My friend Howard suggested that I should write about "How does Feng Shui work". He mentioned that his Russian translator studied FS for more than 10 years from different masters and still could not work out how it was supposed to work in practice.
The simple answer is, "If you do not know what Feng Shui is about, then you will never know how to practice to have results."
Let us go back in time to see how Feng Shui was practiced according to a poem in Shi Jing 詩經:
篤公劉 既溥且長 既景迺岡 相其陰陽 觀其流泉
Honourable Liu brings us to the land that is broad and long. He measures the directions of shadows as he climbs up the hill. He examines the sunny and shady sides of the mountains. He watches how the stream flows.
During the reign of Xia Jie 夏桀 (the last emperor of Xia Dynasty), the tribe with family name Ji 姬 had a wise and honourable leader Liu. He led his people in search for a piece of land where his people could live happily. The poem describes how he did it. This is the first written record of how to practice Feng Shui to have good results. His tribe lived in prosperity thereafter. Many centuries later, they established the Zhou Dynasty.
Obviously Gong Liu did not use the flying stars or the hexagrams because at that time, such sophisticated technique was not known. Feng Shui is a living knowledge that grows with time but the ancient technique used by Gong Liu is still the most fundamental part in our practice today.
Since many different ways are invented over time, most of the inventions are useless but they are being taught by different teachers. To mention a few: use a three-legged toad (the money frog) to bring wealth, create a money vase, use the bagua mirror to cure sha qi, hang a flute under a beam, use a sleeping elephant to make your child obedient or to make your customer to listen to you etc.
JY
The simple answer is, "If you do not know what Feng Shui is about, then you will never know how to practice to have results."
Let us go back in time to see how Feng Shui was practiced according to a poem in Shi Jing 詩經:
篤公劉 既溥且長 既景迺岡 相其陰陽 觀其流泉
Honourable Liu brings us to the land that is broad and long. He measures the directions of shadows as he climbs up the hill. He examines the sunny and shady sides of the mountains. He watches how the stream flows.
During the reign of Xia Jie 夏桀 (the last emperor of Xia Dynasty), the tribe with family name Ji 姬 had a wise and honourable leader Liu. He led his people in search for a piece of land where his people could live happily. The poem describes how he did it. This is the first written record of how to practice Feng Shui to have good results. His tribe lived in prosperity thereafter. Many centuries later, they established the Zhou Dynasty.
Obviously Gong Liu did not use the flying stars or the hexagrams because at that time, such sophisticated technique was not known. Feng Shui is a living knowledge that grows with time but the ancient technique used by Gong Liu is still the most fundamental part in our practice today.
Since many different ways are invented over time, most of the inventions are useless but they are being taught by different teachers. To mention a few: use a three-legged toad (the money frog) to bring wealth, create a money vase, use the bagua mirror to cure sha qi, hang a flute under a beam, use a sleeping elephant to make your child obedient or to make your customer to listen to you etc.
JY
2 comments:
Thank you Master Yu for your wise teachings and access to an archive of Chinese Feng Shui classics that us non-Chinese readers could never access otherwise.
Come to think of it, even if I could read Chinese, there's so many books out there I wouldn't know where to start!
Well...there's the Qing Nan Jing (you translated it), the Yang Zhai Zhi Nan (you translated some very useful parts of it), the Zhou Yi / Yijing (some very good quotes)...and others.
Dear Joseph,
Through the years I have studied with you I have come to realize that Feng Shui is a skillful art that allows us to enhance what is good in life and weaken the evil side.
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