Celestial Immortal Lu Dongbin

[TaoTeChing]

.....

Edited July 9, 2010 by TaoTeChing

[exorcist_1699]

A little difficult to identify his writings, yet two famous ones related to him are :

 

"太乙金華宗旨" ( ie , the famous book " The Secret of Golden flower");

 

another one is the record of talks between Lu and his master:

 

"鍾呂傳道集"

 

Lu 's significant place in Taoist history is that he is clearly the source of the North School and West School .

[宁]

Exorcist,

 

can you please define the general characteristic of the North, West, South and East Schools?

Thank you very much, brother!

[TaoTeChing]

.....

Edited July 9, 2010 by TaoTeChing

[exorcist_1699]

Exorcist,

 

can you please define the general characteristic of the North, West, South and East Schools?

Thank you very much, brother!

 

Generally speaking , all Taoist schools follow the way of Yin and Yang, claiming that no other ways can achieve immortality besides it . However, whether the intercourse of yin and yang can be attained by Single or Dual cultivation, there are difference. For example , the North school sticks to Single cultivation,insists that the they are all in an individual , despite of sex , so it is possible to accomplish the intercourse without the help of other sex . On the other hand , South school claims that as we human beings are split into male and female , and any individual , after the period of adolescence , is lack of either yin/yang to return to his/her pre-heavenly status, so the opposite sex is needed. That means Dual cultivation is the right way ( it doesn't necessarily mean all members of this school follow the Dual cultivation , somebody ,for example, the famous Master Bai ( 白玉蟾) does practice Single cultivation )

 

Another criterion to classify schools is the starting point of their practice . In most cases, the North start from the upper dantian ( examples: " the Secret of Golden flower" and " 性命法訣明指" ) while the South school starts from the lower dantian. Starting point is important because anyhow people do need some "feeling" , some feedback , otherwise they don't know how to start and proceed .

 

 

The West school start not from anywhere of our body , but emptiness outside it; So, its method is special .

The benefit of starting from external emptiness is that comparing with falling into pseudo-void, which is the frequent mistake Buddhist method commits , attaching to or reacting to all things happen in our body/mind is the most common mistake people who follow Taoist methods mostly commit. Situate ourselves outside at the

beginning or during the process of our practice does solve a lot of problems .

 

Besides, the West school has its own way of Single and Dual of cultivation . It is up to people's conditions and choice to adopt any one.

 

I don't know much about the East school , so I can't talk about it here .

 

How about starting from visualization ? some people may ask . As visualization is never thought as any decent /right way in Taoist legacy, so of course, we ignore it here .

Edited December 24, 2009 by exorcist_1699

[goldisheavy]

The benefit of starting from external emptiness is that comparing with falling into pseudo-void, which is the frequent mistake Buddhist method commits , attaching to or reacting to all things happen in our body/mind is the most common mistake people who follow Taoist methods mostly commit.

 

What is pseudo-void?

[宁]

 

The West school start not from anywhere of our body , but emptiness outside it; So, its method is special .

The benefit of starting from external emptiness is that comparing with falling into pseudo-void, which is the frequent mistake Buddhist method commits , attaching to or reacting to all things happen in our body/mind is the most common mistake people who follow Taoist methods mostly commit. Situate ourselves outside at the

beginning or during the process of our practice does solve a lot of problems .

 

 

Thank you Exorcist. I didn't quite get this part quoted above. Can you please elaborate?

[exorcist_1699]

Thank you Exorcist. I didn't quite get this part quoted above. Can you please elaborate?

 

Every way of cultivation has its own benefits and problems . Because there is a huge , nearly impassable gap between a static mindless status and the status of Awakening , Buddhist type of method's trap is mainly at making people entangled in unproductive mindlessness ( also called "pseudo-void " ("假空" ) )and letting them think that they have achieved something, which unfortunately is not.

 

Taoist ways are mainly to ask people to pay attention to some place in their body so as to initialize qi . Circulating post-heavenly qi is mistakenly be viewed as some kind of significant achievement and people always expect to have stronger feeling of qi , which clearly is incorrect.

 

The feeling of qi is common in most Taoist practices, which are difficult to avoid and for people not attaching to . The West school's way of shifting our attention from inside to outside of our body therefore gets the benefits of the Buddhist method, but evading those potential issues of Taoist practice .

Edited December 30, 2009 by exorcist_1699

[宁]

Thanks again. You mentioned this very often, in different context, like it is a very important topic. However - maybe due to your school's rules - you didn't provide some kind of hint towards something that could work. I appreciate the effort of telling what your masters consider to be false and unproductive. I wonder if they could allow you to at least leave a hint. We have a Greek philosopher - I admire Greek philosophy more than German philosophy - that said : if you give me a point in space, i could lift the entire earth... That's what we need, at least one 'point'...

 

On the other hand, the topic of 东，西，南，和 北方 道教 是最有意思。。。 可能你帮忙我们一下。 Ehm, I may even try to write a paper on it at school... they give me all kinds of uninteresting topics for it, but this one it's golden, imho... If you can elaborate on different types of major daoist schools, I will greatly appreciate it

[exorcist_1699]

Yeah , this is important. To different people ,both Buddhist and Taoist ways have their respective entanglements , and they are likely to be life-long . Without some sort of Awakening , people can't experience what high-quality /pre-heavenly qi is , and are inclined to think that consciously circulating qi around their bodies is some kind of achievement. Some even think that the macro-cosmic circulation is just another route of circulating qi in their bodies , which of course, is wrong .

 

The ideal Taoist way of initializing qi ,at the start , is : while your mind paying attention to nowhere ( similar to

"external emptiness") , it still is capable of initializing some qi inside . This way is quite different from the

Buddhist one as right at the beginning, it does not try skipping the crucial element/medium : qi .

 

Unfortunately there are very few writings of the West school, which started by a master called Li Ci Yue ("李西月" )in Ching dynasty , translated into English so far .

 

I think the "point" is how the jump towards Awakening possible . The threshold seems to be very high , in fact , all Zen 's Koan target at this issue . Sometime few guys had got it but were not so sure, so they needed their masters to "verify " it, this is the main reason why those strange Koan were recorded . Taoist talks about the "point" , about the jump is clearer , ie , from the yang in the "Kan" trigram .....also referred as 道心 (Taoist Heart), 不死人 ( Immortal Person)..etc

 

Without Taoist Heart , human mind can't be tamed; without an emergence of immortal person , mortal person can't be rescued. It is naive to believe those written on Buddist Sutra literally that people can make a sudden turn to Englightenment without help....

Edited December 30, 2009 by exorcist_1699