exorcist_1699

Our mind is a series of consciousness and its tendency to stay attached to senses , emotions and being differentiating is unlikely to be changed. Hardly can it , by using its own power , rise to other higher level , not to speak of another dimension . In fact, before talking about rising to another level , some basic requirement is whether we can consolidate our mind into some kind of non - fluctuating , spiritual oneness .

Not trying to give any complete system . Taoist system's significance is its emphasize on Taiji and the use of its split status : Yuan-qi ( basic life energy) located at the bottom, Yuan-jing ( intelligence )at the top, to describe the alienated ( Xing and meng's alienation) human situation . The shift to lung breathing after our birth , plus the development of the differentiating mind , which attached to senses and reasoning , are two main reasons that we lose the contact with the limitless qi outside , which results in our change to and live as a short-lived animal . By chopping off the fluctuating and differentiating minds ('念住') * , it will inevitably lead us to some hold of the existing way of breathing ('息住') ; as the emptied mind persists and deepens , it develops into some kind of prolonged embryonic breathing ; from there as our qi accumulated and its quality uplifted, will further lead to the whole-body breathing . In fact , it is a process so intricate ( not neccesarily means complicate ) that hardly should you request a sifu to experience all of them for you or to write down all details for you beforehand .. * A life and death struggle

Cultivating the upper dantian is a stage inevitable as qi and jing , having accumulated enough , will naturally rise from bottom to top . The problem is mainly that most people are too eager to do it that it becomes over-done . If there is no yang , qi that gets good quality jing inside , then it is some kind of transportation in vain ( like you drive a truck but there is no cargo loaded ) that no matter how hard you work ( circulate the Micro cosmic circulation ) , it is useless . Something worse can be that too intensive a mind you apply makes qi distorted into " fire" , which burns/ dries the yin aspects ( jing , blood or liquid ) of the body and conversely gives rise to many diseases , let alone enhancing your cultivation . This is the reason why the Master says : " 不識陰陽莫亂為" (" If you do not know what yin and yang really are , better not practice your cultivation carelessly " )

It simply is whether people believe that there can be a clear , persistent mindless Mind ? If a man , during the whole of his life , is in sleeping and dreaming , then of course , he will think that , a clear , logical mind of reasoning is elusive and non-existent no matter how hard we try to explain to him . Our mind * is extremely delicate that it can handle time , past and present , its being cut into intervals, its stretch , contract and reverse ( theory of special relativity) , can handle 10th dimensional space ( String theory), can deal with self-contrary concepts ( Fuzzy logic ), can process its own formless form without any contents by making no efforts ( Zen ) . Through many levels of abstraction and by awakening into many higher degree of sanity that our mind uplifted and evolved . Nowadays , another new form of human's creation , Al , is emerging , and is said to be going to defeat us because of its ability to processing countless data at extreme fast speed , that based on complicated algorithms beyond our reach ..; but can AI work with no data, no rules and no algorithms , yet still offers us a system of intelligence ? *元精渺難睹

I hope AI can dream , then awakening from it to an ordinary daily consciousness like humans ; and by many times and through many levels of uplifts , it can further awaken to a much clear , potent meta-Mind ( ' 元神 ' ) . It is said that because the Buddha Heart , Buddhist saying of the Taoist meta-Mind , is mindless , free from any forms , statuses and attachments , that it knows whatever forms of intelligence existing in this universe , men's or creation from them ( ' 般若無知, 無事不知 ' )

In fact, different from dreams , which people can awake from , these lifelong 'dreams' , repeated endlessly with turns, are ' dreams ' that without the help of the primordial qi ('先天氣' )* , if solely relied on their own efforts , that never can they awaken from . * " 陽氣歸來塵夢醒 "

Location of the middle dantian is always clear , hardly should it have any quarrels or ambiquity : middle of the breasts . Generally speaking , women start their cultivation from the middle dantian , men start from the lower dantian , the gifted start from the upper dantian .

Once you have succeeded in initializing qi from dantian , you are endowed with the privilege of playing with emptiness . Handling thing appears no mass, intangible in unknown dimension is always said to be the privilege of particle physicists, but now from the other way round qi practitioners can deal with it similarly . Instead of following the conventional way of circulating qi on the DU and Ren channels , playing qi along with emptiness can be more interesting and productive . But how ? It is simple , just first pay attention to your dantian where qi resides , then forget it ; then forget that you are forgetting and expecting nothing significant or great will be attained (" 悟無所得 " ) ... , then likely you are entering it . Please notice that the last step is important. Based on what ? It is based on the idea that an emptied mind , and the ubiquitous emptiness are just two faces of the same coin : Tao , so they are interchangeable ; we make it feasible only by using qi as the media.

Most people like their qi gong sets composed of just movements, postures or ways of breathing..etc because they are things easy to understand , however , to create yours of these , classified as medical qi going , you still need some profound knowledge of TCM k, , say what the meridians are, from where to where they run , their relation with dantians..etc . Notice that forms of the body , no matter it is a static one ( posture ) , or active one ( some movement ) , are related to energy , in this case, qi, that motivates them . Besides telling people the ways of practicing your system , better also tell : 1) What benefits your system can provide 2)What diseases it can cure 3) In case after having practiced your system , some bad side- effects come out, how to tackle them..etc

To eat, to mate, to have a shelter are basic desires of most animals ; and build on them , you have those other needs . To mate is the most significant one that people always overlook , in fact, many animals such as salmon, cicada , spider ..die soon after mating in varied forms . To reproduce is to grow , also to die . Humans is the same , only that the period of its reproduction is long , the number of mating numerous that the essence of it be blurred , not to mention the fact that many males die in the process of attaining the right to mate . Such desire to mate is a power , also some kind of energy, which is so tenacious and deep-rooted that only Taoism knows how to make use of it . Taoist transformation of jing , instead of allowing it projecting outside into another female's body , but into the form of qi back to nourish one's own body is the most effective way against mortality . Buddhist pursue of awakening from a mindless status so that primordial jing inside us can echo it is nearly the same thing .

How can an english native speaker speak english , so quick and fluent , with his mind paying any attention to those english grammars ? Or, if a fish knows that it is swimming in water, can it still swim that free ? Our mind is , in fact, a flow of consciousness that we are situated and succumbed to , regardless most people think that they /we are in charge ; which , also makes us think that all methods and possibilities come from it , only become realistic via it . However, as we reach certain depth in meditation , more precisely , no-mind meditation , we can detach from it and become some kind outside observer , not only then capable of viewing our minds objectively , but also manipulating our bodies' organs , say stop our breathing or heart-beating at our own will ( it is in this sense that Taoists claim Xing meets Meng ) . So, before asking this question , first ask : Can we consolidate a mind without minds/ ideas..etc ? Or, if ever a mindless Mind be possible ? If anyone still holds any mind ( of method , step ,value..) to meditate , then of course he is not doing no-mind meditation .

Detach from what you experience and feel , not attach to them ; " 見怪不怪, 奇怪自敗" (" see them strange but not entangled , otherwise , you are doomed " )

Most Taoist masters only tell 90-95 % of the true they know , and leave 5%-10% as secret for various reasons , but if people read extensively enough and practice diligently , then like doing some puzzle matching , they can finally get the final , complete picture . Another thing is about level related . What if the masters already told the keys in their talks or writings, but owing to the level of people at the moment heard/read them , they might find that all sound insignificant ; in fact , quite a always happen experience is that the first reading of a famous Taoist writing you find it ordinary , even mediocre , at the ninth reading of it you may find it full of hints and keys due to the rise of your level . Finally it is about proof . Why apart from the modern physiology and medical system , which based on those physical , chemical and biological knowledge we are taught in schools , we have to study a totally different and strange system of jing-qi-shen ? The only reason is that Taoist alchemical practice/ experiment does pass many physical and spiritual tests, say healing diseases , reversing aging..etc ., which makes an alien system like Taoism and TCM worth studying . At least a system which can be viewed as a complement to the modern / western one . Although we are entering the GPT-n epoch , and likely we cannot outsmart the AI system which fed on billions of knowledge ,rules and algorithms ..etc , there is an arena we can keep for hardly can AI make use of the Taoist canons and Buddhist sutras to enhance itself . The reason simply is because even humans can't read them and truth hidden there are something beyond that plane of AI reasoning , different kind of intelligence ..

Just want to emphasize the importance of age in cultivation . Taoist alchemy and TCM both talk about it and pay lot of attention to it , but hardly can you find enough mention of its importance in Buddhist materials . When jing in our body is sufficient , it can echo a persistent emptied mind ; when jing in our body is in deficient state, hardly can it respond to an emptied mind, let alone consolidating one . Incapable of consolidating a persistent emptied mind means people are unable to understand why in Taoist canons and Buddhist sutras, they spend millions of paragraphs , from many different perspectives , exploring the same topic.

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Although Taoist qigong is for all ages, Taoist alchemy is hardly anything for the young people . Even some people are interested in it when they are young , it is unlikely that they can succeed , mainly because they lack of that resolute to commit . It is after having tasted all those bitterness , physical and emotional , in life that do people make up their mind . However , they then find that they are now already in their 50s , 60s .., so a careful calculation of how much jing and qi left behind becomes something important . Conversely , nearly all Zen masters in Chinese history start their cultivation of Zen when they are very young , as teenagers , even as kids in temples ; read Zen's classics ( say : 景德傳燈錄, 古尊宿語要.. etc ) will tell people about it , which in fact , is something significant but many people miss.

Already explain it partly in the post above .

The more jing we accumulate in our body , especially in the area of lower dantian , the more an urge we are forced to release it , either consciously ( the mind knows how to get its many excuses ) *, or unconsciously ( in sleeping , especially at the moment where yin and yang alternate) ^ ; not releasing it can make us sick physically or psychologically unless we can raise and solve it on another higher plane ; succumbing to it means we have to start the whole process of accumulating jing again , and the process just keeps repeating itself , which therefore means eternal youth is hardly anything possible for most people . We can view jing ( our sexual energy ) and qi together as some kind of stem cells invisible that we can extract from our bodies , and then inversely use them to repair our bodies' defects regardless whether they come from diseases or aging ; the problem is that the mechanism underlying is not that easy to grasp .. *+^ Tao's manipulation of fools is not that easy to be identified and disentangled . ( "人情濃厚道情微, 道用人情世罕知 " )

Most males think that since sex pleasure felt to be from the bottom of their body , then jing must originate from there , which is not that correct . In reality , every organ of our bodies gets its own jing and qi , and in an ejaculation , jing of all organs are drawn and run from the top along the spine ( the Du channel) , and rush out . This is why all guys find tired and fragile on the whole back and waist , not just the lower body , after sex or nocturnal leakage . In fact , as long as men who can have an erection , even only some sex urge , as late as up to their eighties , Taoist cultivation is possible . A Taoist poem , which I always like to quote , reads as follows : "人情濃厚道情微, 道用人情世罕知 "

Yeah , if talking about the emergence of them in time order , it is Taoism --> Buddhism --> Tibetan Buddhism .

It is śikṣā ( three trainings) , not Four Jhanas , with a formula : 戒 (Precepts/Discipline ) => 定 ( Persistent no-Mind ) => 慧 ( Intelligence ) , which fight off three Poisons ('三 毒 ') , that correspond to Taoist Jing=> Qi=> Shen . With strict precepts , you refrain yourself from wine , sex, chatting , oversleep or overwork .. etc , so that your jing can be accumulated and then changed to Qi ; and it is with a prolonged , persistent no-Mind that your Qi can be gathered, consolidated and changed into Shen .

The Pureland School is the dominant school in modern Buddhist cultivation , or at least it is the dominant way being practiced by millions of people who live in the Chinese communities : China Mainland, HongKong ,Macao..etc ; a school that has been flourishing for thousand of years, starting from the Song dynasty . Below are its way and some characteristics : 1) It tells people to just chanting the name of Buddha ( or name of a particular Buddha) in daily life whenever they get the time : sitting , traveling , eating..etc , so that their mind can settle down and be consolidated into one ( ' Make use of one idea to take the place of thousands of ideas ,worries and emotions ' ) ('一念代萬念') . 2) People chant the name of Buddha and it is going to be heard ; due to the mercy of the Buddha , He will positively respond to them. In that case, people's cultivation are going to be endorsed and their power enhanced ; it means , beside solely making use of their own power , cultivators can multiply the effect of their cultivation by extra divine power; 3) So, it is a way easy and can be done by ordinary people , even those illiterates; it can also be the last outlet for intellectuals who having been perplexed and misled by the huge and intricate system of Buddhism , at the end after their fruitless lifetime efforts of trying to grasp what it is , when their eyesight are now poor, their backs crooked, their memory fainted .., they suddenly find that there is a simple way out..; Quite a sad fact is that no matter where they start , from Tantric, Taoist , Zen 's.. , many at their old age return to the Pureland way . 4) It is a last-minute rescue for people who are lying on their deathbeds . Minor that it may look , by chanting the name of Buddha when they are struggling with their last breath , people can enter the Buddhist heaven easier, at least not falling to the hell ; of course they have to be in sane status , not in coma or suffered from the Alzheimer's Disease, otherwise there is no way for them to do it . 5) The Pureland way can also be a supplement , even enhancement, if you cultivate it together Zen , which is called " 禪凈雙修 " (Zen cum Pureland dual cultivation ) , a popular term you can always come across when reading online Chinese Buddhist materials . As it is so powerful that people describe such a combination as 'planting a sharp horn on the head of a tiger ' ('虎 角 '). Below I would like to introduce you guys a simple formula for it ( can be viewed as a transition of Pureland way to Zen's ) : 有心念佛 (' First deliberately chanting the Buddha's name for rescue ' ) => 念佛無心 ( ' then , having chanted it millions times that it is now a mindless chant ' ) => 佛不用念 ('at last , people find that it is in fact no need to chant or do anything ' )

Most of the best writings and translations of Buddhism were finished before the Song Dynasty , the period from which that migration of the northern people to the southern provinces started to happen , so related dialect issue is irrelevant . Monks who come from Ming ( for example , the Four Great Monks ) or Song dynasty , no matter how brilliant their writings or preaching seemingly look , are just some kind of further attempts , yet cumbersome or trivial elaboration of their forerunners' .

Although my mother tongue is Cantonese, I do not think that it is relevant to the Chinese Buddhist sutras study . In fact, most of the Chinese Sutras (Buddha's words or writings written by those late coming Buddhist Masters / near- gods that translated into Chinese) are in the form of Classical Chinese , so knowing the classical Chinese is critical ,especially when we think of many original Sanskrit texts are lost . Anyone who tries skipping Classical Chinese and thinks that he can one day understand what Buddhism , not just the Chinese Buddhism , its profound contents mean, is a dream that hardly will come true.

That you can't reply on your existing ego , its senses, reasoning ability , emotions ( vanity and expectations..etc ) to attain the Buddha Mind is the essence of the Buddhist meditation . Billions of moon's reflections on Earth's pools, creeks, rivers, springs..etc are not the moon itself regardless of how pretty they look , how splendid they think of themselves . So detachment from those sense, those reasoning ( to differentiate which is the whole , which is the part ; to think who is good, who is bad ; to separate steps and layers..etc ) and those egos in a prompt way ( as there is no steps and layers , of course it is a sudden grasp ) is the key . Zen's way is a unity of mind ("心" , a potential Buddha , also a cognitive subject ) , way ("法" ) , Buddha ("佛" , an ubiquitous essence ) that makes no-mind is the Mind , no way is the Way , non-doing is doing possible .., which unfortunately is hardly grasped by people , even the smart ones ;