Walker

Whatever the reality of the situation discussed here may be, I have no idea. However, the written Chinese is very clear: according to the text (I believe it's Zhongli Quan speaking here), ghost immortals are not in the circle of rebirth-redeath. Taoist Texts is free to disagree with the text, but to blithely misinterpret it to fit his/her beliefs is strange behavior. Many on this site and elsewhere are not simply content to disagree with Daoism, but seem to feel a need to bend Daoism to fit them. The need for imprimatur? The allure of the exotic? Whatever the reason, for Taoist Texts to then draw upon an elderly Japanese samurai's recorded hodge podge of ponderings in order to try and make the vastly mistaken point that anywhere in the writings of actual Daoists one will find lying being excused or even encouraged is, well, the type of all-too-common perversion that makes old masters shake their heads and sigh, whilst also confusing newcomers and the naive. Unfortunate.

https://shop62107155.taobao.com Really high quality stuff. For the last four+ years I've lived in unheated and barely-heated huts in old Shanghai and Beijing alleyways. Last year I finally bought a huge hooded cloak/cape from this company, specifically made big enough to cover your legs if you're sitting cross-legged. Very happy with it. Found out about them a few years back when someone gave me a frog-buttoned vest from this company, also very high quality. Also bought some thin cotton pants for working out in the summer--good stitching but the colors faded way too quickly. Other brands on Taobao I can't vouch for... there's a lot of junk here, too.

Your questions are interesting but your hypothesis here does not cover all circumstances. Spontaneous movements can and do arise in people who have no knowledge that such things as zifagong/spontaneous qigong exist. Sometimes merely practicing still standing or sitting meditation is enough to trigger full-blown "spontaneous qigong," including, for instance, in countries where most people have never heard of qigong, much less what's being discussed here, and this includes in the bodies of people who are actually trying to sit/stand still. As for why such things seem to happen only in connection with "meditation postures" (to my knowledge, anyway, although having seen video footage of Pentacostal revivals and the like, I'm open to the possibility that what they're going through might, sometimes, maybe be related to spontaneous qigong) and not at any random time of day or whilst falling asleep or during sleep, I do not know. I can only venture that certain "meditation postures" have been passed down generation after generation because they do, for whatever reason, clearly have unique effects on the human body, especially when used by a person who is focusing, relaxing, and quieting his/her mind.

After years of hoping to visit Mt. Lao I'm finally getting a chance. I'm planning to spend three nights there. Has anybody got any tips or stories? Many thanks!

Whoa, great advice! Do you know if any of the temples up there have quarters for visitors? Did you notice any out-of-the-way spots really worth a visit? Come across any adepts worth seeking out? Thanks!

Yes. I have met many seekers and many would-be experts on Daoism, but few seem to even be aware that these teachings are real, nor what their import is.

That's probably not a bad idea, but if you have an interest in Daoist alchemy an old master might suggest that you remain open to whatever comes your way. I've read some For Dummies books--Daoism, physiology, maybe flipped through a few others. They're really not very good. Lots of the books that try to be "Daoist alchemy for dummies" really aren't very good, either. "Dumb" also means mute. The fact is that very few who understand alchemy in part or in whole ever talk about it openly. The books that do come close to being "Neidan for Dummies" haven't been translated into English, and even these texts are almost impenetrable to the uninitiated. Unfortunately, it is easy to read these books, interpret their contents as though one were reading about TCM or qigong, and conclude that one understands them. I would say keep reading, but with a very open mind and lots of detachment. Words like neidan are used very liberally, here and in China. The picture one gets in the beginning is extremely blurry. Those who have affinity are not deterred and keep at their studies for years and years, while also cultivating their de. Gradually things come into focus.

Yaaaaawwwwwnnnn. You selected a sentence about how Confucius learned from "men of talents and virtue" to try and prove that people don't need teachers and that classical Chinese learning comes through books, not person-to-person transmission. Your foot is in your mouth. Apparently a man who is enchanted by his own ideas will see them confirmed in everything he reads. Dangerous.

Heh, I was thinking more like...

No, I would not agree that his message is what you say. Again one of the obstacles to concluding that you're right comes down to punctuation. As many board members might not know, a text dating to the Five Dynasties period would have been written with no punctuation marks, and no spaces between any of the characters. Therefore a difficulty facing anybody, Chinese or foreign, who wants to read old texts, is the question, where should we infer that the punctuation resides? If you look carefully at the link to the same scripture that I provided, the punctuation is different. Version you used: 因于终南山石壁间，获收《灵宝经》三十卷。 Version I used: 因於終南山石壁間。獲收靈寶經三十卷。 If one assumes that there's a comma between "间" and "获," then it it's pretty natural to assume that he's talking about yanking a text from betwixt you some cracks in a cliff. However, the decision of other editors to put a period there gives us enough pause to think more deeply about the character "间." What else can this character mean in classical Chinese? A short period of time A small road To keep at a distance (远离) To hide in secret ("隔开众人,使自己隐而不现") There are yet other meanings, as well, including to do something secretively--the character is used this way in 《扁鹊传》when Bianque receives a secret recipe that gives him magic powers, which is passed to him secretively by Changsang Jun. Considering that we're talking about a man supposedly on the run in the mountains, I am prone to suspect that there's a very high chance what is mean is that he hid in secret in those cliffs--隔开众人,使自己隐而不现, or separate oneself from the masses, making oneself hidden, not appearing. In the next sentence he says he received the Ling Bao Bi Fa texts, yes. However, to assume that it was not passed to him by a person, and that he was not given any oral instructions in the Dao is not only massive conjecture, but also a sign that you seem to be ignoring the greater context surrounding Zhongli Quan's (Zhongli is a two-character last name, by the way; his name is Quan) biography/hagiography. Below are two very important points that argue against your ideas: First of all, from the Explanatory Dictionary of Daoism, we have this: "《列仙全傳》卷三略云仕五代之劉漢為大將軍， 征吐蕃失利， 獨騎奔逃山谷。 迷失道路， 夜入深林， 遇一胡僧， 引行數里， 見一村莊， 謂此東華先產生道處。 東華先生授以赤符玉籙、 金科靈文、 大月秘訣、 周天火候、 青龍劍法等道術。 並見《逍遙虛經》卷一。" I don't have time to try and translate it word for word. For non-Chinese-readers, the gist is, Immortal Zhongli was lost deep in the forest at night when he encountered a non-Chinese Buddhist monk who led him to a village many miles away and told him it was the abode of Donghua Dijun (The Imperial Lord of Eastern Florescence, to use another's translation). Donghua Dijun then gave numerous teachings (with hard-to-translate names like Crimson Talisman Jade Talisman, Numinous Writings on the Golden Science, Secret Teaching of the Great Moon, Orbital Firing Times, and Green Dragon Sword Method) and a scripture that you could maybe call the Empty Classic on Wandering Freely. The idea that Zhongli Quan's teacher was Donghua Dijun is no secret and you could find variations of the same story anywhere on Google or Baidu or in books that detail the lives of Daoist saints. Since we're all working with the same biographical and hagiographical information here, any unsubstantiated belief that Immortal Zhongli had no teacher is problematic--you have to be able to explain your assumption. Furthermore, let's assume that that sentence about the cliffs actually does mean that he pulled a scripture from a hole in a rock, like a Tibetan terton. Even if that is the meaning, the hagiographies tell us that Ancestor Zhongli received instruction from Donghua Dijun. He's able to understand what he reads, because he was given direct transmission in esoteric teachings. Now we come to my second point. We have addressed that Immortal Zhongli has a teacher. What about his disciple, Immortal Lv Dongbin? Does he have any input on the matter? Again referring to the very useful Explanatory Dictionary of Daoism, this time for its entry on the Ling Bao Bi Fa scripture, we have the following statement: "至下手功夫， 姑借咽氣嗽液為喻， 而真機口訣實在口傳心授， 不在文字也," or, with regards undertaking this [scripture's] gongfu, [we] temporarily borrow swallowing qi and coughing fluids in the way of analogy, whilst the real mechanism's oral explanation is really in oral transmission and heart transmission, not in written words. So... No we have questions of punctuation, meaning of Chinese characters, Zhongli Quan's background, and his disciple's admonition weighing in on your specific question above, as well as your general belief about not relying solely on scripture. Can I say that you're wrong, that Ancestor Zhongli definitely didn't just reach into a rock, find a book, and have a bunch of lightbulbs go off in his head (the right lightbulbs, mind you), without ever having been instructed in how to understand Daoist writings in the first place? No, I cannot say you are definitely wrong. But I think everybody reading this will understand where my doubts come from. Perhaps you will speak with a little less absolute surety in future. Perhaps not.

For the sake of preventing readers here who have no connection to the actual Daoist tradition from being confused, I don't think we should even suppose he is right. All I can say to people who might be wondering is that Taoist Texts is flat out wrong; his notions about the role of texts and teacher-to-student transmission in Daoism (not to mention every other aspect of classical Chinese culture I can think of) are specious.

Taoist Texts, I am confused. You reference a piece of writing that starts with "道不可以言传，不可以名纪" in order to tell us that Immortal Zhongli learned solely from books? The English translation you present reads, Dao can not be transmitted in spoken words, can not be written down in terms, meaning that apparently the passage opens by warning people that they won't find the Dao in books or even spoken language... right? Yet that seems to be the antithesis of the point you're making here and in other threads. You translate "历看丹经，累参道友，止言养命之小端，不说真仙之大道" as, throughout this time I read the cinnabar books, continuously asked for advice from the friends in Dao, pursued the small ends of ‘stopping words and nourishing fate’, but never spoke with a true saint about the great Dao. The first problem I see here (I might be wrong) is that interpreting "不说真仙之大道" as but never spoke with a true saint about the great Dao seems like a very elastic interpretation. First of all, there is no character meaning "but" at the beginning of the clause. Secondly, I don't recall often seeing "不" used to mean "never." Neither 《新华字典》 nor 《古汉语常用字字典》 present such a definition for "不" in classical Chinese; the likely character one would expect to see informing your translation would be "未," or maybe "无." Perhaps others who read Chinese can speak up. In short, what I mean to say is that I suspect your rendering, but never spoke with a true saint about the great Dao, needs revisiting. The second problem I see might arise from how your interpret the structure of those four clauses, "历看丹经，累参道友，止言养命之小端，不说真仙之大道." You take it as Immortal Zhongli giving readers a synopsis of what he did during a period of time. Looking at the context, I don't think you're totally wrong. If I recall correctly, Master Zhongli was a general who was routed in a bloody battle, and forced to abandoned his slaughtered troops and retreat into hiding in the mountains, whereupon he became a cultivator. So “不意运起刀兵，时危世乱，始以逃生，寄迹江湖岩谷，退而识性留心” seems to refer to this section of his biography. However, if you look at how the punctuation is presented here you'll see that there's a period after "而識性留心." Subsequently we're presented with "惟在清淨希夷。歷看丹經。累參道友。止言養命之小端。不說真仙之大道." Starting with the character "历" you present a translation beginning with, throughout this time I read the cinnabar books. However, let me point out that the traditional character "歷," according to 《古汉语常用字字典》 also means "逐个、一一地" Moreover, when "歷" is used twice in succession it means "清晰分明," to clearly distinguish, a construction that yields numerous chengyu. With the above in mind, let's take a second look at "惟在清淨希夷。歷看丹經。累參道友。止言養命之小端。不說真仙之大道。" To me, it seems like instead of a simple recounting of Zhongli's activities during a period of time, what we're actually seeing is a terse synopsis of the meat of Daoist study and practice. The final four sentences seem to constitute two couplets, the first four characters long, the second seven characters long. My rough interpretation (I would appreciate input from others who can read Chinese, especially if anybody understands the import of the final two sentences to Daoist practice) of these five clauses is thus: 惟在清淨希夷。[Dao] resides in clarity and purity [synonymous with 清静?] and xiyi [this word is so rich with implication that I'm reluctant to translate it]. 歷看丹經。Read the alchemical classics one by one. 累參道友。Repeatedly call upon Daoist friends. 止言養命之小端。The small method [端] of stopping words [to?] nourish ming [perhaps analogous to the first line of Lv Dongbin's 100 Character Stele, "养气忘言守," but I'm not sure] 不說真仙之大道。The not-spoken great Dao of true immortals [perhaps a reference to 不言之教?] I'm not especially happy with my translation but, in any case, I am very reluctant to agree with your argument that "不说真仙之大道" means but never spoke with a true saint about the great Dao. However, we aren't the only two people on this board who can read a little Chinese; let's see what others say.

Yikes. Here's something for your Google Translate software: 走弯路.

I don't disagree, but any beginner here will be met with a deluge of vastly complex, seemingly-contradictory, and unwieldy ideas that don't wholly come from the -ism this subforum is named for. Daoists as a whole in person and writing alike don't really tend to talk about lots of what this conversation has turned into, for more than one reason. That fact doesn't negate the validity of any of you fellows' experiences and ideas, but I think it is worthwhile even so to let those beginners who don't speak/read Chinese and don't have access to traditional Daoists know that the common uses of the word shen in China are not usually what appears in this thread.

知其要者，一言而终；不知其要者，流散无穷。Not that there isn't some great information in here being shared by cultivators with far more experience than I have. But since we're talking about a word that tends to be used in certain ways in the context of the language it comes from and the traditions that still use that language... In my opinion, from the standpoint of practice as well as from the standpoint of understanding classical Daoist and medical writings, it is enough to understand shen as consciousness. If one takes it a step further and divides the word shen into its houtian (post-heaven) and xiantian (pre-heaven) components, then the former is consciousness made murky by ideas, whereas the latter is raw consciousness, raw awareness. Put another way, you experience the former while you're thinking; the fewer thoughts you have while still remaining in a clear, aware, and awake state, then the closer you are to experiencing the latter. Various locations we can identify in the body's gross, subtle, and/or imagined aspects may have correspondences with attributes that we break the human being at large into, but trying to make definitions in the way that the OP suggests seems antithetical to the core teachings of Daoism which you'll find front-and-center in the first chapter of the DDJ. Leaving books aside, such ideas are also antithetical to the living praxis, whose basic litmus test is always 大道至简: "the great way is great is ultimate simplicity," and whose living teachers tend not to encourage students to "着相," which means to get too involved with appearances and apparencies, whether be they subtle or gross. 脚踏实地.

Homage to the Ctrl V Recluse. All these years in China, all these books, all these mountains and parks and caves and classrooms and clinics and temples and teahouses, all the weirdos and assholes and friends and charlatans and enigmas and saints and lost souls and fools and geniuses and cow blowers and taciturners and and topknots and chrome domes and doubters and even sages later, that is still my favorite passage from my favorite book on this -ism. Blofeld left behind some real gems.

I have absolutely experienced improved eyesight, studying bagua-xingyi and its related foundation (daoyin/qigong) practices. I am talking about being able to put away my glasses for periods ranging between an hour to several hours. During these spans of time I can read signs and make out facial features at four or more times the distance as usual. This doesn't happen every time I practice, and it doesn't happen with all types of qigong and internal martial arts practice--I can say that because I have practiced regularly for about ten years (and irregularly for another six before that) and only with the teacher under whom I've studied for the last two have I had these experiences. My feeling is that, in my case, one of the keys has been in naturally elongating/straightening the neck and lifting the head. I don't think that I could have experienced these results without the help of a very attentive teacher who correctly understands posture and with whom I study several times a week, as, without his attention to detail and regular adjustment, I would probably never discover the mistake on my own--after all, it has been my deeply ingrained habit for years to hold my body in this way, almost certainly inhibiting the ability of qi-blood to nourish the eyes. I suspect that "building qi" in the body is also necessary. Lots of practices seem to promote health and well-being by moving the body around, but certainly not all of them are transmitted in such a way as to build qi in the practitioner. I also think that there is no guarantee that any given person practices any given qigong there will be this kind of result. Vision problems' causes are manifold; types of qigong are manifold; no two teachers or students are the same; ways of practicing are infinite. A lot of factors need to line up, and as you can see, in my case, the results only tend to last for a few hours. Could they be made permanent? I truly don't know.

The mods on this site need to wear looser-fitting undies, sheesh, I can damn near see the wedgies in your Bugle Boy trousers all the way out here in Beijing. Volunteer hall monitor-face-ass margs. First no Deci, soon no Open Dao and Drew, yall are fitting to make discussions on the board into the equivalent of a conversation between a slice of Wonder Bread and a bowl of white rice. Where's the fucking flavaaaaaaaaa? P.S., who stole the hall pass? WHO STOLE THE HALL PASS! P.P.S. Eh, it's irrelevant who stole the hall pass. Can you all just hurry up and suspend me so I can go smoke Newports under the bleachers with that fine Ms Belle? Haha, nah, I'm just playing with you guys, great job, for real. Look, I made sammiches, who wants one? American cheese!

Heh.

I have a Chinese friend in Beijing who is in her late twenties, highly-educated, wealthy, vegetarian, Buddhist-vows-taken on Mt. Wutai, student of New Age "music healing" with piano and crystal singing bowls, house smells constantly of burning sage used to cleanse auras and chakras, studied "classical" Chinese medicine with a Daoist doctor, is a sometimes-practitioner of something called "universal light yoga," a Japanese flower arrangement instructor, who invites any shaman or medicine man/woman who passes through Beijing to her home for tea... etc. In January I went to her place for a visit. She proudly held up her new necklace for me to see: "Look, so-and-so gave me a new Maitreya Buddha necklace! What do you think?" Well, first things first, So-and-So just so happens to be the proprietor of a very upscale vegan restaurant in Beijing, as well as a chain of lucrative "natural beauty" salons, and is reputedly a highly-achieved spiritual master of some sort who hasn't been able to bear the taste of meat since early childhood. So I was a little surprised by what I saw, and could not help myself from immediately asking, my face no doubt contorted by confusion, "uh, is that ivory!?" "Yes--wow, you have a great eye!--isn't it beautiful!?!" "You do realize that the elephants are about a hair's breadth from being wiped from the face of the earth, right? And that it's only getting worse as China gets wealthier... right?" Of course her face fell, but I think half the reason they still keep me around in places like this is that's it's something of a breath of fresh air and/or a bit of a gag to have a guy visit every now and then who doesn't stand on the standard vacuous face-giving ceremony that illustrates most conversations, even those between good friends, in this country. She replied, "oh, well I hadn't thought about that," and quickly fished to depths deeper than even your average trawler must plumb in order to explain why a brand-new ivory Buddha necklace wasn't just about the biggest hotshitfuckdamn train wreck of moronity adorning any of the 21,000,000 + necks in Beijing that particular afternoon. This friend of mine, perhaps a bit high off of all the positive vibes in that Maitreya pendant shooting into her heart chakra, as well as all that damn sage smoke, is convinced that the world is in the process of being woken up by 2012 energies and that we're just around the corner from some great awakening that's being engineered by invisible spiritual guides who've all descended onto Terra Firma to reboot our third eyes and turn the earth into some sort of indigo child Pure Land. Well, hell, I suppose anything is possible, or at least that's what we're supposed to believe, anyway. But in this case I kinda just find myself seeing things the way Drew does. But that's cool. If the world's gonna go up in flames, at least I can watch the fireworks while sipping on a Tiger Dick frappe and having my auras cleansed by silk- satin- and linen-draped babes who're still so drunk off those 2012 vibes that, far as they're concerned, the Pure Land is already here. Namo Maitreya Buddha.

@Nungali: Wow.

Fascinating! Most interesting to me is that the ancients around the world managed to be so precise with their instructions for preparing and combining natural medicines. If you read about the recent discovery of the important anti-malarial artemisinin, you'll see that were it not for Ge Hong (yes, that's none other than the famous Daoist Baopuzi, "The Master Who Embraced Simiplicity") recording instructions to steep the herb in cold water then the medicine would not have come into existence; until Dr. Tu Youyou noted what Ge Hong said about temperature the researchers had been attempting to boil wormwood, which apparently destroyed what turned out to be the active ingredient. As for how the instructions for preparing ayahuasca were discovered... It is also very interesting to note that the "potion" in the OP needs to stand for nine days. The number nine shows up in some of the traditional preparation for Chinese herbs, but unfortunately, steaming dihuang in liquor nine times is time consuming, so herbal medicine companies these days as a rule don't stick to the old methods. Speaking of the number nine, just so happens that in an acupuncture lecture this morning the prof went into a digression about one of her old classmates, who now works in the Chinese government's equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration, overseeing herbal medicine production in particular. Every year this classmate travels all around China checking in on factories and farms. Every year when they get together, my professor says she asks her old classmate about the state of herbal medicine. The answer never changes: "99% of it is of poor quality or fake if not downright polluted and dangerous." I've heard the same thing from other sources, sadly. (The only company that seems to get a bit of respect is Beijing Tongren Tang).

Not even remotely true.

Never doubt that there is a way for you to heal, regardless of what this or that doctor or diagnosis might say. You are embarking on a healing path; you are lucky to have this trouble as a source of motivation and even inspiration. Study hard and search far, far and wide till you find your healing. Then share it with your patients, healer. Also, many/most Daoist practices taught properly can be used in different postures depending upon the physical needs of the student. But you will need to find teachers first. This all may take years, but you will learn much and change deeply if you let your path unfold.

I have received some private inquiries about this post, and have decided to share what I came up with publicly. I did not post initially because the results of my admittedly not exhaustive searching do not lend any credence to Wu's claims, and in fact may lead him to look like rightly or wrongly like a fraud. Well, if the stories are true, then perhaps this post will cause evidence to come to light, which I'm sure would make everybody happy--most of us would like to believe such miracles can happen in the middle of huge cities in the modern day. Here's what I found: 1. A monk by the name attached to the master in Wu's stories was active in/around Beijing in the last century, but he was at the White Cloud Monastery only briefly, and was never abbot from what I can tell. If you follow this link you can find a short biography of a Daoist monk in Beijing in the last century named Du Xinling (杜信灵) who was apparently a very skilled acupuncturist. I'm too busy to translate it all, but below I'm pasting Google's attempt, which more or less conveys the gist. The confusing part about the prison stint refers to an event in recent history when a White Cloud Monastery abbot and his assistant were bound and immolated on the monastery's grounds by other monks who were furious at their corruption and collusion with Japense occupying forces. These monks were imprisoned for their crime (which was actually permissible in accord with the monastery's official rules) but then released not long after because public opinion in favor of executing traitors who helped the Japenese was strong. Apparently this Du was a part of this uprising, which is explained in detail in the book The Taoists of Peking. Below, the Google translation: The last sentence is exactly as the original Chinese states: this man died of illness, not of turning into a rainbow. Conversely, I found no evidence of there having been a 20th century abbot of the White Cloud Monastery having this name. Two Daoists both having this name is not impossible. If they are both 25th generation Dragon Gate or Hua Shan sect initiates, they will both have the character 信-xin in their name, and 灵-ling is a popular enough character that two or more guys all having this same Daoist name is very probable. However, two guys whose last names are both 杜-du and both live in Beijing, one makes onto the internet for being an acupuncturist at a small temple after he leaves the White Cloud Monastery, while another, who serves as abbot and turns into pure light, fades into obscurity? Seems unlikely to me. This brings me to the next points: 2. I persuaded a lay Daoist friend who has worked at the White Cloud Monastery clinic for years to ask around for me. Nobody she asked was familiar with the name Du Xinling. That seems highly remarkable, given that the man supposedly performed his miracle during 1980s. Daoists everywhere eat this stuff up--it wouldn't have been quickly forgotten! 3. There is a librarian/editor at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine who studies Daoism and who is always interested in miraculous tales related to this tradition. He Had not heard of Wu's master, nor of any rainbow body attainment by a White Cloud Monastery Daoist master in the 1980s or any other time. 4. Finally, I asked an Yi Quan practitioner who was trained by Wang Xiangzhai's own daughter. I mention this martial art because supposedly Du Xinling taught Wang Xiangzhai, founder of Yi Quan. If that is really the case, my acquaintance not having heard of him is very unlikely. To make matters worse, the fellow is not just an Yi Quan player but a Daoist doctor who is affiliated with the Chinese Daoist Association, which is headquartered in the White Cloud Monastery. This man is extremely well-read and well-connected in Daoist circles, and he is a native Beijinger to boot. He had heard nothing about this miracle. Having received so many nugatories, eventually I gave up asking. Knocking on every door in Beijing asking people if they know about the guy who turned into a rainbow is a good way to end up in a straight jacket! Since I highly doubt any newspaper archives from the 1980s have been digitized, there is no way I'm pouring over microfilm to try and substantiate Baolin Wu's claims, which I'm frankly prone to believe are probably fantasy.