Martial Arts Talk
May, 28, 2002
James Patrick Lacy

Happy Memorial Day 2002

The desire to learn martial arts, chi kung and herbs has never been greater. Qigong is now an officially government listed accepted mainstream alternative medicine modality. Quite simply it opens blood platelets and thus 'works.' Judeo/Christians are all too familiar with the phrase from the Old Testament "of the fruit of the tree shall be for man's meat and the leaf thereof for his medicine." With that in mind I bring you herbal updates.

We often hear metaphysical terms as we study the arts. Terms like 'ging' can seem quite esoteric as indeed the word 'chi.' When we add science we come up with more pieces of the puzzle from the perspective of terms like kinematics. One might ask how could a deaf, dumb and blind person gain the essence of chi? I guess without a doubt it would depend who you ask. Aside from what science has discovered about chi, a deaf, dumb and blind person's insistence of nothing more than faith and courage being needed would be hard to disprove.

Enjoy this column and have faith and courage to love unconditionally through knowledge that the larger picture is; God is love and technology is the answer to help make crime more obsolete. Use science, religion and philosophy combined with faith and courage in 'good' to better understand your chosen art.

Halfway into the Year of the Horse

The Year of the Horse is not over. This year should erase bad vibes left by The Year of the Snake. Trauma will be replaced by adventure and projects getting started with efficiency and speed. This year will experience frayed tempers among political and international leaders, although good humor will prevail. There will be an upturn in the economy, which is good for those wishing to strike out on their own. Get yourself 'lucky plants' like Narcissuses or Chrysanthemums. Gung Hay Fat Choy roughly translates as "I hope you make a fortune." Be grounded in the "I am." This will give you a solid base anchor to 'play' with metaphysics; so much a part of the arts.

Astronomy

This year astronomers announced they have observed two collapsed stars that may be composed of a new form of matter. At first they thought the two planets were neutron stars, considered the most extreme form of matter in the universe. A teaspoon of this type of matter would weigh a billion tons. Upon further observation scientists concluded that the matter of these stars was not neutron, but rather made up of 'quarks.' Quarks have never been seen in a stable state, which basically means these sub-atomic particles are a new type of matter. Notice the word prefix 'sub' atomic? Don't get confused. There are only so many elements on the atomic chart. It is the combination of these over 100 elements that make up all matter. So looking at it this way assures you there really is nothing new under the sun. I have always said that the energy that leaves the body upon death (about 2 grams,) is indeed light encoded. Light is "substance," thus theoretically weighable.

The Alternative Medicine Front

The herbal supplement PC-Specs has been re-called as of late, by the California Department of Health Services working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. About 10,000 American men were taking it for advanced prostrate cancer. PC-Spes is basically a blend of Chinese herbs in capsule form sometimes recommended by oncologists when traditional treatment fails. The re-call was ordered after bottles of PC-Spes were found to contain traces of warfarin, a prescription blood thinner.

The World of Physics

Great things are happening at the University of Pennsylvania called nanotechnology. The University's newest electron microscope magnifies atoms at a factor of ten million. The microscope is eight feet tall and is fed 200,000 volts through a cable the size of a fire hose. Physicist David Luzzi used the device to discover a fifth type of carbon. It was 1985 when the Nobel Prize was awarded for discovering buckminsterfullerene - a fourth form of carbon that came in balls of 60 atoms shaped like Buck's geodesic domes. The gunk by-product residue that was left from the discoveries, led to a fifth form of carbon. Japanese researcher Sumio Iijima of NEC Research laboratory found that the gunk contained tiny filaments called carbon nanotubes. He just received the Franklin Institute's Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics. It would take 3 billion carbon nanotubes to equal the thickness of a single stand of human hair.

Luzzi first spied these "pea-pods" in 1988. A pod is a carbon nanotube. Inside are the "peas" or molecules of buckminsterfullerene. The peas change the 'properties' of the tubes. Altering them can have properties of heat and electricity conductivity precisely tuned to make them miniature devices and chips. Luzzi likened the peas to impurities added to silicon in computer chips. "Silicon by itself isn't very interesting," he said, "but add some things and you have Intel." I personally would disagree with his dismissal of silicon. After all, he is a scientist who probably knows nothing of the metaphysical properties of silicon. That said, science always seems to get their grant money based on the older metaphysical origins of science. We as martial artists use the word martial. All science is military trickled down. Art as we know it is more and more about math and math is the language of science.

Happy Trails!

Jung Shee James Patrick Lacy
18 Daoist Palms 7th Generation Grandmaster