exorcist_1699

Chen is a tragic figure, in the sense that he knows all steps of Taoist Alchemy but can't attain immortality because of being situated in harsh and turbulent times. I also think that it is a pity that he wasted his most important years (at the age of 30s ~40s) on Earth Way but without gaining any fruitful result ...

The historical fact is that Taoist lineages are expressed and embodied in those schools and sects, formed in different periods of time and in different areas of China ( maybe in future by different States of America :-) ) , and are called by the criteria I mentioned. A school or sect does depend " on sequential transmission"..

Hi, Rainbowvein, After having done some search on internet, I am sorry to tell that there is no or little substantial English language resource about Mr.Chen's life or his writings ..Recently another member of this Forum has asked me about Chen's writings on Female Dan, so I hope I can do some translations of Chen's writings, limited to stuff related to Female Dan, in near future, and post them here. Of course, the obstacle on my way is mainly not anything language related ( I can't claim my English good, but it likely be readable ) ,but my lack of understanding of female's ...so I have to read some books on the subject before I can start my translation job.

Taoist lineages can be classified by the following criteria: 1) By the geographical origin or area of influence of that school, for example, the Mo Shan school is so-named because it originates from a mountain called Mo Shan ( located in the Jiangsu Province).The Complete Reality school belongs to the North School because its influence was mainly limited to the area north of the Yangtze River during the Song-Yuan Dynasties. 2) By the names of its founders , for examples, Wu-Liu School is named after its two masters : Wu Chong-Xu and Liu Hua-Yang . 3) By the method it adopts, for example , the Pre-Celestial School is so-called because it teaches people to situate their mind in a meta-physical dimension of nowhere so as to attain the Pre-celestial qi ... if you start by paying attention to your dantian in order to initialize some qi , then of course, hardly can your method be called Pre-Celestial because you are using an environmentally conditioned reasoning long after your birth to initialize some post-celestial qi in your body...

A persistent No-mind is a status you can't skip if you want to accomplish something great in your practice; that means, if you not limit yourself to attain a peaceful mind or cure a disease ,then 'playing ' with no-mind for long hours a day is a hurdle you can't avoid. To me , it is only after no-mind has become a practical issue, a status with steps and layers that we can deal with, does its real philosophical significance appear to us . So, whatever ways you start from the beginning: Paying attention to your dantian , focus on your breathing or visualization ... etc., up to certain stage, you have to shift to some kind of no-mind. If such a shift is inevitable, then why not doing it earlier or right at the beginning? Besides , paying attention to your lower dantian, for example, does give rise to some troubles to many guys for the more jing and qi that they accumulate there, the easier for them to leak away ( especially in nighttime ) . Visualization is a method most people like to start with , it gives people a feeling of grasping and accomplishing something quick; however, the possibility of nourishing an illusory Dan (幻丹) by adopting this method is greater than others; you are more liable to end up achieving something mediocre, yet you imagine it something superb.. How about paying attention to emptiness before our eyes ? Some people may ask . Or, paying attention to something , then forgetting it ( that attention).. It sounds like some kind of compromise , but it not better than chopping off that stream of minds before it arises..

A state of No-mind is far from Enlightenment, but a persistent form of it is some kind of precondition for making people enlightened; I think no-mind is a spiritual state , like a crystal onion, that has many layers; so after having entered the deeper layer, you can 'apply' it without undermining that balance; And, it is the reason why in practice Taoist alchemy repeatedly emphasize the term : real intention (" 真意") ...Otherwise, any intention is a rise or shift away from our mind, hardly does it not break that precious balance... This is why Wuwei can accomplish something : Doing without ( the intention to ) doing (" 無為而無不為" ) ; accomplishing without ( the intention to ) accomplishing ( " 無為而成")..The highest achievement of Tao.

Given that we are talking about no-mind, it seems strange to mention "steps and layers"... People who have created a status of no-mind after hours of spiritual labors, like having blown out a pretty bubble, are desperate to maintain that delicate balance; any move of their minds is carefully avoided for whenever there is any idea of step or move arisen , you break that balance... yet it really can be some applications of it, as a famous Taoist poem tells us : ( my translation) 恰恰用心時 ( whenever trying to make use of my mind ) 恰恰無心用 ( I find there is no mind to use ) 無心恰恰用 ( no mind really meets my purpose) 用時恰恰無 (in usage , it is no mind that applies )

Reluctant to add my comments after having seen many ideas already posted above, however, it is such a common bias among the young /technical people that it seems worthy of adding mine. As many members on this forum already notice that the issue of emptiness is linked to many basic problems raised by Modern Physics, and have gone deep into finding those 'technical' ways of exploring it , some people still stick to their simple thinking that 'emptiness' is just an ancient , useless Oriental philosophical topic , not fashionable enough to meet their taste , this really startles me.

Dealing with light is easy and funny, what you need is the power of imagination; dealing with No-Mind is much more difficult and dull , and at its initial stage, the dullest thing you ever experienced.

I wonder why people talk about light , instead of qi, after having experienced some status of deep Void . The appearance of light is more subjective and unreliable, especially for those who start their way from the very beginning through visualization. A persistent No-Mind ( or deep Void, for they are just two faces of the same coin ) inevitably gives rise to the embryonic way of breathing ; it is so unprecedented and uncomfortable that , compared to light, warmth, light body .....X@&*^$, unlikely be anything we create or imagine. Besides, the arise of pre-heavenly qi , in fact, blows life into the spiritual form we just create from the deep Void,making it really everlasting, independently alive outside our body.

Some points to discuss : 1) How quick and often can we enter the described status of mindlessness ? 2) Although the old mind has receded, it seems a new Mind has not popped up... 3) A much deeper mindlessness should be some kind of embedded mindset in the background , no matter how fluctuating the minds on the front stage can't dissolve it ( " 惠能無技倆 , 不斷百思量") 4) It is only after the appearance of that much bigger Mind, can we talk about the pre-heavenly qi, the greatest benefit...

In fact, most of the chronic diseases can be cured by the ready prepared traditional Chinese medical pills/ tablets (中成葯); and , because most of them are herbal dose having a history of thousand years, substance being mild and well balanced , so the side effects of even taking a wrong one is minor. Yet some Western fools ( forgive me to use this term, but the more you understand TCM and qigong, the more you will love my expression , and understand my pity towards them ) still stick to their medicine... Of course, you need to know some basic TCM knowledge in order to choose the ready-prepared TCM. Online searching and discussion is one of the best ways of getting the necessary information.

As long as the disease involved is not anything life threatening, expecially those chronic ones, online diagnose is still some kind of helpful reference .Besides, in this process , it enhances your understanding about qi and jing , despite being expressed in their defected or inbalanced forms; so, diseases teach you as much knowledge about qi as your qigong practice. Please note that as a qi gong practitioner ( other Buddhist practices is another story), you should have an ambition of not putting your fate in doctors' hands ; you should have an aspiration of not putting your fate in the so-called Nature's hands. And, sooner or later , you find yourself know your body much better than your doctor; sooner or later , you can cure yourself, then others' diseases by using qi. In fact, many TCM doctors can't initialize qi and do not have any intimate feeling of qi themselves; they can cure because they do read the books; they can cure by observing patients' reactions to the herbal treatment or to the needles, and accumulate the necessary knowledge and experience.

In TCM, three quite common causes that make us sleepless in night are said to be : 1) Uprise of the fire of the liver ("肝火上升"): Here " fire" refers to the overactive ,abnormal function of the yang aspect of the liver, ie , the eccentric behavior of the liver's qi . 2) Failure in the intercourse between the kidney and heart (" 心腎不交 " ), more precisely speaking , intercourse between the fire of the heart and the water of the kidney; it is said that the mechanism enables us to sleep well in night time is due to the descent of our heart's fire , to meet the arising water from the kidneys , making deep sleep possible; A weakening of the yin ( too much leakage of sperm , for example ) of our kidneys will give rise to fire ( abnormal, overactive qi; symptoms: a feeling of dryness in mouth , sweating even just lying there, restlessness...etc ) that undermines that mechanism of sleeping; it likely happens to middle-aged guys . 3) Too much phlegm obstruct the function of the above-mentioned mechanism; generally speaking only can people over 45 know the significance of phlegm in our life; Phlegm's appearance is mainly due to the weakening yang ( qi ) of our stomach , which no longer can digest the food and liquid, especially those oily and spicy ones, we eat so efficiently as before; so what should become blood and jing that nourish our body , now become a sticky stuff, and a series of strange symptoms arise...sleeplessness is one of them .

If you claim it be Taoist-related , then I still have to say, it is not by using visualization that "melt" the body, it is the accumulation and improvement of your jing and qi , your enhanced qi now capable of connecting to the external qi , that breaking of the body boundary, gives you the feeling of body being "melted";

The mentioned versions of methods, although claimed Zen's or to be related to Zen's, are unlikely to have anything doing with it . As some member here already pointed out , these are methods of visualizations , not Zen's . Visualization , to some people , maybe somehow effective ; but by using our mind's power of imagination , we continue to use our daily mind , not trying to get rid of it as requested by Zen . On the contrary , Zen's method , to the least , is clearly a method of cutting abruptly that flow of consciousness, that flow of imaginative ideas, not conversely relying on its enhancing power ; and from it , to nourish , first , a state of condensed oneness or a state of mindlessness, which is unlikely to be anything that visualization can give us. The difference may sound trivial for some people, but it , in fact, leads us to different destinations....

I am not familiar with the Chinese martial art, to which the upper diagram's content related , so better let other people do the translation.

Although the lower diagram looks stupid and superficial , I still translate it as below; anyhow it reflects what level most Chinese Taoists on the Mainland attain :

­I wonder whether people in the West understand what kind of a puzzle is put before them to solve. Their minds are always accustomed to facts and data; they observe and measure them by apparatus and then formulate the found relations into equations. That is , they are good at reasoning and handling beings, not non-beings; hardly anything we call it nothingness or emptiness is their strength. When they are told about God, they think of a father-like One, something always linked to a sense of guilty . When they are told about gods, they think of the Greek ones, not the one you can nourish it yourself out of nothingness. Maybe they are good at observing a flow of consciousness , but hardly can they imagine a series of mindlessness, and what kind of thing will emerge from it. " How can we chop it into instants, isolate them and get their meanings?" , their analytic minds ask , following their inertia. However, as a Tang dynasty Zen master already pointed out : " You can't pursue the Mind by using your mind ; you can't quest for the Buddha through your own Buddha" ("不能以心求心, 以佛求佛 " ) "Any move of your mind (in search of it ) is doomed to failure" ("動念即乖") Try doing so is like a short-tailed kitten, whenever it moves to catch its own tail , it widens the distance and never succeeds. Besides , even you succeed in grasping this instant of mindlessness and lengthen it, there is no guarantee that it not degenerates into some kind of drowsiness or unproductive void .Creative emptiness is conditional . The idea from Taoism is always helpful: "Don't limit your solution for taming this Mind in the realm of spirit; it is never anything isolated from our jing and qi". Why not try listening to an old system which gets 2000-year experience in opposing, later assimilating this strange , untamable Buddhist Mind? Why think that you really know much better?

Seems unhealthy . You start by using the method of visualization ?

A Taoist saying tells us : 靜處練命, 動處練性 " While our physical eternity should be cultivated in a quiet place , our meta-Mind ( 性 ) is refined in daily activities " That means , the Mind is not cultivated solely by sitting there straight and still , hardly is it the original , genuine meaning of Zazen , but in every moment and situation of our life ; not only in its ups and downs , but in its jealousy , fear , regrets .. all are "fuel" for refining itself into something bigger, nobler and more intelligent .

By counteracting your monkey-mind with jing and qi, you can settle it in few minutes, some people even in few seconds ; secure and condense it quick , and firmly . This is why Taoist emphasize the Li and Kan trigrams... water counteracts fire, not in the sense of TCM , but in Taoist alchemical sense .

Any literal translation of Taoist writings is doomed to be misleading . Unfortuantely , most translators who try to do the job are language professors or teachers ,who hardly get any practice in Taoism. For example, in the quoted translation , the character "谷", its literal meaning is " valley" , a concave , hidden and emptied space; by linking it to the character "神" (" spirit") , you get a funny translation of "The spirit of the valley never dies " for the Chinese phase"谷神不死"; A seemingly sensible Animistic interpretation , yet far from grasping the real meaning behind it. I have to say , the term "谷神" here refers to a hidden emptied big mind , a Meta-Mind, not to the spirit of a valley ; because soon after the mentioned phase, it immediately shifts to talk about a place called "玄牝" ( an invisible gateway ) at which a door can be opened for accessing the "roots" of this universe ("天地根"). Clearly, the spirit of a valley is too small for helping us understand the big Universe, nor can the spirit of a mountain or a river do. Stranglely it is the spirit of we humans that does . In Buddhism , there is a similar saying : "空不空, 如來藏" (" Emptiness is not really empty, for what hidden inside is a Budda " ), which tells us that an awakened Mind is , in fact, the precondition for opening a door in emptiness, leading us to another more realistic world. This is why I repeatedly say that a yin-mind , no matter how delicate a thought experiment it can design , no matter how many spatial dimensions it can manipulate by its mathematical ability , hardly can it be used in our cultivation , let alone others of its spiritual efforts: singing some spells , visualization, praying..etc .

Just want to point out : Dual cultivation of the mind and the physical body , transforming them into some kind of everlasting things , i.e. " 性命雙修 ", is one of the basic principles of Taoism .

Classical Taoism does talk about the Meta-Mind , for example , in Laotze : ( Chapter 6 ) 谷神不死，是谓玄牝。玄牝之门，是谓天地根 " The emptied Mind /Spirit never dies, its immortality tells you how the Universe starts ; as the gateway to this Universe, it also shows you how this universe is found" And , it further talks about the strange, supernatural power of this Mind : (Chapeter 47 ) 不出户，知天下；不窥牖，见天道。其出弥远，其知弥少。是以圣人不行而知，不见而明，不为而成。 "Without going outdoors , the Saint knows the society ; without taking a peep out the window , he know the secret of this Universe . The farther we go ,the less we know. So, the Saint knows without traveling, understands without seeing , accomplishes without doing." * All are my translations .