e' sul Ki visto che se ne ' parlato

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Qi

By Scott Phillips

The nature of qi is that when ever you try to pin it down, it transforms,
coalesces or disperses. What I would like to communicate in this chapter is
the idea that qi is a vast concept, a worthy concept of adopting, and a
comfortable concept, something that enriches our view and experience of
life.

What is Qi? The word Qi has been in common usage since about 300 B.C.E. It
is usually translated as 'energy' or 'vital force' which is far too limiting
a definition. "In the very earliest texts qi is the vapor or steam that
arises from the heating of water and watery substances and subsequently
appears as the actual air that we breathe. By the time of the Huainanzi (139
B.C.E.), qi is the universal energy/matter/fluid out of which all phenomena
in the universe are constructed,..."1 An important thing to understand about
this word is that it is adaptable to the 'scale' in which our bodies2 are
capable of feeling and practicing.

Fortunately the term qi is already in the process of being adopted into the
English language, so readers are likely to have some experience with it. The
first thing to say is that qi is absolutely rooted in experience, not
fantasy. This is all one needs to know to begin practicing; however, for
those interested in exploring the concept further, consider the following
statements.

When the term qi was adopted into the Chinese language, logical thinking and
analysis of historical precedent had already made a mark on the
philosophical thinking of the time.

The choice to use the word qi carries with it a comfort or ease with
experiences of ambiguity. It is an expression of ambiguous experience, which
never the less has a feeling quality, an experience of time(s), direction(s)
and can include shape(s).

Qi is only experienced in context, when jing3 or substance is in motion or
in relation to motion. For example, when we are touched, when we visually
track motion, or when we feel time passing, we have an experience of jing.
Jing, is an aspect of qi.

Qi is the quality of our experience which we clearly experience, but which
to enumerate or dissect or 'nail down', would obscure the totality of the
experience, shrinking its multidimensionality, and it's connection to
cosmology. Thus, qi transmissions done through some practice, playing the
flute, calligraphy, martial arts, etc..., can contain innumerable layers of
intimacy.

Though we can have clear experiences of what blood feels like under the
skin, a somewhat ambiguous experience is far more common. With in or around
our bodies there may be 900 different cycles or rhythms going on at once.
All of these can be felt. Perhaps they can even be felt simultaneously, but
differentiating even five of them at a time, seems daunting. Any of the 900
may actually be undifferentiatable. The arbitrariness of naming and the
contextual nature of names are imperfect tools for communicating experience,
this very concept is key to understanding the use of the word qi.

Qi is unifying, it connects and permeates everything. It is zaohua--to take
form and transform.

" ...Qi gives form to (zao) and transforms (hua) everything, in a two-sided
operation, since it defines the fixed form but also changes it constantly.
Zaohua is the Chinese equivalent of our word "creation," but it is a
creation without a creator. The only constant reality is Qi in its
transformations, the continuous coming and going between its undetectable,
diluted state and its visible state, condensed into a defined being."4

Qi is what holds things together and what shapes and changes them. It is
inspiration, that which has no substance and yet permeates everything.

Qi is time and direction, it is a body, a community or communities, in ever
increasing, or decreasing, concentric circles, or spirals or formations, of
smaller and larger entities which are connected because of their
participation in a larger body. The body which is inclusive of everything
known and everything unknown is called the Dao.

Qi is the central focus of a unifying cosmological view of the universe,
which includes the known and the unknown, the detailed and a broader
calculus which extrapolates the unity of all things. It can be summarized as
breath but it would be a breath large enough to inhale tables and chairs,
whole battle fields, and planets. It includes an ordinary sense of breath
but is not confined by time, space, density, purity or refinement. Though it
is not confined by history or density, it can be practically defined in a
scale or a context. The temperature of one's blood can be measured but its
particular qi quality can never be proved, it can only be experienced.

Qi has nothing to do with questions of belief, and it is not romanticism. Qi
is not human centered and is not given a value, good or bad, personal or
tribal.

Qi as a concept was harnessed by Daoists or proto-Daoists to unify different
tribal, linguistic and cultural groups. The concept of qi was used to
consolidate and categorize supernatural forces, including the cults of local
ghosts and gods, into natural categories, like wind, water, thunder and
fire. So there are fire type spirits and wind type gods. It is the
experiencable qi aspects of the supernatural which allowed them to be
categorized. Early Daoists used this consolidating notion of qi to bring
people into unity by including them in larger qi bodies. This expansive
notion folded supernatural and mythic thinking into larger categories of
condensed or rarefied qi, including, larger categories of identity. It is
the foundation of Han culture, the seed of Chinese civilization.

This process is captured in the image of a dragon:

"As a composite totem, the dragon possesses at least the head of a tiger,
the horns of a ram, the body of a snake, the claws of an eagle and the
scales of a fish. Its ability to cross totemic boundaries and its lack of
verisimilitude to any living creature strongly suggest that from the very
beginning the dragon was a deliberate cultural construction. The danger of
anachronism notwithstanding, the modern Chinese ethnic self-definition as
the "dragon race" indicates a deep-rooted sense that Chineseness may derive
from many sources.5 "

In this world view things with out substance, or with virtually immeasurable
or imperceptible substance (mass), are included in (not excluded from) a
larger cosmology.

The modern notions of science expand fragmentation by increasing the
perceptible, not decreasing the imperceptible.

Folk culture everywhere speaks of ghosts, demons, spirits and gods. Modern
culture everywhere speaks of bacteria, rates of infection, surgical cures,
viruses, nerve dysfunction, blood pressure, toxic waste, and ultra violet
rays. To Daoists they are all manifestations of qi, because qi is what we
experience directly. Any of the above explanations of experience may be
useful in a particular context, yet there is no need to make 'leaps of
faith'. For Daoist's, science which claims-to-know, belongs in the same
category as reckless shamanism, trance mediumship, and blood sacrifice. It
is something to coexist with, but not encourage.

If this definition seems overwhelming, keep in mind that talking about the
qi of a time sequence, a work of art, or an event is far easier than
describing or defining the whole concept at once. Actually, feeling it
requires no effort at all.

By practicing the same movements day after day a certain comfort, ease the
familiarity with this ambiguity emerges. Add to this the element of time and
one will be feeling qi momentum.

The following is from one of the earliest surviving commentaries on the
Daode jing:

"Ho-shang kung says: "The Dao gives birth to the beginning. One gives birth
to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to the breath (qi) between, the
mixture of clear and turpid. These three breaths(qi) divide themselves into
Heaven, Earth, and Man and together give birth to the ten thousand things.
These elemental breaths are what keep the ten thousand things relaxed and
balanced. The organs in our chests, the marrow in our bones, the spaces
inside plants allow these breaths passage and make long life possible.""
(Red Pine)6

Qi comes into being at the moment of polarization between any two divisions
of experience. Movement and stillness, time and space, twisting and
wrapping, up and down, or clear and turpid.

Qi gong can be viewed as an experiment with altering our physical
relationship to any two polarizations.

Let's look at time and space. By slowing down the time it takes to do a
movement, the refined details of that movement unfold in space, continuously
transforming over a longer cycle of time, and eventually changing one's
range of motion. From a purely physiological point of view both time and
space are sensory perceptions, which all emerge in utero with the
development of the nervous system and the inner ear, in relationship to
movement.7

With qi gong the amount of time you do some movement is always being
calibrated against the space you do it in. The more slowly you go, the more
details emerge in the space you are moving through.

Simply doing the same gentle movements over time will give the practitioner
a measure of how all the other things they do in the space of their lives
effects the movement of their bodies; noticing first the effects of food,
rest, and work, perhaps becoming more subtle or refined in one's
observations over time.

Time cycles can be sped up or slowed down. Qi gong is relating to time in an
unusual way. There are an infinite number of clocks, or swirling colored
clouds, growing and shrinking around substance (jing). We can give them
names like gonad time, nose time, finger time, hair time, sun time, moon
time, and computer time. Qi gong sensitizes us to time, and the relationship
the factor of time has to everything else, including other senses of time.
This is the practice of qi gong, bagua zhang, taiji chuan, and is a link
these practices have to ritual.

So as the saying goes, when we rush we are speeding toward our own death. So
what is happening to our bodies over time when we regularly sit, stuck in
traffic, in our cars wishing and trying to go faster?

Pain itself may be a forward or a backward movement of time. Diarrhea is
fast, constipation is slow. If my finger hurts, is it because I'm getting to
re-experience all the time it moved over the last three days all at once? Or
is it perhaps that the next three days are being thrust upon me all at once?
Repetitive stress vs. sudden trauma.

When we are aggressive, we tend to get catapulted forwards in time, when we
are gentle perhaps we can go any direction in time.

Qi is a sense of many times, felt together.

Qi gong is moving while feeling time.

Part of what has been the inspiration of Daoist hermits and ritual
practitioners alike, is a deep sense that we are all connected. This same
feeling can also be a strong and clear inspiration for the practice of qi
gong. However: Those who seek the heart of qi gong will also find themselves
swimming in the weak and the murky.

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1 Harold D. Roth, "The Inner Cultivation Tradition of Early Daoism", p.125,
in Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.,
(Princeton University Press, 1996).

2 The Daoist concept of body is not meant to be limited to the 'flesh bag'.
It could also be translated as community and could refer to anything from
all the 'entities in the body of the adept, to the limitless cosmos itself.
(see Schipper)

3 Different jing from the one mentioned earlier which means classic. This
jing, which I am here calling substance is an aspect of condensed qi usually
translated as 'essence'; however, it also has the meaning of "the
self-reproductive quality of nature" as it manifests in things, i.e. pollen
and seeds in trees, the part of our bodies which makes scabs, and as some
vulgar individuals have translated it: semen.

4 Robinet, Growth of a Religion, p.8.

5 Tu Wei-ming, "Chinese Philosophy: A Synopsis," in a companion to World
Philosophies. Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe. (Oxford: Blackwell).

6 Red Pine, Lao-tzu's Taoteching,( Mercury House, 1996).

7 A sense of timelessness and infinite space also seem to emerge in utero.
See Bonnie Cohen, "The Action in Perceiving," in Contact Quarterly Dance
Journal, Fall 87, Vol. XII no. 3.

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to ju koto de
e' tutto

' S A T O R I '

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or manufacturing atomic bombs. It has nothing to do with killing
human beings, destroying things or waging war. Civilization is to
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                              -- Nichidatsu Fujii.
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