Is qigong fading out in China? (Blog)

[jacob]

Discuss here the following article from mind-energy.net blog.


Click here to view the article.

[anonymous]

This is why I think it is a mistake for teachers to only rely on person to person instruction rather than writing in a way that allows people to study by themselves. Maybe some things are best taught person to person but if knowledge is lost because no one is taught what good is that?

[jacob]

Kosta, in that book, writes that there are some reasons for that:

1. The knowledge of kung fu in the high levels meant power, hence it was kept secret and only passed out to maybe one student.
2. There was no such idea as science, no universities which shared information. The reason is #1.

[anonymous]

Originally Posted by jacob

There was no such idea as science, no universities which shared information. The reason is #1.

I would have thought techniques developed and evolved over time. Didn't great teachers add to their field? Or was an entire body of knowledge delivered complete by a single master?

Weren't the temples like universities?

I suppose each field is different but I understood some of the great masters in matrial arts were great because they knew many different forms that they learned from the top expert in each field. Wouldn't advanced qigong or taoists students do something similar - go to different teachers to learn more than they could from just a single teacher?

[jacob]

Perhaps some places (temples and schools) developed the techniques over time. But what he meant was that there were no (or little) interchange between the masters.

But I also know what you're talking about. The developer of Yiquan qigong indeed learned 2 or 3 types of kung fu or qigong and then he took what he thought the best from them with some ideas of his own and developed this style. But it was only 100 years ago. I believe what Kosta wrote in the book is also correct.

So it kind of went in waves. Some development by great masters. Then something was lost until another reached a high level again, possibly from combining several schools.