exorcist_1699

Although both Taoism and Buddhism talk about Emptiness, they get very different temperament , which may reflect the original, different characters of the Chinese and the Indians : 1. The Chinese are relatively practical people who speak less , the Indians are more eager to express themselves. 2. Taoists cultivate and meditate in small groups of few people , Buddhists do them in big groups , say in hundreds, even in thousands. 3. Taoism wants to say as little as possible , Buddhism , although emphasizes that the Void or the Buddha Heart is beyond reach by words, in fact says a lot . The volume of Buddhist Sutras is huge, nobody knows its exact quantity ; Taoist Canons' volume originally was small, it is only due to the pressure of the translation of the incoming Buddhist Sutras that it gets big ; however its volume is still no match to the Buddhist ones . 4. Comparing to the zealous Buddhists who are eager to preach their briefs so as to rescue all people ( in fact, all creatures if animals can hear and understand ) of the world , Taoism is a cold , indifferent religion , whose followers think that only people who are embodied in relatively cleaner qi , hardly can they be interested in Tao , or understand its significance .

Replenishment of jing , regretfully rooted in Nothingness ( " 虛" , Taoist term ) or Emptiness ( " 空" , Buddhist term ) , not rooted in the earth or any other places despite doing exercises and eating jing- enhancing food also help . But we are talking about " root " , so we refer to something fundamental . As nothingness or emptiness is invisible and difficult to deal with , I assume most people do not like it . However , by just capable of attaining an emptied Mind , without thinking of anything related to the female body or its underclothes, we can arouse sex pleasure , heat and " jumps" at the perineum or lower abdomen part is a clear proof of such a linkage . Notice that an emptied Mind gets the same character as , or is equal to , the emptiness everywhere.

The " Yin Fu jing " « 陰符經 » says: " 宇宙在乎手，萬化生乎身 " ( " All things come from the body ⁕ , grasp the cosmic in your own hands " ). Since the cosmic is full of qi , and our bodies are the embodiment of it , so capable of initializing qi from our bodies , manipulating it and expanding it beyond the body boundaries implies the control of the basic force of the cosmic in our own hands something possible . With the fundamental force in our hands, basic / fatal troubles of life : To live ( and to reproduce), to age , to get sick , to die (生老病死) can be solved . Of course, if you can only initialize qi and circulate it in your own body , incapable of of expanding it beyond, then there is no way of talking about the cosmic stuff ; yet talk about curing some diseases in it is still feasible . ⁕ Notice that Taoist view of the body as a mini cosmic.

Modern physics, especially quantum mechanics , make emptiness and consciousness / observers factors or issues that need to be considered when studying the essence or basic blocks of the universe ; they are , in fact , two , out of other few topics like qi, most heavily talked topics of Buddhism and Daoism as we can find , in Daoist cannons and Buddhist Sutras , millions of pages devoted to them . Although modern science thinks that this Consciousness ( in reality, expressions of the Buddha Heart or Cosmic Mind* in minds of the crowds ) something intelligent arisen on planets billions years after the big-bang and the cooling down of those solar systems , Buddhism and Daoism think that intelligent Mind exists right at the beginning , everywhere , it is only its expressions that look seemingly after time and look required happened under certain physical conditions, for example , in the habitable zone of a solar system . *Cosmic Mind ( '天心') , Daoist term equivalent to the Buddha Heart .

Our daily consciousness or scientific mind does achieve great things at our will , via separating things or phenomena into different parts, layers, relations, steps ..and then by observations and by applying logic/ maths on them , we make assumptions and finally find out those patterns and rules underlying them .. ; humans are always successful via such methods , however , they may not be suitable when we talk about studying the world of qi , or world of the Budda Mind.

Cultivating the mind via the body , which composed of jing and qi , is possible . Cultivating the mind via the mind itself is nearly impossible for whatever ways you adopt , say visualizing something , singing whatever name of your gods, focusing whatever strength on something ..etc , you are in fact : 1)in that process , using up your jing and qi, which conversely weaken your spiritual power ; for example, spending a whole day singing the name of Buddha, in fact, drain a lot of jing and qi from the practitioner, especially for old people , which makes greater spiritual achievement not likely . 2) A mind can only be nourished by a much bigger , powerful Mind , not a trivial mind itself. You , in fact, cannot grind a brick into a mirror. Or, put it in other way : If a horse cart does not move forward, which one should you whip ? The cart or the horse ?

It main depends on how young you are when you start becoming capable of refining jing to qi ; to young guys, say those before their 50's , very bright sparks appear somewhere before their eyes when they pee or meditate is quite a common phenomenon . Accumulating enough high quality jing seems to be the only way..

No-mind is , in fact, a stage of transition , leading us from the pseudo to the genuine . Notice that this consciousness , attached to our drives, to our senses , to our emotions and to our reasoning , is so real and dominant that trying to disentangle from it and reach the super-consciousness ( I would rather call it the Cosmic Mind ) as old3bob raised above , to most people , seems unlikely . So, we need some 'skills' of detaching from them to enter another totally new status or dimension. From human's perspective , detachment from this daily consciousness leads us to no-mind , then a further detachment from no-mind may lead us ( or awaken us ) to a much greater Mind , no matter you call it as super-consciousness or Cosmic Mind . However ,we can also view it from a reverse perspective that despite its seemingly lurking and popping up from our brain , that greater Mind is , in fact , the embodiment of an external Mind from the universe on us . If the Cosmic Mind is the moon, then people's minds can be viewed as its billions reflections on lakes, pools, springs on Earth. However , methodologically, some totally new 'skills' which not presume ourselves being the reflections ( expressions ), separated from the origin/ core (' 體'), have to adopt ; and , they may read like these : - "以心求心, 心將成有" ( " Making use of your minds to search for another great Mind , then hardly can it be any way of no-mind ") <<傳 心法要>> ( for it turns out that your intention consolidates some mind(s), not eliminates it /them ) " 喜怒哀樂之未發謂之中 " ( " What is called the core is when minds and emotions just arise but not yet formed" ) <<中庸>> - "當體即是, 動念即乖" ( " At one stroke enter the core , any idea or expectation means deviation") <<傳心法要>> Assume that Dao's essence/ core is somewhere /sometime ( in future ) separated from our minds , and we should squeeze our minds chasing after it is , in fact, human's method/ way , not Dao's.. Anyway, a famous poem, written by the Daoist cum Confucian scholar , Sao Yong ('邵雍') , who lived in the Song Dynasty , tells us the relation between no-mind and the Cosmic Mind: ' 天心復處是無心 ' ( The Cosmic Mind comes on us as no-mind ) ' 心到無時無處尋 ' ( Being no-minded , to its utmost , we cannot find it anywhere ) '若謂無心便無事 ' ( Meaningless you think it is , why ) '水中何故郤生金 ' ( emerged from water , something looks gold like before our eyes )

Some ideas on the posts above : 1) " When I do emptiness meditation, counting my breaths, or observing my mind, there is emptiness(except for small monkeys) but no sense of bliss or emotional content whatsoever. It gets boring. " So, there is something in the background which counts , which observes, which expects ... , in that case, hardly can it be anything an emptiness meditation for a lot of minds stuck there . And, if it is not empty and pure enough, then unlikely can anything lively be nourished from it ; people will then sooner or later find their "emptiness meditation" boring , unable to continue. 2) Instead of talking about those personal experiences, higher level and dimensions stuffs, people should try using how well no-mind meditation cure disease and aging symptoms on their bodies as criteria for they are more realistic , objective enough to be measured , and are free from self-deception . 3)The skills of being no-mind , then erase it as being no-skill , no-way is crucial to our cultivation, both spiritual and physical , for they should not be separated as some pro-Buddhist ways do . It is something indispensable , just like electricians' abilities of measuring voltage , current on circuits to isolate electric failures and web programmers' abilities of writing HTML, CSS and JS codes . Unable to jump freely on different levels of attention, abstraction or attachment, whatever you call it, blocks people from understanding what genuine cultivation is .

Our spirit , appears to us as varied forms of consciousness and emotions , are in fact controlled by the jing and qi that originate from the dantian ( lower) . No matter what structure and layers we think of our mind, problems like bad memory , not having a sharp mind, unable to pull together a still mind , fail to do lengthy reasoning , uncontrolled illusions popping up....etc , their solution can be found in the area of lower dantian rather than trying to find them in the upper , area of spirit . Lower dantian is also a place we accumulate energy or nutrition for a much greater self ; let high quality jing and qi arise to naturally sublimate our spirit / shen is a way much better than people's deliberate (spiritual ) efforts . It is in this sense that we can find how clever and significant Daoism is. The terms "氣機" ( " mechanism of qi " ) and "神機" ( " mechanism of shen " ) have to be studied in details , like studies of how to set up a solar-powered system composed of electrical and mechanical parts based on varied mechanisms , so as to benefit our life .

Daoism simply is a system of philosophy for understanding the world(s) , both physical and spiritual , that we live in . However, different from other systems of philosophies ( even religions) , Daoism interprets them with the ideas and ways of jing , qi , shen , which exist not only inside people's bodies, but everywhere , therefore giving the followers of Daoism the power and means of not only understanding the world(s) , but changing them . Philosophers finally are endowed with a power , qi , that disentangles them from solely being an explainer , always succumbing to poverty, diseases, aging and earthly political power , even alienated human creation like AGI .

Qi, no matter it comes from the body's organs or its meridians ,all originates from the fundamental qi ( '元氣 ' ) located in between the kidneys, a place where also gets a specific name called ' mingmen ' ('Gate of life') . As we age, this fundamental qi decreases , therefore our digestion ability also weakens; this is why although we can keep eating to absorb jing and qi from food , their quality and quantity decrease that we just cannot rely on feeding food to live forever ; all old people experience the shrinkage of their appetite and digestion ability by 50-60s . We can initialize and refine this fundamental qi to certain degree by herbs, needles , our hands , some postures and our minds , however, the pure and most powerful one we can get to reverse the life's proceeding is by attaining a no-Mind . A no-Mind is just something spiritual, empty and pure , free of the effects from our drives ( say sex) , emotions( anger, jealousy..etc) and ideas ( mind locked in a chain of concepts ) , therefore it gets the character same as the fundamental qi 's , which makes our cultivation simple and easy ( ' 同類易施功, 非種難為巧 ' ) .

Exactly . From Daoist perspective , the magnificence and temperament of no-Mind, is better proved by body healing or replenishment of essence as you say , rather than those seemingly silly Koans and question of " Who am I " (in fact , another kind of attachment) .

Yeah , you really get the point that I want to say , but somehow reluctant . To old guys , say those over 65 , the necessity of using the female body as a means (definitely is something troublesome , unless it is their wives' ) of replenishing their jing is not always a must . It also implies , for some jing deficient illness, a condensation of the no-Mind , even without shifting it onto the place where the pain or malfunction arisen, say an ached knee or a tumor , can simply cure it . In fact, Daoist jing-qi-shen theory gives us a nonreligious explanation of how and why just applying some mental power ( a specific mind , no-Mind , not any analytic mind we are acquainted with in daily life, or in scientific practice ) , we can heal .

Although jing -> qi -> shen is the common path to follow , in some cases , people may lose their jing and qi unexpectedly ,say in a traffic accident , a person's body gets hurt and his jing and qi depleted . Does it mean he has to do the whole process of accumulating jing , then qi again ? The answer is it not necessarily be true, in fact, as long as he has done the no-Mind stuff well, he can use it to reversely generate jing , then qi for " 神凝則精聚 " ( "While Shen condenses, jing will gather " ) . You can view it as making use of high-level stuff to repair low-level damages, as follows :