Principles in Taoist Alchemy

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[Jeff]

Hi Zoom,

 

The text is describing tantric/energy purification. The Ling (or mysterious female) aspect would be like working with a Dakini in buddhism. From the male perspective, the loop is created with a "divine female". The divine female creates sort of a localized "void" for the male. That void sort of "pulls on" the energy impurities (issues/fears) and they flow from the lower tien to the divine female. The divine female raises up the energy (purifies) and returns it to the male to the tien of his current capacity (middle or higher). At the higher levels of the process, the loop goes through the crown and back to the male. With this process, the "inner heart" is opened (some traditions call this the 8th chakra). But, basically the tiens sort of merge into an unified field (light body) which is based in the (inner) heart.

 

 

Best,

Jeff

Edited January 20, 2015 by Jeff

[soaring crane]

Ling is in the stars.

[Ya Mu]

Ling is in the stars

 

I saw her last night in the grocery store - she sure gets around!

"The stars are inside my body"

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[Vitalii]

Another offering: follow the Tradition of the Secret of the Golden Flower.

 

 

Just for information.

Translation made by Thomas Cleary contains many gaps and a part of the Chinese text seems to not have been translated. In translation made by Richard Wilhelm (and Walter Picca), we can find some very peculiar translations like "animus and anima", which distort the original meaning of characters that are used in the Chinese text.

Both translators sometimes translated the character Qi (气) as "breathing". This is not correct in respect to alchemical texts, because for "breath" the character Xi (息) has to be used.

Xing (性) is often translated as Essence. The phrase 性命不可见，寄之天光 - was translated by Cleary as "Essence and Life are invisible, so they are associated with sky and light". However, it'd be more correct to translate it like Xing (性) - Original Nature. Then the phrase 性命不可见，寄之天光 - should sound as "Original Nature [Xing] and life [Ming] cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven".

All these mistakes distort the understanding of the text, and even a minor mistake can lead to big errors in practice as you know.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Vitalii

[soaring crane]

 

Just for information.

Translation made by Thomas Cleary contains many gaps ...

yes, V, but the OP is about the Ling/soul. What do you know about that topic?

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[Vitalii]

 

yes, V, but the OP is about the Ling/soul. What do you know about that topic?

 

Ling do not have physical location.

Understanding what Ling means is very important for inner alchemy, because it can really improve your practice. Frankly speaking I do not want to talk about it on a forum.

P.S.

The key to understanding of Ling is in understanding and cultivation of Xing gong.

[ChiForce]

 

Teachings of the Hui-Ming Ching & Liu Hua-Yang - Eva Wong

http://wuchifoundation.org/documents/TRA08_Cultivating_Energy_of_Life.pdf

Very interesting...it is basically talking about the microcosmic orbit and the emergence of the nimitta light. It manages to blend in Taoism and Chan Buddhism together....on the cultivation and meditation levels.

Edited January 20, 2015 by ChiForce

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[soaring crane]

 

 

Ling do not have physical location.

 

Understanding what Ling means is very important for inner alchemy, because it can really improve your practice. Frankly speaking I do not want to talk about it on a forum.

 

P.S.

The key to understanding of Ling is in understanding and cultivation of Xing gong.

I think in order to understand Ling, one needs a strong background in Daoist cosmology. I know enough to know that I don't have enough time left on planet earth to accumulate that amount of knowledge.

[Vitalii]

I think in order to understand Ling, one needs a strong background in Daoist cosmology.

 

to say more precisely, in Daoist inner cosmology and fundamental concepts of daoist methods of spiritual development and Original Nature

[Wells]

.

Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM

[Daeluin]

As jing is often translated as essence as well, I think it's good that we have clarifiation, so that people don't think jing and xing are the same thing. The more I understand these original Chinese terms, the more context I am able to uncover when I read translations.

 

As I said in another thread,

the more I know the more complicated things seem to get!

 

What is the deal with Ling & the myterious female?

How is that important to Taoist Alchemy?

How do you work with it,

at what stage of Alchemy

and where is it?

 

Nice thread.

 

From what I've read, the "one opening of the mysterious barrier", the "mysterious female", the "mysterious pass" are all the same thing. Anyone care to confirm/deny this? If there is a difference, does it pertain to difference stages, or is this all related to the same stage?

 

As to location, it is related to the undivided center. But the entire self is the center - every part is the center, so in this sense it has no center. There are two parts - centering in one's self, and centering in the universe. Decibelle has a good thread about this titled "mysterious female." Also, to reach this center, I believe one needs the golden elixir, hence why Liu Yiming says the one opening of the mysterious barrier is the same as the golden elixir.

 

As for Ling, I'm not sure. Have you read Wang Mu's Foundations of Inner Alchemy, translated by Pregadio? It goes way beyond foundations and speaks directly about how one might create and merge the two elixirs from your quote. I'm not sure what authors typically translate Ling as though, and your quote has perked my interest. I also recommend Pregadio's translation of Liu Yiming's Cultivating the Tao, which is a good companion to Foundations as it gives greater context on all of these concepts. Then there's Wang Liping's Ling Bao Tong Zhi Neng Nei Gong Shu which from the title appears to deal directly with Ling and I believe is a training manual for the the untranslated Ling Bao Bi Fa text, to which Eva Wong's translated classic of Chong and Lu is a commentary of, or vice versa. I feel all of these together should give a comprehensive understanding of Neidan, if one has some guided experience to go along with it.

 

Funny how one pretty much needs to forget about everything one learns to apply it, and yet if one doesn't know where to go when experiencing these things naturally, it is difficult to proceed. Guess that's why the most important concept comes first.

 

In the expression One Opening of the Mysterious Barrier, what is important is the word "One." Guarding the Center and Embracing Unity means guarding the One Opening. In all the ten thousand scrolls of the writings on the Elixir, nothing is more important than guarding Unity. When you are able to comprehend Unity, all pursuits are concluded. Therefore the word "One" refers to what one concentrates on and to what one guards in a state of quiescence. - Wang Mu's Foundations of Inner Alchemy, Pregadio, An Anonymous Master

Edited January 21, 2015 by Daeluin

[Daeluin]

Last night in half-sleep, I was pondering the term "true positive energy" fom Cleary's translation of the secret of the golden flower and suddenly I thought (for the first time ever) about the secret of the golden flower in the connection with trigrams (not exactly my area of expertise).

Would the "creative" be symbolized by the trigram of fire as fire is a symbol for spirit? Or rather by the trigram of heaven as it has three unbroken lines? But, heaven chi was post-natal and not pre-natal chi, so it should not symbolize original spirit as it was pre-natal ...hmmm. And were there trigrams in the original chinese text at all?

 

The "creative" is typically the trigram of heaven ☰, which doubled yields Hexagram 1 ䷀, "The Creative."

 

But this is where the cosmology comes into place. If you look at the taiji symbol, the central dots play an important role. Bright Yang and Terminal Yin. They represent how the mixing of yang and yin come to divide and separate into new self-contained paradigms within the ebb and flow of Lesser Yang, Greater Yang, Lesser Yin, Greater Yin, and the dynamic by which the layers of creation unfold and become more and more diverse.

 

This is where Fire and Water come in. Water, K'an, can be translated to "pit," as a pit one might fall into, pulled by gravity. Fire, Li, can be translated as "separation," as in something has been separated from it. The trigrams help to show this principle - Li ☲ is mostly yang, but is said to contain the "true yin." Li is ☰, separated from the true yang. K'an ☵ is outwardly yin, but contains the "true yang" that it sucked out of ☰. This principle can be applied on multiple layers, and inner alchemy is concerned with extracting and replenishing what is true from what is false and returning to a state before things are hidden. At least that's my perception as a seeker. Ultimately I believe finding needs no seeking and that seeking prevents finding.

[Vitalii]

From what I've read, the "one opening of the mysterious barrier", the "mysterious female", the "mysterious pass" are all the same thing. Anyone care to confirm/deny this? If there is a difference, does it pertain to difference stages, or is this all related to the same stage?

yes, you are right.

the "one opening of the mysterious barrier", the "mysterious female", the "mysterious pass" are all the same thing.

[soaring crane]

But this is where the cosmology comes into place

 

A very nice post, thank you.

 

But I believe it does get a lot more complicated than that. The cosmology involves the actual stars, the Chinese zodiacs, and to truly understand Ling, you have to be throughly schooled in that discipline. And that's an undertaking for a lifetime...

[dawei]

What is the deal with Ling & the myterious female?

How is that important to Taoist Alchemy?

How do you work with it,

at what stage of Alchemy

and where is it?

 

Some background on Ling but it may or may not help your journey.

 

The ancient character is of a Shaman begging/calling down the rain. Although the shaman is often viewed as an intercessor between heaven and earth/man, the ancient rites spoke of in the oracle bones show it is due to their 'completeness'; unity with One/Center.

 

Anciently, this One depicted the center of the cosmograph which itself is unmoved but all others rotate around. This was based on the view of the sky and particularly the pole star which was the 'center' (The Great One).

 

Interestingly, Laozi in DDJ22 says to hold to the center and the line contains the cosmograph character as well... So there seems little double when combined with DDJ10 (embrace the One with your soul - Yutang), and DDJ39 (heaven obtained the One and became clear) that the One and Center are which we should unite ourselves.

 

Early alchemy saw no difference between inner and outer; the distinction is much later.

 

Ling to me is the soul aspect which arises with Dao along with our consciousness. We unite to One / Center / Dao through the guidance of Ling (inner soul-person with outer soul - Center).

[Brian]

As an aside, modern astrophysical cosmology suggests that "the center of the universe" is both everywhere and nowhere...

[kio]

The 'Soul' is an interesting subject. I'm not familiar with the term Ling, but I can speak on the Anima Mundi, or the Soul of the World.

 

 

Anima Mundi is like blood. For blood to be useful, it needs a body to flow through. The blood and the body are made of the same thing, through adaptation. This is what the Emerald Tablet of Hermes talks about.

 

 

The body is the Fixt Point, the so-called Mysterious Female (yin). The blood is Ling (yang), and flows to the center (the center of the female is the womb).

 

 

Edited January 21, 2015 by kio

[Daeluin]

But I believe it does get a lot more complicated than that. The cosmology involves the actual stars, the Chinese zodiacs, and to truly understand Ling, you have to be throughly schooled in that discipline. And that's an undertaking for a lifetime...

 

Thanks, this is beginning to become clearer. Having an astrologer as a parent, I've been studying planetary cycles from an early age. But what interested me more was the structure of how it all fit together spiritually, so rather than taking it towards counselling I took it towards understanding. But ultimately I was led towards Taoist Cosmology, and this past year took me far into the depths of the five phases and their complex application in the energy cycles of Chinese Astrology. Then in Liu Yiming's Cultivating the Tao, is a chapter on the Celestial Net star and its importance in inner work and its function of sharing the power of the Pole Star.

 

Perhaps some of the essences and principles related to cosmology I've come to understand as important on my journey might be worth sharing here.

 

As Brian says, the center of the universe is everywhere and nowhere. My sense is that at the early stages of cosmology, dimensional space has yet to come into being, and thus the center would not be found within "3 dimensional space." And yet we can trace the way back through time to this center and connect to it within ourselves. Amidst the unceasing motion of the Earth, the Moon, the Planets, the Sun, the stars, perhaps this can be seen as attempting to balance oneself atop an ever moving stack of blocks aeons tall. So to help one find, maintain, and increase finesse of balance, it is very important to be able to always orient oneself within an ever changing cosmological environment.

 

One of the things that often seems foreign to people is the concept of retrograde motion of the planets. The planets are one of the most easily felt shifting momentums surrounding us, and they move slow enough to be easy to flow with, but they don't always act they way we might think. As we move in our orbit around the Sun, sometimes we will pass another planet, similar to how one car passes another on a road. At first one approaches, then passes, then leaves it behind - it then has the apparent effect of moving backwards. For example Saturn - associated with structure, integrity, the 5 phase element of Earth, is currently moving forward from our perspective, but this Summer after we pass it, will appear to move backwards for a little while. This has a perceived effect of causing us to revisit themes related to structure, integrity, responsibility in our lives that we've just come from. Trouble is, most of us are attached to moving forward at a constant rate, and when we get pulled backwards we tend to feel off-kilter, unbalanced. So the principle here for dealing with the motion of the planets is to accept the forward and backwards momentum of the planets, and to allow ourselves to move with them without losing our balance, without expectation of thinking we know where we are going.

 

It gets a little more nuanced when we realize that as we approach it appears to slow down, then stop, then slowly move backwards - this is when a planet is considered "Stationary", and the related influences settle into a moment of perceived stillness during this time before going backwards. In theory this should make these changes of direction even easier to sense and adjust to.

 

Once we are able to find balance within our Solar System (which of course implies balance within the Earth-Moon dynamic first), then we can become sensitized to the finer changes within the Galactic Center, and so on.

 

But it isn't all just planets and gravities - the cosmological energies of yin, yang and the five phases operate on a different layer. Liu Yiming (Pregadio) says:

 

Celestial Net (tiangang) is the seventh star of the Northern Dipper; it is also called Commander of Destruction (pojun), Glimmering Radiance (yaoguang), and Ladle Star (biaoxing). It participates of the power of the North Pole. It holds the scale of giving life and taking life, and keeps the handle of creation and transformation. It sets the five agents in motion, causes the four seasons to alternate, and generates the ten thousand things. It is the commander and the chief of all constellations, the axis and the hinge of the circulation of Breath (qi). Its function is extremely important, and its efficacy is extremely great.

 

My sense is that the layout of the stars, in relation to the axis of the Earth, have a profound effect on the interplay of energy. In Chronicles of Tao the student realizes in meditation how his acupuncture points are all aligned with the layout of the stars.

 

In all of this, timing within this incredibly dynamic menagerie of momentum is most important. The moment something is created, it sets a foundation of perspective upon that snapshot of balance within the entire universe. The way energies and momentums unfold after that point have a strong influence on how the life of that creation is shaped, and even though that life has control over its own momentum, the surrounding momentums are too vast to belittle when it comes to spiritual evolution. Further, the pattern of a spirit's existing past life momentum has a strong influence as to the timing of its next birth. Therefore the timing of birth is both the result of one's existing momentum and will also determine how likely one is to succeed at various spiritual pursuits. Again, in Chronicles of Tao the student attempts to go all the way without heeding his masters strong advice that he discover his destiny, and becomes rudely brought back to earth by his neighbor's sudden blasting of music.

 

These concepts continue to be reinforced for me as I foray deeper into taoist mysticism. Even as I recognize just how little I grasp of the ancients' understanding of the celestial mechanism.

 

Does any of this relate to Ling? Could Ling be thought of as the spiritual momentum of the soul within the celestial mechanism? And then Ling Gong might be the cultivation of this spiritual momentum?

Edited January 21, 2015 by Daeluin

[Vitalii]

Could Ling be thought of as the spiritual momentum of the soul within the celestial mechanism? And then Ling Gong might be the cultivation of this spiritual momentum?

 

yes, it can be described as a spiritual momentum of the Original Nature of the Universe/celestial mechanism and as a spiritual momentum of our Original Nature. Although it is said about outer and inner, there is only One spiritual momentum of the Original Nature.

There are a special methods which can activate your Ling and the Teacher can also activate it in ones students.

[Wells]

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Edited February 11, 2015 by ZOOM