Bindi

I think it is possible, I have read of Christian monks who shone with light momentarily, Jesus is recorded as becoming light on a mountain for a few moments, and I like to think that the stories of Buddhists emanating rainbow light at death are true. But, as previous posters have pointed out, these phenomena happen to advanced practitioners, the most devout, the most holy. I’d be willing to bet these states are a consequence of their attainment, not their aim.

I was (attempting to) respond to your assertion that shamans had a kind of forsaking of their bodies, by saying that Xi Wang Mu as a shaman was considered to be an immortal in her body, or so I believe. The whole immortality topic seems to run deep in early Chinese thought, before Daoism was even a thing, and Daoism seems to have incorporated this belief system into itself. I would have thought a Buddhist might say there is nothing there, while it seems a Daoist might say a lot of different things, there’s not one party line. I would say when you are completely empty, and I would mean of all conditioning, then you are aligned with the Dao, and immortality or at least longevity might actually be possible in this state.

This thread was originally looking at differences between Buddhist and Taoist understanding of emptiness. I was just reading the Wikipedia article on Taoism to see what it said about immortality, and came across this line: Taoism on the other hand also incorporated Buddhist elements during the Tang dynasty, such as monasteries, vegetarianism, prohibition of alcohol, the doctrine of emptiness, and collecting scripture in tripartite organisation.

wasn’t Xi Wang Mu a shaman, and an immortal? Xi Wang Mu attained it and took her seat on Shao Guang mountain.No one knows her beginning and no one knows her end. - Zhuangzi One of the oldest deities of China is Xi Wangmu (Hsi Wang Mu). She lives in the Kunlun mountains in the far west, at the margin of heaven and earth. In a garden hidden by high clouds, her peaches of immortality grow on a colossal Tree, only ripening once every 3000 years. The Tree is a cosmic axis that connects heaven and earth, a ladder traveled by spirits and shamans. There is also the mythological langgan tree of immortality found in the western paradise of Kunlun Mountain, and the name of the classic waidan alchemical elixir of immortality langgan huadan 琅玕華丹 "Elixir Efflorescence of Langgan". The first references to langgan are found in Chinese classics from the Warring States period (475-221 BCE) and Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), which describe it as a valuable gemstone and mineral drug, as well as the mythological fruit of the langgan tree of immortality on Kunlun Mountain.

Yes, on the second page here.

And there is the further question, how does this search for immortality (whether transcendent or physical) relate to Buddhist emptiness?

As far as I can make out “forsaking one’s body” is first mentioned in the second century CE, and certainly this concept developed over time to become one of the main Daoist perspectives. But for Taoists before this date the search appears to be for physical immortality.

Feigning death while in fact ‘ascending into immortality’ may be simply a practical way of dealing with the inescapable reality that someone died, and putting an immortal gloss on it. If your whole life is lived in an attempt to achieve physical immortality, you are going to find justifications when the outcome for your peers is physical death. How we might define “physical immortality” may be a nuanced idea, but how were early Daoists defining physical immortality?

Agreed Buddhism does not have “the idea of spiritual immortality like that of Christianity”, the only thing it may have in common is that something intangible, perhaps pure consciousness not limited by time and space according to Buddhist belief, continues, but something intangible at least, in this case intangible like the Christian soul, as opposed to a belief in actual physical immortality which from what I have read was the concern of Early Daoists. Regarding Daoist attitudes prior to Buddhism, most of what I come across is the belief in and search for physical immortality. In a sense I believe an afterlife must be an intrinsic failure to an early Daoist, as they would have failed to have achieved physical immortality. I would be interested in reading early Daoist texts that are not influenced by Buddhism which refer to seeking an intangible immortality.

-Immortality is an important idea in Taoism. Because all nature is united by Tao, Taoists believe, immortality can be attained. Taoists also believe that immortality it not something that can be achieved by separating oneself from nature, like with a soul, but rather is something achieved by directing natural forces through the body, creating more durable body materials, using techniques such as breathing, focusing sexual energy and alchemy. -The immortality referred to in Taoism is physical immortality. The highest goal of many devotees of Taoism is the attainment of immortality through a total channeling of energies to reach harmony with Tao. Immortality can be viewed literally or as a symbol of spiritual liberation. The idea of a spiritual immortality like that of Christianity was alien to the Chinese until Buddhism was introduced to China. -Numerous Taoist prayers are dedicated to the spirits of immortality. Taoist painters have traditionally chosen immortally as one of their central themes. Famous Taoist paintings dealing with immortality include Immortal Ascending on a Dragon, Riding a Dragon, Fungus of Immortality, Picking Herbs, and Preparing Elixirs. -In the old days, many Taoists spent their whole lives looking for elixirs of immortality. The Emperor Shi went through great lengths to try and achieve immortality. http://factsanddetails.com/china/cat3/sub10/entry-5584.html

This captures the ancient Daoist end point perfectly for me, the "天地至精" ( "ultimate jing of the universe" ), the “medicine for everlasting life”. I wonder is this the same as the fruit of the Langgan tree?

When Buddhism was introduced in China it was understood in terms of its own culture. Various sects struggled to attain an understanding of the Indian texts. The Tathāgatagarbha Sutras and the idea of the Buddha-nature were endorsed, because of the perceived similarities with the Tao, which was understood as a transcendental reality underlying the world of appearances. Sunyata at first was also understood as pointing to transcendental reality. It took Chinese Buddhismseveral centuries to realize that Sunyata does not refer to an essential transcendental reality underneath or behind the world of appearances. http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Śūnyatā

Because as far as I know fully embodied/fully felt emotions need to be able to flow upwards freely (water rising alchemically) as a full half of the naturally occurring MCO. Water rising is a standard alchemical notion, naming that water ‘emotions’ is not standard, but it is the case IME. I believe that alchemically ‘something’ is produced if you reach Tai Ji, fuelled by a functional MCO. The elixir, the pill, some thing associated with immortality in some way.

When people negate emotions, this is the essence of negating the ‘earth’, negating yin, and spiritual bypassing. A spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing is a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks". Emotional issues are painful, opening up the emotional channel is hard work, easier to just see all emotions as unreal, and justify it as advanced spirituality.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective “Language is a unique hallmark of the human species. Although many species can communicate in limited ways about things that are physically present, only humans can construct a full narrative characterization of events occurring outside of the here and now.” This ability is uniquely human, and has led to amazing advances for humanity, yet here it is considered an inferior trait?

Yesterday I planted a seed, in a few days it will sprout, yesterday it was a seed, tomorrow it will be a tomato plant. It doesn’t remember it was a seed, nor did it imagine it might be a plant, it just transformed because of the conditions it found itself in, and is already something different in this moment from what it was yesterday.

I don’t get it. Clearly there’s past and future in the plane we live in, something happened yesterday, something else will happen tomorrow, surely that’s indisputable, where is this plane where there is no past or future? The only thing I’ve heard of is some sort of samadhi in which it feels timeless, until consciousness returns to this plane, where time resumes? Is this anything close to what people are referring to as timeless? Some concept of a timeless state, projected as the truth?

If there can be quite a few different interpretations of Xing and Ming (https://daoistmeditation.com/2016/10/18/what-is-xing-ming/) to an extent it can be the one that most appeals to our perception that we settle on. My preferred perspective (for now) is that If the dantians (which naturally exist) are not cultivated, and the contents are not brought up from one to the next, then any realisation will be hollow, all sky (Xing) and no earth (Ming), which is to miss the fact that what the cultivated earth contributes is valuable.

To me my mind is not just apparent, it is in fact just dysfunctional, comprised as it is of my consciousness concerning itself with things it needn’t and shouldn’t be concerning itself with. My consciousness is stuck at this dualistic mind level and thinking it needs to be the boss and organise things on this level until it starts to recognise the role it has been mistakenly playing, and the solution, to just let the dualistic yin/yang mind work within itself in its natural process, which only requires emotional and mental clarity. Then my consciousness is free to perceive something beyond, the ‘higher Self’, and free to start to identify with that level, and to fulfil its role there.

As to how these movements might have come about, and why, I was shown three movements to do when my energy needed to be brought up from my lower dantian to my middle dantian, by someone who actually psychically saw me do the movements first in their mind, to me it was like my own energy body was guiding me. This was after doing a personal version of ldt work for years, though not knowing anything about qigong or dantians at the time. I did just these three movements every day for a year (until I was shown to stop), in brief one was to bring blue heaven energy in, one was to bring red earth energy in, and one was to open the channels down my arms to allow qi to flow down, and come out as healing qi. I was shown to stop all three movements when my arm channels were open and the healing qi flow was constant, and I didn’t need further topping up or more opening.

Yueya, I appreciated your whole post and only reacted to what I felt was a minimisation that return dragon highlighted when he picked out just this line “methods that better align both my body and mind with Dao” as the entirety of Xing and Ming practice. I understand your intent was unlikely to be trying to minimise, but I believe return dragons intent was to minimise the nature of Xing practice to something limited to body and mind level.

But not just aligning body and mind with Dao, also aligning the subtle energy body. For me this is where alchemy takes place.

Agreed pulling apart conditioned consciousness is primary, and there are likely a few ways this can be done. I had a dream in my early 20’s in which there was a large wooden pergola structure and a thick vine growing on it. In my dream I first undid the tendrils wrapped around the wooden beams, then the branches, and then I came to the trunk of the vine which had grown around the middle post of the structure, so that it was almost impossible to distinguish what was wooden post and what was vine. I started to prise them apart, and at a certain point I managed it, and the whole vine and structure started to topple to one side which worried me so I pushed it back up, it started to topple a second time and I worked against it and pushed it back up again, and then it started to topple a third time, and this time I turned my back on it and walked in the other direction. When I looked back, I saw that the whole heavy old structure and vine had disappeared, and in its place there was a new fresh young vine, free to grow. This is my dream version of pulling apart conditioning, which influenced my entire life path. As I see it now the vine is my mind, and the structure is my conditioning. In my dream, my heavy old lumbering mind woven around conditioning gives way finally, after a lot of work undoing it, to a new fresh perspective, this time in accord with my inner reality.

Translation please 🙃