Long Men Repentance

[damdao]

Hi!

As I am interested in the psychological aspects of Daoism I have found the perspective and narrative of Opening the Dragon Gate very interesting and unique. So I would ask about the exercise (the entire cycle rather) called "Repentance" in Cleary's translation. Are some directives (besides those ones written down in the book) that could be shared openly in order to refine the mind for daoist discipline? Is it a daily exercise? Is "structured thought" a spontaneous process or is self induced? Is it used today in the training or there are adaptions of it?

Thanks in advance

[Harmonious Emptiness]

This is a discussion I am interested in, though I myself know very very little about Longmen Pai. It's been a little while since I read Opening Dragon Gate. Could you provide a chapter or page number where repentance is specifically mentioned? The term has been used to signify various teachings/practices

[damdao]

The chapter is Refining the Mind (Chapter II) and the pages 15 to 22.

The relevant paragraphs that I can see are these:

 

The first exercise the old masters taught Wang Liping, therefore, was a practice called "repentance." What this means in the context of Taoism is cleaning the mind, clearing away mundane influences already infecting the consciousness, getting rid of the rubbish.

The way this is done is by temporary isolation and self-examination. The process is subdivided into three parts. First the disciple stays in a dark room for two months with nothing to do. This is supposed to gradually reduce the crudity and wildness in one's nature. The second stage of practice involves sitting still in a dark room for set periods of time, which are progressively lengthened. In the third stage, the disciple is shifted to an ordinary quiet room and required to sit still for at least four hours at a time. p. 15

 

Lao-tzu said, "Movement overcomes cold, stillness overcomes heat; clear calm is a rectifier of the world." He also said, "Effect emptiness to the extreme, keep stillness steady; as myriad things act in concert, I thereby observe the return." The essential point here is in calm stillness; when stillness reaches its climax, it produces motion, whereby you observe the subtle."Structured thought" means that after body and mind have reached the climax of stillness, the brain conceives a "thing," be it a scene, a personage, or an event. One must think ahead or in retrospect, causing the thing to develop and evolve until a "result" is obtained. When this result contains a definite meaning, the exercise is said to have taken effect. This operation of a thought process is called "structured thought."

Now Liping sat quietly in the dark room practicing structured thought according to the directions of his mentor. First he reflected on the fact that even though his body was restrained in a small dark room, his thought could not be locked up and prevented from going out and about. p. 17

One day the Wayfarer of Pure Serenity called Wang Liping to him and asked him what he had gained from his practice. After giving a detailed account of the process and his experiences, the youth finally said, "I can't clear random thoughts from my brain, and I can't attain stillness. Please teach me some method of handling this."

This was precisely what the old wizard had in mind."To clear away random thoughts," he began in reply, "first use formal judgment to deal with them. As soon as a random thought arises, immediately pass judgment on it: either declare it right, or declare it wrong, or declare that this is as far as it goes. Having made this determination, stop right away and do not allow rumination to go on and on. Then random thoughts will vanish by themselves, and in this way you can enter into stillness."

Returning to the dark room, Wang Liping sat cross-legged, adjusting his body and tuning his breathing, and began to quiet his mind. Now when he was assailed by random thoughts, he used this method to get rid of them. After repeating the process several times, he found that it actually did work. Liping felt happy inside. After another few days of practice, these random thoughts became fewer and fewer day by day, gradually tending to thin out as the exercise of entering stillness gradually developed. p.22

[manitou]

It seems to me that a good comparison would be the Buddhist meditation on non-attachment. The more we meditate on our nature, the more we learn why we are the way we are. It inevitably takes us back through memories where we see our own tendencies starting, flourishing down the road.

 

I've found that a simple and daily way of going in to self is to check my own motives for doing things, on a daily basis. To look at my own selfishness and make attempts to turn the huge boulder of selfishness around. To try and get out of the mindset where it's All About Me. And to understand that I have each and every character defect known to man, most likely....there's no shame in that, it's our condition. Until we make the decision to change it.

 

Some people are forced onto the path of self-discovery by the trouble they've gotten themselves into in their physical existence - in my particular case it was alcoholism - but any of the destructive crystallized patterns will work. To recover from these horrible patterns requires an emotional and mental ass-kicking that does the job in a short amount of time - or at least sufficiently that the person is able to stay away from booze or drugs. for this, the steps of recovery were invaluable, in my case. I didn't even realize I had character defects prior to the necessity for my own recovery. But once the process is initiated, the process of looking within and coming to the conclusion that we are indeed imperfect (easy enough to say about someone else!) the process, once it's started, takes over from there. I no longer 'work the steps' in any sort of organized fashion (after 30 years of doing this) but rather the Grand Inquisitor is always sitting there on a ledge and ready to tell me when I am acting purely out of self-interest or selfishness.

 

It's just a continual dynamic that goes on and on...