exorcist_1699

From Taoist point of view, there is a Buddhist formula of cultivation : Abstinence(' 戒') => Samatha ('定') => Enlightenment ('慧' ) which nearly equals to Taoist formula of Jing => Qi => Shen . Without serious abstinence in every aspect of our life , stoppage of the leakage of jing and accumulation of qi is impossible ,and without jing and qi's accumulation , Samatha, a persistent settlement and consolidation of an emptied mind, not just for seconds , but for minutes , even hours , can hardly be maintained . And without a lasting Samatha , there is no way to attain Enlightenment . In fact , Samatha is like playing on the edge of an upcoming black hole , the longer you are capable of staying there , the bigger the possibility you can see it happens..

Talking about the emptied mind and its relation with qi to such an extent and some people still can't get it , then who should be blamed? Chinese Taoists are always accused of acting like misers who don't want to share their wealth with foreigners , maybe from this case, you can find that such claim hardly be true .

Thanks a lot.

Many people know that Taoism emphasizes the importance of both Xing ( our spiritual nature, some kind of hidden meta-Mind) , and Meng ( life composed of jing and qi ) ,however which one we should cultivate first can be a big problem ： - Meng first, Xing later ( " 先命後性" ) : This approach can be summarized in one Taoist famous formula : jing =>qi =>shen . It is a conventional and popular way yet not necessarily the only one we can choose . Some of its benefits are : it lets people start easier , and also enables them to proceed in a step by step way ; however , there are some problems in this approach, for example, the more jing people accumulate at their lower abdomen, the less likely they can contain it , so in the end hardly can they accumulate enough jing and qi to have a quality jump to shen. or - Xing first , Meng later ("先性後命") : Note that this Xing-first approach is not borrowed from Buddhism , but something originally rooted in Taoism before Buddhism coming into China ( The sit-and-forget method mentioned in Zhuangzi is one of the proofs for such claim ) . This approach is also said to be first-difficult-later-easy (" 先難後易") , but it gets the benefits of what I mentioned above : You try consolidating a mindless Mind first before projecting it onto qi ...in that case , what you get more likely be something closer to the high-quality pre-heavenly one rather than something low-end and post-heavenly .

Thanks your comment although I don't agree with it.

" Journey to the West " is full of Taoist poems, some of them have keys for alchemical practice hidden in ; for example, one poem in chapter two reads: " 顯密圓通真妙訣，惜修性命無他說。都來總是精氣神，謹固牢藏休漏洩。休漏洩，體中藏，汝受吾傳道自昌。口訣記來多有益，屏除邪欲得清涼。得清涼，光皎潔，好向丹台賞明月。月藏玉兔日藏烏，自有龜蛇相盤結。相盤結，性命堅，卻能火裡種金蓮。攢簇五行顛倒用，功完隨作佛和仙。 "

Not necessarily, because there is a common ground for both systems : A consolidated emptied mind ; In fact, some higher Taoist way prefers people to attain an emptied mind ,rather than to visualize a qi-ball between their hands , first so as to initialize qi . The advantages of following this path are : 1) People then understand how the Buddhist way works , and its difference from the Taoist ; 2)A detached ,emptied mind likely helps you avoid many potential troubles that are going to arise because people always think that they can overdo their mind ( focus harder , for example ) to get more and stronger qi , which unfortunately is not true; 3) An emptied mind is a thorough solution to jing leakage , especially the nocturnal ones , other ways are unlikely ; 4)Placed right in the middle of people's road towards immortality , emptied mind is a hurdle sooner or later they have to pass , why not deal with it earlier ?

Likely the most famous Taoist poem , written by Shao Yong, a Sung Dynasty scholar, regarding Taoist cultivation ,is : "乾遇巽時觀月窟, 地逢雷處見天根, 天根月窟閑來往, 三十六宫都是春" On the other hand , the Buddhist poem that I love most, talking about Buddhist methodology , is : "法本法無法, 無法法亦法, 將付無法時, 法法何曾法" (" Buddhist way is originally based on no-way , we can't deny that no-way is still a way ; when teaching you what no-way is , do I really need to adopt any other ways ? " ) Buddhist way-less Way, Yi's trigram scenarios and Taoist capability of doing anything through non-doing ( "無為無不為" ) ,is all the great Eastern spiritual creation. It is only after having this creation united with the Western Mind, when we can skilfully use them as we get adapted to mathematical reasoning, for example , should we understand what human intelligence is and has its fullness grasped in our hands . Although there exists a heritage of Christian spiritual healing , compared with the Taoist or Buddhist one, the Western one is just too rough , lacking those necessary details and deep layers to claim her glory ...

Taoist concept of Magical Gateway( ' 玄關' ) is so close to the concept of " white hole " that its cosmological implication can hardly be denied . And, because of this , it is no strange that you find any way starts from an emptied mind or emptiness , where the Gateway emerges from , said to be superb ('上品') while all others starting from the physical body , no matter it be your breathing , dantian , a light ball in between your eyebrow..etc , all are classified as low-end ('下品') by most Taoist writings . Here , two problems we have to consider : 1) Methodologically speaking, both Taoists and Buddhists use no physical apparatus or mathematical reasoning for understanding the cosmos but through a strange ,persistent intuitive process of detachment from the physical stuff , from our senses and reasoning to nourish it ( In Taoist case, it adds the accumulation qi and jing to enhance the effect ) . Note that how big is the mass of a sun-like object so as to collapse into a black hole , the opposite of the white hole , is not the concern of the Taoist alchemy , what it is interested in is how the potential 'white hole ' that may emerge from some gifted individuals. 2) Emptiness is the most possible area enables us to break down the boundary between the outside and inside of us , so as to let energy come in . What Taoist claim of thing being post-heavenly is jing ,qi and shen's embodiment and trap in this physical body and their inevitable ,gradual dissipation , governed by an one-way timeline towards death ; an emptied mind without any ideas is similar to emptiness without any characteristics ( no size , no mass , no light, no curvature of space..etc ) ; we can't say :" The emptiness inside my mind and the emptiness outside .." , so the emptied mind is the best means we get for exploring and unifying emptiness outside , in fact , everywhere . As Can Tung Qi says: "同類易施工 ,非種難為巧" ( " Because they are the same types ,so it is easy to do, otherwise, it will be difficult to make things out of it " )

If you can refine your qi into a crystal clear , emptied Mind , separated and very different from your daily consciousness like there is having another Mind awaken from a dreaming ( your daily consciousness now becomes a status of dreaming due to its relatively under clear-mindedness ) , then you can understand why neigong , which is supposed to be a qi 's practice ( gong) , gets its religious implication ; unable to do so means your failure in understanding why Taoism at some stage turns religious . It also means, in terms of the degree of clear-mindedness , you should at least try experiencing 4 states : 1) Dreaming 2) Daily consciousness and reasoning 3) A crystal clear, persistent emptied mind arisen and detached from 2) 4) Awakening , which is further awakened stage comes from state 3)

Hardly will Buddhists, not to speak of followers of Zen , recognize posture as something important for them because they view the physical body as illusory ; if they do , they face contradictions in their preaching . On the other hand ,Taoist alchemy does recognize the importance of posture, at least, at initial stage . The posture that enables you to get qi , in the order of easiness, is : Sitting upright with legs crossed , standing with hands placed near dantian , lying on your side, lying on your back , walking ...; or course, if you can enter an emptied Mind quickly and stay there persistently , then no matter what posture you adopt , you can get your qi easily . Apart from posture, what kind of drinks or food you eat is another factor you have to pay attention to : 1) Spicy food lets your qi expand , which is inappropriate to consolidating an emptied Mind; 2) Iced drinks that is against yang qi should also be avoided. At last , a factor looks seemingly spiritual , yet qi-related , is : 1) If you get a shallow mind always jealous of others' achievement ,then it in fact prevents you from uplifting and expanding yourself to get more qi; 2) A narrow mind which is always eager to show off some achievement you get can only block you from advancing. So, these are qi-related factors that Taoism emphasizes , yet overlooked by the Buddhists.

Both Buddhism and Taoism talk about emptiness and emptied mind , but because the Buddhist and Zen ones came to the West much earlier than the Taoist, so it gives people quite a lot of confusion . How can we differentiate them ? How unique are the Taoist ? I think , there are at least 3 of them : 1) No matter how much a school talks about emptiness and emptied mind , as long as it talks about them in the context of jing , qi, shen , then it is a Taoist school , not a Buddhist one . 2) No matter how a school emphasizes the importance of emptiness or emptied mind, as long as it claims that the physical body , as the embodiment of jing and qi , is as important as the spiritual part of our life, not something illusory , then it is Taoist , not Buddhist or others' . In short , it maintains Taoist principle of dual ( Xing and Meng )cultivation . 3) No matter what fantastic words a school admires that great , emptied Mind , as long as it recognizes that a Mind , even having gained many 3rd- eye abilities, is still something being encased in a physical skull, limited by a fragile body , living a short earthly life incapable of determining its future ... ie , a mind still having its yin character and needs Yang, the pre-heavenly qi, to help, then it is a school of Taoism , not others' . In fact, two of the contributions of Taoist theory , very different from others, are : - its pointing out the shortcomings ( yin-character ) of most spiritual cultivation , not necessarily be Buddhist , but can come from other religions; -its request for both spiritual and physical proofs : Capable of seeing through a physical barrier by your mind-eye is not enough , you are also asked to regenerate a fallen tooth at old age..; that is , the emptied Mind you nourish should be good enough, deep enough to touch , say, the marrow level the body.., which reflects the Yang at deeper layer. Most modern superficial -minded Buddhists always say that an aging, sick body is unrelated , unimportant . ..blah, blah, blah for their cultivation , yet through some detailed reading of the biography/ autobiography of those Zen masters , likely you can find another picture of the truth .

To me , Liu's words imply some criticism on Buddhist way of attaining the Buddha Heart ( referred to as 'ancestral Xing') , of course , a seemingly real , yet in fact a Yin-typed one . From Taoist standpoint , a great Mind should always be the product of jing cum qi 's refinement . Zen's no-step, no-form, no-need-of- accumulation approach is conditional : it is only true for the superb-te (' 上德 ' ) ; otherwise, please ask for jing and qi's help...

Concentration doesn't let people enter Samadhi , a persistent ,consolidated emptied mind that hardly can people experience in their daily life . If concentration can do , then it means if we prefer and focus , we can eliminate all those up and down of our mind by our own will , which unfortunately is not case . On the contrary , It is our mind's detachment or negating the current stream of consciousness , yet expect no achievement ... ,such a mindset that helps . Taoist way further supplements this process by adding jing and qi for an emptied mind can be grown and nourished through them much easier.

You may like to watch this movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el3i3TfNg-I&t=62s

Mindfulness and concentration are mindsets of daily life and scientific reasoning which most people mistaken them as the spiritual ways that should be followed in their cultivation . In fact, besides the initial stage of some focus on the dantian or on the breathing to settle the mind, it is by using detachment and negation of the existing one , the pseudo mind , that is the way we should apply . And , that is why we keep talking about the use of an " emptied mind ", a non- fluctuated , consolidated one to deal with qi . Of course, a fluctuated mind is related to lung breathing , a post-heavenly way we live ; may be it is also why in emergence , people are asked to hold their breathing so that their mind can think clearer ....anyway , it implies that there is a unique breathing , very different from the ordinary one, that help consolidating our mind ; it is naive to think that the trivial mind we get can settle itself by suppressing the ups and downs of those ideas, through our own efforts to become a great One itself ; conversely , the harder we suppress it , the more it stands against us . A mind become great because it knows how to make use of qi , especially the pre-heavenly one . Using the pre-heavenly to counteract the post-heavenly , using nothingness to contain beings .. is always Taoist strategy , as " Can Tong Qi" <<周易參同契>> says : "以無制有, 器用者空" ( " Using nothingness to contain beings as using utensils because of its emptiness " )

道化性命, 至唯物辯証 , 偉哉 , 斯言 ! 哲人長逝, 悲夫 ..

" 仙" in Chinese refers to a special person who , not only literally hides on high mountain for his cultivation , but also lives an immortal life in Heaven , so translate it as " Way of Immortality' seems closer .

People who follow the Buddhist way are unlikely capable of , or interested in , understanding the Taoist theory of post-heavenly and pre-heavenly trigrams, which although borrowed from the Yi Jing , does grasp the essence of humans' predicament at its core; unfortunately , it is only after your capable of refining qi into Shen , do you get a glimpse of what it really refers to . A post-heavenly yin-typed mind , ie, our daily consciousness , although occasionally can be forced into an empty state, is very difficult to transform itself into Shen or a Buddha Mind by relying only on its own effort ; for example, whenever it desires to empty itself, it adds a " mind to empty " to itself , so not to speak of other spiritual fluctuations, how can it become emptied ? " 動念即乖" ( " Any rise or shift of the mind is doomed ") , but how can it be ? Taoist treatment to solve this trouble is smartly not lied in the mind itself but on the other side , a hidden pre-heavenly Yang ...; I think it is what Daeluin tries to say .

Many interesting debates had already staged before, but not all audience came in time to watch them .Not all actors are interested in repeating their dialogue even they know that they can earn some applause . Besides, you get a not so detailed feedback when trying to key in some words in search for previous information on this site .., for example, I can't find quite a big chunk of what I wrote here... Anyway , to me , the clear line drawn in between the so-called philosophical and religious Taoism is unnecessary , always overstated , which mainly is due to most people's lack of understanding of the Taoist formula : Jing => qi => Shen ; or more precisely speaking , their incapacity in pushing their practice from the stage of having attained qi to the stage of attaining Shen . In that case, no matter how hard you try to explain to people about why holiness or supernatural stuff inevitably arisen at some stage, your explanation fals on deaf ears. People can't understand that for the first time in human history , the appearance of Taoism enables them to grasp an ubiquitous force : qi as a medium to seal the gap between the subject and object , the physical and spiritual , thing-inside your brain and thing-outside your brain ... only if, just only if you can march forward a little , to consolidate that fluctuating qi and minds into some kind of a big One very different from what you daily sense and reason...

Without qi as the medium , it is extremely difficult for people to understand why Taoists and Buddhists are so fond of talking about emptiness . Besides , Buddhist way of dealing with emptiness is so inaccessible that it either presses people into some kind of mysticism or trap them in a status of pseudo-voidness ( a stagnant pool of water that can't nourish fish or a way of ' grinding brick to make it a piece mirror') . Taoist way is much easier for with qi at hands ,in our body to sense , to counter-check ; so easy that in the past people have to deliberately blur its real meanings with strange jargons : white tiger, mercury , yellow old lady..etc .But times has been changing, and we can express it in a clearer way . Emptiness, which exists everywhere without limitation, together with the emptied mind , which is limited to the space of a physical skull no matter how excited, how smart , how great it thinks of itself , are just two faces of the same coin : Tao , the pre-heavenly qi .Making the originally not emptied mind empty, nourishing it with qi ,and letting it meet and have intercourse with the ubiquitous emptiness is in fact the essence of Taoist alchemy.

To me , studying meditation or Qi by a scientific way always smother the greatness of the subject for in most cases you end up with the so-called brain science stuff , limited to the little space of a physical skull , and its magnificent cosmological implication lost . In fact, in this field , people need to get accustomed to thinking in Taoist jing-qi-shen framework and test what they sense and discover in their meditation ... a philosophical mind is always more important than a scientific mind. What you get is : "宇宙在乎手" ( " Grasp the secret of this universe directly in your own hands") , not a trivial field of science which belittles you as only a researcher .

___ _ _ ___ is a trigram called " Li" ('離'), which symbolizes ' Fire' , the post-heavenly , upper , spiritual status of humans ; _ _ ___ _ _　is a trigram called " Kan"('坎'), which symbolizes ' Water' the post-heavenly , lower , physical status of humans ( more precisely speaking for men ) ; A combination of them ( both belong to those eight basic trigrams ) gives you the status of our whole : Upper Fire, lower Water. Fire always goes dissipative and upwards like our spirit ; water always goes down and becomes dirty like our jing . Without Taoist cultivation , they always go further apart from each other as we age , and death is the only possible result . In daytime we use our mind to work or entertain , spiritual energy is wasted; in night time we are drown by sex and trapped by nocturnal leakage . Taoist cultivation , therefore , is just to make them meet and intercourse , arising from it a " Yuan Shen" , some kind of mindless Mind , to take charge of our whole practice so that aging will be stopped and reversed , and everlasting youth, not only afterlife eternity, becomes possible. First , you have to extract that middle Yang from the "Kan" trigram ; please notice that the precondition for such an extractionn is to make 'Water' not so dirty , much cleaner...for dirty water is the main cause of jing leakage , no matter it is in an awaken or sleepy status .

The attitude you adopt towards those feelings such as qi, light, heat, sex pleasure...etc in your cultivation, except those happen at the initial stage , should be something like knowing-but-not-paying-attention-to ( '存而不守') , otherwise, the more you focus on them, the more you likely smother their further developments , let alone something so crucial , related to the appearance of the Magical Gateway ...

" ..................................................... neither attention nor will is needed, in fact, do not think, do not imagine, eyes still closed, just look at Xuanguan (玄关) in front of eyes, with the whole body relaxed and attention focused on looking. By several times practice, some saw a small bright light, Wang Liping guided, “pay attention to this small light, to stabilize it. This small bright light is the light of Yuanshen, present’s phenomenon is the appearance of Xing Light (Xing Guang)” Sound interesting , but problematic ; such a way of opening the " Xuanguan " ..." Attention focused and looking " then.. a small bright light ...I doubt such a way of opening the " Magic Gateway " is likely ..