[HHC Study] Hua Hu Ching Chapter 7

[Mal]

The teaching of the Integral Way will go on as long as there is a Tao and someone who wishes to embody it; What is painted in these scrolls today will appear in different forms in many generations to come. These things, however, will never change: Those who wish to attain oneness must practice undiscriminating virtue. They must dissolve all ideas of duality: good and bad, beautiful and ugly, high and low. They will be obliged to abandon any mental bias born of cultural or religious belief. Indeed, they should hold their minds free of any thought which interferes with their understanding of the universe as a harmonious oneness. The beginning of these practices is the beginning of liberation.

 

Walker's HHC 7

http://brianbrownewalker.com/hua-hu-ching/

 

 

 

 

 

The prince inquired of the master, "Venerable Teacher, will there be people in the future who will have the opportunity to learn and follow the Universal Integral Way of Life by studying these bamboo scrolls on which your great teachings are recorded?"

The master told him, "Kind prince, please do not wonder about this. After I depart, even many, many generations later, if there are still people who seek the Integral Way, they will receive this precious guidance.

"Those who seek and attain the Way must have planted their roots and virtue in one or two or even five lifetimes. Actually they have already evolved to a very high level. Thus, when they hear the truth contained in these teachings, their hearts may immediately reconnect with the integral nature of the multi-universe. Then the omniscient, omnipresent Integral One, which is the Treasure of Diving Power of the multi-universe, will shine upon them and absorb them into it's radiance. They will become submerged in the boundless ocean of blessings and impersonal love of the Universal One.

"Why is this so? Those people will have dissolved their concepts of self and others, male and female, longevity and brevity, life and death. Also they will not have any mental obstructions formed by different cultural backgrounds, customs or religious beliefs which would prevent the perception of the subtle truth of universal integration. To hold the mind within any rigid framework is to immediately become trapped in the bondage of duality. If one does not discriminate between what is labeled as sacred and profane, one is liberated from the bondage of all concepts. Thus one should not embrace any religious concept or mental structure that is formed while living in the physical world. All mental structures must be relinquished if one is to reach the ultimate and subtle truth of oneness."

Ni's HHC 7

Edited March 23, 2013 by Mal Stainkey

[dawei]

Ni's is not a translation but an 'elucidation based upon decades of spiritual cultivation'. Once one achieves once he is saying (dropping of all duality; heart connects with integral nature; submerged in the boundless One)... is there such a great distinction between Buddhism and Taoism?

 

Or put another way: Did Zhuang zi talk of immortals and people who 'attained Dao' ?

 

In the ancient texts, "Sage" was akin to immortal.... and I mean even prior to DDJ or ZZ writing.

 

So while he may use words which we want to label as Buddhist, I am not sure he would assign it to any particular school of thought; after all, the word "liberation" was simply used to say the dropping of duality

[Marblehead]

I knew I would get a rebuttal to my post. Hehehe. I have nothing more to say.

[Aaron]

The earliest references to Lao Tzu being reincarnated was in the Han dynasty. Reincarnation in general has been a traditional belief in Taoist philosophy since around 200 BC. Chuang Tzu himself alludes to the notion of reincarnation when he says, "Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in."

 

As a reminder, any discussion regarding the validity of texts needs to be done outside the chapter study threads.

 

Aaron

Edited March 10, 2013 by Aaron

[Mal]

 

I knew I would get a rebuttal to my post.

 

It was good food for thought, and moved bums to elucidate counter arguments. I was quite confused for a few min when I couldn't find it in thread

 

As a rebuttal I went to Wiki to find

 

The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. They apparently date to the Iron Age (around 1200 BCE).^[16]

The reference for 16 is" ^ Says who ?" got to love a wiki reference ROFL

 

But I feel something like "names can be named, but not the eternal name" Whatever the process of reincarnation is (or isn't) just like when we think we can "label" or "understand" the "Universal One" we have raised a barrier between ourselves and the universal one, as the universal one is beyond understanding or explanation.

 

Like it was said in chapter 6

The Universal One is truly imageless, yet in the attempt to make it conform to an image, people distort its reality and separate themselves from it."

or more simply

Why not be content with simply experiencing it?

 

from this chapter

If one does not discriminate between what is labeled as sacred and profane, one is liberated from the bondage of all concepts.

 

Humans have been creating sacred and profane labels (religions) to stick on the universal one for eons. As all are trying to explain and understand the same thing there are many labels. Some of those labels have persisted over time (and now across cultures) and we can recognize that labels ancestry. Yet any label or concept is insufficient to truly contain and explain the "universal one"

[Marblehead]

It was good food for thought, and moved bums to elucidate counter arguments. I was quite confused for a few min when I couldn't find it in thread

Yeah, I expected rebuttal but I didn't expect my post to be moved out of the thread just because I didn't agree with what was said and I explained why I felt this was true. I guess I am only allowed to speak nicely regarding the subject else I have to keep my mouth shut.

[dawei]

What is hard to really know is what exactly Ni means by his usage of "Those who seek and attain the Way must have planted their roots and virtue in one or two or even five lifetimes."

 

Is this buddhist reincarnation, taoist reincarnation, the dao reincarnated, or immortals re-embodiment, etc.

 

If we wanted to pursue a discussion of what Ni meant, that seems relevant to the study. Then we should look at the meaning of "Sage", "Immortal" and the history of that in ancient writings.

 

If one wants to disprove it all then they need to provide evidences of the above usage (or lack of), but then that is not really studying the meaning of the text.

 

So while I don't disagree with surprise of the post being move, I am equally not unaware of why it would happen.

 

There seems to be a general lack of understanding of such above issues because people stick to only the DDJ and the minute anyone looks outside of it they want to cry foul about the use other texts and its potential meaning. I would hope we can explore other texts to see how they might contribute to our understanding of the tradition and time period.

[Mal]

What is hard to really know is what exactly Ni means by his usage of "Those who seek and attain the Way must have planted their roots and virtue in one or two or even five lifetimes"

To me it stands out as "unusual" if only because I can't recall Chang Tzu or Lao Tzu mentioning reincarnation (or anything much about what happens after death) and when I see reincarnation I think Buddhist as that was my introduction to the subject.

 

I guess "do not worry about this" is the important bit but mentioning people already having previous lifetimes of merit accumulated seems unnecessary, yet if a "master" made the effort to mention this and it was recorded then I would feel that it should be true. Then again Walker did not have this information in his translation .... It's perplexing :-)

Edited March 12, 2013 by Mal Stainkey

[dawei]

I guess 'unusual' is in the eye of the beholder...

 

LZ is said to have reincarnated (or just incarnated) 11 times...

 

ZZ talks aplenty about immortals... die or not die... come back or not come back... Is this create a feeling of 'unusual' ?

 

It is plain-speak to me... once I get outside of the DDJ alone. The tradition spells it out easily enough... And Ni is speaking from the tradition; not a single book or two...

[Mal]

Thanks Dawei. I thought I'd look into "reincarnation in Taoism" a bit more and a TTB thread got 2nd top on google

 

Taoist's view on Reincarnation a couple of interesting links, including one to another TTB thread in a post by Sloppy Zhang along with a quote from B.K. Frantzis book "The Great Stillness" which I'm going to shorten a bit

 

 

 

In their philosophy, the Taoists prefer to focus on life here and now. Neither in the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tse, nor in Chuang Tsu's works is there a strong focus on reincarnation. The Taoist view is that the energy of life is at death mulched in the energy of the Tao and spun out again as another new living manifestation. Chuang Tsu, for example, says: "How marvelous the Creator (the Tao) is! What is he going to make of you next? Where is he going to send you? Will he make you into a rat's liver? Will he make you into a bug's arm?" (Chuang Tsu, Basic Writings, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p 81)

 

 

Many Taoists believe that the vast majority of human beings do not have the capacity to reincarnate intact. They believe that when a soul dies, its consciousness breaks up and later combines with parts of other fragmented souls, thereby reincarnating as a mosaic soul. This idea is also represented in other traditions, especially shamanic ones, where it is held that a human's body can be composed from different past lives of various entities. Thus, some Taoists believe that the human desire to become integrated is based on a literal need.

 

<snip>

 

Since many Taoists believe that most people will not come back as a unified being, they consider talking about reincarnation to be a waste of time. They do, though, discuss karma, which they often characterize as the Law of Return.

[dawei]

It seems to me that something is continuously overlooked again and again....

 

Ni never said the word re-incarnation. That has been the interpretation over and over... and various searches for Taoist re-incarnation... without trying to understand what he means.

 

Is grass re-incarnated each spring? Flowers blossom again each spring... is this simply re-incarnation?

 

I would suggest we move on.

[Mal]

without trying to understand what he means.

 

I think Ni clearly means "To hold the mind within any rigid framework is to immediately become trapped in the bondage of duality"

[Marblehead]

"Those who seek and attain the Way must have planted their roots and virtue in one or two or even five lifetimes. ..." - Ni

 

Quoted from above. Five lifetimes? Okay.