sillybearhappyhoneyeater

Asking out of interest because a friend of mine has been part of their group for several years and I want to get a bit more information about them. It seems like they are an offshoot of yi guan dao and that they have a master who recently passed away in Taiwan. They are religious in their orientation, although they attempt to attract adherents by suggesting that they are a collection of the wisdom of all religions rather than a specific substrate. They use the major texts of Daoism and Confucianism as their base and as far as I know are concerned with the practice of ritual and operate many holy houses in Canada, as well as likely the united states. They are a closed door group and do not initiate people from the general public without first having an eye opening ceremony for that person. I haven't been to any of their things since I am always a little sceptical of unknown elements which could very well be cults, but I'd be totally interested to know if anyone else has experience with them and what they believe and are like. Thanks a lot, Rob

Shen. yuan shen.

Dear Awaken: Stop this silly business! I don't know anything about the situation of modern Wuliu people, nothing. I know about Wu Liu Zong as two people who left behind a practice method of Nei Dan, I don't know anything about the people who practice any religious stuff within their school, so we are talking about two completely different things here. Regarding Yi Guan Dao, again, I only know some people around it, it isn't my cup of tea so to speak, but because my friend is involved with this group and because I want to make sure he will be safe with them, then I am asking about it on this forum. I think we can all learn a big lesson which is that we don't need to put other people down to lift ourselves up. That is why I became angry with you in the first place, it is a matter of basic politeness and decency.

This group is somewhat different. They are mostly Taiwanese with only one or two Canadian members (although they have a religious discussion group with many Canadians, most of them do not go behind the closed door to do the initiation and ritual stuff). It seems like they are a weird group. Very secretive, very focused on ritual and practice of something they call "three treasures" which is a kind of meditation I guess, but it doesn't seem like anything I am personally familiar with. I'm only going second hand from my friend who joined them, because I haven't had the occasion to visit them and see what they do.

Yes! Exactly. one of my close friends was visited by an old man from Yiguan Dao who had started one of their first temples in the Americas and that man said sadly that after 60 years of studying, he just wasted his time. It is such a pity for people who believe in that religion.

What people tend to miss is that the Journey West is a scripture and not just a story. Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Hedonism, the military, and society take a long walk together and each of them learns some pretty important lessons about the limits of idealism.

Daoism recognizes that axiomatic concepts which are predicated on verbal agreements are arbitrary and that although they can be used to represent nature, they are not nature itself. Good and bad in Daoism isn't about cultural relativism, it is about intention. Benefit and disaster share the same root, so not only is there a difference between good and bad, but actually, most of the things we think are good are actually going to lead to badness in the long run. Dao De is about recognizing the nature of situations, not just the surface appearance of those situations. We use the tools of Daoism in order to observe what is natural and then judge things on the merit of how they exist in the open void of nature rather than the axiomatic superstructures of human thought. There isn't really a debate in Daoism, since the issue is more or less decided and has been since the time of Laozi. Gong De as a principle is something that harmonizes different meanings together so that they become part of the same virtue, so whether we are talking about Laozi, Zhuangzi, the celestial masters, zhang boduan or anyone else, they are all basically following the same principle, which is Qing Jing Wu Wei (clear and quiet non action) as a way to develop Gong De (the accumulated work of virtue). If we had to make a statement about whether or not Daoism would be supportive of watching pornography, the answer is obviously no. Pornography is predicated upon a set of very destructive human desires and causes people to give in to their lesser selves, so a pure approach to Daoism would indicate that porn is not ok. If we are just people who are working on practising the principles of Daoism and want to get some benefit from it as we get older, then it is really a matter of personal ethics as to whether we choose to watch porn or not. Some people feel it is perfectly acceptable, others don't, case closed. I love cigars and smoke a couple cigars a month. Does Daoism support my occasional cigar habit? Hell no! But I still like cigars and choose to make the trade off that having the occasional puff entails. If you tried to follow the ancient virtue of the Dao in modern society, you would go completely nuts, and the only way your could really achieve it perfectly would either be if you became a hermit or if you are a freaking saint. Most of us just get enough benefit from Daoist practice to be healthy and happy and that is good enough :) :) Some people are just navel gazers who like stories and believe in magic while never achieving anything concrete in their practice. to each their own.

A recent thread brought up the document "golden elixir four hundred words" and I want to address some things about this document in a separate thread, since this will give us a chance to start with a fresh slate about this very important document. Firstly, I want to clarify that Ziyang Zhenren was not part of the Complete Reality School movement or the Northern School. This is a small, but very important distinction, because the Northern and Southern Schools have very different approaches in the beginning of study. The Complete Reality (Northern) is often called the Sudden Realization School, because it starts from a similar premise to Chan, which is that you quiet and empty the mind as the main method of practice. This is called "first cultivate Xing and later cultivate ming." The Southern school is "first cultivate ming and later cultivate Xing." So the Southern school starts from "The three families gather to meet the new born child," that is to say, yuan jing, qi, and shen are combined in the chaotic (hun dun) state in order to give birth to the embryo. This is hugely different from Wang Chongyang's theory and it is important to understand this because Quanzhen put Ziyang Zhenren's theory into their school after the fourth generation, so it is not native to Quanzhen from the outset. Quanzhen in terms of the Long Men school still mainly practice Xing first and Ming later, so this is also important to remember when we compare the two schools. Now lets do a bit of textual analysis: 七返九還金液大丹者，七以火數，九乃金數，以火煉金，返本還元，謂之金丹。 seven turns and nine returns is the golden fluid great elixir. Seven is the number of fire and nine is the number of metal. When fire refines metal it will return to the root and go back to the origin, that is golden elixir: Comment: the important part here is ，返本還元，謂之金丹 return to the root and go back to the origin is the golden elixir. Gold is found in the centre of the water element (kan) and yin fire descends to kan in order to coax gold to rise to the fire palace (Li gong) where it changes fire to heaven (qian). Li and Kan are the post heaven mixed form of the pre heaven heaven and earth and the work of jin dan is to convert them back the pure form of heaven (yuan xing) and earth (the body). This is not done by "first cultivate xing" because if you do it like this, xing and ming can't mix. This is the weakness of Quanzhen and the reason why they had to appropriate Ziyang Zhenren's teachings to fill out their own teaching. Technically, Ziyang Zhenren taught "first practice ming" but actually, the method is "Xing and ming dual cultivation" because we cultivate both consciousness and life energy together. It will take many years of correct practice to be able to call up this ability when your body is moving, it is why Nan Pai is often called the "gradual realization school." This is the weakness of the Southern school and the reason why it is valuable to practice Quanzhen methods when you are not on the meditation cushion. I want to make this thread not to challenge anyone personally, but to try to talk for real about Nei Dan, because it is important to be very clear about how the different schools understood the practice. it is not a matter of 1500 side doors, because many of the other pai such as western, eastern, middle, san feng, and so on and so on are all very useful. it takes a special kind of conceit for us who are walking in the shadow of giants to put down their studies as having missed the point. I don't think anyone here has discarded the corporeal form and ascended to immortality, so lets not pretend we are the same as those who have before us. I will get off my soap box now.

This is a pretty big topic, but I'll just answer what I'm qualified to answer: The original Nu Dan probably started with Sun Buer, who left behind several documents. If I understand it correctly, her lineage still lived on in the nunnery, but I'm not a Quanzhen person and can't claim any special knowledge of their system outside of general principles. Huang Yuanji came much later than Li Dao Chun. The time line is the Li Daochun was teaching in the Yuan Dynasty, only a couple hundred years after Wang Chongyang. That is why some people call Zhong Pai as a Quanzhen offshot, although I personally feel it is much closer to Nan zong in theory. Huang Yuanji was probably late ming or early Qing dynasty, so more modern. You can actually trace it in Huang's writing style, it is much closer to modern Chinese writing. About your last comment, I don't know, but certainly the theory of dual cultivation of xing and ming was best developed by the middle school, which then influenced many other nei dan schools. The earliest reference I've seen to it is in early nanzong material, but the first clear reference I can find to it as a kind of distinct practice is from Zhang san feng.

I wouldn't say that it was so much of a rejection rather than just wang chongyang's theory being more close to Lu dongbin's theory and that of the qing jing classic which are both essentially spontaneous methods. Also I think the influence of Qiu Chuji and Tan Chudan whose methods were significantly less wrapped up in "Lian ming" than others in the Quanzhen lineage. Keep in mind that Quazhen is also the root of Nv Dan, so it is a very rich school for sure. In my opinion, the persons who put the two schools together first were Zhang Sanfeng and Li Daochun. I think even though we see the term "shuan xiu" in nanzong writings, it was not well understood back to that time in history. I feel Li Daochun really moved that concept forward into something which was systematized.

Shen also means consciousness, specifically the combination of Xing (nature) and Qing (emotion). So in this world view, consciousness, or perhaps I should say the conscious mind, is made up up of our nature and our emotions, so that covers Shen. Shen is located in the heart and is constructed of the fire element, with the outer two yang lines being our nature and the inner broken line being our emotions (there are other ways to look at this, but this is the most germaine to our discussion). Yuan shen is the time when Qing is replaced in the centre line of fire by the living jing essence of the water element (the solid yang line between two broken lines) and then it becomes the Qian trigram representing the heavens. So Yuanshen is the mind of pure yang energy, the original mind, and the mind before it has been affected by outside influences. This can be further defined into Yuan Xing and Yuan Qing (Shui Jingzi wrote about this in Qing Jing Jing Tu zhu), which is still the Qian trigram, but it recognizes that the original Xing is still the two yang lines, but the yang that enters from the water trigram is called yuan qing. that kind of theory is a bit complicated and didn't become as popular as the simple one I described before (which is from zhong he jin by li dao chun). Simply put, Yuan Shen = pure consciousness.

One overlooked movement in 20th century Daoism in China is the field of modern Daoist philosophy and practice, such as those spearheaded by Chen Yingning, Pang Ming and others. These people argued that Daoism has a modern application to current social problems and that as a living tradition, it must work in harmony with our modern society. I think Daoism in the west and China ought to start to investigate its views on homosexual unions, but that because it is a totally new subject, it hasn't been accurately argued yet. My take on it is that homosexuality exists in the animal kingdom and as such, it is part of nature, but that from a Daoist paradigm, sexuality is something which is like an untamed horse and it should be brought under control and used carefully, so a homosexual union based on a long lasting relationship might be seen as a good thing for lay people, but just as is the case with heterosexual unions, the union should not be based purely on sexual gratification, since that has the effect of causing people to lose energy and become stagnant. I haven't given that much thought to this, but that is my preliminary statement at least.

This week I discuss Jing, Qi, and Shen, as well as yuan Jing Qi and Shen.

https://soundcloud.com/user-931790889/this-daoist-life-1 This is the first week of my new podcast about Daoism, and appropriately enough it is discussing chapter one of the Dao De Jing. I have presented the material in a fairly simple and straightforward way without getting too bogged down in theory. I think this is important because not everyone who listens will already be knowledgeable about Daoism, so hopefully I've managed to attain a balance between presenting basic information for people new to Daoism, and more detailed information for people who have been studying for a long time. :) :)

In the sense of the world in which it is applied in Daoism, usually the Roman spelling would be "Xiu Dao" (pron: She-Oh Dao). In this case, it is a term which applies equally across Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism and refers to the act of cultivating the way. Its partners word is "Gong De" or the work of how we accumulate virtue. Xiu Dao can literally mean any method of cultivating the Dao and not only that, it can also apply to cultivating the Dao through art, cooking, music, or virtually anything. Usually xiu dao refers to the practices of Daoism though, and so this can loosely apply to many things, but most people use it to mean meditation.

I think it would be interesting to start a thread about methods outside of Neidan which also exist in Daoism and how they can be of benefit to us and our larger society. Obviously this is a very big field and there are so many practices that we couldn't get around to discussing them all, but I would like to open up the thread with some interesting ideas from Xiao Dao Zang which were later incorporated by Pang Ming Laoshi into his Zhineng Qigong system. Xiao Dao Zang and "Swallowing Qi:" So the small Daoist canon has a very long section on various methods of "swallowing Qi" in early Daoism. They are really varied, all the way from embryonic breathing, the visualizing various colours entering the body and going to the vital organs, to swallowing saliva and imagining it moving to various parts of the body. Fu Qi methods are basically early Daoist breathing methods with some visualizations which are meant to nourish the human being with oxygen and bodily fluid. They can be a little stiff and hard to understand if you are only going by the texts in the Daoist Canon, but Pang Ming Laoshi explained it very well in a talk he gave in the 1990s when he said that when you drink water or eat any food, you can use you mind to observe the food, imagine its nutriative quality, chew and mix with the saliva, swallow, and direct the food to the stomach with the mind. How clearly and deeply you can imagine it is how much benefit this type of practice can give you. He argued that most people who get sick don't suffer from lack of nutrition, but rather suffer from their bad habits, so activating the mind during eating can actually help our bodies be more active during the digestion process and gives us greater benefit from our food. This is a very good modern way of looking at Fu qi practice. Hu Haiya also once said "Qi gong is a snack and a cup of tea," which I believe has the same meaning. These kind of Daoist energy methods are things that are very easy to practice all the time, as long as we remember to do them and don't lose our connection to our bodies. I'm looking forward to seeing other people sharing their methods, although lets please not talk about Nei Dan on this thread, since there are plenty of other threads discussing that subject :) :)

I think they are connected, but it is important to look at what the goals of the practice are. In terms of Daoist ideas, the body should be made healthy from the inside rather than from the outside, so strength practices in classical Daoism are not very common. Usually Daoists use the mind to recognize the universe inside the body, rather than trying to affect the outside world.

i agree visualization is somewhat dangerous and you need to have someone to supervise your practice, because it is easy to make mistakes. Even in small Dao Zang, it says in part that during practice it is normal to pee blood at first on some techniques!! That is why I think Nei Dan is a superior technique, but we can also say that modern Qi gong is like a combination of Fu Qi, visulization, and Dan Dao, but also very safe for modern people to practice, so I like Qi gong too!!

Daoist practices surrounding Dan methods are based on several important principles: - "stabilizing the mind" - "adjusting the fire" - "void and emptiness" - "returning to the root" There are many other principles of course, but these strike me as exceptionally important. When you meditate on the lower Dantian, the first thing you have to understand is how to make the mind stable. this generally constitutes directing the attention to the area and then relaxing as you allow the intention and breath to mix together in the consciousness. This process needs to be controlled so that you neither get tired and fall asleep, or become excited and enervated, so controlling the level of intention and remaining calm is a big deal. It is also important to allow the mind to become vast and open rather than overly directed and stiff, this is the genuine prerequisite for turning yin energy into wuji and wuji into yang energy. It is the lock of the door of the "mystery gate," and shouldn't be overlooked. Returning to the root is returning to being natural and is the result of this type of practice. It doesn't really matter if you put the finger on your dantian or not, you should put more attention on learning to make your intention natural and then the Qi will build on its own. Feeling warmth, a rumbling sensation, or a sensation of well being are all symptomatic with this type of practice, but you shouldn't feel pain, discomfort, or excess of emotions. I hope this helps you a bit and of course if you need to ask more questions, I think many of the people on this board should be able to direct you toward good practice and away from negative ones

you said it should take several years to open 玄關, but Huang Yuanji even put it in his first chapter. Xuan Guan is the basic level of Huang Yuanji's idea, it should be easy for most students to open it within a year. If they are really serious, they can do it in a month or two. This is not a high level idea, it is the most basic idea. I agree that most people don't have the basic, so their practice cannot move past the "External" stage.

The correct practice is based on several prerequisites: - "Lian Shi" practice posture: this means that you practice the correct mechanics of any given movement until you master all of the requirements of posture and micro movements within it. - "Lian Xing" practice the physical body: you need to get the correct shape of posture. - "Lian Xin" practice the heart: you need to be able to cultivate the mind in such a way that "Qing" feeling and "Xing" consciousness mix together in the movement in a smooth and correct way. - "Lian Yi" practice the intention: The intention has to stretch not only to the whole body, but also to the arc of the movement and the destination point of the movement. - "Chen Qi" sink the Qi: this is partially related to sinking the posture and partially related to sinking the intention into the lower dantian. - "Jin Fa" power method: The power method is however your martial art expresses trained power. - "Li Fa" strength method: this is the way in which your style practices physical strength. - "Shen Fa" the method of body use: This is how the style uses the body, for instance, opening and closing, spirals, drilling, folding etc are all forms of shen fa. - "Lian Xu" Cultivate emptiness: cultivating emptiness is how to let the Qi smoothly flow through the body unimpeded. - "Nei Wai Hun Yuan" internal and external "Chaotic Qi": connecting the movement with the three treasures of Jing, qi, and shen, held together as Hun Yuan qi, and then connecting this original chaotic Qi to the Qi of the outside environment and your opponent. - "Kong Jin" empty force: if you can achieve this, it will seem like you move and it can't be detected how you moved. People will see this and not understand it, it is very subtle. I've only personally seen this once in my life in a park in Shanghai and I was too shy to go over and ask the master about his style. I don't even know what style he was practising to be honest. His movements looked totally empty and without root. It was really weird. These different stages might not always follow the same order, but basically, if you want to practice qi in the martial arts and get to a high level, you will have to pass through these stages to get to the point at which the body, mind, and nature merge together and instead of moving of your own intention, you move with nature. I certainly haven't achieved this, but have met people at various levels of this practice. I personally think that to get to the very high level, you will have to learn to meditate, because the meditation practice is probably the best way to understand emptiness and then apply it to martial arts. the problem is, after you achieve something in meditation, you might quit martial arts because you realize how much better it is just to breathe and be free than worry about punching people all the time :) :)

I am opening up registration now for the second month of my weekly class in Neidan fundamentals. Anyone wishing to study with me is welcome to email me at [email protected] The structure of the course is to interrogate classical documents in Nei Dan and then discuss the correct method by which to achieve results through meditation practice. Last month we covered two documents from the Song dynasty Small Daoist Canon, two chapters of "Da Cheng Jie Yao" (a Ming Qing era meditation document), and a section from Wang Chongyang's ten discussions. This month we will be starting out with a chapter on the correct diet for meditation practitioners from "Da Cheng Jie Yao," and then in the second week looking at two chapters of Li xiyue's Western school document called "Three Carts Secret Method," which have a very good basic curriculum by which to approach basic Nei Dan practices such as the mystery gate and small heavenly orbit. Then we will move on to a couple of sections from the middle school document "Zhong He Ji" by Li Daochun, which goes into some depth about how the three major schools of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism approach the practice of meditation, and enlightenment. There is one lesson a week for the duration of the month and you are welcome to email me as often as you like with questions and observations (I will try to answer as promptly as possible). The course fee is $30/month, but we can discuss reducing the price if you are in a financially tough situation but still want to practice. If you want to familiarize yourself with who I am, my personal website is www.daoistmeditation.com Thank you very much and I look forward to hearing from you.

The Internal Elixir School (zhong pai branch) on the predestination of human affairs: 身心世事， Body, mind, the world, and affairs, 謂之四緣， These are the four predestinations 一切世人皆為縈絆， All living people are bound and tangled up by them. 惟委順者能應之， Only by cultivating compliance can one accord with them. 常應常靜，何緣之有。 Long in accord, long quiet , What predestination could there be? - Li Daochun Like someone said before, practice is the key.

When people start to learn meditation, it is important to recognize the individual phases of practice and how to get the best result from them. Huo zi shi is a concept used especially often by Huang yuanji which refers to the time when the latent energy of the water trigram first springs to life. "Zi Shi" in traditional Chinese time means the two hour period between 11 PM and 1 AM and is symbolized by the water element and the rise of the moon. Usually in meditation practice, it is considered one of the best time to practice, because the energy of the moon can help bring out the energy of the body more abundantly. I also suspect it is related to the circadian rhythm and the body being better at going into a deep meditation state at that time, since usually people will rest around this time of night. Daoists used the term "zi shi" to describe the time when the inner yang line appears inside of the kun trigram, changing it to Kan, or water. "Huo zi shi" means the time when "Zi" comes to life and it is a specific idea in meditation, especially in the middle school. Huo Zi appears during the turbid, chaotic silence of deep meditation. It is when yin changes and yang emerges. It is the chaotic energy of the pre heaven and is the time when the pre heaven "three treasures" of yuan jing, yuan qi, and yuan shen are all mixing together. During this time, even though your mind and body are present, it seems like you have no body, and no mind. Huang Yuanji says it is like not knowing one's home village, in other words, it is when the mind goes into the void state. Because of entering into the void, the body begins to follow its own natural cycle and the conscious mind or "Shi shen" (the mind that looks) has been replaced by the pure mind, or "Yuan Shen" (the original mind). This theory can be very complicated, but to put it in simple terms, the "Shi shen" is polluted by emotions (Qing) and when you are in deep mediation, the emotions disappear and are replaced with clarity. Therefore, it is at this time that the mind enters into a state of pure yang energy and the body enters into pure yin energy. Li Daochun said that this is the time when the inner line from the water trigram moves to the inner line of the Li trigram, clearly changing water and fire to earth and heaven, thus propping up and making clear the separation between the pre heaven, unmixed Yin and Yang, and thus allowing the spirit to emerge as pure yang energy. This kind of practice has many stages and it isn't a one time thing, nor does it always manifest the same way. The easiest way to understand it is as a concept about how to swap yin for yang so that the broken yin line in your consciousness is repaired by the solid yang line of your body. This is the way that "Xing" and "ming" merge together, at least in the theory of the middle school of Nei Dan. As always, thoughts and questions are welcome, and if you feel I made any mistakes, please let me know and we'll talk about it more. hopefully this threat produces an interesting conversation.

thank you. Now I just wish I hadn't picked such a stupid posting name (originally just picked the first thing that came to mind because I figured I was mostly going to lurk and not post).