exorcist_1699

Please be reminded that having all jing changed to qi ,although not necessarily means you will lose your sexual capacity, it does imply that you lose your reproductive ability. However, instead of producing a new life outside, you regenerate a new life inside yourself, a new life of higher level which is free of the limitation from yin and yang (female + male)... a secret key of taoist immortality. As a superstitious , timid taoist coming from the Chinese tradition, never dare I explain so plainly and in such details as Dao Zhen did ... I bless him .

Simply speaking, purifying our mind,even deep to the sub-conscious level , is unsafe. Only after having all our essence (Jing) changed to qi , can we say the death/life issue guaranteed . Of course,here , we are only talking about aging, there are many other factors that can give rise to death ...

"I think for serious students, this is a big hurdle to overcome." Absolutely correct; in fact, unable to cross this hurdle, all our effort will, in the end, become futile .The taoist saying is that : capable of stopping the process and reversing it means delaying the process of aging..... Considering a 58 years old man marries to a 45 years old ,healthy woman, their baby will still be as young as others.... Sexual dreams is nothing horrible if most of your jing has become qi; in that case even having sexual dream does not lead to release of it . A "goalkeeper" is there.... Of course, people may then think of the possibility of losing male reproductive ability; it seems not , the process is reversible... The same hurdle exists in female situation, unable to "slash the red dragon" , then any of her effort will finally become fruitless. Of course, all points above are only meaningful for very determined people.

Some religion asks people to pray ( another form of meditation ) many times a day, to pray at certain time a day , or pray in some costume , these all are formalities,incapable of leading them to Reality . ( by the way, calling the name of our God/Lord is , in fact, another kind of visualization, which is also the reason why some priests are capable of initiating healing power ). Taoist and Zen style is something simpler ; they know that formalities are for the crowd, the simplest is for the intelligent.The better we get rid of formalities , the closer we approach Reality; the braver we get rid of trivial , the better we grasp the truth. I think, the term stillness seems misleading , the essence of life or spiritual cultivation is vigorous and dynamic, stillness can only be a short stage of cultivation we experience , not the end ;afterwards, something huge and lively should arise,otherwise we are stuck in it...

Comparing with all known methods, the Zen Buddhist way should be the hardest; it relies on nothing, starts from nowhere , and, preaches even talking about emptiness /nothingness is a barrier; In some sense, I think , the braver a religion in getting rid of formality , the closer a religion approaches Reality .. Where can you find a religion in which its followers dare to burn the statue of its own god/God just for smashing formalities ?

By grasping "qi" in your hands, you can do some supernatural things; you act god-like; there is no huge gap between man and god in Chinese culture as it is in the West. This is also why in Kung fu movie, you can find so many supernatural actions ; in fact, the theory and mechanism underlying kung-fu is same as Taoism. Have anyone ever got experience in waking up in midnight and performing some kind of Kung-fu-like movement subconsciously , but naturally (follow qi's movement in your body)? In Greek mythology, it seems , the gap between god and man is not so big , however, due to the incapacity of discovering of qi ( however, they do raise the concept of atom) , and , later the dominance of Christianity , it later becomes widening ...of course, this time , the relation is between God , a creator of the whole universe , and man . I think , part of the miracles that Jesus did and what are well described in Bible , if they happened in the Chinese cultural context, the Chinese would just describe them as qi gong therapy ; There are , in fact, some records in ancient texts about healing others' diseases without using herbs, instruments , or even having any touch of others' body ; the Chinese just call it " distributing qi " for healing.

Enlightment, different from all subjective things that human beings ever experienced : dreaming , subconscious of , thinking , feeling...etc , its initial stage ,can be called "mindless awakening ". Mindlessness , like a pool of still water without any ripples, is not a state we should pursue . It is mindless then awakening that is something we are eager to attain. Only after Enlightenment appeared , do we get meta-qi , a dose that can really stop aging , or even reverse it. Of course , it also implies the possiblility of getting rid of physical death..... however, anything physical is limited and unreliable , so, the taoists ,just like any human beings , are also eager to attain spiritual eternity . Needless to say, in this way , chasing after afterlife eternity, which is common among most religions , is never the aim of taoism .

Some people may use whether there is an appearance of a "pearl" or "ball " before us as the proof of Enlightenment ; by observing its size ( at first may just look like a small bean ) and color , you know where you reach . However, although in most cases it is true, the shortcoming of such proof is that you are using a subjective thing to prove another subjective thing ; doubt still exists . It is worse for people who adopt imagination as a method right from the beginning of their practice. At this stage , they will be puzzled by whether it is an illusory ball , imaginary ball or a real one ? To solve the problem , Taoism cleverly adopts a way to prove it indirectly on the opposite side : as human beings , we are an unity of spirit and body, and ,Awakening and Enlightenment , as some kinds of huge accomplishment in our spirit, they must also generate deep impact on our physical body . So, why not proving it by seeing whether your cancer is cured, white hair disappear , fallen teeth re-grown ,wrinkles recede or sleeping becomes unnecessary ?

To me, Awakening is a status different from just being mindless. It is an abrupt change , a jump from one status to another status, like there is a door suddenly open in your mind leading to some arena new...some people even find such a jump/change accompanied with some kind of sound.... Thinking it in terms of taoist qi gong practice, the quality of qi you experience in Awakening is totally different from what you experience under mindlessness or ordinary mental status . I call qi arising under Enlightenment , a deeper state of Awakening , as meta-qi ( just a translation ,other people may have better terms than mine) ; Kinds of diseases it can cure are also different from those you can cure by just applying ordinary qi . For example ,diseases such as Cancer and AIDS , can hardly be cured by qi you initiate under ordinary mental condition or just being mindless. Of course, I do not say mindlessness is meaningless; absolutely not .Contrary to many people's thinking that concentrating of our mind on certain spot of our body or imagining something wonderful , in fact ,getting rid of mental interference , is a precondition of the appearance of qi . So, mindlessness is really an achievement provided that you are not trapped in it .

Can Enlightenment be an object /target studied by science or psychology ? Let me raise a metaphor : A 2D " creature" once discovered that a strange object appeared in its 2D world , which was in fact a cross-section of a 3D creature as it was passing through it . Although this is a phenomenon happens repeatedly and can be observed from time to time , do you think , the 2D "creature" can understand what happens before its eyes ? It seems , no matter how hard the 2D " creature " thinks , how much data it collects , how many instruments from its world it uses , its effort is doomed to be fruitless . And, can you say the 3D creature ( in fact, only its cross- section) is being studied and understand ? Once the 2D creature has become a 3D creature itself , then everything about it will become very simple, any expanation seems superfluous.

Enlightenment can never be the research target of psychology as some people may try to do . Any such an attempt will be futile . How can a big Wisdom be studied and sliced by a limited, trivial discipline ?

Every moment of our life is composed of living and death ; in Hegelian terms, it is the dialectics of life ; in taoist terms, every moment consists of yin and yang where yin stands for death, and yang stands for life. Awakening , a status of extreme yang , of course, stands for life . Any moment of awakening you get a plus towards eternity ; any moment of non-awakening you get a step towards death. That is , change of our mind implies the close and open of the Magic Gateway. A taoist saying tells: " What is esoteric and critical is just few words ; what is general and superficial can be found in thousands of books. "

From mindlessness to awakening , there is a big leap .But how? Of course, when talking about leap ,it means some "energy "is needed to apply . Maybe mindlessness is a state you can maintain for hours, but the arrival of awakening does need endless patience , it depends...

Afterlife eternity, although a spiritual one , is a yin way full of uncertainties and submit-to-destiny character , which is not what we should pursue . Contrary to it is a yang way : by obtaining complete , pure qi in the yang form , another way of eternity is possible . Taoism never worships death or transmigration of soul as some elements in Tibetan culture.

Asking," who am I ?" is a Zen Buddhist way towards Enlightenment ,suitable for real genius or talents , not for ordinary earthly ,married guys .Seldom can you nourish the vigorous dragon from that pool of static water by following this path.

Never do I think that "Who am I?" is a question that philosophy can answer, so ,right from the very beginning I have been talking about it in the context of Zen Buddhist's treatment of it, ie, using it as method attaining Enlightenment.So, some of the arguments from Xuesheng just sound pointless to me. I always think that as a taoist, there are two areas of knowledge we must grasp : one is TCM , another one is Zen Buddhism. I have talked about TCM's importance in other topic on this forum , so there is no need to repeat here. Regarding Zen , I always think that all the best sayings regarding spiritual cultivation are spoken by the Zen masters. However, as many taoist Masters already pointed out , the Zen preachings , in fact ,deliberately skip many explanations on the physical part of cultivation . As our spiritual cultivation deepens , our body also experience huge changes, sometime even dangerous, but the Zen masters just seldom talked about it , at least , publicly . Why? You think they achieve it just by asking "Who am I?" ? Anyone who has some knowledge on the history of Chinese Zen Buddhism knows why Zen recedes and its outcome. We can't go into details here. My understanding is ,simply speaking , it was a system too superb but there were too few talents to sustain it . The Zen cases, asking "who am I" is one of the famous among them, finally degenerated into some kind of philosophical bullshit , a vulgarization of a superb system not because of the system or method itself has problems , but because of incompetence of the people , the followers. No reason ,up to this moment, persuades me to believe that the westerners will do it better than the Chinese. I am also accused of barring people from trying or practicing a valuable way of cultivation . But is it true? If I am preventing people from testing a funny sports , a new kind of hobby , or a school of kung fu ,or as MYthmaker put it : "I define the success of this method as people being worried and unhappy immediately smiling or laughing and no longer worried or unhappy after using this method." then maybe I have to admit my "crime". However, right from the beginning I said " Seldom can you nourish the vigorous dragon from that pool of static water by following this path.". So, I was talking about something whether it can make you have a huge jump from just experiencing calmness and some happiness ( which unfortunately is still in that pool of dead water ) to experiencing something really dynamic and immense. Why the taoist masters repeatedly preach: "grasping the universe in our hands"? You think it is just an artistic expression ? .

Only can genius get rid of those trivial,layers and troubles, and, reach the core of Enlightenment in one stroke; others , by following the same path , unfortunately are likely led to some kind of philosophical reasoning bullshit.

In general , healthy people can't die so easily. Seldom do people die in sleeping or long time sitting. They get tired not killed As long as qi is still in your body , Shen (spirit)does not leave; as long as Shen is there , you are still alive. Of course , if Shen grasp qi together ..... I think ,it should be considered in the jin-qi-Shen framework.

Taoism is the source of TCM ( Traditional Chinese Medicine ) .People who know some basic knowledge of TCM are definitely having the upper hand over those who are ignorant of it in practicing qi gong . For example, knowing how the DU channel runs is always beneficial to practitioners , not because it allows you to lead qi running , but because it makes you a little more prepared. People who are familiar with the zhen-qi-Sheng framework , definitely , are more capable of dealing with strange and unexpected problems/troubles arising from our body or mind in the process of cultivation .

Unless you deny the existence of qi, otherwise the most delicate theoretical system that built on it, ie, TCM, has to be comprehend . Qi ,when it is outside of human body , looks simple and pure ; however ,once it is materialized in human body , it changes into a complicated system . Many layers arise ; we have qi split into male and female, qi embodied in different functional organs: heart, liver, stomach... ;Also, we have to consider how qi moves in a time frame, ie, the effects of seasons and daily hours on it . During your qigong practice, why sometime you can be sleepless for several nights without feeling tired; why sometime you can keep on eating endlessly without being stuffed; why taming the" white tiger" is crucial , otherwise, your effort , no matter how many years it has been , is doomed to be fruitless; why you always look young for decades , and others decade just in few years ; why understand the movement of the moon is important....all these issues are mentioned , more or less , in the writings of TCM , not necessarily directly, but sometimes in the form of medical cases. The deeper theoretical insight you have, the higher level of pratice you get.

The best way is the natural way , so ,any deliberate manipulating of your breath can hardly be a correct thing we should do . Similarly , embryonic breathing is a natural phenomena definitely will appear when your practice reach certain level [/b]

The most common way being taught ( mentioned by many books and can be talked publicly ) is as follows: Try concentrating your mind patiently and slightly ( the strength /degree is difficult to grasp at initial stage, this is the reason why I say "skilfully" ) at the position 3~4 inches below your navel for 30 minutes or more , and , see what will happen. Please do not imagine it even you did hear of how it may look like for every individual does get different feeling... If qi , no matter how minor it is, does arises ,then some effect on the disease will be seen after your having practiced it for several weeks . Of course, if the psoriasis is developed near the abdomen area, it will be cured easier ; however , if it grows on limbs far away from body, then it will take longer time because the qi you initiate at earlier stage definitely is not strong enough to affect a larger area /longer distance . Anything afterwards will then depend on your fortune....

A proper mind and having a physical body capable of sitting for 1-2 hour are preconditions for initiating qi . The more powerful and delicate qi you can initiate , the easier your illness be cured, which, unfortunately needs your manipulating your mind " skilfully " . So, in order not to place your own destiny in your doctor' s/other people's / fate's hands , you had better make up your mind asap.

It seems that the keep-coming taoists asking for an already dug cave was some kind of planned tests for Hao's disciples and it lasted for 40 years. Maybe some people think that such kind of test is too harsh and demanding that unlikely can you find people to meet it .Or, you may doubt whether it is worthy of it . However, just thinking of the following question , then , the answer seems clear : Why in this world billions of people are predestined to death and you few guys get the privilege to live forever ?

The issue is not whether qigong can cure it or not ; the issue is whether the patient is fortunate enough to come across it . There are too many unnecessary sufferings and deaths in this world.