Zhuo Ming-Dao

_______________________________________________ Now my personal view: In think that the act of making a baby is the most spiritual and beautiful thing that a human being can do. It is so powerful and transformative that the later Taoists formulated their whole spiritual practice around duplicating the process spiritually and alchemically in order to create the spiritual fetus in their womb (the dan tien), allowing men to also experience that ultimate act of creation. Also, as a man who has felt a baby grow in his wife and then lost that child, I could never imagine myself deliberately and willfully causing this to occur. To me, emotionally and spiritually, it would be no different from taking a mature life. And to those who say that it is not a baby until the umbilical cord is cut... I can only imagine and hope that they are people who have never had a baby of their own. Once you feel your child kick you and react to your touch, it can no longer be "just" a fetus. That said, I do not judge others for the decisions that they make and I would not think of denying a person the ability to make those decisions. I did not personally come to these conclusions until after I had been personally faced with both life and death. You cannot impose this kind of love and compassion onto someone, you can only hope that they someday find it on their own.

I will provide the historical perspective: In the China in which Taoism and Confucianism arose, there would only be one reason in which a woman would ever consider abortion... and that, of course, was in the case of infidelity or rape. Under these particular circumstances, a woman could theoretically seek out a doctor whom she trusted to keep her secret and have him give her herbs and acupuncture designed to bring on her period. This, though, had to been done in the first month or two of pregnancy in order to work safely. Of course, since Confucianism and Chinese society in general considered infidelity and rape to be terribly defiling and a absolute failure of the woman's role in society, they were something that would bring down immense shame and possible desolation onto the woman and her family if this became public knowledge. A good Taoist might have a more open and understanding view of the woman, but even s/he would have to go with the general flow of society or leave society. Most of what women devoted their religious and spiritual pursuits to in this regard, was making babies, not stopping them. There were countless magical, energetic, herbal, and prayer-based practices devoted to increasing fertility and guaranteeing a safe birth and healthy baby. Remember, this religion arose in a time when most babies died in the womb or in their first year, hence it was customary to not name the baby until it reached its first birthday so that the parents would not get too attached. In the meantime, they would call it things like Craphead, or Turtle Egg, or other insults in order to make the baby less appealing to demons and nature spirits that might attack it. Similarly, the Buddhists (and eventually the Taoists too) prayed primarily to Guan Yin for a baby and then for the baby's safety. And also, to increase their odds at getting a boy to continue the family line. Really, the question of abortion as it currently exists today is a totally and incomprehensibly foreign question to most pre-modern people, and particularly the Chinese. It only really appeared in China for the first time in any way after the communist ban on more than one child per family.

In the United States it is a state by state issue. There are a couple of states that require you to have massage therapist license, but most do not. Many states are trying to push it in this direction though. For instance, this is California: Meanwhile, Florida and several other southern states do require a massage license (which will typically come from a program that could take 6-10 months and cost from $4,000-10,000 or sometimes more.) If you are practicing under a massage therapist license you will also need insurance (+$200 per year) and you will need to abide by certain very specific guidelines on when, how, and where you can practice (also determined by the state). You are going to have to look into the laws of the state where you live. Some states are very flexible (and sometimes far too flexible). One of the interesting problems of this profession (both in massage and energy healing) is that many prostitutes hide under these job titles in order to evade the law. This makes life for legitimate healers very difficult. Either way, you never want to claim that you are going to help save, heal, or cure someone. You are just a therapist offering treatments to clients and you are never a healer offering cures to patients. This slight change in wording is the difference between running a successful business and getting yourself slammed with a lawsuit when you are unable to instantly "cure" someone of cancer.

Along these general lines, there are countless legends about eunuchs who did cultivation practices and became effeminate superhuman monsters. Basically, the traditional consensus was that proper harmonization of yin and yang was vital for safe, high level energy cultivation work, and being a man who does not have sexual equipment or has sex with another man makes it much harder to receive enough yin energy to balance the excessive yang in their body (and the extra yang that they may be receiving from their partner's jing). Meanwhile, lesbian sex does cause extra yin jing to transfer to their partner, so it would not really be any more different than using single cultivation or being celibate.

Just to clarify a point of contention here: The cultivation of loving-kindness is a relative practice that sets up good seeds of karma and softens anger, but does not itself lead directly to enlightenment. It is also not the practice that the Dalai Lama was specifically advocating. The practice that he does above all others is the cultivation of compassion or karuna. This type of compassion is non-emotional and unattached to any specific object. It starts from the Bodhisattva vow to delay your enlightenment until after all other sentient beings have been saved. From there it deepens and permeates your experiential understanding of emptiness and dependent origination. Some practitioners mistake compassion for loving-kindness, but the two are very different things. This type of compassion has no opposite (is not dualistic) because it arises from an apprehension of the true nature of reality and therefore does lead one to enlightenment. (I am not saying here that I have anything against practices that do not themselves lead directly to enlightenment, any more than I would discourage someone from doing sit-ups. I am just trying to clear up a misconception here.) PS. Findley, did you really just attack the Dalai Lama?? I know the man might have some flaws, but why don't you just throw in Mother Teresa and Ghandi while you are at it. And please try to make sure you understand the practices that you are attacking before you start falsely flaming famous humanitarians.

Finding expert taiji/qigong/TCM people in China is pretty easy these days. Since the early 90s or so (my ancient history is better than my modern ) the government has lifted the ban and worked hard to promote taiji as a traditional calisthenic. Also, TCM has become a major part of hospital and clinic treatment as the government found that it is more affordable and nearly as effective as state sponsored western medical health care. The trouble is in finding genuine spiritual cultivators (not just people who collect qi) and people who are versed in the ancient textual traditions. It is not that they do not exist, but just that most of them were driven off in the 1950s and not allowed to teach for over 40 years... so many lineages died off. Several years ago the state funded a program to print and distribute millions of copies of the Tao Te Ching in order to recapture a little of their philosophical heritage, but the books were "translated" into modern, spoken Mandarin Chinese (which is radically different from Classical Chinese). Included with the "translations" was a reformatting of much material so that it conformed with the party line. Putting one of the books next to the original is pretty laughable. Oh well. Soooo, you are going to have to look for an academic at the school you are staying at or find the rare someone who has been initiated into one of the surviving textual traditions. If your school in Beijing has a Classics program, maybe one of the professors will know where to point you. As for The Secret of the Golden Flower, keep in mind that this text is not one of the most famous Taoist texts in China. It has become incredibly popular in the West due to some strong promotion from C.G. Jung, but in China it is just one of dozens of important NeoTaoist texts. If you find someone to teach you, you will want to be open to whatever text he means to introduce you to. Besides, there are MANY great Taoist texts that have not been translated into English yet, and if you could get guidance through one of them and then translate it with a commentary from a genuine lineage...

Oops, I meant to give you the link for Livia Kohn's book on comparative monastic traditions, not her monastic rule translation. Both are great books, but the one I meant to link to is a bit less expensive (though still not cheap). I know sometimes I still wish I was in college if for no other reason than to have access to a high level academic library. http://www.amazon.com/Monastic-Life-Mediev...8512&sr=1-1 Rather than have me rake my memory trying to remember all those details from collage, here is a link with a very brief and simplified explanation of some of the particulars of the origins of Taoist monasticism. http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/taoism/geness.html

You are absolutely right about the early Taoism of the late Zhuo Dynasty and the Warring States period. By the time we reached the Han Dynasty, early Taoist philosophy and practice had mixed significantly with the Yin-Yang (5-phase theory) school, the Penglai (longevity) school, the Naturalists (anti-civilization), the Yang Tsu school (natural hedonism), and the fenshi practices (alchemy/fu magic). This grew during the course of the 800+ year long Han Dynasty to also include deity warship and animism, until you start seeing whole Taoist communities and theocratic societies arise. After the fall of the Han dynasty, various splinter states begun sponsoring Buddhism, which in turn gave rise to monasteries popping up in different parts of China. The Taoists soon followed suit and began building their own monasteries in order to compete with the new kids in town. Throughout the rest of Chinese history, Emperors or entire dynasties would choose to primarily sponsor either Buddhism or Taoism and defrock monks and nuns from the loosing religion depending largely on the politics of the period. For example, when the Mongols or Manchu ruled China, they wanted a religion in power that was not native and entrenched, so they sponsored just Buddhism in order to guarantee loyalty. When the Han Chinese were in power, though, they would usually prefer Taoism. Islam had several periods where it received excellent patronage and funding from the state, but because it did not require monasteries, it never became a huge political player. If you want to get a better idea of Taoist monastic life and history check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Daoist-Monastic-Manu...9803&sr=8-6

This is a tall order that I wish I had more personal experience on (or maybe not...as such things often seem to be violent). Perhaps someone else has more personal experience than I. I seem to recall a person on one tread saying that they were a closet Taoist in a Muslim family. I would love to hear more about what that might be like. From a historical standpoint I can tell you what it was like in China. For the most part, their interactions together were VERY tolerant and peaceful. Chinese Muslims held to the precepts but otherwise wore traditional Chinese clothes and lived normal Chinese lifestyles (minus the kitchen god and a few festivals ). It was rare or impossible for them to go make the pilgrimage to Mecca of course, but otherwise they would keep the dietary and prayer precepts. There were a few periods where it was hard to be a Muslim in China, like while the Mongols ruled (but it was also hard on monastic Taoists then too). But for the most part they were tolerant of each other. Many problems were probably avoided since Chinese Muslims largely lost contact with the rest of the Muslim world before the Hadith became law (which would have made them (men and women) stand out and look act in a fundamentally different way than other Chinese people). In modern mainland China, monastic Taoism is mostly dead. There are still some genuine cultivators, but most people that you meet in robes at temples are government employees and are just there for the tourists.(Priestly) Taoism is undergoing a bit of a revival the last few years in China, but it is not really comparable to what it was like prior to the Cultural Revolution. Islam currently makes up about 2% of the population of China, but again, it was largely decimated during the Cultural Revolution. I do not know what interactions are like now, but I would assume the government watches closely. In Taiwan I do not think that I saw any Muslims (but that does not mean there are none), while Taoism is ever present. So there, Islam would probably be an extreme minority. I am sorry if I am dominating this conversation, but I figured that I was invited to since my name was in the tag line.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the most important thing by far in the trade of ideas between Islam and Taoism. For the first 1,000 years or so of Islamic history there was a massive interest in alchemy. In fact, the west imported Arabic alchemy during the Renaissance and slowly transformed it into modern chemistry (while keeping some Hermetic traditions alive). Granted, the Moslims received the theory from ancient Greek and Egyptian texts, but they brought the physical practices to life on a wholly different level. Given this, it is foolish to think that there would not have been a major commerce of alchemical ideas and techniques between the Taoists and the Muslims in China.

This is a big claim to make since Islamic religion and culture directly gave birth to Western chemistry and several other forms of science, which flourished in Islamic countries during Europe's Dark Ages. So it would be impossible to live in a Westernized country and not feel the effects of Islamic culture on your belief system. ...of course, science is now king in the West, while Islamic countries have thoroughly stifled any form of progress thanks to the legal enforcement of Hadith traditions (by trying to recreate the lifestyle conditions and beliefs from the time of Mohamed and by throwing away all that which was not in the Quran). It is amazing how the world shifts.

I am happy to oblige (and hopefully others can chime in as well). China was one of the first countries in the world to receive Islam (as strange as that sounds). Mohamed's maternal uncle, Sa`ad ibn Abi Waqqas, was sent to meet with Emperor Gaozong in 650 A.D. The Emperor thought that the religion was compatible with Confucianism, so he ordered the building of a mosque and gave them state funding and permission to start converting Chinese. The Caliphate Empire became a huge trading partner for China, and Arabian and Persian Muslims became a very common feature in most major cities. From there it quickly spread to the locals and became one of the four court-recognized religions of China (next to Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism). In fact, several of China's most important historical figures were Muslims, such as Zheng He, the man who commanded the highly advanced Chinese fleet that traveled the world on a mission of exploration (and who many think beat Columbus to America). The Arabic script played a huge influence on calligraphy. It was responsible for some wonderful flourishes that became the norm in Chinese brush work. The architecture of Mosques inspired new aesthetic techniques in Taoist temples throughout the country. Taoist, Buddhist and Islamic temple building styles all played off of each other, stole from each other, and similarly shaped each others development. The Muslims also brought a new wealth of scientific discovery to China, particularly medicine, astrology and astronomy, which have always been of huge interest to the Taoists. The Taoists integrated this learning into Traditional Chinese Medicine, their fengshui, and into their early inner alchemical systems. Many NeoTaoist ideas came out of synthesis with or differentiation from prominent Islamic philosophy, just as what happened with Confucianism and Buddhism. When any two religions are in contact with each other, there will naturally be dialog. Chinese Muslims created and modified many forms of wushu such as bajiquan, piguazhang, and liuhequan. There were specific areas that were known to be centers of Muslim wushu, such as Cang County in Hebei. The majority of Chinese Muslims were Sunni, but there are also many large populations of Sufi Muslims as well since the introduction of Islam into China. Traditionally, it was very difficult to tell the difference between a Buddhist and a Sufi in China, because they would wear very similar robes, and do very similar practices. I think that there would have necessarily been some cross pollination between Sufi meditation and Taoist, even if it came through prior Buddhist syncratism.

I personally think that there is nothing wrong with hearing from and taking from as many perspectives as possible. Taoists have always taken whatever techniques or philosophies seem to work and integrate them into their practice, using Taoism as a type of metaphysical infrastructure. Confucian, Buddhist, Shamanic, and even Islamic (believe it or not). This was their Way and it should be our Way as well. You use what works for you and throw away what doesn't. As others have pointed out, the problems seem to arise when someone argues for "The Correct Way." They have found it and it is perfect/complete/true/original or some other wholly relative adjective. This view, even when coming from someone who is tolerant of the "lesser" ways, naturally predisposes the person to see it as their compassionate mission to point others to The Correct Way. Even this, I do not think is necessarily bad (though I can see how it could get a little tedious to some). What is destructive is when the person is actively intolerant of those other paths and possibilities. This sort of intolerance (whether it comes from a Buddhist, someone with THE technique, or a follower of the flying spaghetti monster) is actively harmful to humane discourse, the sharing of techniques and philosophies, and the general comradary between fellow seekers, which this site seems to exit to promote. I hope that none of the discussions that I have had on this site regarding Buddhism have bothered others. There are somethings that I believe Buddhism does a very good job of explaining, and other things in which Taoism, shamanism, the scientific method, Christianity, Western philosophy (and so on) have the upper hand. I do not discriminate based on creed, but on what philosophy or technique best fits the needs of the particular situation. And actually this, I believe, is a truly Taoist outlook.

This is a good point, but I was just saying that civilization did not exist 50,000 years ago. Even the most ridiculed, fringe archeologist would not claim that there were any real permanent structures from earlier than 18,000 BC, and that is pushing the envelope really hard. There may have been plenty of very enlightened nomadic tribes from the paleolithic age, but you could not say that they had any stone temples, crops, or sophisticated (metal) tools. The spinning wheel and pottery were not even invented until the neolithic age sometime after 11,000 BC. So the question that seems to arise is whether or not you can have fairly large groups of enlightened people and civilization (modern or not) at the same time. And for the record, if the kalpas are real I assume that they are referring to other worlds than ours, be it on another planet or in another dimension/realm of existence. I think that there is plenty of backing for this opinion in the Mahabharata of Hinduism, but even more in Buddhist texts such as the Lotus Sutra. You do not have to hold so rigidly to the idea of a kalpa as being an age on this particular earth. And there are many respected people who even go so far as to interpret the kalpa as an age in oneself (psyche), making the Kali Yuga into a type of dark night of the soul before cycling into enlightenment.

Just to make it perfectly clear, 50,000 years ago there were homo sapiens, but they were just hunter-gathering tribes. There was no civilization, no domesticated animals, no crops, no pots, no permanent huts, just nomads with spears and bone earrings. Absolutely all of our scientific evidence agrees with this. Now granted, Plato heard from some crazy old fisherman about an ancient city that he called Atlantis, and the New Age community has latched on to that idea, pushed it back to a ridiculous point in time and added an even older civilization prior to them (the Lemurians), so take what will from it. Even a reasonable theory of Atlantis would not place the city more than about 10,000 years back or so.

You absolutely will not find a better, more scholarly translation of the Gita than this: http://www.amazon.com/Bhagavadgita-Mahabha.../ref=pd_sim_b_3 If you are interested in the Gita and have a lot of reading time, you should work your way through the whole (or as much as has been translated) of the Mahabharata. The Bhagavadgita is just one tiny chapter in this massive work. Also for Hinduism, as someone else mentioned, you will need a copy of the Upanishads. R Krishnamurti is the translation that I use, just because it has all of them in one nice book. As with anything quite that esoteric, the translator will always have some unavoidable bias. For the Bible, this is the most actuate translation you will find today: http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Apocrypha-...1827&sr=8-1

Chuang Tzu saidin chapter one that there were people out there who could live only on dew/mist and chi. But said people also had snow white skin, were perfectly in tune with the Tao, made plants grow, and even flew. So maybe this is a technique that is just a little advanced, haha. Japanese hermits would often cut off all food but the occasional piece of tree bark (mokujiki). The result of which was often spontaneous mummification after death, possibly from drying out the inside of the body. This does not really sound like a practice for me.

Oh, and just to let you know, you will almost certainly not be learning traditional characters in Beijing. Mainland China only uses simplified characters, making a deep reading of the Yijng (I-Ching) very difficult IMO. Oh, and Mainland also does not use Wade-Giles romanization, so you will have to get used to pinyin as well. Oh, the fun of transliteration... If you are going for the purpose of learning to read ancient texts, Taiwan might be a more fruitful place to go, unless you are specifically doing a program on Classical Chinese in Beijing. Most places, though, do not teach Classical Chinese until after you are at the third year college level (which one could achieve in about a year abroad or so at most programs).

Great, another book on the I-Ching by someone who does not know Classical Chinese. I am just teasing, though. Good luck on you project. For the counter view on philosophical versus experiential based understanding you are going to want to get seriously versed on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Heigl, and maybe some Jung for good measure. If you do not do this first, you will not have a strong bases for your arguements either way. And when I say well versed, I mean that you should read the primary sources and not just what collage professors or textbooks have to say about them. I have found that most textbooks are written by people with only a very superficial knowledge of these deep and profound philosophical thinkers. And sadly, this is often true of many (not all) college philosophy professors as well. But basically, you cannot know what Western rational (non-experiential) philosophy has to say about enlightenment without deeply reading the work of these men.

Yep. His name was Ge Hong, but his title was Baopuzi (Master who Embraces Simplicity), and his surviving chapters on Taoism were posthumously titled after him (his outer chapters on Confucian philosophy were lost). The Taoist chapters were about magic spells, herbs, powerful gaits (walking methods for distance or protection), sexual methods (which he did not really agree with, but explored anyway), qi/jing/shen circulation and cultivation methods, the different types of immortals, and complicated external (physical) alchemy procedures and formulas. It also included some of his philosophy on the supernatural and a personal biography of his quest for immortality. He collected his material from all over China and spent his family fortune away buying alchemy materials (gold, cinnabar, mercury, etc) and buying the right to copy peoples Taoist technical scrolls to add to his collection.

I love the Baopuzi, but unfortunately I do not think that there is even a halfway decent translation of the text into English. The only one that I know of was done 50 years ago or so by a Christian missionary... and the translation shows. He translates jing as sperm even when it makes no sense at all, like when women are instructed to circulate their sperm through their spine. And he translates hsian/xian as gennie rather than immortal, which makes no sence at all to me. Oh well. I do not remember him ever specifically talking about mandalas, but it might have been in the magic formula section of the book. It is also possible that someone took a general procedure magic or meditative procedure from the book and then added extra elements to it, such a with a mandala. This is what happened with the ninjutsu practice of kujiin/kujijiri, where a Baopuzi vocal spell was elaborated upon with hand seals.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful response, Blasto. I was very interested in training with Clyman for a while because I could clearly see the results of his practice poring off of him. In healing demonstrations, I watched him touch random people (volunteers like myself) gently as their bodies convulsed, their faces twisted, and they practically frothed, until he had released all of the trapped anger or other emotion from their organs. He has energetic power, of that there is no denying. In his presence, though, his energy would make me feel rather agitated and a little uncomfortable. I think that his high level of cultivation projects his rough personality around him in a very tangible way, and that is also part of why I was so put off by him. On a more technical note: I remember Clyman had said that the conventional method of using the microcosmic orbit was not the best method of practice and that he recommended going up the spine, to the crown, and then back down again through the inside of the spine (I think), rather than to the tongue and down the conception vessel. He said (and demonstrated) the results of such a practice as manifesting through an intense, visible quaking of the entire body from the qi. Does anyone know if he still teaching this practice? And if so, what do people think of the safety of such a technique or effectiveness. At the time I was reading B.K. Francis, who said that such shaking methods were potentially dangerous and not particularly useful in the long run, so I was a little leery from that as well. I personally have no experience with it though, so I reserve any judgment. This is an excellent point.

I was much more "go with the flow" when I was in college and everything in my life was pure perfection (synchronicity galore, abundant energy, and I was at the top of my discipline with scholarship people throwing money at me). It was a hard lesson to learn that it is easier to go with the flow when everything is going right than when everything seems to be going wrong in life (loss of child, job (w/ insurance), and car in three months...). Maybe that was too much personal information, but the point is, I am now getting slowly back into the flow with a much more true and stoic (in the classic sense) perspective on life. In order for "This too shall pass" to work, you have to remember to remind yourself of it in the good times as well as the bad.

I think that they were more thinking of the way in which Rabelais used the quote in Gargantua and Pentagruel for the plaque above Thelma Abby. It is the monastery that Pentagruel builds at the end where the monks and nuns are charged only to "Do what thou wilt," and they do not wear much clothes and indulge in a sexuality and freedom that comes purely from knowing oneself rather than repressing all of that in yourself which is not understood or feared. This is quite a different sentiment than what Augustine was getting at It is also possible that he was pulling from Alistair Crowley's Thelma Religion, which was taken from a bastardization of Robelais' medieval period ideas. I guess it could be argued that Crowley understood Robelais better than anyone else and just put his theories into action, but I prefer to think that Robelais was just exaggerating to shake things up and make people think.

I would like to ask you about your opinions of Gary Clyman. I have meet him a number of times when I lived in the Chicagoland area and I can defiantly attest to the man's raw power. He cleared a terrible qi blockage in my ankle from an old sports injury in moments and freed me of a nasty chronic pain. But he also struck me as an egotistical, abrasive jerk every time I heard him open his mouth, so I never studied under him. It might have just been a personality clash between us, but I figured that if his techniques were in any way related to his attitude/outlook, then that was not something that I was interested in cultivating. Please let me know your impression of his methods.