From: schan@birch.srg.af.mil (Stephen Chan x4485)
Subject: Re: Well, well, well...
Organization: SRG, Arinc Research Corp., Annapolis, MD
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 93 15:08:03 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.162042.10370@sei.cmu.edu> psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell) writes:
>
>...so you want to push hands do you?  
>
>			(okay okay :-)

	Well, in this at least, I probably have close to the same amount of
experience...

>Steve, (you ignorant slut)

	Not at all, I am a well educated and sexually deprived.

>> - by applying their one extreme against
>>the other extreme, the students would come closer to the center.
>
>This is your conjecture.  The way a yogi might study the Vedas for example, is
>to take a single line and meditate on it for hours, maybe days, maybe years.
>Sound familiar?  
>
>	NOT!

	This one just whooshed by me...what are we talking about?

>> is that book learning is VERY
>>important - but that everything you learn must be examined, and made real
>>with practice. Ultimately, book learning must be discarded, but you have to
>>learn it before you can discard it.
>
>...you made this up didn't you?
>

	Nope. I'll cite a whole bunch of "Masters" if you wish.

>>	Its all predicated on the belief that your yogi isn't just plain
>>deluded. Your yogi sits around opening his chakras, and Nietszche sat around,
>>arguing with people, studying history and analyzing things.
>
>I didn't claim proof.  I claimed that yogis have a defined "practice" and that
>the results of these practices can be measured.  That is, at the very most
>basic level, if you follow yogic practice, including diet, you will at the
>very least reduce blood pressure, and be able to reduce breathing and heart
>rate at will.  These side effects are measurable, irrespective of perceptions
>one may have.  

	The west has all kinds of relaxation and exercise programs too. How is
this this relevant?

>See above.  I can also tell you that you can sit in a church from now until
>doomsday and you will never have the consistency of perceptions or the
>residual calm effected by consistent yogic meditation.  

	We're comparing apples to oranges. If you want to compare a life of
consistent yogic meditation, then you ought to compare it to monastic life -
that aspect of Christianity was removed from the mainstream, because it was
too demanding and rigorous - impossible to popularize something if it is too
difficult.
	(hmmm...sounds like the long vs short form discussion)

>
>"There is counterfeit because there is real gold."
>

	The same can be said about your criticism of the west.

>The point is that he is not treated in a useful framework such that his
>"knowledge" might actually serve a purpose.  People cite him in the same way
>they do scripture, as though it had inherent, obvious value. 

	Big deal. People do that with everything. And people always will.

>Ah, so this is it, you discount all things "metaphysical."
>

	Nope, not at all.

>>	Maybe you should give the Chinese some credit for deciding how their
>>language will be represented to westerners, instead of passively accepting
>>Wade-Giles, or other foriegnly produced system?
>
>Okay now this I really don't get.  Actually I'm not passively accepting
>anything except that I have never pronounced any word in the English language
>beginning with the letter "Q" with a "ch" sound.  Is this a difficult concept?

	Then how do you distinguish between the "ch" sound in qi and the "ch"
sound in chang? In Chinese, they are 2 distinct sounds, but in English, they
are pretty similar.
	qi means air/breath, chi (same tone) means to eat (caveat: my Mandarin
is pretty shaky)

>hunh?  Also, I never say "xit!"  or "xame on you..." or "xe sell sea xells at
>the sea xore..."  

	Same thing as above, the x in xing-yi is distinct from the sh in
Shanghai.

	Why use 2 characters "ee" when you can just use 1, "i"? As I understand
it, this usage of i to represent ee was inheritted from Wade-Giles, which (as
you may suspect) was the product of english speakers.

>In other words, I give the Chinese linguists credit for nothing in light of
>their ignorance of my language.

	Maybe you should turn this around. You don't know much about Chinese,
so what basis do you have for criticizing their work?
	The written english language is a confusing, irregular and inefficient.
If you have to create a system for romanizing a language, why not make it
concise, efficient and unambiguous?
	And if it seems weird to English speakers, maybe that's just because
they're used to something different.

>...these are just my opinions after all.  I don't really care who believes
>them.

	You obviously do have some consideration, otherwise you wouldn't go
through the effort of posting them.

--
	Stephen Chan
	uunet!srg!schan or uunet!srg!schan@uunet.uu.net