a specific religious path. The important point is their public nature because they, to a large extent, remove a person from mainstream society and put them into a special category with different rights and responsibilities than ordinary citizens. In the case of Western monasticism, for example, the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience set monks and nuns apart for ordinary people and gives them the the ability to live in communities.

"Poverty" allows them to pool their resources by living communally, which---to a certain extent---frees them from the more onerous parts of having to earn a living. "Chastity" frees monks and nuns from the entanglements that come from sex and reproduction, which again frees the members from significant financial burdens. "Obedience" creates the framework that allows individuals to live together with---at least in theory---minimal friction. The greater society views these three vows as so onerous that no-one begrudges allowing monastics exemption from some of the more intrusive demands of mainstream society: military service, taxation, and---to some extent---some of the random brutality of existence (I'm talking about what used to be called "respecting people of vows".)

When I was younger I often thought that these three vows should be changed to "Self-Reliance", "Birth Control" and "Responsibility". But as I got a little more experience, I realized that any group that really tried to live according to these principles would blow itself to pieces. "Self-Reliance" would result in individuals trying to horde resources for their old age. "Birth Control" would result in endless battles with and over sexual partners. And, "Responsibility" would create division in communities as individuals fought over what each believed was "the right thing to do".

Hermits like me don't have to worry about such things. To a certain extent we get to make our own rules but in exchange the ones we adopt have no almost no influence on how other people treat us. But the vows we adopt can still define our relationship with the outside world to a certain extent. In my own case I've decided to take vows to never own an automobile or fly in an airplane.

Not owning an automobile has freed up a lot of income, which means that I have a lot more freedom to take time off work than most people. It also means that I have more money to put into charity and hermitage renovation. Paradoxically, I think that it also has freed up a lot of my time. This comes about because it means that I simply "do without" a lot of things that eat up huge amounts of my family and friends time. If I cannot walk, ride my bike, get a ride or take public transit---I simply don't go.

I haven't taken my vows to get any sort of special benefits like people in monastic orders. And for the most part they are based on ecological considerations. But I hope that when people see that it is possible to live a very pleasant life without an automobile and that it is possible to be an intelligent, cultured man without having traveled by airplane---that it might get some folks thinking about their own lifestyle.

Precepts

I realize that there is no real hard and fast difference between a vow and precept, but I like to think that the former is rule or regulation whereas the last is more of a generalized principle. So whereas I have made a rule to not own a car or fly in an airplane, I have some more general principles that I try to live my life by.

The first of these is to avoid being Puritanical in my outlook. I could easily slip into a "holier than thou" way of looking at the world because I think a lot of what people around me do is insane, delusional, feckless and irresponsible. But instead of allowing myself to indulge in self-righteous fantasies, I have gotten into the habit of whenever I see someone doing something I don't approve of, I immediately do a mental inventory of my life in order to find the similar things that I am doing. For example, I once passed an wino and it immediately occurred to me that I am as addicted to junk food like potato chips as he is to alcohol. The only difference is that my addiction is less damaging. My experience would indicate that it is pretty hard to be self-righteous when someone adopts this mental habit.

Another precept that I try to remember was given to me by a friend. He said "it's OK to screw up". What he meant was not that we shouldn't try to be better people, but rather to accept the idea that we all make mistakes and that we should have as much forgiveness for ourselves as we do for others. Another way of looking at it comes from a music teacher I had when I was quite young. He said "if you don't blow a few bad notes, you aren't trying hard enough". Which means that people who never make mistakes also never take risks or push the boundaries---which dramatically limits their lives.

I also try to make sure that I don't become addicted to discipline. If I allowed myself I could probably become someone who was quite rigid in my routines---meditated every single day, always ate very healthy food, exercised religiously, etc. I certainly know a few people like that. But I'm not sure that even if I meditated for hours every day I would be a much better person. I might be a bit more peaceful, but I suspect that this serenity would be at the price of losing a certain degree of insight I get from allowing my impulses to follow more of a "random walk" through life.

Just what are Daoists up to?

Over the summer I read The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell and wrote a post about how much I enjoyed the experience. What I didn't say there, however, was how unsatisfying I found his concluding remarks. Campbell was a firm believer in the maxim that "the East is East and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet". At the core of this belief was his thought that the Eastern faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism were ultimately life denying. Instead he posited that the emergent Western ideal of romantic love and the heroic individual---as exemplified in the Holy Grail legend---was a evolutionary step forward.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this point of view since then and have come to the conclusion that Campbell was wrong. To understand why, though, I had to do some serious thinking about human consciousness, and how the Daoists understand it. To that end, I've been reading A.C.Graham's tremendous survey of ancient Chinese philosophy, Disputers of the Dao. The chapter on Zhuangzi is apropos. As Graham characterizes him, Zhuangzi believed that human beings are at their best when "heaven" lives through them, or, when people "merge with the Dao". This is not some sort of cosmic daze, but rather when people develop an appropriate form of intuitive spontaneity that allows them to do the right thing in the right way at the right time---without having to think about it. He uses the analogy of a skilled tradesman who has developed the "knack" of his craft and suggests that a sage has a similar "knack" for living.

For Zhuangzi, this "knack" only comes about when a person is able to cut away their attachment to the ordinary world and totally identify with the world around them (i.e. the "cosmic Dao".) At this point the sage simply cannot be harmed because he can no longer distinguish between himself and his surroundings. As long as he lives, he can flow with his surroundings. When he dies, he merely returns to the source.

As practical spirituality, Daoist internal alchemy has developed practices aimed at stripping away the distinction between the individual and his surroundings. The core practice of "sitting and forgetting" is aimed at quieting the "internal dialogue" that constantly reminds us that we are individuals instead of just knots of sensory experience. The study of martial arts and other kung-fu allow us to develop and explore the spontaneous action that only comes from mastery of a subject. And on a lyrical level the literature of Daoism is full of stories about adepts who were forced to go through tremendous ordeals in order to burnt out the egoistic impurities of their soul.

Where Campbell goes wrong, however, is to think that these egoistic impulses that the Daoist seeks to leave behind are what it means to be who we are. Instead, they are the junk and slag that are left over from our abusive childhoods, deranged culture and destructive instincts. For example, any freedom that I may gain will not come from giving into the anger that is the result of being beaten as a child but rather in going beyond it. That would only be the acting out of old karma---to use the Indian term. Instead, if I can clear away all this sewage from the spring in my soul, I will be able to drink deeply from the Dao's life-giving water.

The key question that people like Campbell get confused about is freedom. As I have mentioned before, true freedom is not the right to sit on a couch, watch television and eat potato chips. But I had never really been able to get my handle on what it is before I came across a quote from Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power". This is a very important saying for political activists (I came across it because it was quoted by Ralph Nader), but it also has relevance for spiritual folks. The goal of burning off the spiritual impurities in Old Lao's furnace is not to become some sort shadow of a human being, but rather to become the most free person possible. This comes about because by doing so we are learning how to directly participate in the central power of the universe.

This is what it means to "merge with the Dao".

Taijiquan, Mediation and Breathing

A lot of people are quite confused about the role of breathing in the Neidan practices. (I know that I was for a long, long time.) That is because there are a lot of contradictory things said about the practice by people who have only partial truths. My understanding has been won by a couple decades of practice, and is always open to revision, but once one begins to understand how all the contradictions begin to fit together into a whole, there is a very good chance that you are beginning to really understand the concept. (Much like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.) In order to help others learn faster than I have, I thought I'd share my understanding.

First, the questions that plagued me as a student and the answers I have found---.

All teachers and all books say that same thing: "Keep your back straight!" The problem with this is that the back is a very complex thing that is far from straight. The spine is an very complex "S Curve" that curves back and forth all through its length, so it can never, strictly speaking, be perfectly straight. Eventually, I just discarded this concept as something that is a short-form for something that is a lot more complex.

Most teachers tell us to keep a vertical back, although I have had others strongly emphasize the need to bend forward and stretch the lower back. I have come to the conclusion that the vertical back is the best posture from a martial arts point of view and as a way to practice the art. My suspicion is that the people who advise an extreme stretching posture are either doing so for a very specific health reason (perhaps to help people with very stiff lower backs) or are simply passing on this lesson in a "monkey see, monkey do" manner without understanding what it does to the body. Either way, once one has advanced in their practice where their tailbone has unfused (you'll know when it happens because it breaks with a loud "snap"), I can't see any more reason for heroic efforts on the lower back and very good ones to stop the practice.

Many taijiquan teachers suggest that people do the set while practicing what is called "reverse breathing". It is called "reverse" primarily because it is the opposite of "Buddha Breathing", which is commonly taught by meditation teachers. Some teachers suggest that "reverse breathing" is dangerous and suggest that people instead breath "naturally". Take a look at the following diagrams to understand the difference between the two and what is at issue.

Buddha Breathing (in breath)


The important issues to remember are that in Buddha breathing, the air is pushed down into the tan t'ien ("hara" in Japanese), instead of the lungs. While this happens, the front of the hips pivot downwards and the rear pivots upward (as the monks say, "the anus looks to the moon".) This is the posture that Buddhists adopt while meditating and it gives a very solid, "locked" feeling when one is sitting in a lotus posture.


In contrast, reverse breathing---as the name suggests---turns this on its head.

Reverse Breathing (in breath)

In reverse breathing the air is pushed up into the chest cavity and the tan t'ien sucks inward. The hips inward, which pushes the genitals up and the anus turns away from the moon and looks to the earth. This has a profound impact on a person's taijiquan because as the hips tuck under, one is able to sink physically downwards through the hip joint while keeping vertical. (My tajiquan teacher called this "sitting like in a chair", which meant absolutely nothing to me and left me completely flummoxed about what he meant.) The act of sucking in the tan t'ien and expanding the chest makes this quite complicated and not terribly easy movement a lot easier. The value from martial power is that as the hips roll under, very strong tendons in the back are stretched like springs, which stores power that can be unleashed at a later time. This is where the idea comes from that in taijiquan one attacks with an out-breath and retreats with an in-breath. When one understands the importance of reverse breathing in taijiquan, one eventually moves towards a pace where each move takes one long, calm breath.

The reason why people suggest that reverse breathing is dangerous is because it does seem to have bad effects if you try to force it or do it all the time. At one time I tried to do it while meditating and did try to force it. I stopped doing this when I had a blood vessel explode in my left eye while meditating. I have heard examples of practitioners who were stricken blind or who suffered from severe high-blood pressure from too much reverse-breathing. As a result, teachers who do not really know what they are doing, or have to run a lot of students through their halls in order to the pay the rent are probably better off simply saying that it is dangerous and tell people not to do it.

But life is dangerous and the greatest risk in life is to take no risks at all! The taijiquan sets that I have learned all begin and end with three slow, quiet breaths. My suspicion is that the initial three breaths are supposed to be reverse breathing in order to prepare for the taijiquan. The last three should be Buddha breathing in order to bring the body out of the habit of reverse breathing. I also think that the reason why people are supposed to study meditation once they get to a certain level in taijiquan is to learn about things like Buddha breathing and reverse breathing in order to advance their forms practice; and then to settle down into serious Buddha breathing to act as a prophylactic to prevent the practitioner from damaging herself. (There are also many good reasons for doing Buddha breathing, of course, for example, I have found it a good thing to do to keep warm on my cold walks home from work.)


Of course, the overwhelming majority of people who do taijiquan simply want some non-stressful exercise and would find all of this quite bizarre. The biggest problems arise from people with bad judgement who obsess about this sort of thing and don't use their common sense in practice. But if someone remembers to be a "light unto themselves" and to tread the path of moderation, these practices can be of value for that vanishingly small part of the population that seeks to follow the same path as I.