Taoist Texts

Well if he thinks ghost immortals are outside of reincarnation then his school isn't legit. 

 

All ghosts have to be led to the light. 

That is a good hunch;).

 

To say that ghost immortals do not reincarnate is completely incorrect. They cant even read the basic Chinese they offer as evidence.

 

the phrase 终无所归，止于投胎就舍而已。means 

 

'In the end, having nowhere to go, the ghost immortals just enter a human embryo again to take abode there and that's it."

 

止 here stands not for stopping but for 'only/just'. This is my xmas present to these guys, god save their poor souls.

 

Eva Wong also translates this passage along these lines, (with minor mistakes)

 

 

 

"The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality: The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu," translated by Eva Wong.

 

"Chung said:

'The ghost immortal is the lowest class of immortal. Ghost immortals are beings who have attained immortality in the realm of the dead. Their spirit is dim and they have neither name nor title. Although they are not forced to be reborn, they are not able to enter the Peng-lai lands of immortality. They wander about in limbo between the realms of the living and the dead, and their existence comes to an end if they chose to be reborn into the human realm.'

Well I can't recall the exact source, but I believe I read Liu Yiming in some Fabrizio Pregadio article (or perhaps Pregadio himself) stating that they three are actually different aspects of one "thing", I'll have to see if I can find the citation.

Broadly speaking the whole universe is one thing. The 3 things are spoken about as one when pointing out their unity is serving didactic purposes. It is true in some sense but useless out of the didactic context.

 

Anyway, what spurred my question was contemplating how various traditions, specifically Pratyabhijna or Kashmir Shaivist philosophy, but also Chan depending on how you read it (concepts of One Mind, etc.) claim that all of reality is consciousness or exists within consciousness/awareness. The Daoist tradition of course tends to say that all of manifest reality is qi, with the most purified and subtle qi being heavens, deities, etc. and the coarsest being matter, but all qi nonetheless. This got me thinking about the relationship between the two views and how Daoist's view consciousness/awareness. 

 

I've seen some Daoists speak of the Dao mind (道心) and even say a variation of Bodhidharma's famous statement with, "The Dao is the Mind and the Mind is the Dao", but I am still unsure on how Daoists view the topic, specifically consciousness or Mind's relation to qi.

Qi is a flashdrive, the mind is a file stored on it.

 

 

Precelestial Shen is not a consciousness.

 

 

What is it described as then? Non-consciousness or unconsciousness? Of course 

Of course it is a consciousness. Shen means a spirit. And a spirit is defined as

 

However, God help you (and us) if it's Donald the Dickhead in the White House!

According to CBS’ L.A. affiliates, neighbors of Muslim mass murderers Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik noticed some very suspicious things going on at the couple’s apartment in the days and weeks leading to the horrific massacre that took fourteen lives, but they chose not to report anything, for fear of being labeled “racist.”

 http://takimag.com/article/sum_ting_wong_david_cole/print#ixzz3vh4RJfiX

 

The media and the Democrats can’t do all the work themselves; average “victicrats” must do their part too. Working together, this coalition has succeeded in creating the situation we have now, in which risking a mass-murder spree is actually considered the lesser of two evils compared to being seen as racist.

 http://takimag.com/article/sum_ting_wong_david_cole/print#ixzz3vh4x5WoM

Wilfred Thesiger once wandered the salt marshes of Iraq in perfect safety as Mubarak bin London.

Thesiger waited a decade to write up his Arabian adventures, which included climbing and crossing sand dunes 700 feet high, murderous threats from warring Arab tribes

 

 

And, as I pointed out, Afghanistan was perfectly safe and welcoming in 1974 (as were Iraq and Iran).

 

Autumn 1974[edit]

It is announced that another attempt to overthrow the regime has been discovered and quashed; its leader has been executed and 11 participants imprisoned. Shortly afterward there is trouble in Takhar province, where the Muslim Brotherhood, which dislikes President Daud's secularizing policy, is very influential. The government is obliged to take stern action; 70 members of the brotherhood are arrested, along with the governor of the province, the Revenue Commissioner, and the Superintendent of Police, and all are brought to trial on charges of plotting against the state.

 

Unless the Quran was rewritten in the interim it's reasonable to conclude that "Islam" wasn't a problem then.

Those 3 nations were secular, with islam kept firmly in check then.

What is the relationship between qi/chi and consciousness or Mind? It's often said that jing, qi, and shen (which is seen as consciousness, spirit, or mind) are actually one.

Would that be the case there would not be 3 names

 

Does this mean that qi is related to, possesses, or actually is identical to consciousness?

Yes, no, no.

 

 

On the topic of qi, is anyone aware of a good study of the topic from a Daoist perspective which perhaps might go in greater depth than is typically found, i.e. an entire article or book devoted to the topic?

 

Thanks.

 ...although in this case, how is it any different from capital punishment in the USA?  

Countries where in some cases a woman's testimony is worth half of that of a man:

• Algeria (in criminal cases)^[13]
• Bahrain (in Sharia courts)^[14]
• Egypt (in family courts)^[15]
• Iran (in most cases)^[16]
• Iraq (in some cases)^[17]
• Jordan (in Sharia courts)^[18]
• Kuwait (in family courts)^[19]
• Libya (in some cases)^[20]
• Morocco (in family cases)^[21]
• Palestine (in cases related to marriage, divorce and child custody)^[22]
• Qatar (in family law matters)^[23]
• Saudi Arabia^[24]

what ZYD just said.

 

Also the term itself as i have found out today comes from 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zosimos_of_Panopolis

 

 

who says 

 

Démocrite, distingue lui-même et dit : « Reçois cette pierre qui n’est pas une pierre, cette chose précieuse qui n’a pas de valeur, cet objet polymorphe qui n’a point de forme, cet inconnu qui est connu de tous, qui a plusieurs noms et qui n’a pas de nom:[39]

 

 

"This stone is not a stone, and has nor name nor shape"

 

From Gnostics the term was passed on to early Christianity and was adopted by the western medieval alchemists.

 

As to what it is and what he does Zosimos says

 

"C’est là le mystère incommuniqué, qu’aucun des prophètes n’a osé divulguer par la parole"

 

Its a secret.

This is just another way of saying that whatever goes against natural order

whats a "natural order"?

is basically working against the causes of its existence.

why would it do that?

 

It's a simple idea.

Thats why it is  in DDJ.

 

Thankyou for your helpful response Taoist Text. 

Anytime;)

To clarify for myself, are you referring to the Yang Shen body as somewhat the equivalent to the Spiritual Embryo? 

Yes. The yang shen body is what the spiritual embryo becomes when he is born and grows up.

 

And what shen then flows through the 3 Dan Tians?

To quote from the above:

 

 

 

Returning to Emptiness. When the Zhong-Lü alchemical tradition explains “refining Spirit to return to Emptiness,” it builds in the first place on the foundation of “refining Breath to transmute it into Spirit.”

 

One should move the Infant from the lower to the middle Cinnabar Field, where it is further refined and nourished.

Then the Infant is moved from the middle to the upper Cinnabar Field; this is called “moving the embryo” (yitai).

Finally one obtains the Yang Spirit, which exits from the Gate of Heaven (tianmen); this is called “delivery of the embryo” (chutai), and is also called “nourishing warmly” (wenyang).

This is not mentioned in any of Zhang Boduan’s works.

Yang Spirit=Yang Shen body

I understand from this that after the transmuted jing, qi and shen merge, the Spirit Embryo is then formed, and it is instead these merged energies circulating that then nourish the Embryo?

Well, this is a good question, but unfortunately a truthful answer to it is going to be unavoidably complex.

The alchemy uses 3 main models for the same process of the great work:

1. Qi: jing-qi-shen-void

2. Pharmaceutical: small medicine-great medicine

3. Reproductive: inception-pregnancy-breastfeeding-maturity

While people do try to correlate them, it can cause confusion so at first it is better to try and understand these separately.

The embryo is a notion from #3 and does not strictly speaking belong to #1. Now, since you are interested in the qi-based model (#1), in it, the three energies do not merge or nourish, but rather a lower energy is suppose to transmute completely into a higher one without nothing left at the lower plane. The jing is completely refined into qi, the qi is fully reworked into shen, and the shen 100% changes into the Yang Shen body to become one with the Emptiness.

And the matured Embryo is then 'born' into the void?

Yes you can say that.

 

 

In his Sizhu Wuzhen pian (Four Commentaries to Awakening to Reality), Fu Jinquan (1765–1844) says:

 

In the alchemical texts there are subtle words, plain words, clear words, allusive words, metaphoric words, murky words, as well as circuitous and cunning words. There are doctrines on the Elixir, and there are oral instructions. It is as if a divine dragon first hides itself and then emerges, only to vanish and become invisible again, leaving a scale on the eastern road, and a claw on the western road. This requires much attention from the reader. 

 

 

How so?

 

This results in shen that is pure yang, and is transmuted into Void, and it is at this point that the Spirit Embryo is created.

The void is the terminal achievement of the process, happening at the end of the Nine Years. The Embryo is happening at the end of the  10 Months. The author is confused about the stages.

 

 

The Embryo of Sainthood (shengtai )

In one of the poems quoted above, Awakening to Reality says: When the three families see one another, the Infant coalesces. The Infant is the One holding True Breath; in ten months the embryo is complete — this is the foundation for entering sainthood.

 

“Refining Spirit to return to Emptiness” is the highest ideal of the al‐ chemical doctrines. This stage is also called Higher Barrier (shangguan) and Barrier of the Nine Years (jiunian guan). 

http://www.goldenelixir.com/files/Wang_Mu_Foundations_of_Internal_Alchemy_SAMPLE.pdf

I was reading An Introduction to the Philosophy and Religion of Taoism

by Jeaneane D. Fowler.

 

She writes that when coarse jing has been transmuted into subtle jing in the LDT, it is passed up to the MDT to aid in the transmutation of coarse qi into subtle qi there, which in turn is passed up to the UDT where both subtle jing and subtle qi aid in the transmutation of coarse shen into subtle shen.

 

After this the “subtle states of all Three Treasures merge as one.”

 

This results in shen that is pure yang, and is transmuted into Void, and it is at this point that the Spirit Embryo is created.

The bolded is signally wrong. The rest is just some keywords strung together.

I was wondering why zen monks wear black robes and even their  zafus are black  ? 

 

What does black color mean to zen ? 

Nothing much it is simply a practical color because the robes were made from donated or begged or found cloth, the black is the most practical color to dye the diverse cloth to make the robes uniform.

 

The rakusu represents the garments that the Buddha put together to wear after he left his palace to seek enlightenment. According toBuddhist scripture, Siddhārtha left the palace where he was a prince, and collected rags from trash heaps, funeral pyres, and various other places.^[3] He then cleaned the rags by rubbing them in saffron, which gave his robes an orange-golden appearance.

In the Sōtō school, the rakusu's color is usually determined by the wearer's status.^[2] For example, lay practitioners frequently receive a blue rakusu and black ones are given upon ordination as a priest. A brown rakusu indicates that the wearer has received dharma transmission and is authorized to teach.

 

 

Japanese Buddhist Priest’s Mantle (Kesa), 1775-1825. LACMA textile collections.

 

 

 

Black is generally considered evil,  inauspicious and not good in any way 

Not in china or far east in general

 

 

And is this an innovation of Japanese zen or the black was also used in Chinese chan ? 

 

 do Chinese chan monks also use black zafus and zabutons  ? 

 

 

In India, variations of the kāṣāya robe distinguished different types of monastics. These represented the different schools that they belonged to, and their robes ranged widely from red and ochre, to blue and black.^[2]

Between 148 and 170 CE, the Parthian monk An Shigao came to China and translated a work which describes the color of monastic robes used in five major Indian Buddhist sects, called Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi (Ch. 大比丘三千威儀).^[3] Another text translated at a later date, the Śāriputraparipṛcchā, contains a very similar passage corroborating this information, but the colors for the Sarvāstivāda and Dharmaguptaka sects are reversed.^[4][5]

Nikāya Da Biqiu Sanqian Weiyi Śāriputraparipṛcchā Sarvāstivāda Deep Red Black Dharmaguptaka Black Deep Red Mahāsāṃghika Yellow Yellow Mahīśāsaka Blue Blue Kaśyapīya Magnolia Magnolia

In traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, which follow the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, red robes are regarded as characteristic of the Mūlasarvāstivādins.^[6]

 

In Chinese Buddhism, the kāṣāya is called jiāshā (Ch. 袈裟). During the early period of Chinese Buddhism, the most common color was red. Later, the color of the robes came to serve as a way to distinguish monastics, just as they did in India. However, the colors of a Chinese Buddhist monastic's robes often corresponded to their geographical region rather than to any specific schools.^[9] By the maturation of Chinese Buddhism, only the Dharmaguptaka ordination lineage was still in use, and therefore the color of robes served no useful purpose as a designation for sects, the way that it had in India.

During the Tang dynasty, Chinese Buddhist monastics typically wore grayish-black robes, and were even colloquially referred to as Ziyi(緇衣), "those of the black robes."^[10] However, the Song dynasty monk Zanning (919–1001 CE) writes that during the earlier Han-Weiperiod, the Chinese monks typically wore red robes.^[11]

I want to know the many different neidan schools that are open to teaching folks.

 

All of them are wide open and waiting for your money

 

Preferably simple ones. Healing Tao from Michael Winn is very complete but it's ridiculously complex. He markets it as not being complicated and says he simplified it ever since his time with Chia but that really isn't the case at all.

That is true, neidan is basically glorified qigong

 

What other legitimate schools are there?

They are all legit because they say so. And google knows them all.

Hi Jee, I recommend you teach yourself fasting and then introduce your mother to it. Fasting is amazingly effective, and frankly, fasting is the only remedy that works.

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you on the history because I have made a special study of Confucian cultivation and it goes back at least to Mencius, and many people think even earlier to Confucius disciple Yan hui, and possibly to Confucius himself.   

It does indeed. My fav quote in this regard:

 

子曰：「賜也，女以予為多學而識之者與？」

對曰：「然，非與？」曰：「非也，予一以貫之。」

 

The Master said, "Ci, you think, I suppose, that I am one who learns many things and keeps them in memory?"

Zi Gong replied, "Yes - but perhaps it is not so?"

"No," was the answer; "I seek a unity all pervading.

 

《衛靈公 - Wei Ling Gong》

I'm sorry to be so long to get back to you on this, but I have been kind of busy and preoccupied.

'tis the season to be merry;)

 

 

 

While I think the person you should really ask is the person who wrote it, my interpretation of the text would be, both. If we look at the whole quote:

 

 

Two things are being talked about, the "pre heaven jing, qi and shen" and how when they meet the mind "naturally cultivates yuan qi", this is really rather more a state of emptines, which is why "it may seem like something has been taken away", but then there is the "trace of the Dao", which is "post natal heaven qi moving through the various meridians".  It is this movement of the post heaven "Qi" which "often manifests", so to me it seems like he is talking about two different, but complementary processes, one which seems more like "emptiness" and the other a slightly noticeable movement of post heaven qi that arises spontaneously in response to the "mind naturally" cultivating yuan qi and it is this spontaneous motion which is the trace of the Dao.  At least that is how I would interpret what he says.

Your take on this is interesting, so i am glad i asked the rather rhetorical question, which was not directed at you specifically, but still thanks.

 

 

  You might want to check out the original post.

Well I did, you see, the neidanists have this intriguing mode of reasoning which i term the 'word fungibility', meaning that any word can be substituted for another word according to the neidanist's likes and dislikes. The corollary to which is 'words do not have meanings'. Fascinating!

What I am doing simply works for me. 

 

Great, thats the way to go. Important thing is to keep the pain and heat away from the heart, head, kidneys and testicles.

Honestly, I have never thought to find a teacher. I have always assumed that there is no one.  

There is not.

 

Where would I look for a teacher

And even if there would be, people just say this in the auto-reply mode. If asked what guarantee does a teacher provide exactly , they would be hard pressed for a correct answer. Which is 'nothing'.

As far as I am concerned the idea of "storing up energy" begins with some bad metaphors and analogies and goes downhill from there.   

yes.

 

 

This goes much deeper, but basically, when this process is ocurring, you may not notice very much,

....

 

This movement of Qi often manifests 

so which is it?

  Why define Taoism so narrowly?

 

They shoot for the box on the right. Its a poorly executed marketing strategy, whereas they try to exclude everything else to position their product as the only true Taoism. Which is of course easily disprovable.

  All these methods with putting attention on the LDT with breath  .... has no relation to Neidan.  

 

If it stops, it then stops behind the hall of the navel and in front of the Gate of Ming  In between these two and slightly below there is a circle of empty non-being. My heart-and-mind stops here and practises inner observation of it. The heart-and-mind shines into the void. It combines with the qi 56 and [the two] protect each other. It is held fast between the compass and the L-square, comes and goes inside the square and circle.With every breath it returns to the root and unites with the spontaneous transformations.

 

(Huimingjing, Nicholson)

 and has no any relation to the authentic Daoism. Building the foundation in traditional Chinese schools means work with precelestial qi in the very beginning, but breath work with attention on LDT has no any relation to these methods

Is it an IMHO? You know, as in 'totally unsubstantiated IMHO'? Because it strangely sounds like one.

Traditionally translated as "virtue", but having no religious overtones.

.....

 

4. (in Buddhism) 大德 dàdé, translation of Sanskrit "bhadanta", most virtuous, honorific term for Buddhist mendicant or monk.

 

I see.

Virtue is there in the evil man as well...

 

Virtue is supposed to be something completely good and an evil man is supposed to be completely evil, so no. Probably you are thinking about something that is best suited to a different name. Interesting what would that be and what's its real name?

By obtaining Yuanqi, De is born. That is the only way.

so one can obtain yuanqi without having De? Interesting;)