Bulding a foundation

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

This post is about building a foundation in Nei Dan, I just want to talk about theory, and if others have something to add, then please do.

 

 

People who practice any art must first build a foundation and meditation is not any different.

The difference with meditation is that the foundation can be hard to understand, since many of the goals of meditation are not tangible at first.

Neidan provides some problems which complicate the issue further.

Most schools of meditation are mainly focused on developing consciousness first, and some never even touch upon the physical health aspect of practice in their meditation.  This often leads meditation schools to having various types of exercise that compliment their meditation. Yoga is a great example of a modern school which successfully combines meditation with physical exercise (although I personally think yoga people overemphasize the exercise part a bit). 

Daoism gets around this by focusing on developing Qi as well as developing a clear, empty mind.

Developing Qi and then being careful about your lifestyle is a very good way to maintain good health, and usually this means that you can meditate a lot without getting tired.

The problem is that at the beginning, people are unclear about what qi is, how it is developed, and how it relates to the mind.

This, plus the many complex writings passed down in Daoism lead to considerable potential for distortion of facts.  This is one of the reasons why so many ancient masters maintained the importance of receiving oral transmission and not just textual notes.

 

Having said all that, Nei Dan has a set of basic attributes which must be put in place for the rest of the practice to succeed later.    If you don't achieve these basics, then any later work will be a waste.  It is like the old proverb that you shouldn't build a house  from soggy wood.

 

In Neidan, the core basis of the practice is predicated upon achieving internal quiet, minimizing mental phenomena, and allowing the required phenomena you can't ignore to merge together.   So the basic practice of Nei dan will usually somehow relate to the mind, breath, and body merging together as one.  That is how post heaven jing (phyiscal substance), Qi (breath), and shen (mind/spirit) are mixed and how the mind is gradually brought  to being quiet.

Most people have to go through this door and only a very few brilliant people can "focus without focusing," which is really one of the eventual big goals of practice.

One of the reasons why the mind, breath, and physical aspect are usually brought together in the lower dantian  rather than other points in the body (earlier methods of meditation often used any point in the body as a dan tian, the lower dantian thing really originated with embryonic breathing) is because This area of the body is capable of collecting pre heaven yang Qi and allowing it to build there.

This is really the fundamental big goal of early practice in Nei dan is to build up yang qi in the body, and although focusing on other points can cause qi to build there (there is an entire five element art in fu qi lineages where people focus on each of the five organs) the Dan tian is the one place in the body which can hold the qi safely without causing health or mental unbalances.

There are many early stages of practice that resolve themsleves as yang energy starts to build up in the Dantian, and some of them can trick people into thinking they have had profound experiences.    The fact of the matter is that these effects like seeing a flash of light come and go before your eyes, or going into the mystery gate (the unconscious portal between post and pre heaven) are bi-products of correct practice, and aren't enlightenment or anything big.

Many people who have studied with me are so surprised after entering into deep meditation and feeling qi for the first time that they write long essays to me about the experience,  but these points in practice are really only the basic minimum requirement to enter into the Nei Dan practice.

 

Before anything like opening the small orbit, the big orbit,building the embryo, or any other of the popular phenomenon that many people write about begin to happen, you have to achieve quiet and build up enough Qi in the lower dan tian.    If the Qi isn't enough and you can't enter deep, profound silence, then the Qi will never move on its own. 

Many people are impatient about practice and if the Qi isn't moving in the Du Mai, then they just imagine they are moving it around by themselves.   This is exactly the wrong thing to do and it does not have a positive effect.   Even if you can feel something while you move your mind around the MCO, all that is happening is empty and it won't deeply benefit your health.

The real way to get benefit from Neidan practice is to slowly cultivate the mystery gate, pre heaven, and lower dantian.    If you get a positive effect like qi moving on the surface of your skin, or when the Qi suddenly moves up the spine to the brain,  don't get excited, just keep slowly practicing in the correct way and you will build up a foundation.

the practice should always end with you moving your mind back to quiet, back to stillness, and back to conserving the energy you have.

Many people act like Qi gong is a contest to see who can open up all their energy gates the fastest, or they imagine they can get a mystical result in a short time.   Neither of these things is a good attitude to be taking, and a better attitude would be to work on first understanding and then achieving the basics of the practice.

 

The central reason why I'm posting this thread is because the board has entered into one of those cycles in which many people are talking about Qi gong practices which are genuinely dangerous to their physical health.  It seems like some of them have teachers and that some others are just making up their own art as they go along.    One poster even said that he makes himself nervous and sick when he practices.  this is really bad and no one should do that.

 

It doesn't matter whether you practice Neidan or qi gong, you should always follow a few basic rules to keep yourself happy and stabilize your progress.

Anyone can make a feeling of Qi occur simply by making the mind intense and breathing in a convoluted way.  The real skill isn't in feeling Qi, it is is building and keeping it.    If you are a beginner, you should spend more time on achieving deep quiet (not just when you are seated in meditation, but in your day to day life), and protecting your energy (by practicing the Dantian properly in meditation, and by learning to minimize the amount of energy leaking from your sensory organs when you are doing day to day life).   Even being able to do these two things is a big achievement and will give you more benefit than imagining the sun circling around your body ever would.

 

I hope this thread is helpful and as always, if you have any criticisms, or want to add to it, please feel free.

[thelerner]

I hope this thread is helpful and as always, if you have any criticisms, or want to add to it, please feel free.

Great subject.  I look forward to reading peoples discussion. 

 

I hope people will keep positive and not criticize other systems.  We have a bunch of old threads that have gone down in flames due to 'My system is best, yours is deluded' styles of posts.  As an experiment in TDB internet communication, I hope this thread stays lively, positive and members don't take this worthy thread in that direction. 

 

In other words be respectful and understand other arts have different interpretations.  Please tell us what your arts philosophy is, without cutting down anothers.  If that isn't possible, then avoid this thread.

 

Threads in the Daoist section should not be ending in silly vendetta like circular pettiness.  We're here to learn and discuss.

[oak]

"...or going into the mystery gate (the unconscious portal between post and pre heaven)..."

 

Want to elaborate on that? Thanks 

Edited January 14, 2017 by oak

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

"...or going into the mystery gate (the unconscious portal between post and pre heaven)..."

 

Want to elaborate on that? Thanks 

the mystery gate is a fairly contested subject in Daoism, with early schools believing it to be the nose and mouth, and then some schools making the criticism that it actually referred to the lower dantian, third eye, or solar plexus, but the best definition of the mystery gate, and the one I personally use is that of Huang yuanji, which is that the mystery gate is the time when the mind enters into the  "Hun dun" or chaotic state.   This state is when the kun hexagram reverts to the fu hexagram (deepest yin passes and one yang line emerges as the base of the six lines),  The first place I've seen this articulated in terms of neidan was in some poetry from the southern school, but the middle school totalizes it into a theory of how the meditative mind moves from the active (you wei) to the inactive (wu wei) and then action without action (wu bu wei).   In this case, it is when pre heaven jing, qi, and shen all collect together in Chaos and fortify the energy body, as well as giving birth to stronger post heaven Qi.   

In practical terms, the mystery gate refers to when we forget ourselves.  Huang Yuanji called this "I do not know what my home is."

It is the big difference between practices which focus on the pre heaven and practices which focus on the post heaven.  post heaven practices will look to build Qi by coaxing it with the intention, while pre heaven schools build Qi by entering into emptiness to the point where the mind disappears for a brief time.  When it comes back, the alchemical process has been started without our even having recognized it happening.    This is totally in keeping with how the Neidan school articulates two different kinds of Qi, one means the qi related to breath, blood and external nutritional elements, the other type of Qi refers to something which is tempered in emptiness.

[oak]

the mystery gate is a fairly contested subject in Daoism, with early schools believing it to be the nose and mouth, and then some schools making the criticism that it actually referred to the lower dantian, third eye, or solar plexus, but the best definition of the mystery gate, and the one I personally use is that of Huang yuanji, which is that the mystery gate is the time when the mind enters into the  "Hun dun" or chaotic state.   This state is when the kun hexagram reverts to the fu hexagram (deepest yin passes and one yang line emerges as the base of the six lines),  The first place I've seen this articulated in terms of neidan was in some poetry from the southern school, but the middle school totalizes it into a theory of how the meditative mind moves from the active (you wei) to the inactive (wu wei) and then action without action (wu bu wei).   In this case, it is when pre heaven jing, qi, and shen all collect together in Chaos and fortify the energy body, as well as giving birth to stronger post heaven Qi.   

In practical terms, the mystery gate refers to when we forget ourselves.  Huang Yuanji called this "I do not know what my home is."

It is the big difference between practices which focus on the pre heaven and practices which focus on the post heaven.  post heaven practices will look to build Qi by coaxing it with the intention, while pre heaven schools build Qi by entering into emptiness to the point where the mind disappears for a brief time.  When it comes back, the alchemical process has been started without our even having recognized it happening.    This is totally in keeping with how the Neidan school articulates two different kinds of Qi, one means the qi related to breath, blood and external nutritional elements, the other type of Qi refers to something which is tempered in emptiness.

 

Thank you, sillybearhappyhoneyeater.

[Rakiel]

Thanks sillybearhappyhoneyeater. Are you ever going to write another book?

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

Thanks sillybearhappyhoneyeater. Are you ever going to write another book?

 

I've been collecting notes for about two years in planning for another book.   Its going to be a syncretic approach to Nei Dan which uses documents from all of the major schools to explain the practice from early foundational levels to the development of the small and large heavenly orbits.   The material in the book will be teaching the same stages as my first book (i am a stickler for developing the energy body properly, which I think many writers skip in order to favour more romantic material that really shouldn't be practiced until people have mastered the basics), but in much more accurate detail.    One of my big regrets about the first book is not including enough translated material (it was mainly based on oral transmission from my teacher), so the second book will aim to fix that problem with much more exact primary document analysis.

I have a publisher, but we are just waiting a while to finalize details.

 

In the meantime, I do teach various online courses and am being invited out to start a Daoist centre in a secret (for now) location somewhere in North America.    

[Ormus]

At last some real contribution regarding Nei Dan!!!!

 

Thank you.

 

Ormus