exorcist_1699

No, a mindless erection can occur when we succeed in having our jing leakage stopped for 2- 3 months plus we can sustain an emptied mind , say more than 5 minutes..; it , of course, is one of the features of the birth of Yang, but should not be viewed as the main one.

Hi, Marblehead, Glad to come across you again here ...

Although China is such a big country and Taoist alchemy has a history of over 2,500 years, Taoist alchemical jargons are strangely very coherent . Terms and jargons appear in those Taoist main writings are always precise , for example, when we see Xing ('性') , Ming ('命') , primordial qi ('先天氣') , Magic Gateway ('玄關') , Gold-in-water ('水中金') ... followers know clearly what they refer to , and should not have too many otherwise interpretation . How about the term " Micro Cosmic circulation"? people may challenge me . MCC likely comes from the Wuliu school , which is originally referred as an important step related to refining the Dan ( essence that gives us immortal life ), so its later re-interpretation by people like TCM doctors or medical qigong practitioners can only be viewed as some kind of vulgarization , some kind of compromise because most people really can't initialize the primordial qi ; so even they can initialize the 'post-heavenly' one and circulate it , Taoists may passively be forced to agree that it be called MCC, provided that it is nothing to do with immortality ...; fortunately such kind of relatively quarrelsome terms are not so many..

Just raise two issues : 1) WuLiu says that an abrupt , strong erection (of course here referring to male practitioners' ) in our meditation, is a symtom of the birth of Yang (' 陽生' ) ; and , even though we are told that it happens in a mindless status , such a claim is still doubtful , and already criticized by many Taoist masters . 2) Regarding " laying the foundation" ('築基’）, WuLiu says that after having succeeded in stopping the leakage of our jing forever , our foundation is well laid ... which similarly is doubtful and challenged by many people.. Wuliu's over-use of Buddhist sayings and inappropriate introduction of some of Buddhist Sutra not only make Buddhists unhappy, but also downgrade Taoist image ( although Taoists do not search for fame or position, there is no need to give people wrong image...) .Don't get me wrong , I respect Wuliu , its masters and writings , a lot ; only saying that it collects all the best from Taoist's , is far from the truth..

"In the methods of the School WuLiu is not only collected all the best from many schools of Taoism......" Such a saying only shows how little the author's understanding of Taoist schools and their ways... :- )

I wish I could be as erudite as Taomeow..

I always think that people can come to Taoism in many different ways : -Studying Chinese herbs -Practice acupuncture -Searching for meaning of life through philosophical reasoning -Practice Calligraphy -Having no intention to search anything ( ie , Zen ) -Martial arts All Chinese schools of martial arts , in the final analysis, have to return to the concept of qi and its applications to fighting, so its relation to Taoism is inevitable. Early years of the 20th-century China is a time where brilliant Chinese kung fu masters rise in their dozens ( See the movie : ' The Grandmasters') , we have Huang Feihong , Sun Lungtan, Wang Xiangzhai (王薌斋) .. yet Yip Men's claim as one of them seems doubtful . Real master really is a person who can fight against ten guys , or knock down a person without even touching him ( just like real Taoist sexual practice is likely something free of body contact.. ) Reading books written by those Kungfu masters is like reading difficult books on Philosophy, and , similar to those about medical qigong in TCM , another way leading to Taoist alchemy..

If you know Chinese , or want to practice your Chinese writing ability, then you should visit Baidu.com where many Taoist, qigong and kungfu 'bars ' ( chat rooms ) can be found ; you can participate and show off your Chinese language ability . Capable of using Baidu to search Taoist materials is also important. Maybe you will argue that learning Chinese is difficult...yet by simple arithmetic you should know that investing 10 years in mastering Chinese in exchange for living 100 or many hundreds years longer and healthier is worthy..

Just enhancing our brains's memory or speed seems a little trivial to talk about ; in fact, qi's , together with it our sublimated jing, entering our brain does get a special term in Taoism: " 還精補腦" ( Refining our jing into high-quality stuff so as to nourish our brain). Note that loss of memory and loss of a sharp mind, from Taoist point of view (also TCM's) , both are owing to the loss of jing, so clearly they can be remedied during this process. However, we should expect much more in this process. Qi's entering our brain, if appearing in a little higher form, should be giving you some kind of "Pong ! " , something like having water entered your ears .... then a previously fluctuated mind no longer fluctuated , a previously turbulent way of breathing no longer going ups and downs... so, we can say that its extent of possibility is huge ..

I wonder why people expect so little , they should have a much greater aspiration , not just asking for a better memory and speed , after having entered the arena of Qi . Maybe they are entangled by their way of thinking , which is claimed to be scientific, say : identifying which part of the brain that gives rise to what effect.. ?

Knowledge about TCM ( Traditional Chinese Medicine, including acupuncture) is always ignored or underestimated by the people who practice qigong or Taoist meditation . Taoist jing-qi-shen formula , an abstraction of the essence of the TCM system , in fact, helps us filter many details and complexities of the system , and give us an illusion that if we follow what we are told by our teachers or in the DVD , we will be okay and achieve something . However, it is one day after our practices run into troubles, does TCM knowledge's significance start to appear to us . The reality that how jing, qi and shen function and interact with each other in our body, and how the imbalance of them give rise to diseases are what people should know , yet they don't , or think there is no such a necessity to look into the detail or trivial. They practice Taoist qigong, but they still view most changes in their bodies in the framework of Western medicine. Although most people know that yin and yang and their balance is the key to TCM , hardly do they know how delicate and deep it can be . The followings are some of the examples : -A ulcer emerges as a red swelling , tipped with a white cap , is classified as yang ,which can be squeezed or punctured to have some fluid out to cure; a ulcer appears as something in gray or black color, with a flat or concave surface is classified as yin, which should never be squeezed carelessly. -While a headache caused by external cold or strong wind is classified as yang for its having caused by substantial factors / evils ('外邪' ) , a headache caused by internal weakness , maybe due to leakage or deficiency of blood or jing , is said to be yin . (' 內虚 ') - A mental illness in which the patient sits unmoved and talks to himself/herself not loudly is said to be yin typed ; a crazy person , shouting loudly and holding a knife in hands, chase after people to chop , his illness is said to be yang-typed. - Persons who always find themselves lack of an appetite to eat , an energy to do physical jobs and having a bad memory , their problems can be classified mainly into two types : lack of qi (yang-typed) or deficiency of jing/blood ( yin-typed) . The yang-typed is always cured by using herbs such as Ginseng and Dang Seng ; the yin-typed by Di Huang ('地黃') , Dang gui (' 當歸') ..etc. Note that in TCM's sense, qi is always classified as yang , in opposition to the material /liquid side.. Knowing how to classify every spiritual or physical symptom into yin or yang , and maintaining their balance , of course, helps us a lot in solving problems arising from our practice. Read my blog :http://exorcist1699.wordpress.com/

Enlightenment can't be searched for and attained . The key is not to search . Whoever searches it, whoever loses it. Any mind presupposes something (method, form, place..etc ) makes you go astray right at the starting point...

It seems it is just some kind of initial tasting of an emptied mind, wandering outside the threshold of Taoist Magical gateway ( " 玄關 " ) ...far from having entered it . It is only after the material wall, which separates you and family, no longer blocks your sight of them , for example , can you claim of any accomplishment. Others : doing the dishes in emptiness, playing with the kids in emptiness,...are all your subjective experience which can't be relied on to make judgement . In fact, most of the people even can't keep their achievement because of aging , limitation of their aspirations, ups and downs of their life ..etc., so regretfully, what they really get is a superficial taste of the mystery of Tao.

I have to say that we can take Chinese herbs to help our practice , even use acupuncture to help our qigong, it is especially meaningful for old people ; but why seldom we hear people talking about it , the reason I think of likely are : Qigong masters always think the methods they preach are good enough , there is no need to ask people to take herbs or other means to help ; on the other hand, because many acupuncturists and TCM doctors can't initialize qi or experience it themselves directly ( the " feeling of qi" on the needles , which experienced by most acupuncturists are, regretfully not a direct experience ) , of course , they can't combine herbal treatment and acupuncture with qigong practice. Old people who are weak in qi or jing can drink Ginseng, Dang gui..to improve the effects of their practice; Because nearly all Chinese herbs can be made as a plaster to stick , a hot soup to steam our body , a pillow to sleep on.. ( the so-called 'external treatment ''外治" ) , by combining them with our meditation, for example , faster and more effective results can be attained. The benefit of the external treatment is , whenever you get bad feeling from it, you can remove it , while a swallowed medicine can't come out of our body so quickly... Keen guys may then think of sticking a plaster , with qi-enhancing herbals , to their qi-hai area ( in case of ladies, to their " Dan zhong " 　’膻中’　area ) so as to arouse the qi they never experienced before , or to enhance the qi they think too weak.... (Warning: before you guys take any action , you must know the herbs , acupuncture points and Taoist jing-qi-shen stuff very well, otherwise ideal or safe results can't be attained.)

HI, Iradie Thank you for reading such a difficult topic; in fact, before I wrote it, I expected no or not much feedback for TCM, especially its herb-related part, is quite difficult . Please try any herb in small dosage ( say 3~4 grams) first before proceeding to ordinary dosage. Of course, if you already know them well, then it is another story.

The Chinese herbs, in fact , includes all things from plants, minerals, shells, insect to animals ,in sea or on land....the range it covers is very wide and deep. How different parts of plants correspond to different parts of the human body, why certain herb is classified as the medicine for specific meridian..etc is very interesting , and in fact, it is in TCM that a complete ,detailed view on the Taoist world of qi is fully manifested .

Canon , simply speaking , is just a collection of books ,so I can't understand how it is severely referred to as " plagiarism "... The important thing is its content. Taoist canon is very different from the collection of Buddhist sutras, for it includes a lot of medicine , medical qigong or daily life health related stuff so detailed that hardly the Buddhist sutras can match to ; for example, at what time ,facing what direction should we do our qigong, or eat what medicine or food , massage what acupuncture points to make our practice progress faster .. etc.

In recent years , Western veterinarians , based on the medical theory they are told by the Chinese, start to apply acupuncture on animals . For example a horse its tongue covered with a layer of yellow moss ,plus its eyes decorated with red lines, can be diagnosed as having a " hot " symptom, and certain acupuncture points on its feet may be taken for a treatment. Up to this moment, assume that you are a veterinarian , you are happy about having learnt another new means of treating the pets of your clients, and it is really not complicated because a horse, dog, cat..are mammals that have a form close to humans' which you can make some kind of comparison to work out their channels and acupuncture points .... A horse, likely also has its Du & Ren channels same as ours , and, if a horse is clever enough and bears some good karma, it may do its own Micro-cosmic circulation and become a horse-immortal ( just kidding..) Unfortunately on one morning , one of your clients comes and brings along with him an octopus, saying that it is his pet, and he wants some acupuncture treatment on it , then where can you start? The next morning, another lady comes and brings in a scorpion , or a snail .... If you are not that knowledgeable & creative in TCM , or if you know not deep enough about the yang (qi) and yin ( topology of how those acupuncture points distributed on living things ) stuff , you are stound and can't do your job well. Similarly , it is likely that a qigong practitioner can't handle those strange problems on her long road towards health / immortality if she doesn't know TCM well.

Taoist alchemy , same as acupuncure and the usage of Chinese herbs , are the fortune of all human beings , and should be known to them . However, knowing acupuncture is relatively easy, writing herbal formulas for our diseases is more difficult, successs in attaining Taoist dan can be very difficult. In fact, quite a large portion of Taoist writings are impossible to translate . Unfortunately they include important works such as " A Treatise on understanding the Reality" ( '悟真篇' ), and Yin Fu Jing( '陰符經') ..etc. As more and more foreignors know the Chinese language and have some experience in Taoist practice, maybe this can be changed ? Recent decades of the Chinese history already told us that Taoist legacy ( 道統 ) should not rely on one nation ,or one group of people only . The spirit of a nation , no matter how great it ever has been , can shrink and deteriorate , and become no longer open enough , grand enough to undertake its responsibility in passing the Taoist truth , then things will change... Besides, it is unwise to put all eggs in one basket ..

What is TCM's relation to qigong practice , especally to those situations when our practice go astray ,likely is what people want to know . Below I try to raise some instances , incoherent they may be, that can help : 1) Most of the Chinese know that when they catch a cold, they should not take any soup of Ginseng or Dang Gui , herbs that nourish and enhance their qi ,blood or jing , for the fear that those herbs will push the external evil ( the cold ) inwards and multiply it , worsening the disease. It is after their cold be cured that qi or jing-enhanced herbs should be taken . Based on this TCM rule, similarly , before we start practicing qigong , purifying our mind first should always be given the top priority, without it , the evil element , that dark-side power , will be multiplied together with the expansion of our qi and shen, leading to a status that we can't control it , its damage outweighs its benefit to us . As a Chinese saying tells us : " 道高一尺, 魔高一丈 " (As Tao rises , the Evil also rises, even outpaces it ) . From this perspective, a long and painstaking process of polishing our character and morals is something needed , and it is better than those quick and easy ones that people propose . Don't worry about your incapacity in initializing that great power , worry more about when it comes to you, your ability to accommodate it , to make use of it appropriately. 2 ) In TCM, organs of our body are said to be related to certain , specific emotions of us . For example, the liver is related to anger (which is always easy to arouse ), lung is related to sadness , fear to kidneys ..etc ; because of this , we should never do our qigong soon after our having got angry at something. Anger makes our liver qi expand, which will affect our practice , even our health .The stronger the qi we can initialize , the more dangerous it will be . 3) In many cases, we find that the inappropriate use of people's mind, say over-focusing on their forehead ( the so-called upper dantian) , be the reason that leads them to high blood pressure or headache; on the other hand , over-focusing on the lower dantian can give rise to noctural jing leakage or diarrhea .These qigong-related diseases can only be cured by the ways of qigong , acupuncture or the Chinese medicine ( likely not by other medicine for herbs used in the TCM framework are qi or meridians related , others not ). For example, shifting our attention from the areas in trouble , say from our head or body , to the acupuncture points at the tips of our limbs : -勞宫 (Lao Gong; in the middle of our palm); 足三里 ( Zu San Li ; on the side of our ankle); - 隠白 (Yin Bai; on the side of our toe); -湧泉 (Yong quan; in the upper middle part of our foot bottom ); may ease the symptoms. Besides, there are some Chinese herbs that can guide our qi to specific part of our body, which make them a means for curing : - 桂枝(Gui Zhi) : can guide qi to the upper limbs or fingers; -杜仲(Du Zhong) : can guide qi to our waist or back ; - 牛膝( Niu Xi ) : can guide qi to our feet or toes. Simply speaking, if you get qi always rushing out of your control to your head , you may adopt a treatment that combines drinking a soup of Niu Xi with your mind focused to the acupuncture point : Yong quan . ( Warning: every case is unique and complicated , and may have its long history of having mistreated ; people should not rely on what is only briefly introduced here to take any action ; I am just addressing some general principles to a big audience , not to any individual ..)

Clearly Chen was the first person , by using the modern means of mass media ( magazine in 1930s' Shanghai region is something new ) , to talk about the secret of female alchemy . But impress me most is Chen's emphasize on proofs in Taoist practices , which I find it so true. In Chang San Fang and Lu Dong Bin's works, for examples, what we read are , after telling us the Taoist ways of practice , these masters will then point out what physical and spiritual symptoms in our bodies will arise afterwards....that means, if no such symptoms emerge accordingly, we may have done something not so correctly . This, of course, differentiates Taoism from other religions, for most of them claim that their proofs are in the afterlife, somewhere in the Heaven...

A mind of no intentions is a purified Mind . The more a mind intends to purify itself , the more it becomes restless , therefore powerless. The difficulty is how to make use of this intention-proof Mind...

My understanding after reading the quoted chats is that they emphasize on the impossibility or difficult of translating Taoist materials into foreign langauge, not so much 'racist'...

As mentioned above, in my reply to Rara's , we , with a qi-nourished Shen , can change our yin-typed mind into a yang one , and make ourselves more active and independent when handling our relation with our body (and the world outside it ) . In Taoist writings , people can read many detailed descriptions and skills about how this yang-Mind, after having fully nourished by jing and qi, being forced to leave its original accommodation , just like a matured fruit has to leave a tree, or a butterfly has to leave its cocoon naturally ... However ,some people still find it frightening , so we can do some kind of job in advance ... As a Taoist saying tells us : "聖人常無心, 以天地之心為心" ( "The Taoist saint is always in no-mind , he lets the Cosmic Mind as his mind " )..of course, such a Mind is free and at ease no matter where it is situated .. ( By the way, the Pre-heavenly school's way , in this sense, is said to be less dangerous than than those of the Wu-Liu's , as the Wu-Liu's way makes people pass more risky steps ..) Of course, such a mind is not of those particle physicists' or of those who pray restlessly many times a day to their God..

4th spatial dimension is some kind of mathematician's creation / discovery , no matter how fantastic & innovative it is, is still something entangled in the realm of human reasoning , ie , still has those limitations of a yin- typed of spirit: - A yin-typed spirit embodies passively in a physical body , and then forced to leave it because of aging/ accident/diseases..., that means it doesn't grasp its destiny in its own hands. - A yin-typed spirit is always separated from the external world , and subject to those social and cultural forces. At first look, it seems okay to just link and manage the things around us through handling tools, machines and materials; however, a deeper look tells us that , in so doing , we are in fact subject to the social force of division of labor and the power of the authorities. For example , scientists rely on government and university's money in order to do their experiments .., achievement is always the result of collective force or political will ; scientists are divided and assigned to explore the further secrets in their already trivially divided disciplines..etc. Even those claim to be studying the basic stuff of this universe , say physicists Hawking and Feynman, just raise 2 examples, when they got their neurological disease and cancer respectively , they relied on their doctors , experts from another discipline , to give them treatment. From Western point of view, it is nothing wrong ; but from a Taoist point of view, it is nothing reasonable : grasping the basic stuff means we become powerful and self-healing ....; any separated, divided mind , anyhow , can't be said to be full and free . In Taoist case, with qi and its spiritual dimension, Shen , grasped in our hands, of course, we don't suffer what the above mentioned .