Ice Cold

惟真陽以禦之，則蒸然流遍大千

Because the Genuine Masculin guards against, therefore steam boundlessly naturally flows all over and everywhere.

The text goes on explaining how one becomes impervious to cold in a, as usual, pretty obscure sentence involving a “Genuine Masculin” and steaming. 氣, having the meaning of vapours, steaming seems logical. Still, one can wonder how to train cold resistance. This post will explore some of the possible avenues of research the text leads to and a further one the sort of training linked to cold resistance.

Resilient

夫氣足耐寒，血足耐暑，神足耐饑，精足力綿

One can endure cold when vapours are sufficient, heat when blood is sufficient, hunger when spirit is sufficient, the force is continuous when essential liquids are sufficient.

This passage belongs to the 精神氣息解, “Explaining essential liquids, spirit, vapours and breath¹” paragraph. To the usual trio essential liquids, spirit and vapours, breath has been added, probably to show that it is equally important. In the quote, it is blood which has been added. Internal practices use to pay more attention to what is happening inside the body, the organs and the liquids they produce, the blood… and what is not visible but has an impact on one’s performance, what we call vigour, vitality, which they theorised as vapours and spirit.

Genuine Chaos Or Fake Sword

許氏四人所臨摹的原本《渾元劍經》的原稿件，又是從何而來的呢？這對我們都是一個難解之迷。

Where did the original of The Sword of Chaos Classic copied by the four from the Xu family come from? This is a difficult puzzle for all of us¹.

In the realm of self-discovery, writings, because they set in stone, are not the favourite tool used in martial arts. As it has already been mentioned many times in this blog, solving oral enigmas used to be the way to pass on knowledge. Hence, when the first boxing manuals appeared, they were not too comprehensive. It seems a bit odd, for the least, when faced with a detailed internal Taoist martial arts manual dated before most of the others².

Writing And Chaos

一層功，一層理

A  level of skill, a level of theory

沉肩墜肘

浮肩昂肘

Sinking shoulders and dropping elbows.

Floating shoulders and soaring elbows.

以氣為主，以力當先

以氣為主，以理當先

Vapours direct, strength must come first.

Vapours direct, theory must come first.

There is a fencing manual, the Sword of Chaos, which embodies the internal arts influenced by the Taoist theory. It has already been quoted in this blog but it may be interesting to develop parts of it as examples of themes often recurrent in internal practices. Still, before doing so, following the last post on the Lady of Yue, one has to further understand what kind of writing is mainly found as far as martial arts are concerned and the issues brought along.