the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

TrainingDummy wrote:

wayne hansen wrote:First when people talk about spiritual aspects each individual has a differing view of what it entails
It should be a result of standard training
Three stages are needed
1. Earth.body training
2. Man.mind training
3. Heaven.spirit training
Without the first two in place the third will lead to dark places

Sounds fine within a Taoist context but there's plenty of spiritual traditions that don't involve those three stages and don't seem to be lacking without them.

Different people have different things to do.

Note my personal training is roughly under this framework, but I always feel diversity in spiritual models makes it more interesting and avoids dogma.

In olden times stage one was probably achieved by most people by the heavy burden of physical labor. In ancien warfare(maybe modern too) some soldiers probably got stage 1&2 from coming out alive and whole from the battles

Having worked shoulder to shoulder with many labourers it is not the same
Most labouring tears down the body not building it up
I think PTSD puts pay to the theory that being in the military gives you 2&3
Not saying that some don't achieve it but it is not always a byproduct

Any of the internal traditions as well as shaolin can be practiced with the spiritual component. The issue is understanding how that component is different from religion.
Chinese tcma grew to maturity at the beginning of Chinese modernity, so while tcma does include aspects of daoism and Buddhism, they are also highly coloured by modernist ideas about athletics and spirituality.

Taijiquan, baguazhang and xingyiquan all have qi gong and neidan practices, but to what extent these are available in individual lineages is highly influenced by what the school emphasizes as well as what it might keep secret.

My suggestion would be to learn meditation independently of martial arts and then once you have the basic idea, bring it into your practice.
If you understand the basic concepts, you will be able to see the connection.
There really is no school of martial arts that does meditation as well as authentic Buddhists or daoists, and in terms of traditional such as those of wudang, let's just say that their martial arts are decidedly modern in flavour

wayne hansen wrote:Name one that doesn't follow the formula

I must be misreading the question, there's tonnes on non-Taoist spiritual schools with depth, and there's plenty of schools that don't clearly separate the training into body, mind, and spirit. Can you clarify what you're asking?

Examples are Tantra in it's Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan flavours; Jewish kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Sufism, Theravada Buddhism, etc.

I don't know about Kabbalah and have never seen anyone who has achieved through it
I do know with Christian mysticism that they are now borrowing heavily from zen
As for tantra and Buddhism they all follow the EMH model
All start with posture and breath earth
One point man
Leading to enlightenment heaven

Some theorize about Jesus "lost years" that he during this time dwelled in India and from there picked up his spiritual teachings, so the "neo" Christians borrows from Zen Buddhism might be seen as trying to go back to the roots, but I guess it's more of a trend thing as Yoga and Taiji and cross fit has been for many. About Kabbalah I guess Christianity's Holy trinity is Kabbalah light.... or maybe the very essence.

wayne hansen wrote:All start with posture and breath earth
One point man
Leading to enlightenment heaven

Ok, so you're using HME as a meta model. I don't total agree with the model. as I prefer to separate meta models (e.g. Wilber's AQAL) from the traditions themselves to avoid confusions like the one I just had, i.e. I thought you were taking the position that only practice focused Taoists followed a "spiritual" path.

Also not every tradition has breath exercises, not every process focuses on a single thing, and the definition of enlightenment is hard to get consensus on.

Cheers

Name the ones that dont

wayne hansen wrote:Name the ones that dont

Academically the onus is more on you to prove your theory, but maybe go back and re-read the Bhagavad Gita for an example.

Anyway, it appears that we have a fundamental disagreement in opinion, which is fine from a diversity viewpoint, but is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. Good luck with your model and I'll be genuinely happy to see you expand on it in future.

cheers,

There is no onus on anyone
However you are the one that says I am in error so I just wondered which traditions you were referring to
I have been training for a lot of years without your blessing so my path does not need your blessing
As for reading ancient Indian texts I did that in my early years of training
I find the Taoist texts to be much more to my liking so my interests lie there
I was just simply trying to respond to the question asked
Most people don't even come to grips with the physical component of the arts so to ask for more would be a step too far