exorcist_1699

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 :

Similar to women who , being frustrated or in depression , become addicted to eating snacks or shopping , many guys become addicted to masturbation under depression or worries ,which likely are more hurtful . There are many ways to deal with it , here I only want to talk about those highest ways of treatments or cultivation ('上品丹法') as they are fundamental and most secured , which can be expressed in few sayings : 1) " 事來無對之以心, 對之以性 " ( " when affairs or troubles come , do not face them with your minds or emotions , but your no Mind " ) 2) "境殺心則凡, 心殺境則仙, " (" those who are overtaken by their life scenarios are called the ordinary , those who overcome their life scenarios with their emptied Mind are called the immortals " ) 3) "道不可須臾離 , 君子終日乾乾 " (" people should not leave Dao even a second ; the saints always live and have their Yang qi reversed on the top " ) For sex drive and emotions ( anger, jealousy, fear..etc ) always secretly lurk beneath us , and they get hold of us unnoticed even in a second of time . So, before they act and strike , having us grasped , we put our spirit up there on a much higher plane that are free of their reach or hurt .

An amazing achievement . Yeah , breathing practice should be linked to qigong , then emptied mind stuff , otherwise in the end , all is futile . Doing or paying attention to breathing is only some kind of thing doing at the transitive stage , what we really want to do is making use of the unreal so as to attain the genuine ( breathing) (' 以假練真') .

Doing the Micro cosmic circulation does not necessarily mean people can nourish their brains with qi as it really depends on the quality of the jing sublimated , embedded inside it . The following can be viewed as criteria to judge : -how hot the qi they feel -whether any bright dot/ball of light appeared somewhere before them ? (provided that imagination/visualization is not the way they adopt) - any sex pleasure ? - whether they then get a clear mind, one with good memory and understanding ability..etc - sweet saliva overflows from mouth? - ' beat ' of the perineum area? If people get most of the above mentioned phenomena , then not only their brains nourished ; that kind of qi really can be a powerful doze of medicine that cures most diseases , even severe ones .

Different from post-natal jing , the pre-heavenly jing is outside of our body('天地至精' ) , everywhere , which can also be called as the Mind of the Cosmic('天心') because at the pre-heavenly level , not yet embodied in the body , jing , qi and shen are a trinity , unseparated ; it is only after a physical intercourse of a man and a woman that the body is born and post-natal jing then stored in people's bodies , yet its amount so limited that it can only sustain a life of 125 years approximately . Capable of retaining the post-natal jing and accumulate it to a full extent will start another intercourse, now a spiritual one between qi and shen back to the higher plane , that lets people open the gateway of accessing the limitless pre-heavenly jing outside, therefore makes the breeding of an everlasting life possible . Transforming jing ( it sometime in the form of energy , sometime appears as some physical stuff) into qi , then reversing it upwards to nourish the brain (' 還精補腦 ' ) is the first step of such an exploration .

"Ming men" is said to be located in between the kidneys where qi of the body originates. "Perineum " is where the acupuncture point "會陰" located , feeling its jump, its being a hot spot , are good phenomena that your qi upgraded. " connect ming men with perineum " : Not necessarily be true ; other people's feeling or path is not necessarily yours.Better let qi show you its way , not forcing qi to follow what you are pre-told .

The seed of cannabis , in fact, is quite a common TCM herb, but it is mainly used for curing constipation because of its "lubricating " （ mimost plants' seeds in TCM is claimed , more or less, to have such an effect 　 ) effect on the large intestine , not its ability of enhancing the qi of the large intestine . Anyway, talking about external help to increase your qi in spiritual cultivation , of course , you can stick some kind of plaster of Chinese herbs : ginseng mixed with others , say 北芪 (Bei qi) , 當歸 ( dong guai ) but likely not cannabis , at the acupuncture points under your navel when doing qi cultivation. However, a clear, emptied Mind is , in the final analysis , the key for any qi , then spiritual cultivation , and anything that interferes it is no good . Doing the emptied Mind stuff well can take the place of all those tricks : drinking medicine , singing curses, adopting some body postures..etc , so for those who love simplicity and get the resolute , they may prefer such a simple, thorough solution.

Maths, to most people , is always something difficult . Differentiating things around us , chopping them into parts , and then find their relationships ; identifying what features of things are important , what are minor ; repeating the process from induction to deduction, then deduction to induction..; using different symbols and words to describing those differentiation and abstraction in different applications ..all are things not natural to our mind, they need some kind of analytic power, some kind of persistent concentration . And even if people find it easy in their youth, they will find it difficult in their old age . The power and delicacy of our mind , in fact , comes from our jing ( essence ) , so the deterioration of it will give us a dull mind ; memorizing things no longer that easy , learning new technologies no longer so quickly ..etc . Fortunately No-mind does not require our spending jing , qi or mental power ♦ , instead it helps us grabbing us jing and qi from the surroundings ; so if talking about replenishing jing , even reversing aging , especially for old guys/ ladies , it is really a god given way . ♦ if it still requires us to squeeze our minds , then it is not No-mind .

In order to attain higher quality of qi, a taste of emptied mindlessness stuff is , anyway , needed .

The difficulties of attaining Buddhist way of Enlightenment are : 1) Before attaining Enlightenment , you need to sustain a prolonged state of emptied mindlessness , which to most people , is something too tough to do; 2) Technically, the more you want to attain Enlightenment , the more you are unlikely to get it for it only comes when you do not pay attention to . And , there are many awakenings , small or big.. , to accumulate . So, it is technically difficult . In fact, to our mind , abstraction is always something difficult ; there are analytic abstraction , say maths , which deal with abstractions of numerical quantity , relations , arrangements or spacial dimensions of things around us , that makes us frightened . The German philosopher , Wittgenstein, once compared analytic thinking , a process of struggles, to diving where we always have to fight against the floating force ; there is also the intuitive abstraction in which we can play with layers and levels of nothingness , first in steps, then at a stroke.., something even more intimidating than those we do in maths . The reward is that while in analytic abstraction we only indirectly gain the power ( 'Knowledge is power') , in intuitive abstraction , we can directly grasp the energy , then the power , in hands provided that we explore deep enough. If after having read above you still cannot find anything significant , then fortunately , apart from the Buddhist way, we get the Taoist way, a way of primordial qi , that simplifies many things .

Simply Ming refers to jing ( essence ) and qi , and xing refers to shen , some kind of spiritual nature hidden in the back of our mind that will only emerge after our having accumulated certain amount of jing and qi in our body . It looks simple but in fact intricate . It implies that qi, as some kind of energy , can simultaneously appear to us in three states : inside qi there is jing embedded as low-level basic stuff , liquid-like , which makes people feel of the heat and sex pleasure ; and there is another higher level spiritual stuff over qi , built on it , that at certain stage , enables people feel of some kind of spiritual clarity and oneness ; if compared it to water , it means water appears to us as steam, ice and water simultaneously , which is bizarre and unlikely ; I think this is why by scientific method and criteria , people cannot directly find qi and therefore deny its existence . It can also mean for a physical body , human body and the brain , we can have two systems of abstraction and both work . It is similar to a physical computing system , we can build on it two different virtual machines and they can take control at some time . We can have a abstraction of the human body that is based on our understanding of atom , its structure ; molecules and their combination via their outerest orbit's electrons , then those big molecules , a long chain of C, H, N, O ..etc . We can also have another abstraction of the human body based on jing ,qi and shen . Both systems of abstractions can work , can cure the malfunctions of the body and even give their respective solutions for the immortality of it .

Yes, qi is everywhere , but for beginners , they can only feel qi via projecting their minds to dantians , placing fingers on some places of their bodies or having eaten some herbs ..etc In fact, by approaching qi via varied media , people can know it better .

Adding Qi , as a skill set , to our life is similar to having mastered more skills, such as preserving food, repairing some broken electric appliances or setting up a web server in our house ; any of them makes our life easier and more enjoyable. Preppers who are planning to live in city or jungle after future war may find it more significant as they are mostly free and easy to access . The skill set can include the following: 1) Capable of testing pulses on our wrist so that we know of roughly what problems are going in our body . Details of identifying pulses and their patterns include how fast the pulses felt , how strong the pulse reacts to our fingers , and at which location we should put our fingertips on..etc ; other important locations, critical to life , to check the pulse can be on foot at places where acupuncture points Taixi ( KI 3) and Chongyang (ST42) located . 2) The ability to write a simple TCM formula for curing some slight diseases or troubles in our body . Try writing some simple formulas which compose of only one herb (Dang gui, Kan cao , Ginger ..)or two herbs , to start . Ordinary stuffs we can find in kitchen such as wine , vinegar, salt , honey are also materials that we can add into those formula to change or enhance their effects ; the only difference is that in TCM they are used under the Taoist yang/yin ( ie, qi/ blood or jing) framework and meridian system, quite different from those used in other natural remedies. 3) Know where the main acupuncture points are and their corresponding effects on curing ailments , for example , He Gu ( LI 4) for face and head ailments, SanYinJiao (SP 6) for women's ailments..etc . Consider having drunk dirty water from a creek makes our stomach ache or having a severe headache , but gets no medicine at hands , such kind of free of charge cure is of great value for survival in wilderness . 4) Capable of initializing qi from our dantians , which people talk a lot on this forum , so it is unnecessary to go into details here .

" 谷虛應聲，心虛應神，神虛應氣，氣虛應精，虛極則明，明極則瑩，超乎精神，而無死生。精從內守，氣自外生，以氣取精，可以長生。" Translation : " The valley is empty it echoes with sound , the mind is empty it echoes with shen, the shen is empty it echoes with qi, the qi is empty it echoes with jing . When emptiness reaches its limit, spiritual clarity emerges; when spiritual clarity reaches its limit , crystal brightness appears. It transcends both jing and shen, and goes beyond life and death . Guard the jing from within, then qi will come from the outside , and by using qi to grip jing , one achieves everlasting life . "

San Mao (三茅) refers to the three immortals of Taoism who lived in the Han Dynasty . According to legend, they are the three brothers Mao Ying, Mao Gu and Mao Zhong .

People who are familiar with Taoist literature can , at a glimpse , know any document they are reading be from the TCM's perspective , or from Taoist alchemical perspective , to talk about those terms of 精, 氣 or 神 ( jing , qi or shen) in it ; of course this one is a Taoist alchemical piece of literature .

Shen builds up on jing and qi , so the loss of jing and qi also means the lose of shen which is easy to understand and identify . However , shen can also leak directly from its own activities via our eyes and the projection of our spirit : worry too much about matters in life , read too many books , play too many online games , do too many intensive reasoning , say programming ..etc Notice that 3 yang : stomach, bladder and gallbladder meridians all originate from our eyes and they run through most parts of the body , so they can be the exits of shen and qi (via shen ) ; this is why although many people not addicted to sex, wine or irregular lifestyle , without losing much shen via jing and qi aspects , most of them still get back pain , feeble knee , deteriorated eyesight ..etc after entering their 50s . Evade doing those things that hurt our eyesight and drain our mental energy are solutions to it . But most importantly is the ability to consolidate some kind spiritual oneness , which safeguards our shen , lifts and keeps it at a much high level that it now no longer projects outside and dispersed . Although the body is said to be safeguarded by a shield of defensive qi , it is the shen , now in the form of consolidated oneness , that determine the boundary of it , say whether it closed or open to external energy ..

Reluctant to say that both are trivial and futile tricks , hardly capable of leading people to anything great ..