exorcist_1699

You really grasp what I want to say . We no longer have to travel close to the speed of light or being situated in another , different gravitational field so as to change the time of our existence , qi as media will allow us..; there is time dilation between ordinary people and immortals , in fact , once we are able to stop Jing leakage it starts to tick slower , whether it is on biological level or physical level seems no need to differentiate , maybe on both .

Time is a strange dimension of our existence, supported by qi, and is always important for our cultivation. In Taoist alchemy, there are at least 3 scenarios showing you its significances : 1) At which time you do your cultivation/meditation does matter : It is no exaggeration to claim that in certain period of time, for example , from 3 am to 5 am, if you can wake up to cultivate , then it is many folds more effective than the cultivation you do in other periods . And anyone who can sustain such a habit for a long time, she definitely can achieve something great; 2) As "Rise of yang' or ' Pop-up of a mindless Mind" is something always happen in a flash of second , if you can't grasp it in that short instant, or you try to add to it any extract idea, it immediately disappear and escape from you ,making resumption of your practice something laborious and discouraging. 3) After having succeeded in stopping the leakage of jing / your periods , the time of your existence start to 'stretch ' , and it is no longer calculated by decades or centuries . In science, a biological clock on molecular level does not necessary equal to a physical clock on sub-particle level , but in Taoist alchemy, we do not have to differentiate it because a mindless Mind ( which strangely related to how full our qi is ) smashes our illusion toward time , despite whatever level it is situated , and can end its physical effects on us . In this sense , hardly can Taoism agrees with the prevailing idea of " Living well in the present moment " as a solution for troubles and sufferings in our seemingly short and unpredictable life for no mind is the best mind, no time is the best time.

Thanks a lot .

Shen or Buddha Mind is a Mind beyond evil and goodness , doing and not-doing, this side and the other side.. ; of course, it is also a Mind beyond time . People think that since they don't know what disaster or fatal disease they might get in the future, it seems better to live a so-called full life or try to grasp something meaningful in the present moment , and views it as some solution for it . However, as the Diamond Sutra already told us : " 過去心不可得, 現在心不可得 , 未來心不可得" "Neither a mind attached to the past , nor a mind attached to the present , nor a mind attached to the future, can be attained " In fact , all pseudo-minds get their respective , illusory feelings of time intervals . A pseudo-mind is always fluctuating , intermittent and limited, and it thinks that those limitations are real. However, it is only a Mind beyond the past, the present and the future, nourished from nowhere and no time that allows us to have an ability of travelling across those time barriers ( similar to physical barriers , say a wall or a hill in space , blocking our ordinary eyesight, but not our 3rd-eye ) , and go straight to grasp what time is. Wisdom got from those pseudo-minds is shallow and unable to solve our life predicament, which if expressed in existentialist term , is something of our ontological crisis : Death or detachment from God ; if expressed in Taoist term , is a post-heavenly status symbolized as fire ( spirit) having no intercourse with water (jing) . We are always entangled by daily trivial , mistake what is crucial and refuse to face it . " Living in the present moment" in most cases degenerates into engagement with daily trivial.

Another sad thing is that you can't use Google 's translate to help , even partly to lessen the difficulties of the job . AI scientists always like to bullshit people about the coming of Singularity as super AI is going to access all knowledge through the world wide net and understood all different languages through Machine Learning and NLP ..etc, yet two huge archives ( millions volumes of them in Chinese ) of Daozang and Fozang (" 佛蔵" , Buddhist sutra in Chinese ; in fact, nobody knows how huge a volume it is .. ) are there talking about deep knowledge of jing, qi, shen , time, consciousness ..etc , so important to human' intelligence , are even not mentioned by those AI scientists; Writing to this point, it makes me think of a Chinese saying you can always come across online : " 無知者無懼 " ; " Those who are so brave to claim intelligent , unfortunately are those who are so ignorant ( of what human intelligence really is ) "

It really depends on what level we are talking . On some high level, we may only need pure yang qi...

Just ordinary one : -) In Chinese , " 精神" ( " jing- shen" ) is a fixed term being used daily , which implicitly tells people that they are two things closed related ; it ,in fact , implies that once you have enough jing accumulated , your spirit will be affected and upgraded , only unnoticed by ordinary people ...

I wonder why people pay so much attention to their breathing ,better breathe naturally . What kind of breathing we get is dependent on what kind of a mind we have , which is not anything by a deliberate effort .

Such a saying is for people who already reached certain ,higher level , not for people at the initial stage. Let say you want to study and master Japanese, you decide to go and live in Japan and spend a lot of time in learning kana, kanji, their complicated pronunciation and those grammars..etc. At first, hardly can you speak one or two sentences ..,later after having accumulated tons of vocabularies , expression patterns and grammars, you then become capable of sustaining a lengthy conversation... however, it is after decades later , when one day you no longer think of any pronunciation rules and grammars and react instantly to a person's question that you find yourself become a native-level speaker of Japanese.. Similarly, as a native speaker of English, you don't think of any grammars before you open your mouth to speak, otherwise, you can't speak it so fluently . It doesn't mean there are no English grammars, but to you , different from other non-native English speakers, there are no rules to tell you , guide you to speak . This kind of phenomenon does happen in some other fields, but to Buddhism and Taoism , it is especially significant as in these two arena, we are handling something unique . Let me raise the Pure-Land Buddhist way of "singing the name of Buddha " as explanation , through it your path of climbing up those spiritual levels may take the form as the following: First, you sing the name of Buddha mindfully and anxiously so as to get some effects ( "有心念 佛" ) -> then , after having sung it for months or years , you find yourself entered a stage of singing the name of Buddha mindlessly ("念 佛無心") , even lost yourself and suddenly ask : " Who is singing it " -> Finally , you find out that there is , in fact, no need to sing any name of the of Buddha at all ("佛不用念, 無修無証" ) . So , no rules becomes the highest rule, no minds turns into the biggest Mind, no action yet allows you to achieve all... Hard to grasp for beginners ; especially for most people, experiences tell them that if they do things mindfully, pay more effort, focus stronger, then they achieve more ; but in the arena of Taoism and Buddhism, we need to adopt a different mindset . Hopefully, with some more practice, people can grasp it .

Something need to know before you buy it : Whether it is in traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese , with punctuation or not, and how big is the font size..etc.

Five sources that form the Chinese culture are said to be : I-Ching, Taoism, Confucian , Buddhism and TCM ( an embodiment of Taoism in our bodies, food, seasons, plants.. etc ). Regarding those common elements that both Taoism and I- Ching share , in the context of cultivating a forever life , there are at least two : 1) The five-element theory ,which brought into the I-Ching system , and takes the forms of those trigrams and hexagrams . Two of them : fire and water , are especially important for their combinations are always used to symbolize the predicament we humans face . For example , hexagram of upper fire - lower water symbolizes humans' post-heavenly difficult status as fire is always go upwards and diffuse while water go downwards and leaks... So, Taoist cultivation is said to be just reversing it and making it into another hexagram of upper water - lower fire so that there is an intercourse between them . A Taoist saying plainly tells us : "水火交 , 永不老 " ( " Once water intermixed with fire , never can you get aged " ) 2) The pre-heavenly and post-heavenly : In fact, trigrams are also classified into post- and pre-heavenly ones. On post-heavenly level , you get aging, worries, lost and found, sickness, death..etc, all those stuff you call them life, nature , science ,reality ..etc. However on pre-heavenly level , they are not necessarily true . In a word , " saints/immortals and ordinary people walk on their respective paths " (" 聖凡異路" ) ,and seldom so they meet ; never can you expect to meet Tao by having a post-heavenly type of mind set embedded in your brain .

Fire is the key for our cultivation . At first, we use post-heavenly fire ( "paying-attention-to-your-dantian"); at a later stage, we use pre-heavenly fire ( "mindless-mind"); Sometime we use strong fire , sometime we use weak fire ..etc;

Difficulties in reading the original Taoist canon are : 1) They are in classical Chinese , not modern Chinese; 2) Many are without punctuation ! ( that means your reading ability must be very high so as to separate the sentences/phases) 3) In the texts, there are lot of strange jargons , making them nearly not readable ;

This is also a place I always visit. Yes, most materials are in Chinese, mainly classical Chinese ...

Their relations are subtle and not so simple as people think... It is said that: " 性由自悟, 命假師傳 " (" While Xing is something self-enlightened , Meng relies on sifu's hints " ) Xing is like the 4th dimension, no matter how hard mathematicians or physicists try to explicate it, people can only roughly imagine what it is . In fact, Xing is a strange dimension of our mind which is extremely difficult to grasp , as a saying tells us : " 海枯終見底, 人死不知心" ( " It is possible that one day in future the sea dries up and you see its bottom , seldom can men understand what their real Mind are even on their deathbeds " ) The exploration of the core of Xing gets its varied levels of depthness; rather than proving the accomplishment of Xing at different stages through spiritual preaching , like what you find in those look silly Zen's Koans , Taoism smartly proves them the other way round through something look weird : Can you stop the leakage of jing just through applying your mindless mind ? Or, can you stop your breathing or heartbeat whenever you like in a mindless state ; Like what you find in science, a good theory not only explains the existing phenomena well, but predicts the happening or existence of something strange , for example: Einstein's prediction of the curvature of space was proved by observing the change of position of a far away star when its light passing through our Sun's edge while it was in total eclipse ; Or, Poincare's proposal of the existence of gravitational wave..etc. Taoist alchemy says that if you do your Xing gong ( roughly means 'practice' ) well, then a stoppage of your breathing or heartbeat will definitely happen at some stage of your cultivation ; which , from a scientific point of view, is something fatal, yet from Taoist point of view, is a must and nothing strange because the stoppage of your old way of breathing provides the condition for the rise of the pre-heavenly qi . A deep mindless Mind ( Shen ) will definitely 'mobilize' the pre-heavenly qi , appeared as embryonic breathing. Shen and qi are just two faces ( Yin /yang) of the same coin: Tao, and they interact . Their 'intercourse' is something inevitable as you reach certain stage, and such an intercourse also makes them inseparable ( comparing to others' ways of settling our minds and their inevitable failures , how clever the Taoist way is ..) Mater Zhang Zhi Yang ( Bai Tuan ) once said : " 不識陰陽莫亂為" . ( " If you don't well understand the theory of Yin and Yang, don't carelessly muddle Taoist alchemy ")

There are many ways we lose jing, not only sex intercourse ; If it is only celibacy matters, then we can easily see many immortals walking in the streets..;

Empty Cloud once repeated what he thought of an affair being true : describing how Taoist master LU learnt from a Zen monk : Empty Cloud said : 宗门（指禅宗）下源远流长，天神归依，龙虎归降，八仙会上的吕洞宾，别号纯阳，京川人，唐末三举不第，无心归家，偶于长安酒肆，遇锺离权，授以延命之术。洞宾依法修行，后来乃飞腾自在，云游天下。一日至庐山海会寺，在钟楼壁上书四句偈云：“一日清闲自在身，六神和合报平安；丹田有宝休问道，对境无心莫问禅！”未几道经黄龙山，睹紫云成盖，疑有异人，乃入谒。 值黄龙击鼓升座，吕遂随众入堂听法。黄龙曰：“今日有人窃法，老僧不说！”洞宾出而礼拜。问曰：“请问和尚：如何是一粒粟中藏世界，半升铛内煮山川？”黄龙骂曰：“这守尸鬼！”洞宾曰：“争奈囊中自有长生不死药。” 黄龙曰：“饶经八万劫，未免落空亡。” 洞宾忘了“对境无心莫问禅”的功夫，大发瞋心，飞剑斩黄龙。黄龙以手一指，其剑落地，不能取得。洞宾礼拜悔过，请问佛法。 黄龙曰：“半升铛内煮山川，即不问，如何是一粒粟中藏世界？” 洞宾于言下顿契玄旨，乃述偈忏曰： 弃却瓢囊击碎琴，从今不恋汞中金； 自从一见黄龙后，始觉当年错用心！ 此是仙人归依三宝，求入伽蓝为护法的一例。道教在洞宾之手亦大兴起来，为北五祖；紫阳真人，又是阅祖英集，而明心地的南五祖；故此道教亦是为佛教宗门（指禅宗）所续启。 Maybe this one is what you refer to . Unfortunately such an event unlikely happened ; Taoist scholar Chen Ying-Ling and master WU ( 伍冲虛) already wrote about it in details...only because you ask about it ; of course, his talk sounds positive , but placing Taoism as something inferior is quite clear. Pure-Land monk : 印光 , his criticism on Wu-Liu school is widely known , please read : "印光法師文鈔"

Reading Zen / Buddhist masters' biography / autobiography is always helpful . Reading their criticisms on Taoist alchemy is more helpful . Examples from modern China are : 虛雲, 印光 , 月溪...etc ; Although people can enforce a mindless mind, which seemingly giving them a feeling of linking to the universe or to all people, it still can be something unproductive . Whether their mindlessness is a stagnant pool of water , or a pool of water full of life really dependent on how much /what quality of jing they can keep and consolidate . Those never-married or teens-turned monk later become masters from Buddhism unfortunately seldom notice it and their criticisms on Taoist jing-qi-shen way therefore always sound superficial . Generally speaking, Taoist practitioners ,after having attain certain deepness of mindlessness , understand what those Sutra/ Zen dialogues say , and can approximately identify what level the speaker/ preacher reached ; vice versa Buddhists who can understand Taoist way's significance are rare .

I didn't say that you must , I only said that it is a "majority, conventional" way. If you follow the "Xing first, Meng later " way, which although looks like Buddhist in fact not . Taoist way is always cautious of falling into a trap of mistaking a yin-typed , unproductive mindless mind for the genuine shen.

The point is not whether it cultivates Ming first or later, but its refutation of Ming's cultivation , and its failure to understand that physical stuff and spiritual stuff are just two faces of the same coin ( Tao) .Likely the original Buddhist idea on Ming is not so extreme, otherwise the Buddha didn't say that his quit from earthly life and went into seclusion was due to his resolution to solve those sufferings in life : Aging , sickness, death.. through cultivation ; and, most of those sufferings are , in fact, physically related. It is those late coming shallow-minded Buddhists that make it so biased. Zen's saying " 淫心即道心" ( " The drive towards sex pleasure is , in fact, the drive towards Enlightenment " ) clearly tells people the truth lurking behind . In practice , the moment you get the strongest lust is also the best opportunity for you to attain the great Mind... , yet seldom do people understand and grasp it ..

Thank your feedback ; please first tell me what jhanas and nibbana are ..

Ming refers to jing and qi of our body ; Xing refers to shen , some kind of hidden , bigger Mind inside us ; Prior to understanding how to cultivate Xing and Ming, of course, you have to know about what those basic terms are ; Jing , qi and shen are terms so thoroughly discussed on this forum ( eg. my " Why Taoism is different" post ), so I would not repeat them here . Notice that the conventional ( majority ) way of Taoist cultivation follows the jing --> qi --> shen path and it has two main features: 1) Cultivate Ming first, then Xing ; 2) It is a gradual way : After having certain amount of jing existed/ accumulated, you get qi ( likely through paying attention to your lower dantian if you are a man ) ; after having certain amount of qi accumulated, you get a quality-jump to shen..etc; Can you not follow such a conventional path, and get some kind of shortcut ? Yes, you can ; That means , you start from nourish your shen first, then by using it to initialize and upgrade your jing and qi . Concretely speaking, you start from ' consolidating' a mindless Mind first .., which of course is a harder , yet faster way . And, there are two implications of it : 1) It implies that jing and qi not solely be initialized and 'crystalized ' by your focusing on dantians , but also can be aroused by your capability of pulling together a mindless Mind; 2) It also implies that shen can enhance itself through cultivating itself , but how ? In fact, many Buddhist teachings , especially those from Zen , already told us a lot about those hows , what is lack of is some kind of "Yang " from Taoism ; so most of those spiritual achievements degenerate into a yin-typed Mind, and most 'masters' aged and died, in the end , all become futile .

First you get an intention or goal to cultivate Tao , say paying attention to your dantian so that qi arisen there leads you to Tao( 有心修道) . Then, you notice that cultivate qi /tao in a mindless / no-intentional way is better ( 修道無心) . Finally you understand that Tao is , in fact, no need to cultivate (道不用修) If you find the above stuff no bullshits , and somewhat methodologically sensible to you , then it is Great ! If you find the above -said is philosophically sensible to you, then it is NOT so great , study more.

It is mindlessness the heart of meditation , not mindfulness no matter how hot this concept prevailing. Mindlessness means your mind paying attention to nowhere, no-time , no-form , no-step, no-dimension... ; in that sense , even ‘having faith’ is a blockade lied there limiting you . Some people think that because Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam..all preach love, kindness to people, faithful towards your friends ...etc , then they are nearly the same , unfortunately what they miss is the big difference of a mind/ Mind how these religions to attain those kindness and faith ! Notice that it is because of our capability in playing those no-time , no- dimension... a mind of foretelling the future and knowing what really happened in the past is possible . Comparing to this, Visualizations , those most 'masters', 'psychics' and 'Messiah' advocate to attain a 3rd-eye look trivial. It is you chop time into intervals, and call them ‘future’, ‘past’ ..that make your mind limited and entangled , and you suffer in them.. Mindfulness are , sorry to say , just those trivial tricks using in " soothing kids not to cry" ( 止小兒啼哭) as many Buddhist writings always like to say. Hardly can it thoroughly solve any real problems in our cultivation or meditations.

"太乙金華宗旨" ( "The secret of the golden flower") is said to be Lu's work, however , whether it is true or not seems doubtful ..., and hardly can it match to Huang's work ( sorry to say this, unfortunately , it is true ) ; Huang's , although is just some records of his talks with his disciples , and looks unorganized , is , in fact , the climax of the development of Taoist literature in recent centuries.. Why says that it is unfortunate ? Unfortunate in the sense that so few foreigners read Chinese, especially those who know and read the Chinese Taoist literature . 2nd or 3rd class stuff is always viewed as the most precious ; it happens in the case of Taoist writings , it also happens in the case of appreciating of some schools . The most popular ones are mistaken as the best ..,which always happen .