 |
Qi Gong For Beginners List Price: $14.99 Sale Price: $6.99 Used From: $6.95  |
|
QI GONG FOR BEGINNERS/ is the perfect way to explore and experience the numerous benefits of Qi Gong. Used for thousands of years in China to build energy, improve & maintain health and cultivate peace of mind, these easy to learn practices are designed to enhance you vitality and well being... |
 |
Wudang Taijiquan (Tai Chi Chuan) 108 Form - YMAA List Price: $39.95 Sale Price: $27.99 Used From: $27.99 |
 |
The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way (Fireside Books (Fireside)) List Price: $16.00 Sale Price: $9.08 Used From: $5.87 |
|
Written by a Westerner for the Western mind, here is the first book to explore in light of modern science the balanced and comprehensive system of health care used by Chinese physicians, martial artists, and meditators for over 5,000 years... |
 |
The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know List Price: $16.99 Sale Price: $5.22 Used From: $1.79 |
|
The bestselling authors of The Multi-Orgasmic Man show you and your partner how to: Experience intense multiple whole-body orgasms Pleasure each other profoundly Use sexuality for health and healing Deepen your love and spiritual relationship Couples will discover simple step-by-step techniques for a level of sexual pleasure, intimacy, and healing they may not have known was possible... |
 |
Tao Te Ching List Price: $10.99 Sale Price: $5.77 Used From: $3.64 |
|
Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living, and one of the wonders of the world. In eighty-one brief chapters, the Tao Te Ching looks at the basic predicament of being alive and gives advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit... |
taoist tai chi books
taoism and meditation?
In the Chuang Tzu (or Zhuangzi) and the Taoteching, meditation isn't really mentioned anywhere. These two books just sort of tell you the truth about life and everything and I guess that they are so apparent and so direct, that you do sort of "lose the self." Really, it seems to me that meditation isn't really necessary for anything at all in Taoism. But, in Zen, a school of Buddhism influenced by these Taoists, they meditate all the time, using zazen, to sort of experience the truths about Buddhism, which are strikingly similar to the truths in Taoism. So, is meditation necessary in Taoism? Did I miss something about meditation or yoga or zazen or tai chi or whatever in the Chuang Tzu and the Taoteching? And really, how important is meditation and how useful is it really?
Also, which way should I go down - Zen or Taoism?
Meditation is certainly the goal of Taoist practice. However, what is generally termed meditation by other practitioners is often nothing of the sort. Meditation is a period of time spent free of the mind, free of sensation and thus free of the body. It is not often experienced and at best can be found in a short period of time each evening that we spend in deep dreamless sleep.
Meditations with visualisation and indeed any techniques utilising the mind as a tool can never fully work. Imagine a flooding river and then trying to negate it by pouring great amounts of water into it... This is what we are doing when we attempt to harness and direct the mind to assist us in losing the mind... to try & forcibly enter the state of "no-mind".
The Tao Te Ching and other texts simply cannot provide the methods beacuse it requires tuition and oral transmittion. How can a book help you if a posture is incorrect, how can it discourse and clarify any issues, how can it work out and fine tune a personal method and so on ? So unfortunately no text can transmit what needs to be said to achieve this type of Taoist meditation and so it can only act as a taster and perhaps a subtle experience of what the whole experience can be through its wondrous prose and metaphysical imagery.
Some Zen techniques are excellent. I would recommend simply reading more into it all and seeing which pulls you in your gut more. To my eyes Taoism has the ability to draw from any source to achieve its goal and any Buddhist technique is an exercise in repression & control. And to harness the full power of the organism cannot be found in this way. Sure bliss can be found (of sorts) and a good pleasant life can be led BUT one will never find the total unity within theirselves when elements of them have been repressed. Push the wrong buttons and a Buddhist can still be affected in many ways. I did very little just last year and made one walk away from me in disgust. It reminds me of when a tortured Christian cries at the sky "WHY ME GOD??? - WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS". Where control is given away to a deity or a method or the mind or whatever then how can one ever be in their own personal centre ?
Primordial Qigong (Chi Kung) or Tai Chi for Enlightenmen
