Apech

Sounds plausible to me. In fact I have always thought that the WaiDan/nei dan tradition came from a single source which was both/neither - if you see what I mean.

My copy of the Seal of the Unity of Three suggests the earliest date for the Cantong qi of Han dynasty - this text is said to be the beginning of a implicit Nei Dan tradition - but of course there are no explicit nei dan texts until around 700 AD as you say. But you said you don't trust anything before 500 AD so I was trying to work out which texts or schools you mean. That was the reason for my post. I agree that there was Buddhist influence in later texts. But then I quoted earlier a book which hints at least that the Buddhist yoga/tantra practices were influenced by Daoist Internal Alchemy. in calling this 'just a modern mix' what exactly are you relying on as authentic? That's what I'm getting at and don't understand.

The Cantong qi is dated to Han dynasty - so around 200bc -200 ad. so you won't find any Nei Dan before that only Wei Dan.

Not that modern ... The learning of the divine immortals consists in nothing but cultivating and reining xing and ming.? Wang Jie 王 玠 (z. Daoyuan 道 淵 , ca. 1380), Cuigong ruyao jing zhujie 崔公入藥鏡註解 (Commentary on the Mirror for Compounding the Medicine, DZ 135),

This thread has gone all Jesusy. Shame.

the use of alchemical agents is mostly Weidan and predate Nei dan.

Jesus of Daobums - "Turning the waffle into whine"

From Samuel - Origins of Yoga and Tantra

Could you give me a detailed explanation of the terms 'youwei' and 'wuwei'.?

I think this may be a problem! But I'll let the Daoists on here answer you. But just to say that Internal Alchemy is usually understood to be both Xing and Ming, so you may be missing 50%. I think the male/female, yin/yang, emptiness/lumonisty may be for another thread. Big subject.

Do you think Daoist Alchemy exists independently from Daoism? TTC Ch. 1 The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery. Uniting emptiness and luminosity: ... very different from uniting male and female???? The way to the Father is not duality if he and the father are one ????

'the Dao that can be spoken of is not the eternal/constant Dao' It's not pre-packaging at all but a statement of truth. It is nothing to do with discouraging sailors and wotnot - it is saying the truth about reality is beyond words and non-conceptual. And thank goodness for that too . I don't agree that yin and yang are 'material' but I won't split hairs - otherwise yes uniting the two is the key - in Buddhism they say the union of emptiness and luminosity and so on. jesus? Three persons in one? Is this non-duality? Could be.

All the systems which I am aware of, all the good ones anyway say that the absolute is ineffable, mysterious and beyond words/concepts. What they try to do though is provide a framework for working towards realisation of ... whatever you want call it. I realise that doesn't exactly address your point but it is a starting point. In the same way Jesus says you only come to the Father through me - meaning the Logos provides the way to the Absolute. Beyond that the teachings are culturally embedded to be helpful to people who are karmically linked to a particular way of seeing things - hence the variety of schools/sects/systems. They do borrow heavily from each other - particularly Yoga/Tantra from Daoist Internal Alchemy - where they take some principles from the Daoist approach and put it in the context of Indian Sramana and Brahmanical systems. It is very hard to untangle how what we have available today has come to be as it is.

isn't it against the Daobums rules to agree with each other?????

Well, that's your opinion

That's vedanta.

Not sure what you are getting at here - but there is no soul (or other agent in samara) in Buddhism.

It's true that a lot of Buddhist texts suggest that you should view reality as 'like a dream' and so on. Which suggest illusion. But if you think about it - when you are dreaming it is completely real. So the advice can be a bit misleading. Illusion is a bad word to use as it suggests faulty perception. It would be better to say it is not as it seems. But also that in an ordinary everyday sense it is as it seems - it is conventionally true provided your perception is not faulty. In terms of things, what is being said is that they do not exist in and of themselves and the existence they don't have is an eternal and indestructible selfhood. They are more like effects arising in a flow - a bit like the river which is never the same one moment to the next - but no-one would say there is no river - it is more a debate about what the river actually is. If you said that the phenomena you observe has an eternal indestructible self - and you allow the same selfhood for yourself - then you have duality.

I think dreams are a good way to follow this material - since dreams operate on a deeper level than say conscious memory and can provide links between subject matter which the conscious mind would probably filter out. So I don't think we are in disagreement about that. If by absolute emotional identification you mean fully engaging with the process and keeping it in the here and now - rather than looking it from afar as through a metaphorical microscope - then I would again agree that this is essential to 'sorting out' this stuff. But I think that it is a simple fact that what you are is not the same as the sum of ancestral or historical records - and this is important for gaining freedom or liberation from imposed patterning. Otherwise we would be mere puppets of stored emotional content, pushed around by the force of those emotions and without any free will. So I think it is important to convince oneself that the observer is not the observed.

Chakral confrontations! I think you should copyright that phrase.

Just gaze at this image:

Dear boy, Just run along and play with yourself.

yes

Karma means 'action' - when people use the word to mean accumulated baggage they really mean 'results of karma'. Action has results, you push something it moves and so on. Hence ripples in consciousness could be said to be karmic. When you act or experience something it leaves an imprint in what is called the alaya-vijnana which translates as 'storehouse consciousness' or 'possession consciousness' (the is Buddhist terminology from Yogacara). What this is referring to is our consciousness as a perfect recording material. The imprints act like seeds in the soil. When the right conditions exist then they will grow a bear fruit. So there can be a delay of an indefinite amount of time before this happens. So karma is not immediate. The cumulative effects of stored experience can be overwhelming, especially if involving violence and other high energy and unassimilable material. But the dual approach of non-identification (that is coming to a direct understanding of the status of this content and the fact that it isn't 'you') and careful and patient probing of thoughts, memories and records which cause pain and trauma to gently release the energy locked up in them - will in time allow assimilation. When I said the karma dissolves, I think technically this is only half true. What dissolves is the compacted energy/form of the karma as an active seed. If you dissolve karma the energy is discharged and becomes available for new free expression, while the form is assimilated but available as wisdom - wisdom from experience.

Well I was thinking about the activity which ripples through consciousness eternally - and it could be argued that this is also in a sense karmic. If you think of wave like motion it is alternate expansion contraction etc. if you see what i mean.