Wednesday 19 January 2011

Man’s Last Song Chapter 3-1: Qigong Rhapsody

QIGONG  RHAPSODY

Qi rumbles through Ma Yili, flushing his meridian channels, warming the Dan Tian – an abdominal pocket behind the navel where his bladder and intestines are.
Most people do not normally feel the presence of internal organs unless something has gone badly wrong. To Ma, that's just another thing wrong with the normal person. He neglects the body for so long, taking it for granted, until the only connection left is the emergency alarm; he only feels the stomach when it aches, rather than sharing with it the pleasure of digesting something delicious and healthful.
He can actively direct Qi with his breathing, which is one of a few ambiguous meanings of the word Qi. What else could it be? Flux of neutrinos? Expression of other alpha beta gamma bits? he used to wonder. Gradually, he gave up intellectualising it with the same cleverness he once employed to study equally quirky entities sanctioned by modern physics.
"To understand these things, you can't think forcefully," his mentor Mary Scott once said.
In the end, be it Qi or some ephemeral subatomic phantom, it's all in the mind isn't it? A steel door is practically empty in atomic terms. Just a bunch of electrons buzzing between a matrix of nuclei. In spatial proportion, merely a few specks of dust zipping between raison-size clusters stuck at the corners of a grand ballroom. Should the electrons freeze – if the metaphoric dust should settle – everything would vanish.
Weird? That's science... or Qi...
There's nothing. A door is substantially not there according to science, so is the physicist, Ma reckons with due humility. Not there. Nothing. Zilch. Buddha was right wasn't he? But even the brightest or dumbest scientists don't attempt walking through doors. Neither did Buddha.
Understanding is one thing, believing is another, perception is yet something else. In the twilight zone of existence, reality slips, slides and teases. The great 20th century physicist Niels Bohr said "reality" does not exist independent of observation. His contemporary, Heisenberg, told us that the reality that can be put into words is never reality itself. Were they Daoists?
Perhaps Qigong reshapes reality with wayward bonds and psychedelic charges, as hallucinating drugs do? After practising for decades, Ma still has no idea. It took him years to clear the meridian channels, to make room for the free flow of Qi. Now that he has attained this wondrous sense of void, he can let in... in... and in. Something fundamental and omnipresent, older than the universe itself, seeps into him, waking his spine, electrifying his being. Or is it the other way round? Is he dissolving into the infinite background, like a fizzy tablet in water instead?  
Yes, all in the mind.
The cosmos, so very big, is no bigger than a teeny-weeny singularity. Perhaps singularity could be reconstructed in the mind, tugged behind the bellybutton. Ridiculous; but why not? If something so incomprehensibly tiny could give birth to the universe... maybe the fathomless complexity of a physicist's macrocosm could also be condensed into elemental purity, back to nothing. "In a flat universe, all the energy adds up to zero." He learned that in Physics.
It started with nothing, and will end in nothing.
"I'm nothing," he lets the thought echo. "There's nothing out there."
What can be more peaceful than me, being nothing, worrying about nothing?

How long has it been? Minutes? Hours? Aeons?
Time bypasses Ma when he meditates. But somehow, part of him knows. Dozing bus passengers always wake before their stops.
Qi radiates out of his Dan Tian, caressing ageing vessels, massaging aching muscles, fortifying stiffened joints.

*    *    *
Ma once speculated Qi to be the ultimate element he hoped to isolate in a giant accelerator. Ultimate – what an extreme state; a serious word used too lightly. The ultimate element must be absolutely basic. What can one say about something so elemental, other than it's the very first step from there isn't to there is? The fundamental essence of all things must be that simple; indivisible. It has to be omnipresent purity without mass, charge, spin, dimension, smell, flavour, beginning, or end...
It just is.
Shouldn't have a name. The Dao that can be described cannot be real... Laozi said that. Heisenberg said that. Anything with a describable feature can't be truly and ultimately fundamental can it? It's indescribable, unnameable. We exist because of a transient disruption of the primary state of affairs.
The resultant existential stir, Ma thought, perhaps still thinks, could be Qi. The universe, the one that we see, the big wide expanding thing out there, is the result of a disturbance, a cosmic bruise. Call it the Big Bang, whatever. It's nothing more than a temporary divergence, unmitigated stress, of the fundamental state. Like a bruise, it will disperse and heal in the fullest of time – when it all ends.
We won't be there. Nothing we own will be there. Nothing we've ever fought for or believed in would survive the healing, when the cosmic bruise settles back into neutrality.
Meanwhile, everything that exists does so at an elevated stress level. To be is waiting to heal, to return to ultimate basics, to be again not to be.
That's why things are unstable. They are unstable the moment they came into being – the moment they began coming into being. Status quo at any instant is not sustainable.
To Ma the Daoist and physicist, Qigong Master and irreligious spiritualist, the concept became self-evident after years of contemplation. Then it became far-fetched and confusing, impossible to fathom, simply weird. Then it cleared up again.
Then it went away completely, and stopped to matter.

If it is, it doesn't matter.

If it isn't, it doesn't matter.

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First Posted 19 Jan 2011 on Guo Du Blog

“笙歌” 第三章  之(一) “气功狂想曲”


“笙歌” 第三章  之(一) “气功狂想曲”
氣功狂想曲

鏈接到上一節 “分娩”

馬依力盤腿跏趺而坐,身心兩忘。他頭端正,顎內斂,虛凌挺拔,手結三昧入定,體內氣機徑走奇經八脈,有序而流,丹田暖暖的,空空蕩蕩,眼簾內一片光明,個中愉悅非語言所能形容。

宋笙曾多次問到丹田到底是啥,但馬師傅也無法說清。那位置本應藏些小腸尿囊之類的人雜內臟;久經苦練後,好像被偷空了。他起初對這種感覺難免有些擔心。後來放棄了科學精神,不再用物理學家的思維去鑽研,倒好像似是而非地參透了少許。

“氣”為何物就更不好說了,不過“氣”這個字倒蠻有意思。最早的丹經道書都寫作“炁”:大概表示一切能量靜止,屬火的心也淨滅下來,於是无火謂之“炁”。不知怎的,“炁” 慢慢變成了“气”。 “气”其實是古字。籀文,篆書,都是這個寫法。後來可能由於社會退步,人變得市儈習氣,萬事必須有米,否則無神無氣,於是加了粒米進去調動積極性,變成了“氣” 字。呃,再後來搞個革命,講理想,省筆划,又再次把米去掉,變回了“气”。不少鐘情繁體字的衛古之士,還以為這是無產階級洩了氣,走了米呢!

反正氣和高能粒子一樣,都是幻有幻無的鬼東西。

馬依力觀空冥想時其中的一件觀想物竟然是扇鋼門。厚厚的鋼門,表面堅硬實在,從物理粒子的層面看,卻百分之九十九以上是空間,剩下比較“實在”的原子核,比例有如幾顆葡萄乾各佔了大型宴會廳一角,而葡萄乾之間有十顆八顆比塵埃更細小的電子以光速巡邏。就這樣,忙得很,很簡單,基本上空無一物。把葡萄乾和塵埃再拆細的話,更空得徹底!老佛爺說得對:空,一切皆空。這是物理學,馬依力的老本行。妙!

從物理角度看,鋼門不外幻覺,何況肉身?最了不起的人,本質也是空空如也。但空洞的傢伙,硬闖空門,肯定頭破血流。科學家的解釋是電子飛動帶出巨大能量,所以穿越不過。馬依力心想:哪,不就是氣嗎?

反正理解歸理解,很多東西信則有,不信則無。不是嗎?算你有 “鐵一般的事實” 擺在眼前,你看一個樣,我看又一個樣,他看又另一個樣。大家各持己見爭辯一生,結果各自抱著懷疑和不忿躺進棺材。歸根到底,通通都是主觀幻覺。但要真正做到空空蕩蕩,身心兩忘的幻境,還必須下苦工。馬依力花了十年以上的時間才掌握到個中奧妙。不過一旦掌握,那實實在在的虛空,又確實妙不可言。

他現在閉目運氣,仰天而吁,好像把宇宙吐吶於胸腹,同時飄蕩其中,遨遊無窮之鄉, 無際之境,與天地為一,不分內外人我。

不可思議?馬依力認為打坐冥想,運氣練功,可能跟迷幻藥在腦袋創造另類現實有幾分相似。不同者是練功有益,吃藥則傷身敗命而已。說到底還不是靠點生理反應,製造色空易位?再者,宇宙之大,來源是小得不能再小的天文奇點。那麼得法地運動真氣,調整思覺,把時空壓縮,將自己與宇宙混為一體,又似乎不足為奇。

馬依力這位物理學家的思維,就像那個“氣”字一樣,最初由簡變繁,又再由繁變簡,返璞歸真,復通為一。最重要的是,氣脈通了有很實惠的好處。通則不痛,痛則不通。都通了,在沒有止痛藥的年代,是卻患良方!

他也曾經懷疑過,“氣” 這東西就是他曾幾何時努力尋找的“終極分子”。終極一詞其實非同小可,不應輕率濫用。稱得上終極,便不可再分,不能再小,是簡無可簡的原始狀態,甚麼質,量,磁場,氣味,轉向,體積,電荷,一概消失,否則便可以再分;可再分就談不上終極啦!所以終極分子其實是抽象概念,連名字也不應該有。因為甚麼特色也沒有了,憑怎麼來起個恰當的名字呢?道可道,非常道;名可名,非常名!從現代科學角度看,哎呀,老子有道理!

氣就是這樣:然於然,無處不在。由浩然之氣凝聚而成的宇宙萬物,無非暫時現象,猶如淤血,早晚必散,回復純真,盡歸於無。難怪宇宙中可見的事物和現象一律不穩定,沒有長久持續的可能性。老佛爺一句「無常」道盡了!

對馬依力這物理學家,道士,哲學家,太極和氣功高手,間中迷信的無神論主義者來說,“氣” 即是終極分子這個想法,起初越想越合理。但多年來想多了,又越想越多問題。問題想多了,又好像都根本不是問題。

最後,算啦!不想啦!悟啦!

反正想對了又如何?


錯了,那又如何?
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2011年1月 19 日 於过渡网发表
2017年11月修訂