THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF A HOUSE ALTAR IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE FENG SHUI with Liu Ming

Sunday July 17th 2011
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Like the palace at the center of the nation, the heart in human body and the temple/clan hall in the neighborhood, the Chinese family altar at home reveals much about the qi network application of feng shui in everyday life.

In this class we will cover the principles behind the altar (animist, Daoist and/or Buddhist) and ways in which these principles can be applied to the “network” of qi represented by the “ancestors, Buddha mandalas and/or qi currents of the natural environment”.

The true home altar need not be associated with “religion” of any kind but with the continuity of Qi/Time that represents itself in feng (wind: invisible flow) and shui (water: form).

What’s on your mantel? Is your TV or computer your family altar? Let’s be realistic and see how the principles can be used!

Logistics:

• WHEN:
  Sunday July 17th 2011
  
  
  
• TIMES:
  9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
  
  FEES:
• $75
  
• $60 for GGSFS Graduates
  
  
  
• WHERE:
  Golden Gate School of Feng Shui
  3225 Adeline Street
  Berkeley CA 94703
  

Buy tickets here for Ancestral Altar Class



Liu Ming is a euro-American who over the last 40 years has had the great good fortune to study and practice Chinese Daoism, Chan/Zen and Tantric Buddhism with several great teachers. He holds a degree in Asian aesthetics (art/philosophy) and has been teaching aspects of Chinese medicine and astrogeomancy for several decades. He currently lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His students understand him to be a trance-medium.

In Traditional chinese medicine the heart is kind of an altar of the body, and in Chinese feng shui the altar is a heart of the house.

So the heart in Chinese medicine is different to our Western view- point, it doesn't work, it doesn't do anything. It's like a Emperor, it sort of sits on a thrown and all the activities around it are kind of reported back to it, and edicts go out, but actually there's not a lot of work. It's kind of like a still point in the midst of all the activity.

So a house without this kind of a still point in the midst of all the activity, for instance is also kind of like a parking lot. It' doesn't really have an identity, doesn't have an aspiration, it's hard for the residents to be INspired.
You'd be surprised that it's not religious, we're not really talking about creating a table full of icons for your religion. There's lots of ways to establish it in a very discrete way.
What the word icon means? What is an icon? It's kind of what the heart is. It's an icon of our shen (spirit).

So if we have no iconic, intentional iconic place in the house, then a piece of furniture can take over. In other words... something that is very, very strong like a television for example can actually take charge of the house, because its an icon that you bought, and brought in. It wasn't your intention that your children should stop relating to each other and only relate to the television. But that's what happened because you brought an icon in. But if the children actually know, 'this picture of a grandma, for instance, is the icon, is the icon of our house, so whenever you come home from school - wave to grandma and then you can watch the television all day.' doesn't really matter, cause you know that the house's icon is the ancestors.

So playing with this idea about how chi is regulated by the iconography, you know the custom in American businesses, to put your first dollar in a frame near the cash register, as an icon of what we're about - lets bring the money in.

Just to think about what icons are. A house should have one, every room should have one, some place where the activity keeps regulating itself. So designers or interior decorators, etc. understand these principles to certain extent, but the anonymity of the iconography is stylish. In other words style that takes away the content. - Liu Ming