Zhuo Ming-Dao

Warning - Big, unhelpful personal story to follow: I did some physical qi gong practices for a while and felt no tangible results (but then my teacher at the time also did not have any tactile sensations of qi...). At this time I was also doing some deep trance meditation and stumbling around trying to understand an altered state that I had experienced as a child every time I had a serious fever. Then I dropped the martial arts after I received my first reiki healing. This event triggered a sudden, unexpected kensho experience. I spent the next handful of years learning reiki and practicing on many hundreds of people. At this time, when I had a firm intention to heal, my hands would heat up, the energy would start flowing from my hands, I could feel the emotions and physical pain of my clients, and have solid results. However, most people that I know who did reiki did not have such amazing results. Reiki seems to be a very haphazard technique, since it has so few formal practices to help people who do not have a natural knack for it. Also, as we have discussed elsewhere, it does not have many safe guards for the things that can go wrong (and some teachers even claim that nothing can ever go wrong, which is simply false). Then I discovered Robert Bruce's Astral Dynamics. I spent several years using his (fire method) technique to systematically open up my system, ratchet up my ability to feel every flow through my body, clear out all blockages that I could find, and force open the microcosmic orbit a little at a time. This was rather forceful, but very effective. I also found that hours after I had practiced and I was walking somewhere or sitting and not thinking about anything, the energy would move on its own in a far more smooth and natural way. Also at this time I learned astral projection and lucid dreaming. I began being woken up occasionally by painful dreams of electricity going up my spine. These things were fun and interesting, but less important than the energy work. Now I am doing long bouts of zazen. Once I was able to comfortably enter access concentration, the energy and the microcosmic orbit stabilized and started to flow smoothly and naturally on their own whenever I was on the pillow. When off the pillow, it flows like this by itself whenever my mind becomes still. Also, my healing energy is now much more subtly profound than it used to be. Throughout my day I also try to do vipassana. I gave so much time to "my story," not because I think that it is important or unique or even interesting, but because I don't think that I can point you to a single thing and say "do this" and you will get "this." Everyone is wired differently. Also, I might try new techniques now, but I do not know if they would have helped me more or less when I was first starting. I see a lot of people go straight to water techniques in the hope of energy sensations right off the bat, such as qi gong or stillness meditation, and spend 30+ years without experiencing qi directly. Because of this, I usually recommend that people start with something that deliberatly uses the mind to move the qi, in order to build up qi sensitivity to a good degree, and then switch to a more gentle method. Everyone is built differently, though, so you should either find a teacher who is good enough to know how to tailor their teachings to their students, or be a student who is willing to try different things, take some risks, and put in good effort to whatever you are doing without going overboard.

I think that it is a great idea for us realistically evaluate our progress and think a little bit about what we really think we are capable of achieving. That said, I do not mean that we should be proud, or that we should be setting crazy, unrealistic expectations. We don't want the goals to get in the way of the path, but it is valuable to provide a guide for ourselves to keep us practicing. I have already achieved a few of my early spiritual goals, particularly the ones relating to self discipline, self control, will power, relaxation/stress reduction, a high level of emotional equanimity, a good flow of healing energy, and a solid current through my microcosmic orbit. I the next few years I hope to achieve more reliable stability in the higher states of concentration meditation, more Vipassana noting speed and control, and some nice energetic breakthroughs. In the distant future I hope to realize some form of enlightenment, be this through a kundalini event, satori, or an Taoist alchemical transformation. I will take whatever I can get (assuming that they are even actually different realizations and not just different maps and terminology for the same realization). If any form of immortality comes, I will not complain, but I am not actively seeking it.

These are difficult questions. I had the most trouble with the last one, regarding spiritual agents or entities. My trouble arises from the fact that I do not believe in such beings as a matter of faith or because someone told me about them and they sounded like a good idea. But I have experienced supernatural entities, and my experiences fell completely in line with traditional Taoist beliefs in nature spirits, immortals, etc. However, I do not yet have enough evidence to convince me that these beings have any objective reality, even though their archetypal forms correlate with Taoist and Chinese folk mythology. Since part of being a Taoist, for me, is experimenting and experiencing these things personally, comparing them with tradition, and theorizing, rather than accepting based on faith, I find this question difficult. In short, I do not know if I "believe" in spiritual agents as discrete entities, though I know that the experience of encountering spiritual agents is a significant and potentially meaningful event.

When I first started learning reiki, my teacher had me doing a lot of (yi mind) energy work on my head and in my third eye. Of course, this quickly became problematic, because unlike her other students, I actually did all of the practices and I did them for long, sustained periods of time. At first I began feeling lightheaded and dizzy on and off for hours after I had stopped the practice. Then I began feeling unfocused, unable to concentrate, and confused, with strange noises in my ears. The teacher's fix for this at first was to give me reiki on my head to help "balance" me. As I continued to practice, I began to develop continuous splitting head aches and migraines. When it got to this point I discontinued the practice and focused on grounding and the real world for a while. After a few weeks things went back to normal. Moral of the story - Make sure that the advice you are following has actually been carried out as directed by someone before you, with good effect. People often recommend techniques because they have read about them or have done them intermittently or without real effort or intention. This is particularly pronounced in any New Age community setting...

Taoism was practiced in Japan during the Heian Period by a group of people known as the Onmyoji (Yin-Yang Masters). They were officials in government paid positions and their job was to perform feng shui, astrology, Taoist ritual magic, exorcism, and other Taoist techniques. After the Heian Period they lost their jobs and mostly took the the mountains, where they eventually helped to form the Shugendo tradition (a fusion of Taoism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Shintoism). Even today anyone who goes into the wilderness to practice spirituality in Japan is called a sennin (仙人) or what in Chinese would be a Taoist immortal. Of course Folk Taoism also traveled to Japan, but most of that mixed in so thoroughly with Shinto in the last 1,000 years that it has become indistinguishable. And (whether some people believe it or not) it also went to Tibet and influenced Tibetan Buddhism. All you have to do is look through a book on Tibetan Buddhist symbolism to see countless examples of this. The best example is the Six Signs of Long Life, which were pulled directly from Taoism (and often actually depict Lao Tzu himself in addition to Taoist cranes and deer). Other good ones are their use of Cinnabar and the Taoist longevity symbol.

I think you need to read some more history. There is not a single religious founder that I can think of who had an easy time of it. The Buddha had many enemies in his life time, some of whom tried to kill him. People thought that he was nuts, but he would usually use some psychic powers on them or teleport or something, and they would back off. Mohamed was thought completely crazy, so he gathered up the homeless and the poor, converted them, left Mecca, trained them into an army, and then started conquering everyone that disagreed with him. Then he returned to Mecca with his now huge army and got the last laugh. Jesus was killed for his beliefs. Lao Tzu was probably fictional, but even so, he was just a lonely librarian until after he disappeared off the face of the earth. Then people started reading his poems. Confucius spent his entire life trying to get a king or governor to listen to him, and he failed in his life time. He died poor with only a small number of followers, having made no impact at all in his lifetime. Moses had to magically kill the first born sons of an entire city before anyone listened to him, and still his own people continued to worship golden calf idols. I could keep going with Zoroaster, Nanuk, Mahavira, and many others, but I think you get the point. Founding a new religion is never easy, and people will pretty much always think you are crazy.

Oh Buddhism... Serene Blue, please do not take this nonsense too seriously. Remember that at the time Indian society was very patriarchal. The Buddha did a great service to all women (at the behest of Ananda) by allowing women to take vows and become nuns. Prior to this, no women could ever engage in spiritual practice in India at all. The Buddha broke the many societal rules and conceptual norms by opening things up for women, but his tradition was not able to shuck all of the nonsense away immediately. As Enishi said, there was a very practical reason for men to think that they were better off, since they were not endowed with periods, shifting hormones, childbirth, and other physical limitations, in addition to the societal limitations that would have made it impossible for them to make most major life decisions (such as taking the vows) without the unlikely consent of their fathers, husbands, or even sons. With all of these problems, it must have seemed clear that a female birth was an unfortunate one. Here is something to keep in mind: While rebirth in the Western Paradise of Amitabha would automatically bring you back as a man, rebirth in the Eastern Paradise of Akshobya would bring you back as a woman who would not have a period, could have painless, instantaneous childbirth, and would have a beautiful physical form with no sexual desire. Either way, Taoism traditionally had a much healthier view of the feminine throughout its history. At least Vajrayana has consorts for all of its Buddhas, and it frequently depicts its advanced beings as hermaphroditic.

I went for about five years with a twice weekly schedule, and then finally got up the will power a little less than a year ago to do zazen every morning at dawn. I have only missed one day so far, because it was the day after a retreat and I needed a mental break My practice has deepened profoundly since I switched to a daily schedule.

This is a fascinating scenario! As a junior high/high school teacher myself I would love to give some of my ideas from what I have seen. The most important point - Classes should be small! If we have 25 students, we should have about three classes. That gives students enough peers to drive them to deeper exploration, but not so many to create real distractions or to fall behind. Perhaps the biggest problem that I am faced with as a teacher is lack of attention and focus of the students in the classroom (granted, I am working in a pretty great teaching environment right now). This problem could be solved with a combination of meditation and deliberate, disciplined martial arts spread throughout the day. This would give the kids the focus to be engaged in class for longer periods and in more meaningful ways. The biggest thing that I would take away from the model used at the charter school where I work now is the great books seminar model. Basically, the students read some of the greatest books ever written and come into class to talk about them in a circle discussion format. In the younger grades we read things like Aesop's Fables and Treasure Island, and in the higher grades we read things such as Plato and Descartes. This works beautifully for both history and literature. It develops their deep thinking skills, discussion and debate abilities, and it makes history and literature something meaningful and personal and real. The only change that I would make would be to add in a bunch of Asian texts. (If anyone here is interested in this, there is a good watered-down system with lesson plans already made up called Touch-Stones. It is very effective in public school environments). Just as history and literature would be more based around self exploration and development of ideas, so too should science and math. I think that the natural environment should be used as fully as possible to act as a laboratory for geometry and any type of science. It would be interesting to integrate meditative/energetic/contemplative studies into this using the scientific method. It could be something that they experiment with, test for reproducibility, and take the evidence that they individually gather to form theories about the nature of reality and subjective experience. This could line up with their philosophical studies in very interesting ways. I would also want to make sure that we are not burning them out with "homework." Given the model that we are working with and class sizes, most work could be done in class. The biggest out of class thing to do would be reading. We would also want to some how integrate much more practical pursuits, such as musical training, art, hunting, sewing, navigating, and so on. I do not know how I would want to organize all of this, but it is certainly worth some serious thought.

I got my information from the book Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. In it was the chapter by David Waterhouse called Notes on the Kuji, where he lays this out. http://books.google.com/books?id=gsLDwvmnt...;q=&f=false Go to page two. If only google was so amazingly wonderful back when I was in college, it would have saved so many hundreds of hours of research time... Edit: Upon rereading the last post, I want to make sure that it is clear that the mudras did come from Buddhism (and therefore probably from India), but the mantra, the words that go with the mudra, came from a Chinese Taoist magic spell. But yes, the Taoist spell came first.

Just out of curiosity, could we discuss this very difficult and interesting question? Marblehead gave a solid, if slightly materialistic, answer and explanation. Vajrahridaya provided a literal, traditional Vajrayana interpretation. Both of these answers have great merit. I would also like to see the interpretations of other schools of thought. And maybe I am asking too much, but I would also like to see a discussion and debate of the ideas rather than the people who presented the ideas. To support Marblehead's original proposition, the Buddha refused (in the Pali Cannon) to talk about parinirvana. Given that the mechanism that caused people to reincarnate was extinguished upon reaching nirvana, and that there was no self, and that the skandas would no longer have anything to hold them together, it is perfectly logical to assume that the Buddha ceased to exist after his physical body died. However, I tend to fall on the more optimistic side. Since the Buddha (or any enlightened one) lost the sense of an independent, eternal self, and Realized the interdependent nature of reality, I think that he simply became that interconnectedness. In other words, he became Indra's Net, and his true self/buddha nature continues to reverberate through the timeless interconnections from the beginning of time to the end of time. Perhaps this is just a more philosophical way for presenting Vajrahridaya's more mythological perspective. I also admit that my interpretation is based on reading and extrapolation rather than personal experience (I have never traveled to such high astral realms, and even if I did I would still probably suspect that my mind was interpreting a grander experience through more familiar symbolism and mythology.) Does anyone else have a take on it? - Oh, and by Buddhism's own religious definition of the word god, we know that enlightenment is something that the Hindu gods (and presumably gods of other traditions) have not yet achieved. A Buddha is therefore something more than a god (or less than a god - thank you durkhrod chogori). If you mean the word "god" in a more anthropological sense, then we need to specify that a little so that we are all working from the same perspective.

The mantra that goes with the kuji-in is originally Chinese. Like you said, it was a spell recorded by Ge Hong in the Baopu Tzu. Its purpose was to protect a person from demons and wild animals when they were going into untamed forests and mountains to train. The spell was Taoist in origin and was just a sentence in classical Chinese asking for assistance from a heavenly army. The Buddhist mudras were added to the spell later at some impossible to determine time. The combined technique was received in Japan from China during the Tang dynasty. It was originally used by the Onmyoji (Yin-Yang Masters) of the Japanese court, which suggests that it came from Chinese Taoists, not Buddhists. But during the Kamakura period, after most of the Department of Yin-Yang (Onmyoryo) was disbanded, the techniques were picked up by Shugendo practitioners (who were originally made up of both Vajrayana Buddhists and former Yin-Yang Masters). Since Shugendo is often considered a form of Buddhism (even though it is no more or less Buddhism than it is Taoism or Shintoism) the kuji-in are often mistaken as being purely Buddhist, and the mantra as being originally from Sanskrit. Edit: Though it is, of course, true that the verbal spell was mangled a bit from its journey from Classical Chinese pronunciation to Japanese pronunciation.

To anyone who owns the first and second edition: If I already own the first edition, is it worth my time and money to buy the second edition as well? Is there much new information? I also wanted to chime in about the merits of this energy development system. I spent quiet a while doing qi gong moves with no ability to actually feel qi. After a few days with this system I could feel it clearly and manipulate it at will. After a few months I had cleared out huge blockages and created a sustainable flow, and after less then a year my microcosmic orbit was powerfully surging through my body. This system is clearer and more to the point than Mantak Chia, or really any other Buddhist, Hindu or Taoist explanation and instruction into energy control that I have ever read. From there, if you want to cultivate conscious out of body experiences, go for it. If you do meditation long enough, though, OBEs and lucid dreams will come on their own, whether you think they are helpful or not. Even the historical Buddha engaged in OBE in the Pali texts, even if he did not offer it as a method for liberation.

This is one of the very common side effects of post-kundalini arousal. This will usually happen within the weeks after the kundalini has arisen (or if you're a Theravada Buddhist, after the Arising and Passing) during the dark night of the soul phase. This article speaks directly to your problem: http://realization.org/page/doc0/doc0053.htm Here is an excerpt: I also recommend reading Daniel Ingram's book. He has a free online version here: http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml In it he talks about ways to power through this stage of awakening into Equanimity, when your body integrates the kundalini experience and overcomes the potential side effects of the dark night.

Thank you, that was a wonderful example.

The problem here is that the author is viewing Daoism as just another set of ethics to be followed and to force your life to fit within. This is the conventional approach, but exact opposite of the Daoist approach. Instead of analyzing an event and trying to use your limited human reasoning to create a morally constructed response (e.g. "What would be the most harmonious thing to do in this situation?"), Daoists react spontaneously and naturally to the situation, without thought or contrivance. This state is not achieved through philosophizing, but through transformative spiritual practices. The specifically proscriptive morality that Daoist schools suggest is intended for those disciples who have not yet achieved any stability in wu wei (or wei wu wei). These types of limiting rules do not apply to the sage, who responds as the situation demands, rather then by an externally imposed rule set.

Traditionally, in Chinese culture it was even frowned upon to cut your hair, since you we supposed to return your body to your ancestors as you received it as a matter of filial piety. This was one of the reasons why it was such a big deal to shave your head and become a Buddhism monk or nun. Keep in mind that nearly 90% of people who sign up as organ donors on their drivers licenses do not end up donating when they die because they did not express their wishes to their family members. Or sometimes their family members actively decided against donation after the person is dead. One organ and tissue donor can save or dramatically improve the quality of life for up to other 27 people, so make sure your wishes are known or put your wishes in legal documentation.

Last year I taught middle school Latin, so I hear these types of arguments all the time from both students and parents. "It is a waste of time," "it is not useful for anything," "it has no practical application," "why don't you teach them Spanish instead?" I have heard it all. And in truth there are some practical benefits for learning Latin, such as an increased English vocabulary, ease learning any later romance language, etc. But in the end, the real reason behind teaching it goes beyond all of that and into the ineffable. As with any part of a liberal arts education, it is just good to be a well rounded person who has been educated in a wide variety of topics and who understands his cultural roots. On the same token, spiritual pursuits may have some minor practical benefits (clarity of mind, increased memory, equanimity, better health, dream control, etc.), but the real reason is much more difficult to pin down. No matter how much science or math you study, there is still always going to be more. No matter how much TV you watch or alcohol you drink, you will still crave for more (some times even when you are still watching one show or currently drunk). Even the study of philosophy and the faith in religion does necessarily quench this feeling that things are not quiet right, that you are not quiet right. You may drink and screw and read and try your damnedest to try to hide from it, but in the end it is still there. Boredom. Disquiet. Suffering. The unsatisfactory quality of our lives. All of those practical peaces of advice that you offered are just distractions from this fact of life. There are people, but from antiquity and modernity, from the East and the West, who claim that meditation, that understanding the inner process of the mind and the body's energy, can lead to a different mode of operating in the world. To a free, liberated state of existence. A state of effortless effort, where one is able to perceive and operate in the universe in a radically different way. If this was true, would it not be worth the investment of some of our free time? Even if it might not be true, does that mean we should not try? If you do not experiment to learn the truth for yourself, then you are not a scientist or a rationalist. You are just an evangelical missionary in the Church of Materialism. Have fun preaching your blind faith.

Empress Wu is a fascinating character! At age 13 she was made one of Emperor Gaozong's concubines, and spent all of her teenage years secretly offing all of the other wives and concubines. Eventually she was able to put one of her son's into a direct line for heir. Once he was in place, she had the Emperor killed and she became the defacto ruler through her son. She then had all of the remaining concubines executed (in some pretty awful ways) and she set up a network of secret police to kill anyone who might speak out against her or plan rebellion. Once her son was older, he started making decisions on his own an tried to take real power. So she had him killed and placed his little brother on the throne. After some years, she had finally consolidated her power enough that she took him off the throne and ended the Tang dynasty by placing herself on the throne as Empress (Huangdi) and founding the Zhuo Dynasty. As Empress she was able to publicly break the taboos against remarriage, and she set up a nice little harem for herself. She was staunchly Taoist (perhaps because one of her early secret lovers was a Buddhism monk, and he turned against her), and so she outlawed Buddhism and pored huge amounts of money into Taoism. She also reconstructed the Phoenix Pavilion and performed a recreation of the ancient ascension ritual which would place all of the spirits of China under her control and make her into the supreme empress of China. The First Emperor of Qin tried this as well, but it is said that the gods rejected him, and by Ming Yang, a usurper during the brief hiccup in the middle of the Han dynasty. As an old woman, she was finally disposed by some of her officials, who wrote edicts in her name while she spent several days ill in bed. Through those edicts they were able to have her hansom young 'guards' thrown out and killed and maneuver themselves into position to retire her and place another person from the Tang dynastic line on the throne, thus restoring the Tang dynasty to power. Does her monument, which she designed for herself, remind you of anything? She was just such an interesting woman, even if she was a power hungry psychopath.

Along these same lines, we can ask the question: Does every enlightened person automatically have psychic powers (siddhis)? There does seem to be a link (concentration skill helps greatly to develop psychic abilities and to achieve the enlightened state), but I think it is unreasonable to say that every enlightened person can automatically read minds. I suspect that the same relationship exists in between ethics and enlightenment.

This is a wonderful point. I think that it really depends on what your definition of "enlightened" is. It is altogether possible to be enlightened, an arhant, Taoist immortal, what have you, and experience reality from a state that is liberated from the illusion of a separate self, and yet still have all kinds of problems operating in everyday society. When you read the Pali Cannon with a discerning eye you start to see a very different Buddha than the perfect super-being that is spoken of in the Mahayana texts. If you think that an enlightened person is totally omniscient, can fly and shoot laser beams from his eyes, never makes any mistakes, will solve all of the worlds problems automatically... then I think you will have a very hard time in your quest for enlightenment or in finding an enlightened teacher. For instance, I think the Dalai Lama is an enlightened human being (among others), but that does not mean that he is INCAPABLE of making mistakes. In fact, if someone thought that their teacher was incapable of making mistakes, I would seriously start worrying about the person, because any teacher that tries to make their students think they are perfect is dangerous. I think that we need to be clear about what we mean when we say enlightened. Particularly when we are taking about an enlightened living human being. After an enlightened person sheds their mortal coil, it might be a totally different story. People make bad decisions some times. Just because they can see through the delusions of self, permanence, and suffering, does not make them immune to bad decisions and it does not make everything they do wise.In fact, as Inedible pointed out, being in a state beyond good and evil might just make it more likely for you to make bad decisions in some cases. You will just make those decisions in the NOW with no attachment to the events or the consequences. _________________________________ That being said, I think that we will not come to a total consensus on this point until we can create a clear definition of enlightenment that we can all agree upon. Personally, I do not think enlightenment automatically turns a person into a saint, even if that person needed some virtue to achieve enlightenment. I have read of many saints who were not enlightened and many enlightened people who were not saints.

I voted for the Tang Dynasty... though my first choice wasn't listed. The Tang period produced some of China's greatest poets, painting, calligraphy, teas , literature, and architecture. It was during this period that a great synthesis and revival of ideas occurred in all of the major schools of religion and philosophy.The Confucians stopped being the same old stodgy officials and remade their philosophy by integrating Taoist metaphysical principles to create Neo-Confucianism. Chan (Zen) Buddhism was created through the fusion of Buddhism and Taoism. And Taoism, in addition to experiencing a surge in popularity, made huge leaps in the sophistication of all of the monastic practices, meditational techniques, and cultural influence (poetry, calligraphy, etc.) I also love the evil Empress Wu. My favorite period, though, is the Warring States period, after the Zhou had collapsed but before the First Emperor of Qin rose up to unite the empire. Warring States was when most of the great ancient philosophers lived and died (Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Han Fei Tzu, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tsu, Leih Tzu, Mo Tzu, Yang Tzu, etc.). It was a time of intrigue and power struggles, where everyone was trying to figure out the best way to bring peace and order to the land. Also of interest is the pre-Zhuo dynasties of Xia and Shang. There is ever growing evidence that these periods really did exist. And perhaps even more interesting is the period of mythological history before the Xia dynasty, with the golden age of Yao, Shun, and Yu, the flood, the Yellow Emperor and the invention of medicine, and the Yi Ching. For you Han Dynasty lovers out there, I can commiserate. Yoda gave a very brief outline of the rise, but really, it was even more exciting than just that. If you are interested you MUST read Records of the Grand Historian: Han I by Sima Qian. It history at its best and most exciting. The Han dynasty also gave birth to several great emperors that ruled through Taoist virtue and it was ended largely by the Yellow Turban revolts, a series of peasant uprisings that was orchestrated by a brilliant, charismatic religious Taoist after he was tossed out of court for trying to manipulate the emperor, and succeeding... I expect to see some people vote for the Three Kingdoms period just due to love of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms video games