Saturday, March 28, 2009

Happy Mother and Daughter




Friday, March 20, 2009

Special Design - a follow-up

A design according to Feng Shui principles must integrate the concept of San Cai 三才 - Heaven, Man and Earth 天人地. The part San Cai takes in Feng Shui is Time, Activities and Space. The part San Cai takes in design is Truth, Virtue and Beauty 真善美.


The design must also cater for the special purpose of what the space is for. The concept of yin and yang for a debate is undoubtedly appropriate. The design, however, is too artificial. The Heaven part is represented by a hanging Taiji symbol. This is eye-catching but as Howard Choy pointed out, it is something calling "Look at me, look at me". In Chinese, it is called "the noisy guest overshadows the host 喧賓奪主".

The Man part consists of a structure inspired by the Taiji Tu 太極圖. The male seated in the white section while the female seated at the black section is not the right seating. In the Taiji diagram, there is a white dot in the black part and a black dot in the white part indicating there is yin contained in yang and yang contained in yin. Therefore, the male should be seated in the yin part while the female in the yang part. As a matter of fact, during the show, the man (黃毓民) talked loudly all the time and the woman (葉劉淑儀) had to plead for a chance to speak. It was chaotic and lacked harmony.

The Earth part is also represented by a large taiji symbol painted on the floor where the seats are placed above. Well, the Earth part should be a square conforming to 天圓地方 (round Heaven square Earth). This will help the speakers to talk with solid foundation. Now, what they say are superficial because there is no firm grounds to support them.

The Heaven part must be true 真 meaning that the taiji symbol hanging there should be replaced by light and shadow on the ceiling to be real. The Earth part must be beautiful 美 meaning that the design must be natural symbolizing solid grounds. Although this is a face-to-face heated debate, the atmosphere must be harmonious and the two participants must have constructive ideas for the benefit of the public. The Man part must show harmony and virtue 善.

JY

Monday, March 16, 2009

Special Design

This is a TV show of two famous political commentators in Hong Kong debating over certain issues. Note the design of the room where the heated debate takes place. Do you think it serves the purpose?



Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Tai Sui 太歲

Some students argue among themselves whether Tai Sui of the year covers 30 degrees or 15 degrees of the luopan.

Qing Nang Xu 青囊序 says:

先天羅經十二支 後天再用干與維

In the luopan, the Xian Tian divisions are the twelve branches.
In Hou Tian, the stems and the corner trigrams are also used.

This means that the Heavenly bodies occupy and define the twelve palaces along the yellow path. When it is mapped onto the earth, in addition to the twelve branches, the eight stems (Wu and Ji go to the center to become the Huang Ji 皇極) are added to assist the branches. Moreover, the four trigrams Qian, Gen, Xun and Kun are also added to make it up to 24 paths occupying 15 degrees each.

Xian Tian is the body while Hou Tian is the application. Fundamentally, Tai Sui covers 30 degrees but in Feng Shui practices, we use the branches of the 24 mountains to define the location of the Tai Sui. 7.5 degrees from each side of the branch will be occupied by assisting forces of the Tai Sui.

JY