exorcist_1699

Most people follow the ways of visualization ( visualize a qi-ball, some form of light or others )or concentration ( focus on their dantian , breathing or places where their illness arise..) , but there are some other ways which make you leap from the jing , qi stage to Shen stage easier ,one of them I call it 'Consolidation' ('凝神') or more precisely 'Consolidating to Oneness' ('守一') Many people understand what Taoist jing- to- qi transformation means, however, when talking about qi's jump to Shen , not too many people know what it is or how ; it is mainly due to the influence of their dissipated senses and daily fluctuating minds , so consolidating them into a spiritual Oneness is always important ; maybe you can view it as an initial step of entering the gateway of a much deeper , bigger spiritual world. It is even said that : " Capable of consolidating a spiritual Oneness means all our troubles and sufferings will be gone" ('守得一, 萬事畢') . But how ? the answer is you do it by forgetting or ignoring ; or doing it by not -doing; it is in this process, you start to understand the ' skill' of ' Wuwei'... Remember that famous formula : "Forget the form/body to nourish qi , forget qi to nourish Shen , forget Shen to nourish Emptiness"

The cruel fact that I hesitate to tell is that : Out of 1000 intellectuals who practice Zen , likely 999 of them fall into the trap of pseudo -void , some kind of unproductive mental status that they are unaware of , not for a while, but for a whole life ; so whenever we talk about Zen, we should be carefeful . From Taoist point of view, it is only after our having succeeded in mobilizing qi, should we taste the flavor of Zen . Since most Taoist /qigong practitioners don't know how to apply their minds to get high-quality qi, the introduction of Zen at that stage is always helpful , even crucial, for Zen is always excellent in ' analyzing' , griping and making use of our mindstream , intervals between the appearance of one idea and its disappearance, or of exploring different depths of the no-mind.. etc , all are important to the refinery of our jing and qi . As a Taoist saying tells us : " 身心無為, 神氣自然有為" " It is only when our body and mind do nothing and expect nothing , do Shen and qi naturally fulfill their jobs for us " In a word, how to apply a mindless Mind to our jing and qi is always the key .

Yeah, people know that they can burn jing and qi to refine the Dan of immortality ('不死丹'), yet seldom do they know that they can also add anxiety, fear , jealousy ..etc as fuel into oven.

Living a life of celibacy is far from , or has nothing to do with , making you into an immortal of any kind ; it is even far from giving you a healthy life if you can't ' sublimate' that accumulated jing into qi , or directly into shen ; in fact , celibacy can be worse than a life with marriage. People always mix up many things : For example , a life of celibacy doesn't necessarily means a life without jing leakage ; Nocturnal leakage has to be taken into account. Even if it happens once a month, it is no different from having jing leaked in sex intercourse. Having any jing leakage , even once in many months , means your effort towards physical immortality is doomed. Second, jing leakage is in fact expressed in varied forms that sometimes you miss to calculate them ; Note that the energy that makes us continue to live is in fact an integration of three levels of things: jing, qi and shen , with jing at the base to build up the whole . Although leakage of jing is , to men, most clearly felt ( not sure what feeling it is for women ) and time-consuming to recover , leakage at other level can be closely harmful : At qi level : For example, you move heavy objects for a whole day , and feel tired ( Roughly speaking, it is leakage from the middle part of our body) At shen level : For example, doing lengthy mathematical calculations or playing online games for hours ( Leakage at the upper part of our body) So, whatever leakage we get from these levels : jing, qi or shen, deterioration of jing ( qi and shen are just different forms of its expressions) definitely will lead us to death . Other status such as too much worrying , serious fear or jealous of other people's fame or fortune..etc can be harmful. This is why physical immortality is so difficult to achieve, and tuning our mind is more fundamental than tuning our life or circumstances.

If you want to achieve something great , then celibacy is definitely needed ; it is 100% sure, no unrealistic expectation here. To those married but resolute guys ,the best strategy that they can adopt is : Squeeze your sex life and make it as few as possible , and then up until 55, for example, after your having fulfilled your earthly responsibility and want to start that new great journey, you still find yourself having enough jing and qi retained for it .

It is said that Taoist alchemy can be summarized into just one simple sentence : "凝神入氣穴" " Consolidate your mind and put it into the hole where qi arises ". A consolidated Mind means a mind without fluctuations and diffusions, one that is totally different from our daily mind. Of course, ' the hole where qi arises' is the place that we call it " Dantian" ; however, that many people think of a place similar to some kind of acupuncture point where if we insert needle into, massage it or focus our mind on , then qi arises... is unfortunately different from Taoist alchemical view of It. Taoist definition of 'Dan' is pre-heavenly qi , a ' medicine' that gives us both physical and spiritual eternal life ; so the only place that can be called Dantian is where the pre-heavenly qi arises ; the places where ordinary / post- heavenly qi arise or flow are called acupuncture points or meridians.. And there is no Dantian , or at least it doesn't appear , before our having attained that consolidated , persistent mindless Mind . In fact, the presuppposition of what Dantian we will get, where it is .. is quite pointless , such a presupposition conversely blocks that ' hole of qi' from appearing . Keen readers here should have noticed that any presupposition is the blockade of mindlessness. Because Zen is especially good at disentangling us from those invisible spiritual frameworks, so Taoists like Zen : Any shackle puts on qi should be smashed ; if qi is accumulated, freed and becomes more delicate, then the rise of an powerful Shen is inevitable . In Taoist alchemy, the concept of pre-heavenly qi is so crucial that if we can't grasp it, all magics of Taoism becomes groundless .

The term 'Upper Dantian ' is , of course, head or brain related ; however , it doesn't necessarily mean that if you start from there, you get a shortcut for achieving anything great especially quickly . Most Taoist qigong schools advise people to start from the 'Lower Dantian' , schools that start from the ' Upper Dantian ' belong , in fact, to the minority . As the ' Lower Dantian ' is the so-called ' source of qi ' , it is easier to get some effect or feeling by just focusing your attention on it . On the other hand, focusing attention on the 'Upper Dantian' , a place where some 'masters' claim to be at the inner depth between your eyes, neither gives you a feeling of qi nor help you nourish an enlightened Mind easier ; quite the contrary , it likely gives you a headache or a high blood pressure. The cause of such a mistake is that people are always misled by the Western brain science , which preaches that some part of our brain is special for some function ,even having some extraordinary ability , and make a wrong comparison that Taoist quest for ' Shen' is same as the Western one. In fact, in order to achieve some higher level of spirit, we need something very different from just ' paying attention to ' , ' focusing on' or visualizing . Nor the ability to do lengthy reasoning and different levels of abstractions are what we need here . How to apply our mind is more important than where to apply it . Strangely , it is the 'skill ' of applying it to nowhere , even not applying it at all , is what we need to learn about . A no-mind is still a mind , maybe a much greater Mind; a way of doing nothing , being applied to nowhere can still be a way , maybe a much greater Way (法本法無法, 無法法亦法) . If asked about what in Western sciences we can find things related to or close to the Taoist concept of 'Shen' , the only area I can think of is Modern Cosmology, definitely not the part called ' Brain Science'.

It is easy for people to understand mind power , however, for most of them , to understand no-mind power is another story . Zen's ways of preaching itself , although split in many styles and forms, are always proved to be useless for most people ; the appearance of Zen sickness is nearly something destined on the first day when Zen emerged for the human mind is not designed to grasp thing devoid of any characteristics, layers , aspects ... Zen is too ' arrogant' to talk about concepts such as jing and qi, yet to any serious and smart person , an inquiry into how Taoist alchemy views Zen's ways is definitely beneficial . Buddhism is the top achievement of the Indian culture, Taoism , to me , is the utmost that the Chinese can accomplish , the intercourse of these two great cultures gives rise to Zen , a spiritual system that no wise person can afford to ignore .

Xing gong (' 性功') , efforts and ways to attaining our true spiritual nature , is a unique Taoist alchemical term that people seldom find it in other disciplines or religions .Because it involves things like no-mind and primordial qi , it always gives people an impression of being unreal , something too abstract to grasp. This is especially true when Xing gong is compared with Ming gong ('命功') , ways that teach us those physical steps , styles and postures of how to practice , how to cure disease..etc. To many people, Xing gong is something beyond their reach , maybe even something useless. In fact, Taoist Xing gong, to me , has the following implications : 1) While Ming gong , in alchemical context, is forbidden to elaborate , talking about Taoist Xing gong is said to be harmless even if we go into detail ; there is no worry of any misfortune or spell cast on us from the Heaven. 2) Different from Ming gong's reliance on what our sifu or teacher told us beforehand , Xing gong requests us to understand those things we experience at varied stages of our practice on our own, as an old saying tells us: "性由自悟, 命假師傳" ( " While Xing gong is self-enlightened, Ming gong ,especially those alchemy related, likely come from your sifu." ) 3) The success of Xing gong is always said to be a natural outcome of the accumulation of our jing and qi , no more should be added. Taoist alchemy practitioners therefore can put less effort , or no effort , into the final stage of attaining Shen as what the 《 Huang Ting Jing》has told them : '仙人道士非有神, 積精累氣以成真' ( ' The immortals are people of no divinity ,the secret of their accomplishment is just a result of having enough jing and qi accumulated ' ) On the other hand, without the help from jing and qi, the Buddhist followers likely find themselves situated in a less favorable situation for achieving what they expect , regardless of the fact that their masters speak of spirit-related stuff in ways usually better than the Taoists' . 4) There is , in fact , an argument about whether we should explore Xing gong first , or we should dive into Ming gong first . Although Xing gong is frightening and most people avoid entering it ,there are unexpected rewards of doing it first : - Whenever we get breakthrough in Xing gong , we leap forward much faster than people who follow the do-Ming gong-first way. It , therefore , can be viewed as some kind of shortcut for our cultivation. - The deeper we understand the Xing aspect of our practice , the less we will be liable to committing mistakes in Ming gong ( ie, there will be less physical troubles arising ) or the stronger we will become in evading those physical or spiritual pitfalls. -( This one likely can only be understood by the TCM students) Generally speaking, when people get a cold, they are not suggested to drink Ginseng soup because if they nourish their sick bodies at that moment , they will also enhance the external evils ,pushing them deep inside , and aggravate their illness ; it is only after having the cold/disease ousted from their bodies , should they start drinking nutritious things . Similarly , without having our Xing uplifted first, the more jing and qi we accumulate , the worse physical and spiritual troubles we will come across..

We know that both Taoism and Buddhism talk about emptied mind or no mind, but how Taoist Xing gong differentiates from the Buddhist and others' ? Doing meditation doesn't necessarily mean you are practicing Xing gong ; from the point of view of Taoist alchemy , some kind of meditation that only gives people a peaceful mind or a feeling of unifying themselves with the universe..etc . , strictly speaking , can't be classified as Xing gong. Of course, such kind of mental preparation , for example , to settle a mind and make it calm , is always useful , but it is things too common in all spiritual practices that doesn't tell the uniqueness of Taoism . I have to say that to initialize high quality qi , not ordinary one ( for you can use Taiji or other medical qigong measures to initialize it ) , is the reason why we need Xing gong. Another one of Taoist Xing gong's characteristics is its emphasis on the importance of maintaining a 'crystallized ' state of Oneness as some kind of transition ; as a famous saying tells us: " 守得一, 萬事畢 " (' Once Oneness is attained , all sufferings leave us no trace ') To condense your mind into a state of Oneness and sustain it for a period of time is not easy ,you may experience a series of steps / periods as follows : First , paying attention to your breathing/dantian/somewhere/nowhere => then, forgetting /ignoring/ emptying such an attention so as to => Condensing it into a state of Oneness => Sustaining this state of Oneness by further forgetting/ignoring/emptying it => ...until a mindless Mind comes upon you ... Of course, a mindless Mind can't be a mind, or more precisely speaking , can't be a human mind ; and , so immense and powerful it is, can't originate from our brain , but something from the outside , from the Cosmos which Taoists always call it : ' 天心' ( the ' Cosmos Mind' )

Since both opendao and 松永道 mentioned about the dual cultivation issue, I would like to talk about it first. The general principle is that Taoists should cultivate both Xing gong and Ming gong , but it doesn't necessarily imply that we have to do them simultaneously without the need to consider the sequence of them . For example , a guy in his sixties who can't sit there straight for over 15 minutes without falling into some kind of drowsing , or he can't have a hard-on even thinking of women's bodies or lingerie, then in that case likely we should suggest him to do Ming gong with some body movements first. It is only after his situation improved , should we advise him to do some Xing gong. The reason is simple , it is useless , for example, to ask an always sleepy mind to explore the Xing gong. On the other hand, a young guy in his early 20s who always has strong sex drive that he can't suppress it by playing lot of sports or taking icy baths, and he is a quite quiet and smart guy, then likely we will suggest him to do Xing gong more intensively , with Ming gong as supplementary .

Yeah , Ming gong =minggong; To any serious Taoist practitioner, Xing gong is something you can't escape from . To evade doing it , you just postpone a crucial issue that you have to deal with , which may not be advantageous to your cultivation . For example, regarding nocturnal leakage of jing , a troublesome issue that many guys are annoyed : To people who are good at Xing gong, it is something easy to solve . However, to people who are not good at it , then they will incline to solve it by those physical ways : not to read pornographic stuff ,better wearing loose clothing , drink as little wine as possible...etc ., which can be somewhat effective , but unlikely be radical .

I know little about Muslim but does it also talk about qi ( or similar stuff) and mindlessness?

Of course, it is an old saying, passing down from centuries. Things may be changing...I hope one day I can come across many immortals in USA when I travel along the Rockies...

Although aging is an already solved issue , at least 2,500 years ago , in China , people who live in other places of this world are still struggling with it . Some people even create various kinds of theories to justify their incompetence by saying that , for example, it is aging or death that makes life meaningful , or how wonderful it is a life after retirement..etc. From Taoist point of view , such kinds of theories are ridiculous and pitiful ; the truth simply is , Qi, the aging-cured medicine or dimension, doesn't appear to many people, especially the aged ones, only because their bodies' jing are deficient , too weak to feel it , plus they have not been told how to initialize it skillfully . People having grasped Qi in their hands will then find how strange that cultural factors can block people's eyes on their life,and understand deeper the meaning of the saying : "人身難得, 中國難生, 大道難遇" " It is fortunate to be born as a human, it is more fortunate to be born in China (so that people can read Chinese and open to Taoist alchemy),provided that they are fortunate enough to come across Taoist alchemy not too late ( say after 65 ) "

Don't forget that Taoist qi theory is a trinity of jing, qi and Shen , and they are, in fact, inseparable ; which , also implies that mind and body is mixed . Western study of humans is divided into different disciplines: medicine, psychology , theology , philosophy ...owing to its incapacity of discovering qi , the medium which links all spiritual and physical stuff together ; in this sense, the understanding of the essence of Taoism is destined to be very difficult for it accepts no trivial grasp of IT.. Even in modern physics, the only discipline which claims to study the basic energy and force of this universe, leaves no room for anything spiritual for scientists view intelligence as the outcome of matter's billions years of evolution, not anything co-exists and co-develops with matter, time and space , let alone understanding Taoist view of it as something hidden in emptiness...

" Da cheng jie yao " (' 大成捷要' ) is an amazing book , it talks a lot about Yang Shen's out-of-body symptom & steps... , if you compare it with books on death , ie, on those yin-typed spirits' journey ..., written by those Tibetan monks in the West , in spiritual realm, what is superb , what is low-end can clearly be identified , anyway, it is sad that there is no English translation of it . Because I read it before I read those stuff related to medical qigong, Wu-Liu school's writings...etc, you can imagine how shocking it can be...

In order to slow down or stop the clock , whether it is biological or physical , inside us , the only possible way is either to get on a rocket that travels at a speed close to light , or to put ourselves in the gravitational field of a massive celestial object, say one with a mass 1.5 times of our sun's, this is what we are told by the Modern Physics ; otherwise, due to the fact that entropy ,degree of disorder, in any physical or biological system tends to increase, the time's arrow of our existence pointing towards disintegration or death is inevitable. It sounds miserable because , for instance, capable of traveling at the speed of light happens only in science fiction or thought experiments designed by theoretical physicists,hardly can we succeed in doing so in near future. Fortunately, there is a system called Taoism , and followers of it do get another choice . Although capable of initializing ordinary qi only enables most of them to slow down their biological clocks a little bit, some portion of them who can summon primordial qi through entering a persistent , condensed state of mindlessness , plus having accumulated a critical mass of high-quality qi , will find that to slow down , stop or even reverse that clock is possible . In fact, the rise of primordial qi, accompanied by the appearance of a meta-Mind ( ie . Shen) , not only gives people a feeling of timelessness, but also changes the time dilation of their existence . People's absolute view on time is some kind of everyday illusion that makes them mediocre ; it prevents them from believing in forever youth or in understanding our mind's ability of foreseeing the future ,i.e. , things not yet happened.

Although Buddhism also talks about time's influence on us, for example , in the Diamond Sutra , it says : " The past heart shouldn't be attained, the present heart shouldn't be attained, the future heart shouldn't be attained" ("過去心不可得 , 現在心不可得 , 未來心不可得 " ) its concern is mainly on Mind's freedom against any shackles , whether it is physical or time-related , which of course is very different from the Taoist approach. The problem is : No matter how free a mind we get, the best of it can give us is our looking younger, it can't make our fallen teeth reborn , for example, unless we find another special way..

It somehow relates to your age: If you are under 20, follow the Zen's way; if you are 20~50 , follow whatever ways you like; if you are over 50, follow the Taoist way plus some gong with body movements. Why people over 50 should follow the Taoist way? Because Taoism emphasizes the accumulation of jing and qi as the precondition for any substantial spiritual achievement which the Buddhist way hardly agrees to , and the old people really can't afford to pay the price of wasting time on some unlikely successful enterprise at their age . Following the Taoist way allows them to lengthen their life expectancy so that they get more time to explore and test different methods ; as a Taoist saying tells us : "Safeguard their Ming ( physical life essence ) should be the top priority for old people's practice" ('老人修煉以救護宝命為急' ) Why young people under 20 should follow the Zen way ? Nowadays teenagers are either chasing after girls, addicted to online games or playing sports...if you find one out of ten thousands who is surprisingly interested in Eastern spiritual practice, then that one must be gifted , blessed or the one just reborn to finish some not yet completed job in his/ her last life..

Yes, it can be related to the Chinese medicine . For example , to do good things is not so simple as people think , in fact, it needs a combination of many of our good characters: First we have to identify what is right and what is wrong, which needs intelligence ; then we need the courage to put it into action, and to do it in a persistent way... all these are related to different qi we get in our different organs ( the model is related but a little different from TCM' theory ) : For example, immense Heart qi is the foundation for kindness('仁') which makes us compassionate towards all people , even animals; a full and strong Kidney qi enables us intelligent ('智') enough to identify what is evil , what is noble; yet without a strong and healthy liver qi , we can't get the resolute and courage (' 勇' ) to take those moral actions...etc.

While many people think that they can refine qi better in deep cave or on high mountain, Confucian qigong practitioners definitely will tell you that it is among the crowd that our qi is best polished and upgraded. A Chinses saying tells us the truth from another perspective : " While petty hermits hide in the wilderness , the real hermit hides in the marketplace " ( ' 小隠隠于野, 大隠隠于市')

People seem not knowing that the common terms we widely use today : Micro cosmic circulation, Macro cosmic circulation , external medicine , internal medicine ...are either invented or widely broadcasted by the WuLiu school, so saying that there is no literal effect on us sounds strange and unreal ; As told, I make the comments based on the content of the journal, so if people think that it is some kind of invention or illusion made by someone , then there is no ground to argue.

I think this journal can only be read as record of experiences people get from practicing some specific methods of a Taoist school, and should not be viewed as something common. The reason why many masters oppose talking about personal practice experience in detail is that, based on a practitioner's age, sex, status of health and way of practice..etc , likely she/he will give you very different descriptions of her/his 'achievements' . Besides, more importantly , a foretold symptom will likely block its appearance on the body/mind of those late practitioners; For example, too detailed description of the ' magic gateway' conversely smother its emergence. Nowadays, we can read many such kinds of journals on blogs and Facebook on internet , and most are problematic; this one..uhm..I am hesitant to give comments as it involves a quite famous sifu in China and his followers' activities, however, just base on the content of the journal and the author's claims , I do have some doubts and ideas: 1) There is no channel called ' SHO' , any mistake here ? 2) 'Ling Bao Bi Fa ' is a problematic book , that means, it likely is not written by Zhong li quan, Lu Dong Bin's sifu, and judging from its content, it should not be something people heavily rely on; 3) The author's understanding of Macro-cosmic circulation : Qi extends beyond the Du and Ren meridians, in which the Micro cosmic circulating , and now run from the bottom of our feet to more places of the body ...etc, seems to be a narrow ( I hesitate to say ' shallow' ) view about the MaCC. 4) Although we are told of many things such as light, heat, qi, third-eye ability... in those diaries, the crucial one , ie, the magic gateway , seems never be mentioned, which does reflect the character of the WuLiu school ( or you can call it its main shortcoming)...;although people claim theirs being Longmen school's , but most of them can't escape the influence of WuLiu's . 5) Too 'body-entangled ' is another feature of the WuLiu school; for example, telling people to put clip on their noses or stuffing something at the anus at certain stage of MCC..( likely not appear in this journal , but readers can judge this from reading the diaries : for example, on one hand talks about pre-heavenly qi , on the other hand talks about doing those five-element stuff sounds contradictory..) Of course, there are more..., but I would like to stop here so that it looks not too lengthy.. Don't get me wrong, if the author's description is precise and no exaggerations, then I have to say his achievement is quite good... ; the WuLiu school's ways , in Taoist circle , is generally viewed as something above the middle, but having certain distance from the top level ; I think as people's practice go deeper and they read more, naturally they can make judgement on these kinds of journals themselves .

In Liu Hua Yang's Hui Ming Jing (慧命經) , he quoted a lot from the Buddhist classics : the Śūraṅgama-sūtra (楞嚴經) ,Laṅkāvatāra sūtra (楞枷經) Avataṃsaka-sūtra (華嚴經) , Heart sutra , Sixth Patriarch sutra...and give them some Taoist interpretation, some are correct, some are not appropriate ..