language question "chen" vs. "zhong" 沉/重

[bailewen]

I know already that the two characters officially mean the same thing but it has come up in my training that, in the context of taijiquan, they are totally different. So what's the difference?

Many Chinese words come up as sets of 2 characters, mainly because if you use a single character in spoken Chinese, the number of homonyms in the language make it impossible to tell what you mean without at least a little context. The example I bumped into recently what "chen" vs. "zhong". The word "chen-zhong" means, "heavy" but "shuang zhong" is a "sickness" of taijiquan while "shuang chen" is something that, so far, I can only compare to what we call in Southern Shaoling arts, "heavy hands".

The idea is new to me and my understanding is limited. I was hoping somebody here with a decent handle on some of the more subtle nuances of Chienese could help me clarify the term. By way of example, there is also the term "xing-ming" which usually is translated as "life" but "xing" and "ming" are different. The dictionary will list them both simply as "life" but the saying 性命双修/xing ming shuang xiu alludes to the idea that they are different concepts as the saying means "xing and ming, develope them both". Now over the years I have gotten a decent handle on the idea of "ming" vs. "xing" but this "chen" vs. "zhong" is kind of new to me.

Help?

[Ian]

zhong just means weighty. it is quantifiable (zhong liang).

chen implies movement - sinking (you can say xia chen but not xia zhong).

does that mean anything in the context of what your shifu is trying to convey?

[bailewen]

I'll think about it for a bit and get back to you.

It definitely helps clarify the terms though. Thank you.

What he said, more of less, what this: In Taiji, you have three different possibilities. Double light, double "chen" or one light and one "chen". He presented them all as absolutely positive manifestations or versions of Taijiquan. It confused me because I had understood "shuang qing" to mean basically something like "no root" or basically just such a perfect opposite of "shuang zhong" that, in practice, it was the same. No change happening. You need to have full and empty areas and a lively interaction of them both.

I got a really pretty decent physical demonstration of the idea so I am not really confused and this is a language question. We did some push hands where he was first "shuang chen" and then alternately "shuang qing". Didn't get a demo on "yi zong, yi qing". Might ask him about it tomorrow if the opportunity comes up.

Thank you very much for you clarification of the terms though. Even as I am writing this it kind of clears up a bit but I am still going to need to "meditate" on it for a bit and see if I can really link the intellectual with the physical. That may take a bit. Thinking of one as a kind of 量词 or something like that and the other as more of an adverb does kind of help.

[Wuyizidi]

Ian is right. In normal usage these words are often used interchangeably to mean heavy. In Taiji Quan, we make clear distinctions between Chen and Zhong. The key difference is Zhong is just one direction - a big force going downwards. Chen should feel like a object sinking in water - there is also an upward force.

This has very practical impacts in martial art. Because how we think, how we feel affect our postures and quality of movement right? If you think "I want to be an immovable object, like a big rock or tree", you will subconsciously try to go as low into the ground as possible, and be as resistant to change as possible. While that may make you more stable, it sacrifices mobility and quickness. The term "Taiji" means having two opposite qualities within the same entity at the same time. So real Taiji skill means here we need to also supply an upward force. However Taiji does not dictate that those two opposite forces must be equal. Otherwise it makes it hard to move right?

So even when we're standing still, putting all our weight on one leg, we don't just sink into the ground, we use mental imagery like "there's a light, pure, upward lifting energy (definition of yang) shooting to the top of the head", or "think pushing your body out of ground instead of sinking into it". Having forces in the opposite direction, or at least the mental preparation to exert that force at any time, helps us not just be more agile (the ability to make change quickly), but also more stable. More stable because the overall force is more balanced. That's why we say elements of yin yang, or wu xing, are opposite but complementary forces. Complementary because they help each other, serving some bigger goal together.

So in Taiji Quan, we want Chen, not Zhong, as by definition zhong is not a taiji quality. An untrained person does not have root, so the first thing we tend to emphasize is to 'sink qi to dan tian'. But if we only do that, we will be too slow. This is self-evident when doing moving push hand/sparring, but not so much in static push hand. This is why we see people who primary do static push hand do poorly in real fights. They give their opponents their dream target - a slow, solid object that takes in the full impact of attacks.

The overall concept of balancing forces is a very common one in Chinese martial art. In Baji Quan for example, the saying is "head butting against the sky, foot planted in the river of underworld" (头顶苍天， 脚踏黄泉). In Xing Yi Quan this is called six directional force, in Taiji Quan, Baji Quan, it's called eight directional force.

And when you're both balanced and agile, not only can you exert a greater force, but that force is also less subject to outside influences.

Wuyizidi

[Wuyizidi]

Omar,

Xing here means soul, mind; ming refers to the physical body. Xing Ming Shuang Xiu means to develop/cultivate both the mind and the body. Amongst Chinese philosophies/religions, this is a distinctively Daoist approach.

To us humans, what is the worst thing, the one thing we all like to avoid - Death. The killer app of all religions is eternal life. For most religions, the approach is as follows:

• Make clear distinction between mind and body.
• The essence of our existence is not the body, but this intangible thing called soul. The workings of our mind, which we're conscious of, is used as evidence for existence of that intangible entity called soul.
• We can all see the flesh is weak.
• The soul is eternal, while the body temporary and corruptible.
• That which does not persist, that are temporary, are but illusion.
• Therefore we should focus on the permanent, the incorruptible.
• It doesn't matter when the body dies, because life = life of the soul, you are not your body.

So the body is but temporary vessel for the soul. Or as the Buddhists call it, the 'dirty skin bag". The implication for practice then is very clear, we should only concentrate on the soul, it's the only thing that matters.

Daoists, who I like to think are the naughty rascals of world religion, have a completely different view. Their point is, your body is you too. So we need to cultivate it to prevent decay. Hence all the attempts at alchemy, elixirs, and more helpfully, qi gong (aka internal elixir) and other health practices. In other religions you don't care if your body dies. Daoists don't want the body to die to start with.


Wuyizidi

[ppscat]

RSF administrators should create a separate folder for Wuyizidi's posts!

.

[bailewen]

Always a pleasure to get your input on the more scholarly stuff. I wasn't really asking about xing-ming but rather just throwing it out there as an example of how there are supposed synonyms in Chinese that really have different meanings if when you get into it deep enough.

Ian is right. In normal usage these words are often used interchangeably to mean heavy.

That was me actually.

After posting this I asked the wife for a little input too. She gave me a couple more 2 character word pairs to help clarify as well. It's interesting that "chen" seems to almost always bring up the water allusion for Chinese speakers. Maybe it's the water in the character that subliminally suggests it. She went a boat metaphor that blends well with what both you and Ian suggested. I big boat is very heavy (zhong) but does not necessarily sink (chen) unless there's a big hole in the bottom.

To perhaps [over]simplify the difference. I am starting to want to think of "zhong" as "heavy" and "chen" as "sinking".

[Yuen-Ming]

Omar,

this is all well explained in the Old (Yang) Family Manual already.
"Zhong" (heavy) is associated with "qing" (light) while "chen" (sinking) is associated with "fu" (floating).
Here is the complete text for your reference:

太極輕重浮沉解

雙重為病，干於填寔，與沉不同也。
雙沉不為病，自爾騰虛，與重不易也。
雙浮為病，祗如漂渺，與輕不例也。
雙輕不為病，天然清靈，與浮不等也。
半輕半重不為病，偏輕偏重為病。
半者，半有落也，所以不為病。
偏者偏無著落也，所以為病。偏無著落，必失方圓。
半有著落豈出方圓，半浮半沉為病，失於不及也。偏浮偏沉，失於太過也。
半重偏滯而不正也。半輕偏靈而不圓也。
半沉偏沉，虛而不正也。半浮偏浮，茫而不圓也。
夫雙輕不近於浮，則為輕靈。雙沉不近於重，則為離虛。
故曰，上手輕重，半有著落，則為平手。除此三者之外，皆為病手。
蓋內之虛靈不昧，能致於外氣之清明，流行乎肢體也。
若不窮研輕重浮沉之手，徒勞掘井不及泉之歎耳然有方圓四正之手。
表裏精粗無不到，則已極大成。
又何云四隅出方圓矣。所謂方而圓，而方，超乎象外，得其寰中之上手也。

Best

YM

[bailewen]

lol.

Awesome. Shifu actually, in not so many words, alluded to this very text today. As we were leaving the park I brought up the subject again, what's the difference between "zhong" and "chen". He had just been talking about "gui"/规 and "ju"/矩 which gave me the opening. He said that "zhong" and "chen" was an extremely impostant contrast and used the very comparison that you just posted, "zhong/qing" vs. "chen/fu". 英雄所见略同！

Thanks for the classical reference btw. It seems to address the exact question I was asking.

[ashe]

RSF administrators should create a separate folder for Wuyizidi's posts!

.

it's called wusource.org

[Wuyizidi]

Omar,

this is all well explained in the Old (Yang) Family Manual already.
"Zhong" (heavy) is associated with "qing" (light) while "chen" (sinking) is associated with "fu" (floating).
Here is the complete text for your reference:

太極輕重浮沉解

雙重為病，干於填寔，與沉不同也。
雙沉不為病，自爾騰虛，與重不易也。
雙浮為病，祗如漂渺，與輕不例也。
雙輕不為病，天然清靈，與浮不等也。
半輕半重不為病，偏輕偏重為病。
半者，半有落也，所以不為病。
偏者偏無著落也，所以為病。偏無著落，必失方圓。
半有著落豈出方圓，半浮半沉為病，失於不及也。偏浮偏沉，失於太過也。
半重偏滯而不正也。半輕偏靈而不圓也。
半沉偏沉，虛而不正也。半浮偏浮，茫而不圓也。
夫雙輕不近於浮，則為輕靈。雙沉不近於重，則為離虛。
故曰，上手輕重，半有著落，則為平手。除此三者之外，皆為病手。
蓋內之虛靈不昧，能致於外氣之清明，流行乎肢體也。
若不窮研輕重浮沉之手，徒勞掘井不及泉之歎耳然有方圓四正之手。
表裏精粗無不到，則已極大成。
又何云四隅出方圓矣。所謂方而圓，而方，超乎象外，得其寰中之上手也。

Best

YM

Translation:






Wuyizidi

[Overlord]

Zhong just means heavy, for instance if you are overweight, you are very Zhong.
Cheng means heavy but fluid like, slippery and agile. Bit like mercury in a tube.
Hope this can help.

Over

[Bob]

Omar,

Translation:
Once the circular and rectangular is in the four main skills, in everything from inside to outside, coarse to detailed, then the high level mastery is achieved. Then, what of the talk about transcending the circular and rectangular with the four supplementary skills? Rectangular but also round, circular and also rectangular, going beyond mere external appearances, such is the way to achieve ‘high level hand’.


Wuyizidi

Would this have a similar reference to bajiquan? Liu Yun Qiao talked about the square as structure, circle as roundness and triangle as power---the square within the circle within the square the triangle. Having all three then represented a high level of skill attainment.

[Wuyizidi]

Omar,

Translation:
Once the circular and rectangular is in the four main skills, in everything from inside to outside, coarse to detailed, then the high level mastery is achieved. Then, what of the talk about transcending the circular and rectangular with the four supplementary skills? Rectangular but also round, circular and also rectangular, going beyond mere external appearances, such is the way to achieve ‘high level hand’.


Wuyizidi

Would this have a similar reference to bajiquan? Liu Yun Qiao talked about the square as structure, circle as roundness and triangle as power---the square within the circle within the square the triangle. Having all three then represented a high level of skill attainment.

Here the rectangular/square refers to the four main skills of Taiji Quan (peng, lu, ji, an) and the four supplementary skills (cai, lie, zhou, kao). In ancient times, before we have the understanding of the natural world we have today, Chinese people though "heaven is round while the earth is square (rectangular)". Heaven is thought to be round because it envelops the earth, and seemingly without boundaries and seams. Earth was thought to be square in that you can readily assign the four cardinal directions and four diagonal directions, delineate it in a grid-like manner ("earth is like a go board").

In Chinese culture people believed Dao, the universal principle, can explain every thing in this world. So even people in what was considered "low-level" pursuits try to explain and elevate what they do by mapping it to those high-level philosophical principles. In this way the 5 main skills of Xingyi where mapped to 5 elements, the 8 palms of Bagua Zhang mapped to 8 trigrams, and the 4 main skills and 4 supplementary skills of Taiji mapped to coordinates of earth in Chinese cosmology. If you have the earth (4 cardinal + 4 corner skills) and the heaven (circles), then you have everything right?

Today it's hard to say how we got internal martial art skills: did people think "this is way Dao works, the soft can overcome the hard, how do we apply it to martial art?", or did martial art skill get to a point of high efficiency where people start to connect the dots: "hey, through clever timing and direction and manipulation of other aspects of force (not just speed and power, but also angle, direction, duration, etc), in this case we successfully dealt with a large force of this type using a smaller force of this type, this is soft overcoming the hard! Let's investigate it further, because according to Dao we should be able to deal with all types of forces in a similar manner..." My guess is it's probably the later.

The abstract principles of Daoism does a great job of explaining how and why internal martial art skills work on a physical level. However we need to be aware of the cultural tendency mentioned above, and be careful of its inherent pitfalls in trying to find one-to-one correspondence between martial art and philosophy/religion:

• Traditionally people say there are 36 (one of those magic numbers) main types of jin (trained force) in Taiji Quan. In reality there are more than 36 basic types. So her we need to be careful not to miss something important.
  
  
• On the other hand, in the overall scheme of things, historical martial art is a small dao (xiao dao). Meaning what we're trying to do is simple - try to kill another person with bare hands and some simple tools. It's not solving the world financial crisis. It is but a tiny subset (very partial one at that, not a perfect microcosm) of our overall experience of life, universe, and everything. So it's futile to map 64 palms of our form to the all-encompassing, rich, dense layers of meanings that are embedded in Yi Jing's 64 trigrams.

Wuyizidi