Geof Nanto

I've made a pdf version of the Neiye based on the translation I've posted in my PPD and attached it here. Neiye Booklet.pdf

I took this comment as an allusion to a paragraph in Jung’s Red Book (which I know from previous posts 9th has read). “My thoughts are not my self, but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional.”

Animalwise: A Parable for Wayfarers Let me make it plain from the start. I‘m a proud and tough possum fending for myself in the wild. My one quirk is an uncanny interest in the strange realm of humans. They fascinate me. There’s a rustic old hermit’s hut with plenty of trees nearby within my territory that I like to regularly visit. It’s an easy climb up onto the iron roof. I love to run around and make a racket when I'm in the mood. It annoys the hell out of that peace loving hermit. Even better, I regularly sniff out small gaps and squeeze my way inside. There’s so many mysterious things for a possum to explore. A few nights back, whilst hot on the trail of freshly baked sourdough bread, I chanced upon a book lying on the table. Mind you, that’s not unusual. This old hermit is a cultivator of the Daoist and Buddhist way and has many books on the subject. I’ve browsed some of them while he sits oblivious in mediation, and I can tell you it baffles me why he needs books when we are all intrinsically of the Way. Every animal knows that, expect it seems it’s lost to humans. But that’s a mystery for another time, and this book wasn’t one of those anyway. It was a children’s book. There’s something about the look and smell of these battered, big type, brightly coloured hardcover books that touches my heart. Maybe it’s a memory of a simpler time. A time of wonder and easy enchantment when I too was child-like. I nibbled that very tasty bread, and pawed open the cover. It was a book of riddles. My eyes came to rest on a familiar conundrum. It totally grabbed my attention for an instant, until the sound of danger jolted me. That old hermit was on my tail wielding a broom. Humans! Now there’s an enigmatic species for you. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding them. They have so much yet never seem satisfied. Back with my daughter in the safety of my Tallowwood tree the riddle stayed in my mind. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” I’d heard it before except in our possum version it’s an eagle chick. When I first heard it as a youngster in PossumTree school my imagination was stirred and my reason challenged. I was drawn to its koan like impossibility. Now the riddle had become almost a cliché for “don’t even bother to try to understand this one”. It reminded me how easily curiosity about life’s mysteries fades as one grows older. I was chewing it over the next evening with some of the local wallabies. Wallabies are the true sages of us timeless ones; wise but invisible in their actions, helping but not intruding, absorbing cruelty without becoming vengeful. I have a lot of respect for wallabies. Most of us wild animals live a life Zhuang Zhou could only dream of. We have no possessions. When tired we sleep, when hungry we eat. We are masters of living in the moment. But within this tradition wallabies stand out. To me they’re bodhisattvas, though they themselves shun all labels and tell me that they are simple followers of the way of nature. Anyway, our discussion of the riddle soon led to the revelation of knowledge which is apparently well known within the wallaby lineage - but was certainly new to me. They gave me some interesting insights. Interesting enough to stir me to write them down. The wallabies have their own story on the purpose of human life. It’s told to all joeys at an early age to help them understand this strange and sometimes aggressive species. Considering its ancient origins I was surprised that, to the best of my knowledge, no possum had ever heard it before. But then that’s what wallabies are like. It takes patience and a Zen like empty mind for their stories to unfold. If you approach them with strong opinions, which being a possum I can't help but do, they'll scarcely dispute you. It is their nature to go along. So in my ignorance I often thought the wallabies agreed with me. It is only now as I grow older and less sure of anything that I’m able to see them in a different light. What I perceived as passivity and ignorance is in fact a manifestation of the contented detachment of true Daoist sages. For ones that lead such humble lives, the level of abstract thought that pervades the wallaby kingdom always surprises me. My encounter with this extraordinary analogy, which is after all just part of a parable for joeys, only reinforces my admiration for them. The wallabies liken human habitation on our planet to that eagle embryo growing inside its shell enclosed biosphere. Their analogy underpins major issues that wallabies, indeed all us animals, face every day as our habitat - indeed our very lives - continues to feed human growth. We are being eaten up, just like that yolk. But to my dismay, rather than condemnation and anger, I heard a worldview shaped by an entirely different paradigm. Old Longears, an elder (pictured meditating), explained further. “That eagle embryo uses the yolk to grow and eventually breaks out of its shell into an unforeseeably large world as an eagle chick, and then grows into a magnificent eagle able to soar through the skies. This is how things are; the joey grows from an egg, the tree from a seed. So too a similar process is occurring on an abstract level. Humans are experiencing remarkable evolutionary change. It is a difficult era for them. Their collective consciousness is like the embryo of a new life-form – one that's invisible to our eyes. It is a subtle entity, honed by intelligent reason, with empathy as its heart and the creative arts in its blood.” “They’re using the resources of our planet to build a web of interconnections between living minds. The larger the consciousness, the more energy needed to power it. I tell our joeys this is the way of things. It's neither right nor wrong - it just is. Like how our brains evolved from single celled organisms, constantly growing in energy needs along the way.” “Human consciousness is a part formed, resource hungry thing. At the most basic level those countless interconnections mean massive infrastructure. Many thoughtful people understandably feel anxious inside their finite resourced biosphere, aware of their growing numbers and ever increasing appetite. There's consternation too at pollution caused by clumsy technologies, and of the competition and greed that energizes much of the growth.” Old Longears continued in the seemingly nonchalant manner that I’ve learnt belies the natural wisdom and profound trust in the Way of these earthy macropods. “I‘ve heard the present period referred to as the sixth great extinction. This one caused by humans. So many of our fellow species are being lost.” “I tell our joeys in this difficult time our role is a simple one. We must live as wallabies have always lived. We must carry the knowledge of our possible destruction lightly and behave as if we live in blissful ignorance. We must help keep environmental stability in the midst of human flux by maintaining our traditional way of life. It’s our role within the great Way. We eat grass, we nurture our young, we play. We flee from danger. In death our bodies feed dingoes, our rotting carcasses, goannas. Our life is clearly delineated by our wallaby instincts. Our presence could be a marker for humans of the vital diversity of organic life, of the evolutionary wisdom we all embody. We are a tiny part of this intricately interwoven ecosystem, complexly alive on levels humans are as yet unable to comprehend. Our world is their world and all life is interconnected.” To me it sounded like gross injustice. “Why should humans occupy centre-stage? What about our rights?” I wanted to talk about a more secure future for animals, about actions we could take to protect our way of life. You know – protest! I was already thinking of all the roofs I could stomp on in the middle of the night. But their lack of response reminded me wallabies aren't ones for confrontation. They've been around a long time, just listening; watching the world unfold, solid in their wallaby nature. Old Longears said, “Think about the parable. All new life is needy and only knows how to take. It needs wise, warm and sometimes tough nurturing. Consciousness is no different. Humans like to think it's about them but really it's about the ongoing evolution of life itself. It's a fundamental wallaby belief that a healthy consciousness must eventually embrace the totality of biological life which hosts it.” I wasn't so sure myself but I knew I was still hungry. And food was all around. After a long period of peaceful eating in the noble silence so characteristic of us animals I came upon Zirana (pictured above, left). Her joey had just been on an adventure outside the pouch and her face still glowed with the excitement of it all. Old Longears once hinted that she was their wise one but I'd never heard her speak. So it surprised me when she said, though seemingly with reluctance, “Have patience dear possum. We're witnessing evolutionary change here and that's millenniums slow. Each retained adaption is the survivor of countless blind alleys and failures. Consciousness lives across the tensions created by difference. It needs meaningful dialogue between opposing perspectives in order to develop healthy and strong. It thrives on tackling appropriate levels of problems and conflict.” Us possums are always fighting over our territory and our mates so I could relate to that. We never seem to learn anything new though. Maybe lack of dialogue is our problem. But at least we're stable in our wants, unlike humans with their never ending need for more. “Zirana, your notion of our planet as somehow nurturing an emerging transcendent consciousness may be all very well for wallabies but I want to live my life my way, for me. What if humans bring catastrophe on us all?” She looked at me as if I was a joey who still didn't understand, “Human exceptionalism creates a tendency towards hubris, it's true. That power bestowed by enhanced awareness is a gift but also yokes them with a great burden. It’s lost them their innate animal wholeness so they can no longer live simple, spontaneous lives like us. They're increasingly feeling uncomfortable with the consequences of their actions because their empathy sphere is expanding too. Concern for the welfare of our whole planet is slowly gaining traction. We don't judge them harshly. Consciousness thrives at the edge of chaos. Truly, dear possum, consciousness is the new form of complex life evolving here. It has its own evolutionary imperatives, its own will to survive. Individual wishes count for only a little within the great pattern of life. We are all like straw dogs in this game” The encroaching dawn brought an end to our nocturnal ruminations. I was glad too. Interesting as it was, there's only so much a possum can accept. As I climbed up into my favourite Tallowwood tree hollow for much needed sleep, the thought foremost in my mind was “I shall do my best to survive, proudly, as the autonomous individual I surely am.” The Possum

Or more generally, "People don’t have consciousness, consciousness has people". I wrote a brief story about how consciousness is like a new and evolving life-form here on earth; like a new animal in the forest to use 9th's imagery. I’ve posted it a while back on my PPD here.

“Oddly enough, the paradox is one of the most valuable spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or reduces its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided, and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible.” – Carl Jung

My “Thank You’’ is for making this work known. I’ve browsed a little of the preview and his interpretation is not one that appeals to me. However, I do appreciate the effort and intelligence he’s put into the work and I’m sure others will find his perspective helpful. I can’t help but notice how he creates a dualism between what he calls the truth of realism against the falsity of idealism. For instance, he writes: "The ability to differentiate things is obviously valuable but the downside is not so obvious. In fact, the downside is often hidden from us due to the nature and strength of our viewpoints. Our points of view are so strong and definite that we mistakenly call our views 'true' rather than realizing how they are merely convenient and tentative. Our personal, shortsighted view is idealistic rather than a broader, more realistic view." From my brief reading of his commentary, it seems to me he’s fallen into his own trap of believing his own analysis and own distinctions are true. However, I appreciate that no discussion is possible without creating distinctions, as I have done here by differentiating my perspective from his. And that immediately takes me away from Dao. Hence I make this post with an inner smile and will say no more other than, for me, the world in an amazing mystery that defies all attempts at rational understanding.

Bindi, thank you for your above two posts. What you’ve written parallels insights I’ve gained from working through my own long-term ego crushing experiences. I was struggling with how to express these same sentiments and you’ve saved me the trouble with your concise words and quotations. (BTW I could add some qualifiers as you've written from a Christian perspective whereas I relate more to Daoist 'reality' but highlighting such differences would only serve as a distraction from the essential truth of your posts.)

The image I get and like from some of the comments here is one of a self that’s grown strong enough through personal cultivation to allow the integration of darkness as part of a multi-faceted fluid self that needs to be accepted fearlessly in all its sometimes unpleasant and contradictory aspects; a self that's totally whole yet not necessarily unified. It's an image of a self that's aware of itself as a circumference that holds these many aspects of the totality of what it means to be human, rather than a self that can only function as a single-pointed controlling centre. A laissez-faire self.

Building a Hut Choosing from the whole land of open abstraction, I find suitable conditions in the Dreamtime. In building the foundation, It must be steady and stable; In setting up the practice, It must be thoroughly grounded. Standing up real knowledge as a pillar, I set the absolute as the main beam. The blue sky is the roof, The occupant enjoys the uncreated. Levelling off the ground, I finish the foundation the same day. The mountains come in from the north, The river flows out to the west. The door is completely open, The windows thoroughly clear. Who are the companions in the hut? The light of the moon, The clarity of the breeze. (Adapted from a poem attributed to Li Daoqun, 13th century China.)

Yes, hopefully. But as I'm very much a work in process I can't claim any ultimate knowledge where I'll end up. The Daoist approach that I like is one of removing the disharmonies that keep me from alignment with Dao. That way I allow the Dao to flow freely through me and hence I allow it to grow me, in my own individual way, to my fullest extent . So yes, a dissolving of complexity and simplification. And so far I've had excellent results. I wouldn't like to go back to the person I was decades ago. (I use the terms 'I', 'me' and 'my' with full knowledge that such usage is problematic / inadequate in this context.) Edit: Rather than opening my previous response to your comment with the ambiguous, “Yes and no”, it would have been clearer if I’d said. “Yes, this is good for the reason you state, but as well…… (Not so simple to avoid ambiguities and hence potential misunderstands, hey. But I do try for the very reasons you mention.)

Yes and no. Experience has shown me the self I’m conscious of is only the tip of the iceberg of my whole psyche. From my observation, we all have much hidden psychic content. That’s why personal cultivation is a life-long task. Uncovering deeper, darker layers is a slow, and emotionally fraught, process. It takes a lot of courage – or desperation – to look deeply inwards and acknowledge the totality of what is to be human; that we're all made of the same stuff, saints and sinners alike. For me, true compassion and humility arise spontaneously from within and deepen the more I'm able to acknowledge myself as the complex mishmash of often contradictory feelings and emotions that I am.

I like to hear of anyone’s interest in Daoism. But why the search for a Daoist sage? What do you expect to find? Without knowing anything of your background, what I would suggest is that you start with some form of qigong practice under a local teacher within a group you feel an affinity for. The rest will follow in its own time ‘self-so’. You don’t need to find a sage. After all, if you were starting out to learn music, would you search for a Beethoven or attend a local music teacher? Yeah, I particularly like these translations of Lui I Ming's works by Thomas Cleary. His Taost I Ching is a gem that's given me much valuable guidance over the years. Of contemporary teachers, one whose written works have impressed me is Damo Mitchell. His White Moon on the Mountain Peak is excellent. If I was younger and starting out, I would go to him and his group for teachings.

The Neiye 內業 (Inward Training) is a lesser known elder cousin of the Daodejing. It is widely considered a key part of a set of texts on techniques of the heart-mind (xinshu 心術) from the period of classical Daoism (480 B.C.E.-9 C.E.), and provides detailed principles and instruction for inner cultivation. The brief twenty-six verses of this relatively straight forward text encapsulates what for me is the essence of Daoist cultivation. I’m presenting it below, chapter by chapter, over the coming days as part of my personal meditation on this text. I’m including it in my PPD rather than using the dedicated Neiye section of Dao Bums because it’s not meant for analysis or discussion – just silent contemplation of the work as a whole. —1— The vital essence of all things, It is this that brings them to life. It generates the five grains below; It becomes the arrayed stars above. When flowing amid the heavens and earth, We call it ghostly and numinous. When stored within the chests of humans, We call such beings sages.

Neiye – Ancient large seal script Background: The Inward Training text (c. 350 BCE), as contained in the received Book of Master Guan, consists of a series of rhymed poetic stanzas. Inward Training contains two or three divisions, thus dividing it into three or four long sections. It has been further partitioned into a varying number of verse stanzas by different scholars. Allyn Rickett, following Ma Feibai, has translated the text as dividing into fifteen stanzas, with most of these being further subdivided into shorter units of varying length. Harold Roth, developing the work of Gustav Haloun and Jeffrey Riegel, divides the work into twenty-six verse stanzas. Thus, the appearance of the text as a series of verse stanzas or poetic chapters is a modern hermeneutical development. A.C. Graham, a renowned scholar of Chinese intellectual history, has commented, “'Inward Training'...is important as possibly the oldest ‘mystical’ text in China. And in reference to verse two, “This may well be the earliest Chinese interpretation of the experience of mystical oneness.” Moreover, Harold Roth believes that “Inward Training assumes a significance that has not heretofore been appreciated: It is the oldest extant expression of the distinctive mystical practice and philosophy that is the basis of the entire Daoist tradition from its obscure origins to the time of the Huai-nan Tzu [Huainanzi] in the mid-second century B.C.” Inward Training represents one of the key “foundations of Daoist mysticism.” It very possibly links the methods of early Chinese Shamanism with what later emerged as a distinctive Daoist approach. Acknowledgements: All translations are also interpretations – and that’s especially the case with works as distant from us as ancient Chinese texts. My thanks to all those translators / interpreters who have put effort into making this particular text accessible to English speakers, of which several can be found on the web. I especially thank Harold Roth and Louis Komjathy. The above translation presented in 26 verses is based on the critical Chinese text compiled by Roth and published in Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei yeh) and the Foundation of Taoist Mysticism. It is a composite of Roth's work and Louis Komjathy's translation that’s also based on Roth’s critical text. Komjathy keeps much of Roth’s English wording with alterations based on his own extensive knowledge of classical Chinese language, Daoist textual history, theory and praxis. His translation is published in the Inward Training volume of his Handbooks for Daoist Practice. (The background information above is edited from his extensive introduction to the text.) I have sometimes used Komjathy’s variations, other times kept Roth’s wording, depending on which I found more lucid. Roth’s Original Tao is a must read for anyone who wants to broaden their knowledge of the text and related early Chinese thought, practice and lifeways. There’s an abundance of translation notes and other relevant material based on over a decade of research and reflection. Moreover, it’s a work written with great personal conviction as to the value of the Neiye. Although far briefer than Roth’s, Komjathy also gives excellent background and interpretive information in the Inward Training volume of his Handbooks for Daoist Practice series. I particularly like learning about this period of proto-Daoism when the meaning of key concepts such as jing 精 (vital essence), de 德 (inner power), qi 氣 and even Dao 道 was still fluid and practice hadn’t been systemised. But above and beyond what can be conveyed in words (as helpful as they can be), to my mind, the only way to gain authentic insight into what the original author of the Neiye was trying to convey is by personally practicing inner cultivation over an extended period of time. In the utter silence Of a temple, A cicada’s voice alone Penetrates the rocks. I’ll leave off here and open this thread to anyone who’d like to comment.

—26— The mysterious qi resides within the heart-mind. One moment it arrives, the next it leaves. So subtle, there is nothing inside. So vast, there is nothing outside. The reason why we come to lose it Is because of the harm caused by agitation. When the heart-mind holds to stillness, The Dao will naturally come to settle. Considering humans who have realized the Dao, It permeates their whole body to their pores and their hair. Within their chests, they remain unsoiled. Follow this way of restraining sense-desires, And the ten thousand things will not harm you. (That’s the final verse. Tomorrow I’ll add some acknowledgements, and then open this thread to comments.)

— 2 5 — Considering the vitality of human beings, It inevitably comes from peace of mind. When anxious, you lose the guiding thread. When angry, you lose the fundamental point. If you are anxious, sad, pleased, or angry, There is no place within you for the Dao to reside. Love and desire: still them! Folly and confusion: correct them! Do not push, do not pull! Auspiciousness will naturally return to you, And that Dao will naturally come to you So you can rely on it and be guided by it. If you are tranquil, you will come to realize it. If you are agitated, you will come to lose it.

—24— Expand your heart-mind and release it. Relax your qi and allow it to extend. When your body is calm and unmoving, Guard the One and discard myriad disturbances. You will see profit and not be enticed by it. You will see harm and not be frightened by it. Relaxed and unwound, yet acutely sensitive, In solitude you will delight in your own being. This is what we call “circulating the qi.” Your thoughts and deeds are natural and spontaneous.

—23— Considering the way of eating, If you over-indulge, your qi will be injured. This will cause your body to deteriorate. If you over-restrict, your bones will be weakened. This will cause your blood to congeal. The place between over-indulgence and over-restriction, We call this “harmonious completion.” Here is the lodging-place of vital essence. It is also where knowing is generated. When hunger and satiation lose their regulation, You must make a plan to rectify this. If you are overly satiated, engage in activity. If you are hungry, expand your thinking [beyond food]. If you are old, forget your worries. If you are overly satiated and do not move, The qi will not circulate through the limbs. If you are hungry and do not expand your thinking, When you finally do eat you will not stop. If when old you do not forget your worries, The well-spring of your vitality will dissipate.

—22— Considering the vitality of human beings. It inevitably occurs because of balance and alignment. The reason why balance and alignment are lost Is inevitably because pleasure, anger, grief, and anxiety. And so, for inhibiting anger nothing is better than poetry. For casting off grief nothing is better than music. For limiting joy nothing is better than ritual propriety. For guarding ritual propriety nothing is better than reverence. For guarding reverence nothing is better than tranquillity. When you are inwardly tranquil and outwardly reverent, You are able to return to your innate nature; Your innate nature will become greatly stabilized.

—21— Considering the life of human beings, It is the heavens that brings forth their vital essence, And the earth that brings forth their form. These two combine to make a human being. When they are in harmony, there is vitality. When they are not in harmony, there is no vitality. Inquiring into the way of harmonizing them, What is essential is unable to be perceived, And what is subtle is unable to be compared. If balance and alignment permeate your torso, This harmony swirls and blends in your heart-mind. This provides enhanced longevity. When joy and anger are not limited, You must make a plan to limit them. Regulate the five sense-desires And cast off the two misfortunes. When both joy and anger are negated, Balance and alignment will permeate your torso.

Carver’s method (above), and Peter Wohlleben’s both show great sensitivity to the natural world, yet they also demonstrate fundamentally different approaches. I called Wolleben’s Daoist because an underlying theme of his is that, left to its own devices, the forest takes care of its self ‘self-so’ (ziran). His attitude to managing the forest is characterised by minimal intervention, by non-doing (wu wei), because he realised that nature is far greater and wiser than us humans. By way of contrast, from the above excerpt, I’d call Carver’s approach truly Christian. His is an interventionist approach that puts us humans in a central role as carers and healers. His attitude is centred on compassion. (I present these two attitudes side by side merely by way of comparison. I’m not claiming one is better than the other – indeed, in my own life as a manager of a small private wilderness sanctuary, I practice both. But my natural inclination is towards the Daoist approach.)

—20— Thinking and inquiring give rise to knowing. Idleness and carelessness give rise to worry. Cruelty and arrogance give rise to resentment. Worry and grief give rise to illness. When illness reaches its apex, then you die. When you think about something and don't let go, There will be internal distress and external weakness. Do not plan things out prematurely Or your vitality will abandon its dwelling place. In eating, it is most appropriate not to fill up. In thinking, it is most appropriate not to overdo. Regulate these to an appropriate degree of activity, And you will naturally reach vitality.

Thanks for the reference, Cheya. It’s an excellent review. I’ve only just now read the review and recently read this awesome book. As far as I know, the author, Peter Wohlleben, knows nothing of classical Daoism, yet relevant insights are woven seamlessly throughout his narrative. He slowly came to these views simply by observing forests, especially the one he manages, over many, many years. And I don’t mean cool, detached observation; his learning arose through empathy and deep respect for the intelligence, wisdom and mystery of trees as complex, feeling beings. He was taught by nature, just like those ancient Daoists. Here’s an excerpt that wasn’t quoted in the review – but really, only reading the whole book can do it justice…… “So, let's get back to why the roots are the most important part of a tree. Conceivably, this is where the tree equivalent of a brain is located. Brain? you ask. Isn't that a bit farfetched? Possibly, but now we know that trees can learn. This means they must store experiences somewhere, and therefore, there must be some kind of a storage mechanism inside the organism. Just where it is, no one knows, but the roots are the part of the tree best suited to the task. The old spruce in Sweden [referred to in previous paragraphs, whose still living roots have been carbon 14 dated to an astonishing 9,550 years old] also shows that what grows underground is the most permanent part of the tree—and where else would it store important information over a long period of time? Moreover, current research shows that a tree's delicate root network is full of surprises. It is now an accepted fact that the root network is in charge of all chemical activity in the tree. And there's nothing earth shattering about that. Many of our internal processes are also regulated by chemical messengers. Roots absorb substances and bring them into the tree. In the other direction, they deliver the products of photosynthesis to the tree's fungal partners and even route warning signals to neighboring trees. But a brain? For there to be something we would recognize as a brain, neurological processes must be involved, and for these, in addition to chemical messages, you need electrical impulses. And these are precisely what we can measure in the tree, and we've been able to do so since as far back as the nineteenth century. For some years now, a heated controversy has flared up among scientists. Can plants think? Are they intelligent? In conjunction with his colleagues, Frantisek Baluska from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at the University of Bonn is of the opinion that brain-like structures can be found at root tips. In addition to signaling pathways, there are also numerous systems and molecules similar to those found in animals. When a root feels its way forward in the ground, it is aware of stimuli. The researchers measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a "transition zone." If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root tip changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas. Right now, the majority of plant researchers are skeptical about whether such behavior points to a repository for intelligence, the faculty of memory, and emotions. Among other things, they get worked up about carrying over findings in similar situations with animals and, at the end of the day, about how this threatens to blur the boundary between plants and animals. And so what? What would be so awful about that? The distinction between plant and animal is, after all, arbitrary and depends on the way an organism feeds itself: the former photosynthesizes and the latter eats other living beings. Finally, the only other big difference is in the amount of time it takes to process information and translate it into action. Does that mean that beings that live life in the slow lane are automatically worth less than ones on the fast track? Sometimes I suspect we would pay more attention to trees and other vegetation if we could establish beyond a doubt just how similar they are in many ways to animals.” (From Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, pp82-4)

—19— By concentrating your qi as if numinous, The ten thousand things will be contained in you. Can you concentrate? Can you unite with them? Can you not resort to divining by tortoise [shell] or milfoil [stalks] And yet recognize the auspicious and the inauspicious? Can you stop? Can you cease? Can you not seek it in others, And yet realize it within yourself? You think about it and think about it, And think still further about it. You think and yet you cannot connect with it. The ghostly and numinous can connect with it, This is not due to the power the ghostly and numinous, But to the utmost capacity of vital essence and qi. When the four limbs become aligned, The blood and qi become tranquil. Unify your awareness and concentrate the heart-mind, Then the ears and eyes will not overflow with stimulation. And even the remote will seem close at hand.

Although, as ZD has stated, this is a vast and complex topic with a history spanning many centuries, from my reading I suspect we tend to view this from our Western eyes where doctrinal differences between religions were of fundamental significance (and still are in many quarters.) Hence we see these debates as primarily about doctrine, whereas, to my understanding, they were primarily about national politics. The foreign emperors were staging these debates as a way of legitimizing their right to power, and also as a way of dispersing the vast wealth controlled by religious communities (in this case the Daoists, in previous purges the Buddhists were the victims.) In Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250 – 1276 Jacques Gernet writes: “…..the religious sphere in the West is divided into separate doctrines with well-defined tenets and beliefs. In China, however, differences in doctrine were never of any importance. The only religious differences were differences of social context: official [Confucian] cult, family religion, local, regional or village cults, or professional ones in the case of the all guilds; and in all these contexts, doctrine played a subordinate role.…… 'In this vast empire' wrote, in 1326, the bishop of Zaytun (Ch’uanchou), Andre de Perouse, 'where there are people of all nations under heaven and of all sects, every single person is authorized to live according to his own sect, for they are imbued with the idea, or rather, the error, that everyone can find salvation according to his own sect.’ This general indifference towards doctrine was stronger still in the cults and beliefs of the people, because often a multitude of heterogeneous elements were quite indistinguishably intermingled in them.” It seems this attitude is also shared by the Japanese. In The Essence of Shinto, Motohisa Yamakage writes: “As well as Shintoists, many Japanese generally don’t believe in words very much. They understand that it is wrong to consider human language as absolute, recognising that human existence is very small and limited when compared to great nature. The Western mentality that treats human knowledge and language as absolutes is, from Shinto’s perspective, a form of human arrogance.”