In Taoism and Tai Chi, a so called superior person is one who attains to learn and practice the 5 excellences.
1- Tai chi
2- Poetry
3- Medicine
4- Painting
5- Music
RE: 5 Excellences
Interesting... I've got 1, 3, 4 and 5 covered (as in regular practicing thereof).
what does poetry entail? appreciating or writing? just poetry or prose/literature?
RE: 5 Excellences
I don't know, I am still pretty devoid of 3 of them. I think it just means you should work on them. Cheng Man Ching was considered a master of the 5.
RE: 5 Excellences
Hmmm - in my book a superior person is one who thinks that she/he is no such thing 😉
But then, I don't do Tai Chi and only just scraped my anatomy exam - and as for painting!... So I would say that, wouldn't I?
love & light
BV
[sm=cat.gif]
RE: 5 Excellences
I don't believe they mean in the sense of being superior, you know how translations go but more in the way(tao) you lead your life.
RE: 5 Excellences
Sure, John - forgive my former flippancy, I think I sort of understood what they meant really. It's good to have accomplishments to aspire to, even if they seem rather a long way beyond us, dontcha think?
Bestest
Patrick
RE: 5 Excellences
ORIGINAL: bigvoice
Sure, John - forgive my former flippancy, I think I sort of understood what they meant really. It's good to have accomplishments to aspire to, even if they seem rather a long way beyond us, dontcha think?
Bestest
Patrick
definitely. i like having goals; even if i don't achieve them, the fun is in trying to!
RE: 5 Excellences
I think another word for this is Renaissance person.
[link= http://www.progressiveu.org/175750-what-happened-to-the-renassance-men ]http://www.progressiveu.org/175750-what-happened-to-the-renassance-men[/link]
RE: 5 Excellences
ORIGINAL: jbarry
In Taoism and Tai Chi, a so called superior person is one who attains to learn and practice the 5 excellences.
1- Tai chi
2- Poetry
3- Medicine
4- Painting
5- Music
Erm dont get me wrong thease are good assets to have but this was said in the past, perhaps we need not take them litteraly. Just do what make us happeist and dont aspire to too much. But it would be good to be good at all of thease things though
RE: 5 Excellences
this is fun - I tend to recognize myself in hindsight sometimes.
While I was a performing musician and lyricist I made money as a house-painter. I started learning Tai Chi along the way. I gave up the house painting job to develop healing abilities...I enjoy them all...thanks for this post.
Jamee
I just was reading one of Da Liu's books and I guess the origin of "Superior Person" is from Cofucious and was some of his input into the I Ching. Representing the ideal of the right way of life and behavior.
I guess 'Superior' could be translated better as 'Enlightened' or maybe 'Cultured' depending upon whether the viewpoint is spiritual or humanist??
Da Liu keeps cropping up - what a bloke - have you read his book 'Tao and Chinese Culture' - very insightful.
M
I still can't paint. 😀
In Taoism and Tai Chi, a so called superior person is one who attains to learn and practice the 5 excellences.
1- Tai chi
2- Poetry
3- Medicine
4- Painting
5- Music
I have all five but would never consider myself superior to anyone else.
Perhaps if someone believes that they are a superior person, there should be a number 6- Ego.
purpose of a well devolped mind/sole
The purpose of Mastering the five excellences is that all things of great substance are the same. It takes doing them to realize this is so however.
I can tell you that the coffee is hot but it takes your actual participation in drinking it for true realization of this fact. (enlightenment )
All arts have the same principles and practice if one wishes to achieve any level that's of any quality. one must work on more than just the physical movements of say Tai Qi. Or even more than just Tai-Qi itself.
Development of your mind, and spirit along with an understanding of how your body works, and reacts to various things ( medicine ) is essential to the way of the scholar warrior.
But how can ART relate to my Wu-Shu training?? It reminds me of something one of my great teachers said one day. ( Kwan Sai-hung ) He said " THIS IS WHY YOUR TAI-QI STINKS!!!"
Practicing Art, or writing in it's truest form puts one in a state of meditative awareness. Music has this same effect. Western academics recognize that kids for instance who play music do much much better in school particularly math and science. Furthermore they note that kids who play sports also do better. See the example of how the physical feeds the intellectual?? Can you not see that as students of Yin Yang ( which is really what Tai Qi is) that the opposite is also true???
Intellectual feeds the physical???
Even the physical traits of art are seen in Good Wu-Shu practice and training. Take a look at your hand.
Try and cup the palm of your hand as though your picking up a walnut, or golf ball with your palm only no fingers. See that hollow?? That is what a great painters palm looks like when they hold their brush. That's how a classical guitarest's hand looks when they play Bach. Or a Pianist when playing Bethoven. Note that their wrist is not broken. They have what the great Chen Man ching called the "beautiful ladies hand." A straight line from the fore-arm to the pointer finger. This is so CHI can travel unrestricted to the very tip and beyond. Break the wrist and stop the flow of chi. If an artist wants to put " energy " into a painting, or a pianist wants emotion in music, that comes from " Chi ", moving out from this direct line. See it's in ALL we do.
A great surgen has this same hollow when performing delicate surgery. These things are all connected for another reason. There is only one way...... one path...... that's it.......Tao