Bao wrote:Bhassler wrote:Could be-- it's just a theory based on what I've seen of contemporary practice. There's also some debate about what genuinely constitutes "meditation." Depending on some definitions, genuine jibengong and meditation might be physiologically incompatible,
What western people call meditation is pointless in the discussion. How meditation was perceived and practiced historically in China and in martial arts is what has meaning in the debate.
What I know is that Yang Cheng Fu's generation of Tai Chi teachers, both him and teachers from other Tai Chi schools practiced standing meditation (standing exercises practiced
as meditation), which means that it's highly likely that standing as meditation is at least older than Yang Cheng Fu's generation, long before "taiji went all floppy", maybe something practiced at least as early as by Yang Lu Chan's students.
Anyway, from all available accounts, it's certainly not a modern hippie thing.
Thanks for the comments. I'm not a Yang stylist, nor a historian, so it's good to get more context. It sounds like Appledog may have some issues with the claims about older generations including standing meditation, but that's all outside my baliwick, so I'll leave you to it. I'm still going to call most taiji folks a bunch of floppy hippies, though-- a man's gotta have hobbies.
Also, I'm not talking about a "western" view of meditation, I'm basing my statements on conversations with those who have practiced meditation seriously as part of various traditions such as zen and yoga. As you mentioned earlier, the same word can mean different things to different people depending on background and context. What I think of as serious meditation and serious jibengong are not compatible, but both of those things may mean something different to you. We don't have to agree, but it's probably good if everyone is clear for themselves what
they mean by those terms.
Bao wrote:Bhassler wrote:Bao wrote:Back then everyone was religious and did various religious practices.
That's a very monolithic way of thinking. It's unlikely that "everyone" was any more homogenous 2000 years ago than they are today.
It's "everyone in China" and it's my own conclusion from reading history. Even the most intellectual thinkers were religious and superstition. There's a written account that Zhu Xi (he who resurrected Confucianism as a state philosophy) prayed before altars in Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian temples in one and the same day. Through the centuries, religion had an influence on virtually everyone's daily life, their thoughts and actions.
General comments:
-Academic record and "ground truth" are frequently not the same.
-Participating in cultural norms does not necessarily imply religious or superstitious belief.
-Everyone is superstitious, it's wired into our brains, and is what allows us to function as humans. Belief in electrons is superstitious, as no one has ever actually seen one. Most people's belief in science is functionally religious. If you haven't done or at least read the original research, and can understand the technology and the math involved, you're taking it on the word of "enlightened" individuals that what they say is truth. Just because someone places their faith in Neil DeGrasse Tyson rather than the pope doesn't make it not faith.
-All of which is to say that it is likely that all the variations and complexity of belief systems that exist today, are probably no more varied than what existed through most of human history. It gets to be a pretty deep and twisted rabbit-hole of epistemology and cognition, which is way off the topic. It's worth at least knowing it exists, though, if people want to challenge their own biases and assumptions about what these arts meant in the past and how that relates to what they mean today.