exorcist_1699

" Mingmen " (" 命門" ) is a TCM's term , which refers to a special area in between our kidneys where the yuan-qi originates, and is said to be the source of those qi that nourishes all our meridians and organs . "Dantian", or more precisely speaking the "lower dantian" , is a Taoist alchmical term which refers to an area under our abdomen where the yuan- qi arises ; so they are nearly things the same; saying that qi stored in the Mingmen better than those in dantian seems to be a result of ignorant of TCM's literature , and its intricate relation with Taoism . In fact, the start of using " Mingmen"as a term in the TCM literature was from the Ming dynasty , and was somewhat related to the rise of the Wu-Liu school.. ; anyway, it seems no need to go into details here.

On primordial level or in prenatal state, Jing , Qi and Shen is unitary, so we call them yuan (meta or original )-jing yuan-qi, yuan-shen. After birth, ie, our having shifted to breathe by using the lung, they split , but connected; after adolescence, they further split, but still related; and up to our becoming 30 something, they start to drain away. To most of us , without enough jing, we can't sense qi; this is why old people can't "initalize" qi so easily and likely not believe in it . However, in some cases , they may understand it better than young people because they feel qi , with jing embodied, in its distorted and deficient forms clearer : Deficient jing makes their eyesight deteriorate or ankles ache ( lack of jing), unable to work long hours ( lack of qi ) and lose their memory ( lack of shen )easier . Although medical qigong holds back the becoming deficient qi , it is Taoist alchemy that reverses it, and makes the split jing ,qi, shen united again. The key is an ability to form that Mind or Shen ,that empty and consolidated mind . It is said that "神凝則精聚 " ("While the Mind consolidated , jing also gathers ") , that means, you not only can alleviate back pain or arthritis by some needles , but cure it thoroughly through applying a Mind .

Because there are so many Taoist gods so people think that Taoism is a religion; in fact, those gods are originally humans , it is only because they can refine their qi into Shen , which appear to people as supernatural abilities , that they then become gods and worshiped . Besides, the time duration of these gods' life stretched once Shen is attained , so they live very long ,even forever, therefore people also call them "immortals" . As a saying tells us : "What is called Shen is something not entangled by yin and yang"("陰陽不測謂之神") ,and beause the balance and struggle between yin and yang implies change, which also means time ,so Shen is also changes-proof and time-proof . "Religious " Taoism gives philosophers unlimited energy , wisdom and forever life that hardly can they think of , dream of.

Here on this forum , we get different readers/ members who have attained respective levels or interested in different subjects, so if some people find my posts arrogant, please just ignore them and continue their conversation ;

From Taoist standpoint, any spiritual achievement, once achieved doesn't necessarily imply that it can be kept forever , you need jing and qi to sustain that " energy level " , otherwise you likely will drop off from it , back to your previous level as you aged . Of course, hardly are old Buddhist "masters" eager to tell you this because they already established their prestige among followers when they were young...; besides, recognizing Taoist truth at old age seems too late and therefore too painful for them.. * It doesn't necessary mean Buddhism is inferior to Taoism in every aspect , Buddhism has something really great, for example , Zen and Hua-Yan , which can be equal , even superior , to Taoism.

The thinking that our practice " once certain level/ breakthrough attained, can be kept forever " ( "一得永得" ) is hardly true for Taoist alchemy and Buddhist enlightenment , nor martial arts. In the case of martial arts, there is a famous saying tells us that " 鍊拳不鍊功, 到老一場空 " ( " practicing those postures without having attained some (qi)gong , to the end of your life, all your efforts end in vain ") ; If you follow Taoist jing -> qi -> Shen formula, then unable to eliminate jing leakage or period ,similarly makes your efforts, no matter how many years they accumulated , something futile. How about Zen's ? Sitting there straight for long hours to hollow their mind, in fact, drains off monks or Buddhist practitioners' jing , qi and shen , so unless what they gain in deep emptiness overtakes what they lose in jing+ qi+ shen, decade-long meditation mostly ends up giving them a dull mind and withered body only...

The novel " The Journey To The West " is mainly a Taoist novel although it is a story with a Buddhist theme and there are many Buddhist figures appeared in it . Nearly in every chapter you can find some Taoist poems, and quite a big part of them hide some keys ( that is , hints for solving Taoist alchemical problems/ troubles you are facing or will be facing ) , which hardly can you yourself figure them out ; in fact, many of those poems look so plain , just few simple words ,that you don't think that they have any significance until you reach certain stage . In many cases, pre-telling them might not be anything good ; But why science can tell people about the truth of this universe , as clear as possible, even in concise equations, for example : F=ma or E=mc2 , Taoist alchemy so reluctant ..

You don't put the most precious thing at the place where you most likely will lose it. Unfortunately the lower dantian is situated at the area where we get rid of our waste, and jing, in its full status , is very likely turned into liquid form and released outside from there . So, the 1st step to prevent such a loss is to turn it into qi's form . However, as we accumulate as much qi as we can in the lower dantian , the danger of its being turned back into jing and then released outside as semen is also built up , which is why the introduction of the Micro Cosmic Circulation is neccessary . Note that by turning jing into qi and let it move upwards, the danger of its being lost is lessened. In fact, by looking at the jing-> qi-> shen-> emptiness formula, you can find that through changing their respective forms, you lessen the danger of their being lost at respective stages... Sharp readers may have noticed that the way of preventing qi's loss and making the most out of it , is to turn it into shen , not just accumulating a big volume of it. Also notice that the more qi ( or shen) you store in your body , the more likely the local one expands , contacts and merges with the external qi , which is limitless; this is why forever life possible . Hardly can you only reply on your local qi to get forever youth .

While jing (water) has a tendency to leak and go downwards , the spirit (fire), our post-heavenly mind , is always fluctuating and dissipating, hardly can we consolidate and settle it ; such a status, if we let it continue , then aging and death is our only possible end. In fact, the more jing we lose, the more dull and unstable our mind is ; conversely , the more spiritual power you loose, say through reading too much books or playing too many on-line games, the more likely you get nocturnal jing leakages. Besides, we can say that why Buddhist type of meditation fails , especially for old guys/women, is its unable to identify this delicate balance and feedback between these two poles. Fortunately , we can nourish qi from jing and use it as a rising power , following the Du ( back and upward) channel , and make it counter that always uncontrolled fire... Taoist water/fire theory is important due not only to its actual healing effects on many diseases( insomnia, mental retardation, impotency..etc) as its having adopted by TCM, but its playing as an important complement to the Buddhist cultivation .

Why people want to lead qi to their heads ? Do they think that by doing so, they can attain some kind of 3rd eye power ? Or, it is what they think how qi be upgraded to the shen level ? Although you can lead qi to some part of your body to cure some disease, say ringworm or tumor , provided that you do it properly ; yet you can't do it the same way to upgrade your energetic level , ie from qi to shen . No matter it is a place right before your eyes/ inside your forehead / in your brain..etc . Most people get it wrong because they apply their daily type of reasoning to the world of qi , thinking that it works similarly, which unfortunately is not . Or, they are misled by those "brain science ", and think that some part of our brain in charge of some super-natural ability ? In that case, if they force some qi to that part , they will get the 3rd-eye ability ? All such kinds of thinking is sadly totally untrue ..

If you are talking about anti-cold, then acu-pressing the " Yang Chi " ("陽池" ) ( literally means "Pool of yang " ) acupuncture point at the middle of our wrist is helpful . Just press it 2~3 times per day , each last for 3 ~ 5 minutes .

Huang Di Nei Jing is composed of "素問" and "靈樞", and the phrase comes from "靈樞", which specialize in acupuncture theory and skills ; note that both are ancient paragraphs /books with many hand-copied versions on bamboo/cloth , so differences in content is likely. My claim based on the following 4 books' quotations, they are either Ming or Song's writings : 1) 玄膚論 2) 紫清指玄篇 3) 性命圭旨 4) 脈望 It is nothing strange that if you can't find it on the modern version of "靈樞".

"Tian Gu" ("天谷" ) literally means " valley , an emptied mind , on top/heaven" comes from a phrase of Huang Di Nei Jing, the most important classics of TCM : "天谷元神, 守之自真" " Focus on the Tian Gu and maintain that emptied meta-Mind , we can live forever. " Why just focusing on the upper dantian makes us live forever physically seems difficult to comprehend , not to mention that most of the later-coming TCM medical qigong writings mainly ask people to focus on the lower dantian . In fact , why men can't get rid of their jing leakage is due to the uncontrolled lust from their lower dantian , which disguised as illusory desires and emotions (" 妄情 " ) , that helps nature secretly "steal" their jing and qi ( see Yin Fu Jing) and make them die ; a persistent emptied Mind therefore is the most reliable safeguard against such an unnoticed loss.. (* upper dantian is place of troublesome , be careful )

There is no need to differentiate those thought, observation, intention...etc( in fact, you shouldn't ! ) ; just eliminate all mental activities, including this intention to eliminate , and expect nothing upcoming....to its utmost , an emptied mindless Mind , ie the real Mind/ meta-Mind, will pop up ; If you can't follow the above-mentioned way , then follow Taoist way , that is : jing -> qi -> Shen ( emptied Mind) , which implies using jing and qi to counteract your fluctuating minds...

From Taoist viewpoint, it is only after an empty Mind capable of mobilizing qi can we go from philosophical level to practical level , and the main issue of humans, i.e. Xing's ('性' ) alienation from meng , be solved ; otherwise all philosophical treatments of humans' dilemma , in the end, turned out to be futile . The key is "凝神得竅" ; "Consolidate a mindless Mind and open the gateway to qi " ; All others are useless , just something " soothing kids not to cry " ;

From Taoist point of view, it is a process of Shen's reuniting with Meng ( our physical life of jing and qi) : First you can stop your breathing through having consolidated a mindless Mind , not through a deliberate mind , for 1~ 2 minutes, then 15 minutes..and longer ; later you can stop your heart beat at your own will ..( just place your finger on your pulse at the wrist but not be distracted , whenever it happens , likely in a gradual diminishing process , you can sense it ; since you make it happen , you can re-activate it ) . Accompanied these with your skin turned back baby-like, fallen teeth reborn ..etc, physical immortality becomes something believable, otherwise all are self-deceit . I always think that physical proofs are more re-liable than spiritual proofs for you can get a mental disease and think yourself turned into an immortal or Messiah , but physical proofs can always be used as reliable counter-checking..

The saying that there is some form of jing existing outside of us , in this universe , sounds strange to most people ; however, if people know the Taoist theory well , then it is nothing incomprehensible : 1) Jing ,qi and Shen , on pre-celestial level is unitary, so saying that jing outside of us , existing everywhere is same as saying that qi outside of us, existing everywhere. It is only on post-celestial level that it splits, making us only sense them in respective ways , not their united status. Anyway, dull mind or a fragile body after sex still tells us about their original linkage. Jing also implies life, which, under whatever harsh conditions, try to rise and grow; Confucius , in his famous comments on the Yi Jing , ie the so-called " 易繫辭" , tells us : " 天地之大德曰生" ; " The greatest de (' function or expression ')of this universe is its tendency to have life and its trial to grow" ; 2) Under utmost mindlessness, we can get sex pleasure arisen from the abdomen ( in case of women, somewhere in between the breasts , correct me if I get it wrong...) , then spread to the whole body, which likely are some of the male practitioners' experiences ( hardly can old guys experience that , unfortunately ); so although post-celestial sex pleasure arises from different areas ,say oral, anal, phallic..etc at various of our growth stages, as told by Freud , all of them are limited to certain area or organ of the body . Pre-celestial jing pleasure , on the other hand, is not limited to any small portion of it ; Because utmost mindlessness gets the same character as ubiquitous emptiness , it is another , maybe practical , proof that jing , more precisely speaking , pre-celestial jing, does exist outside; it is also Taoist explanation about why life finds every chance to live and glow.

From Taoist viewpoint, whatever consciousness we get , even Enlightenment , doesn't necessarily lead us to immortal , it really depends on how deep, how thorough our mindless Mind influences our body ( Buddhists hate to talk about the body , we Taoists don't mind ..) ; even in Chinese Zen, we get the famous formula of how deep Zen mediation is in correspondence with what effects we get : 1) The initial stage of Zen ("初禪念住" ): No mind and no fluctuations of ideas ; 2) The second stage of Zen("二禪息住") : No breathing ; 3)The third stage of Zen ("三禪脈住") : No heart beat at all ; . . . Of course, the highest stage of Taoism ,as mentioned above , is the qi-lization of the whole body and consolidation of it again at whatever place/ time in this universe at our Mind's own will . People may be astonished by my " careless" talks about no breathing and no heart-beat : Isn't no breathing means no oxygen entering our brain, and it means great harm...? Yes, it is , but what they miss to notice is that if stoppage of breathing is achieved through a deliberate no-mind practice, then such a stoppage also implies the initial rise of the pre-celestial qi, that means , we have been entering a stage of using pre-celestial qi to nourish our brain, not post-celestial oxygen . Saints / immortals and the common people definitely are walking on every different paths , hardly can people expect to live in a totally different life form only by just doing some philosophical reasoning or seeing some Hollywood movies ..

Some ideas: 1) The time of Zi is , in fact , divided into two types : Fixed ("正子") and flexible("活子" ) ; young men who have not much jing leakage experienced likely follow the fixed type, ie , from 11pm to 1 am ; most middle aged men , like they will follow the flexible type, that is , some from the time of 2 am to 4 am; some from 3am to 5am..etc. That means, their later sex activities influence the original,fixed schedule of how jing rises and recedes in a day ... Old men over 60 may get no zi time at all...( in fact, most of them hardly get an erection in daytime , not to speak of zi 's yang rise ) 2) The precondition of reverted elixir is the stoppage of jing leakage for at least several months , yet it is even not mentioned here (?), so strange it sounds . The success of it will definitely lead to the stop of aging, even the reverse of it , which is the simple proof of Taoist argument for immortality , yet many doubters of immortality here never directly answer such a challenge .. 3) Voidisyinyang makes things too complicated here. Taoist truth is simple, not so trivial as expressed ; although every organ really gets their specific qi , the basis of the five-element theory, we can in fact skip it and emphasize only on the delicate, not necessarily complicated , relation between Shen and qi ( with jing embedded) ,and explore how their intercourse gives rise to the possibility of an eternal life..

Those who can't live forever "physically' ( note that Taoist sense of physical is a little different from those of science ) ,of course, can't be called immortal; Taoist highest achievement is not just a forever life, but life form beyond space and time , as we are told: " 聚則成形, 散則成氣" (" While it gathers and consolidates , it appears to us as forms ; while it dissipates , it appears to us as qi " ) And, such a process can be manipulated at a superb taoist immortal's own will. So, Taoist highest achievement looks like some kind of teleportation, the only difference is that instead of dealing with jing-qi-shen , in Western science and technology, they emphasize how to build up some kind of physical device so that matter or energy , in the form of particle, field , or big molecule can go from this place to other place without traversing the space between them. Of course, whether a man after having teleported, is still a man gets his original mind or character, hardly is their concern. On the other hand, Taoists argue ( in many of its legends about immortals ) that they already succeeded in some kind of teleportation as jing-qi-shen on pre-celestial level is , in fact , a whole; it is only after its having embodied in a body ( fallen to post-celestial level ), that it is split and blocked by physical obstacles and timely intervals ( as we live a post-celestial life, we are limited by past-present -future ); a return to pre-celestial status enables us not only live inside this body, but outside it , in fact, live wherever we like ; not just live as one self, but as many split selves simultaneously , linked to each other through quantum entanglement , maybe :- ) .

Although modern physicist interpretation of emptiness is fascinating, I am more eager to know what practical way enables us to get the "天地至精" ( " ultimate jing of the universe" ) hidden in emptiness ,which is said to be the "medicine for everlasting life". Some hint from Taoist alchemical classics " Can Tong Qi" is : "同類易施工兮 , 非種難為巧" "If they are the same kind, then we can get effect from them easily ; otherwise, it will be very difficult " If we interpret it from Taoist yin-yang school's (陰陽派) theory, it means : " it is because we get qi from another human's body , despite from the opposite gender's , that makes our practice effective ". However, if we interpret it from Taoist primordial school's (先天派) viewpoint, it is because that ubiquitous ,featureless emptiness gets the same character , ie, no character , as the emptied Mind ( although encased in a physical casing , our skull ) that makes their interaction likely be productive .

In Taoist history, there are two famous Buddhist monk turned masters, one is South school's 3rd patriarch Xue dao-guang , another one is Wu-Liu school's master Liu hua-yang, both were enlightened but at the bottom of their heart, they sensed something still missing, which in fact, is some extra step after enlightenment...; Xue mentioned such pursue in the prologue of his writing: " 還丹復命篇" . Liu mentioned it in the prologue of his famous writing: " 慧命經" .

Hardly anything my creation, will tell you later.

:-) you know my answer.

Both Buddhist and Taoist emptiness are the same and they refer to something absolute , ubiquitous , not just physical but also spiritual ( also notice that emptiness is not only an idea of space , but also an idea of time ) , yet there are differences between them : 1) Talking about how to grasp emptiness and nourish something energetic and intelligence out of it , Buddhism thinks that only by shaking off those formless shackles ( pseudo-minds ) on us , especially in an one-stroke , abrupt way ( ie Zen's) , a real mindless Mind (Buddha Mind) will appear . However in the case of Taoism , it knows that such a process and the Buddhist offer is something difficult and unlikely , so it offers a jing-> qi -> Shen path to make it easier , in which Shen is , in fact, that immense , everywhere mindless Mind . 2) Taoism insists that after having attained that mindless Mind, which is just other face of emptiness with same corresponding content and structure ( ie no content and no structure) , there is still a last , hidden step to complete , and repeatedly asks : " What was the last step ( ' 末後一着 ' ) told by the Fifth Patriarch (of Zen) when he asked Hui Neng ( then the later famous Sixth Patriarch ) to come to meet him at 3 a.m. in that deep night on a high mountain nearly 1,400 years ago ?" ; and that " last step " is said to be Ming related... * Notice that you can't explore that emptiness through physical means or through philosophical reasoning for any such an application of an idea , any such an intention, makes your mind not empty , so the only possible way is an emptied,mindless Mind with the same character and structure ..