Monday, April 20, 2009

E-Book Review


Title: Yang Gong FengShui - Fundamental Theories
Author: M.L. Chin


Review:

This is a very BASIC book of Yang Gong FengShui written in the pretext of the so called old method or GuFa. Although the introduction is brief, it is meant to give an over simplified view of classifications as the old method versus the new method for purpose to allow reader to further research into both techniques without the preconceive ideas of which is neither superior nor otherwise. As this work reflects on the writer, whom was a disciple of Yang Gong Old method, he has consciously tried to distance himself from writing a biased view with regards to Yang Gong in an idolised manner, although with its setbacks. From the continuous explanations, such devoid of idolization result in many interpretations that is purportedly classify as Yang Gong old method, very distinctive in nature and in a style of explanation only found common within the Chinese literate FengShui communities. Saying thus, the ways in which a postulation is made is typically Chinese in thinking, logic and understanding. For a western reader, such will pose a greater degree of irrational line of reasoning and logic. Perhaps the notion of things being Chinese would need to be clarify before embarking on this book.

Chapter 1 resemble the history of Yang Gong in a nutshell. When it states that Yang Gong is the Imperial Master, such title has a far reaching impact to the Chinese reader then any others, as such title bearer holds the responsibility beyond the living and the death. The tale of how Yang Gong left the imperial palace and live among the commoner in a place now called Yang Xian Ling or Mountain of the Sagely Yang, on a superficial level indicates its genesis, which again may lead to further abuse of identification of authenticity of any FengShui lineages, as Yang Gong old and new methods are one of the many lineages harping around this art of FengShui. At a deeper level, although not mentioned in details, is the name of Jiu Ping annexed to Yang Gong as the savior of the poor. Meaning in regardless of the auspiciousness of a place, such method can still make a difference to a commoner.

Chapter 2 resemble the definition of Growing Qi, ShengQi. The writer tries to give different perspective of ShengQi in accordance to different schools although not without its setbacks. More importantly, the writer stress the fact that ShengQi stems from the underlying knowledge of the 12 growth phases with relation to the 5 processes, each found in the 8 directions. Precisely saying, the purpose of FengShui is to ride ShengQi both the internal and the external, a concept annexed to the Burial Classics again, by another great grandmaster before Yang Gong, name GuoPu. Here the methodology is silenced, as prescribed it is just a BASIC book of Yang Gong Old Method.

Chapter 3 resemble the meanings of Qi or Water Mouth. The opening pretext stems on comparison between the other schools, again not without its setbacks. The underlying principle is first to indentify what is not Watergate. Then, only to identify what is Watergate, typical of a Chinese way of reasoning. That is still not the catch. The writer brings its reader one full cycle of landform analogy of how Qi is born out of earth and water is born out of Qi, follows by why water follows mountain as the principle of water is Yin, female and Mountain is Yang, male. Such postulation has caused heated debates among the contemporary FengShui theorist today and is taken as a distinctive boundary between the old methods with the new method, although I may differ in such opinions. These male and female marry in the so called XuanKong with the front bright hall. The intercourse of male and female give birth to ShengQi, before the water exits via the Watergate, usually locked by two mountains. At this point of explanations, there is again, no conclusive definition as to what constitute a Watergate, liken to the act of chasing mirage.

Chapter 4 resembles more round about arguments as first the theory of what and what not constitute a mountain dragon and the water dragon annexed to phrases and definition found in the burial classics. Overall, it is noted that these dragons are found naturally and not drains that were dug out, purportedly to mirror the water dragon and lumps of mud to represent mountain dragon. More importantly, it states that the male and female moves parallel to each other. What does this signify in regards to Yang turning or Yin turning was not discuss in details and were left for other chapters. The rest of the sub chapters were more geared towards rebuttal of the other method, not constituting the old method school of thoughts. To the uninitiated, it brings forth a sense of supremacy of the old method over the new method with highlights of redundancy of the Yin Yang denotation of the Heaven plate and the use of the Human plate to audit the external environment. More importantly the notions of Yin matches Yang or vice versa are deeply misunderstood when it comes to the Yin Yang Heaven plate. The roles of the human plate were rather sketchy and were left unaddressed.

Chapter 5 resembles the famous Yang Gong 72 dragon rings. The postulations of each directions consists of the 5 elements are explained here in a geomantic manners. The writer subconsciously idolised the intelligence of Yang Gong when he explains the derivation of the 72 dragons in pain taking details, almost of explaining from the inner rings to the outer rings of the Heaven plate. It is just a pity that the writer did not include diagrammatic explanations to ease understanding. The other subchapters dwell more into the notions of death and emptiness lines or void lines but never mention in detail as the applications of these void lines and how would a practitioner quantify such in a nexus of its measurements. A comparative discussion were made against other school of thoughts notably Xuan Kong, again which bias towards the Yang Gong Old Method. These 72 dragons were annexed to another postulation of Dian Dian Dao sequence which was to be explained in detail in chapter 9. Reaching thus far, it is not easy to consume all the postulations put forth at a glance, critically, as it was explains in a typical Chinese way of understanding towards the subject matter in a flux at a beginner or entry level.

Chapter 6 resembles the introduction of the 12 growth phases, the 3 combinations or frames, the palm method for ease of remembrance. These palm method is very useful to ease the art of memorizing, again something very Chinese in inclination, almost devoid of using the LuoPan. This follow by the way of reading the Heaven’s plate on paper or in theory only. It absolutely sound easy, nevertheless very difficult if one is not shown the way in practice.

Chapter 7 resembles the notorious arguments of the old method supremacy which were very bias in nature. Along these line of arguments, the idolisation of Yang Gong takes centre stage almost liked taking a direct reference from other writings in the same subject in the Chinese language.

Chapter 8 resembles the modus operandi of Yang Gong old method 9 procedural practices from pre-audit to rectification of others “screw-up” FengShui jobs in a glance. Yes, do not expect anything more then a glance and it works well fine as a brochure to advertise and advocate Yang Gong old method as a curriculum.

Chapter 9 is note worthy and resembles the discussion of the classical text of Qing Ran Ao You at a theoretical approach only without much reference to applications.

In summary, when one understood the method, it is as easy as A B and C. Although the writer wishes to explain in a beating about the bush manners and very Chinese way of postulation, many so called secrets are woven in the arguments put forth. Unfortunately it only reserve for the one who knows such method and never for the uninitiated. If this is a beginner book, I would have rated it as less then skin deep. However, comparatively to the tons of pages of reference books that only displays charts and charts of meaningless graphics and glossy travelogues of searching the dragon, this is indeed a book worth its price and contents. At least, one who does not have access to the Chinese books written on the same subject, would have now granted a glimpse into the intricacy of the arts served raw.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Approaching Doom @ 12.12.2012


12 am 12 December 2012 a date that spelt doom for the world we live in. The Christian called it Armageddon. There are tons of article wrote on such doomsday prediction, for more see http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Doomsday_Prediction . Theory has set that the polar shift will occur and world will be thrown to chaos with sudden increase of sea levels spurring world magnitude tsunami disaster that will swallow the Himalaya in seconds. Such predictions among others are based on the followings: -

Terrence Mckenna's
Timewave Zero interpretation of the YiJing mapping against the world events having the end date pointing towards 12 December 2012, also see http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timewave_Zero .

Precession-alignment theory that coincides with the Mayan Long Count Calendar which ends on 12 December 2012, also see
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_calendar .

Pole Shift aggravated by "Planet X"/"Nibiru", also see
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZetaTalk .

Web Bot prediction based on web crawler software known as spider design to comb the web for certain key words, used to project trends of the future. These web tools arrive at the conclusion that 12 December 2012 is doomsday, also read
http://www.aphroditeastrology.com/2007/05/web-bot-project-and-2012.html .

The question is, what do we Chinese Metaphysics see from this date?

… To Be Continue

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Brief History of the Descendant of the Dragon 龍的傳人


Since time immemorial, the Chinese are called the descendant of the dragon 龍的傳人. Such term does not stem out arbitrarily. The term Dragon is referred to the Yellow Emperor 黃帝.

Legend foretold that the Yellow Emperor, first known Emperor of the Chinese Civilization is the rebirth of the Celestial Dragon King. Dragon King is a celestial existence known in other cultures as Nagas, Serpents or simply, dragon. These creatures to some cultures are celestial beings or unseen celestial bodies some called Deva or Deities. These are noble creatures that have great affinity with the human existence in a symbiotic relationship. Many sages view the human existence as a testing ground to achieve higher attainment and therefore such existence must be protected at all cost.

This is the role of the Yellow Emperor at a point of time. However, his brother, ChiYou 蚩尤, leading the entire army of gargoyle, thinks otherwise. They battled forcefully to the brink of extinction for the human race in what is known as the battle of ZhuoLu 涿鹿.

Then the turning point begins when the Yellow Emperor broke down to end his life. He thought, what use of an emperor if he has no one to lead and it will be better off if he would return to the celestial and become a dragon, if Heaven does not permit. The Celestial Western Mother heard his plea and requested her trusted celestial deities to his rescue.

The savior of Yellow Emperor is none other then the Mysterious Lady of the Nine Heaven 九天玄女. She is the manifestation of the universal Yin energy resemblance of the celestial Phoenix that has been known in legendary history as the mother creator of the LuoPan and the Art of War. Among other things that Yellow Emperor inherited, these knowledge of KanYu and the compass marked the birth of Chinese Metaphysics. At that point of time there is no SanHe or SanYuan.

These knowledge were later handed down to Jiang Tai Gong 姜太公, Huang Shi Gong 黄石公 and masters of the later date. There is a reason why in my earlier writings I wrote about http://yifengshui.blogspot.com/2008/12/politics-as-highest-form-of-art.html, http://yifengshui.blogspot.com/2008/10/we-are-one-big-family.html and http://yifengshui.blogspot.com/2008/12/political-science-of-kanyu.html. There is a reason for it. These will be revealed from time to time.


By then, I will continue later.

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Principle of Cul De Sac And Sucking Egg


The Neo Urbanism movement has in favour of bringing back the community to scale, opposite of the megalomaniac principle of modernism where size does matter. In the discourse of modern urban design principle, we toyed around the 2 principle ideas of urban form one called the fine grain and the other as the coarse grain. Fine grains are found mostly in traditional town such as Kyoto and ShengYang where the fine grains are reflected to the scale of the roof against the height of the built forms which centralised on the human scale as a reference point. Whereas the coarse grains are modern solutions to our modern problem of congestion, over population and scarcity of land, in which these fine grain towns are stacked up vertically in forms of high rise mega structure with complex networks of roads, flyovers and vertical mapping, called plugs in and plugs out.

The failure of modern urban design principle in addressing the issue of human scale has paved way to the ideology of Neo Urbanism, where the human scale becomes the vital yard stick in examining urban design components such as landmarks, gateways, plaza, edge, nodes and paths are instituted to the right size of a human scale before it is implemented. One product that has signified such an arrival in Malaysia is reflected in Putrajaya, the new administrative capital to Kuala Lumpur.

In the course of my work in Valencia Sungai Buloh, one principle of Neo Urbanism that I find practical is cul-de-sac which give birth to clustered residential with ample parks and pathways clustered liked organic cells, hugging the contours, each manifesting its own identity as a community beacon with huge potentials to grow itself to another community as an entire organism of human inhabitants. In reality only the rich can afford such a dwelling in such a community. It is only the non Architectural trained FengShui master that makes an issue to such wonderful urban solutions by saying it is a sickle formation, therefore very bad Sha Qi – what a disgrace!

What is a sickle formation? Roads that wrap around the cul-de-sac are similar to rivers that wrap around an island and at the concave side of the roads or rivers are deemed to be cut by the sickle, where this is called sickle formation. This is crap!

Second, if there are fewer vehicles, the sickle formation will be less effective. This is another crap! Qi does not travel in car, as Qi does not have a valid driving license. When wind moves, Qi moves. When Qi stop, water coagulates.

Third, in the cul-de-sac formation, there may be a bright hall as the island park. The classics say, bright hall eliminate Sha Qi. So where is the sickle formation?

Fourth, if the sickle is nowhere to be found, how about the pulling nose or piercing heart ShaQi for the unit facing the incoming road that either flow out or flowing in? A pulling nose formation is where water is flowing outward from the main door of the unit in question. Whereas, piercing heart is where water is flowing in directed towards the main door of the unit in question. Answer, these are craps again as the bright hall filters out the unnecessary ShaQi, if any. So what is wrong with a cul-de-sac clustered community, FengShui wise?

Fifth, units facing the water gates are deemed less auspicious based on the premise that water gates must be locked, so that Qi will not disperse. Another less noble saying is that, it is not pleasant to face a property at the ass of the neighbourhood. However such minor concerns can easily be taken cared of by placing what designer called neighbourhood beacons as gateways. So, there is really no fuss at all.

Imagine, getting a FengShui master to teach Architect and Urban Designer to deal with the sickle ShaQi problem is liked teaching them to suck eggs? This is absolutely unwarranted. Worst, if one has to pay a premium for the art of egg sucking, such notion is unimaginable.

Good luck to the egg suckers…

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