Wuxing theory

[Apech]

I'm looking for a good book on wuxing theory or possible yinyang wuxing theory ... I don't want psychobabble and I don't want acupuncture ... just the principles with an emphasis on Nei Dan.

 

Any suggestions?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

A good one is Five Elments and Ten Stems by Kiiko Matsumoto and Stephen Birch, which is distributed by Redwing Book Company:

 

Five Elments and Ten Stems at Redwing Book Company

 

This is mostly an acupuncture text, but is very comprehensive and has some notes on cultivation theory.  It is essential background.  There may be more recent books that are of value, but most of my early study in this was some time ago, so book wise, I am a little out date, but the information is not.

 

Redwing Book Company is a great source for books on Eastern Energetic therapy and cultivation, just looking at their site is educational and if one finds something there, it can possibly be ordered elsewhere if someone is outside of the U. S., also in this case, an eBook is available.

[Daeluin]

For emphasis on neidan, Liu Yiming's Cultivating the Tao tl Fabrizio Pregadio has a chapter on the five agents, as does Eva Wong's tl of Zhong Lu Chuan Dao Ji in The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality ; The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu.

 

I love how circular these books are, especially Zhong Lu Chuan Dao Ji - this circularity flows with the five phases throughout its entirity, requiring an understanding of these phase changes to fully comprehend the book in some ways.

 

What really helped me to understand the five phases was Liu Yiming's association of these phases with Virtues and portrayal of the relationship between these virtues. Wisdom (water) must rest upon (be controlled by) a solid foundation (earth), etc. Then in Cultivating the Tao, he describes the principle by which the five phases become more "post-celestial" or "pre-celestial." When one takes what one's environment has created and controls these resources for one's one purposes, this moves in a post-celestial direction. When one rests upon the guidance of one's environment as-is, and proceeds to create harmony within the constraints of this environment, this moves the energy in a pre-celestial direction. A discussion of how this relates to destiny can be found here.

 

Discussions on the five phases are easy to find, but they are slippery to fully comprehend. Does earth come after fire, or is it the center? or both? We have to remember how this relates to the unfolding of daoist cosmology, and learn to see the five phases in the four forces as well. The lesser yang, greater yang, lesser yin, and greater yin of the taijitu also work in relation to the five phases. Growth (wood), Culmination (fire), Settling (metal), Stillness (water), connected by a common center (earth).

 

In Chinese Astrology can be found an almanac like exploration of the five elements - the ten celestial stems and the twelve earthly branches. This is a study of how the heavenly energies interact with the earthly energies, or perhaps the interaction of the spiritual with the material.

 

The ten celestial stems are simply the duality of each phase - yin water and yang water, etc. The twelve earthly branches are simply how these ten celestial stems expressed after being stored up within material forces. There is an extra pair of yin and yang earth, giving 4 earths - placed between each of the other elements. These energies flow cyclically through time, and are most commonly observed as cycles through the year, month, day, and hour. Each time frame expresses these energies in subtly different ways. The monthly energies are the strongest, as can be seen in our seasonal changes. Centered around the Winter Solstice we have yang and yin Water, followed by yin Earth, yang and yin wood, yang earth, yang and yin fire, yin earth, yang and yin metal, yang earth. Also known as Boar, Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog.

 

Study of this arrangement helps us understand how earth works better - yang earth dragon is positioned between yin wood rabbit and yang fire snake. Dragon is an entrepreneurial energy. It places the wood where the fire will burn. Each of the earth phases perform a integrative role, helping the other energies to merge as one.

 

Earth is the most important phase, as it represents the center. In taiji practice, standing still with feet together and arms by the side, relaxed, is often called the wuji stance, where nothing is formed. Every movement is supposed to come from wuji, and return to wuji. Well now, remember - the 12 earthly branches (material realm) are simply boxes expressing particular energies of the 10 celestial stems (spiritual realm) at particular times. And the 10 celestial stems exist, perhaps, beyond and before the material realm, yet even they have an origin to return to - for this we look to the yang earth and yin earth stems, which are named Wu and Ji. When we are able to return our energies to wu and ji, we are able to cultivate the primordial. Zhong Lu Chuan Dao Ji explores how this operation works with neidan throughout its contents.

 

For learning about the five phases, I recommend identifying the phases within anything that changes. The phases are like yin and yang - they cannot be trapped or absolute - but it may be easier to identify the settling from the expression, the slowing from the quickening. Not every growth must express before slowing, not every expression must slow down before expanding. It is a complex world out there. The I Ching can help us understand these changing patterns, but it is enough to accept they are variable.

 

The more we are able to identify external changes as related to the five phases, the better we can grasp the internal changes.

Edited July 1, 2015 by Daeluin

[Mudfoot]

You might find Healing with form, energy and light by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche or Wu Xing by Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallee useful.

 

[Mudfoot]

Or not useful.

Because suddenly you have both wood-fire-earth-metal-water and earth-water-fire-wind-space, and which will you choose?

Both are interesting to practice.

 

So the next question will be, how do you incorporate them in you daily training?

[Apech]

Or not useful.

Because suddenly you have both wood-fire-earth-metal-water and earth-water-fire-wind-space, and which will you choose?

Both are interesting to practice.

 

So the next question will be, how do you incorporate them in you daily training?

 

 

I'm exploring links between the I ching and Nei Dan ... so will probably stick to Chinese version.

[Mudfoot]

Both are used in China, albeit the second one is more predominant in buddhist practices but you can find it in some daoist traditions as well.

 

If you are more into I Ching you might find wuxing being a dead end. In the Matsumoto & Birch book mentioned in this thread there is an attempt to correllate the trigrams to wuxing, but at least one daoist teacher (that would be Bruce Frantzis by the way) explicitly states that they are different processes. I might mis-remember that through!

 

If you want to feel the changes of I Ching bagwa might be a good starting point.

But here I am out of my depth, working with wuxing and five elements only.

[Daeluin]

I've become comfortable working with wood = wind and thunder, metal = heaven and lake.

 

Wind, as I perceive it, receptively communicates change between polarity, making no action of its own, simply responding. It can be gentle or fierce depending upon the extremes present in the environment.

 

While thunder is active and electric, booming suddenly for all to hear.

 

So in this context it is easy to view thunder as yang wood, wind as yin wood. Though Taomeow views wind as metal.

 

The trigram of heaven is often noted as metal. Perhaps there is association here with the golden elixer - a substance said to be the merging of the fluid in the lungs with the golden light. The lungs are metal, and this fusion creates a metal that is soft and pliable, able to contain the light without leaking it. This is said to be a substance of the utmost yang, and the trigram of heaven is all yang lines. Perhaps this perspective can shed light on why metal is associated with heaven.

 

Lake is akin to a swamp, to joy, to transformation, and as family members is likened to the youngest daughter. Metal is the phase in which there is a settling after the culmination of creative expression, the return following upon expansion. But often after creative expression we get lost in the sensation of experience. We are so excited by the events of our day that we don't want to go to bed at night, we are so attached to relating with others that we wish to stay up all night, never letting go.

 

The hexagram of lake over lake represents a dynamic of delayed gratification vs instant gratification. After creative expression, we can be rewarded with transformation. After work we get a paycheck. When we perform we can get validation and praise. But there is a choice here - we can choose to spend the paycheck all at once or save it up. We can chose to let the praise and gratification make us feel entitled and adorn ourself with followers and bask in the glory of the limelight, or we can just accept the praise graciously and gracefully. Saving up is good if we want to buy something of a greater magnitude, and acting gracefully is good for cultivating a reputation that carries one higher. So when we delay gratification our potential for transformation is greater.

 

Here is where many get lost - by choosing to follow joy and instant gratification, rather than letting things settle, mature. When we allow things to settle, the top yin line in the lake trigram transforms to yang, becoming the heaven trigram. And perhaps here too we can more deeply understand the connection between heaven and metal. After expression, when we allow the energy to settle, it becomes full again, like the heaven trigram. Often the youngest daughter and the father have an interesting relationship. The youngest daughter can be tenacious and inquisitive, but has trouble doing wrong in the eyes of the father. She, being the youngest, may have fewer expectations or entitlements, as everyone else is her senior, but this position allows much growth through learning from the experience of others. The trigram of lake under heaven is called treading, as in treading on the tail of a tiger, and here the youngest daughter can tread on the tail of the tiger without getting bitten, rather, there is an opportunity to develop experience and grow strong.

 

In western terms we can say that conscious and subconscious need to be merged to reconnect to the heart of things. What we think we know and what we intuit need to work as one without interfering with each other. In daoist terms we originally have heaven over earth, but their middle lines exchange (like the two dots in the taijitu), and rather than revolving around a common center, they begin to revolve around these two dots. When the middle lines of heaven and earth exchange, we then have fire and water. The middle line of heaven is referred to as the true yang; the middle line in earth is referred to as the true yin. Well, the true yin is now space between the original, remaining two yang lines in heaven, now fire, and this space allows conscious thoughts to form from as the energy of the yang lines are invited to express within this space of true yang. Meanwhile the true yang from heaven is now in the center of the two yin lines of earth, now water, and these to yin lines invite us to express this primordial yang; when the water is still and clear this true yang can express as wisdom, when the water is momentous or turib there is outward ambition and desire.

 

So even as metal settles (lake and heaven) into water, there is metal contained within water - the true yang from the heaven trigram that has been trapped inside of the trigram of water. The work of neidan is to settle the heat of consciousness, fire, down into the lower dantien to dissolve and carry up the true yang, the metal in water back up to transform fire into heaven, so that conscious and subconscious are one, again revolving around a common center. Naturally it is more complex than this, but still natural. What has separated is reunited, and there are several cycles following this principle.

 

Too, we have two earths in the trigrams. Mountain and Earth. I like viewing earth as the stillness of fire, mountain as the stillness of water.

 

Just like the five phases can be taken as a cycle of five, or a cycle of four with a common center, the 8 trigrams can have many different arrangements. We have to remember that the daoist cosmology factors in all posibilities; each new number of interacting forces both integrates all the preceding dimensions and dynamics, but too adds its own dimmension, which might not be as linear as it seems given the multidimensional underlayers.

 

So when the trigrams are arranged in different ways we can interpret them in different ways. Studying the he tu diagram and the luo shu diagram (magic square) and their associated elements can be very interesting. Hope this helps!

Edited July 4, 2015 by Daeluin

[Apech]

I've come across this correlation of the wuxing to the young and old yin/yang lines:

 

Old Yang = fire

Old Yin = water

young yang = wood

young yin = metal

 

... and balance/centre = earth.

[Mudfoot]

It is usually around here I get lost, when I Ching comes in.

The action of the five elements are described in the Hong Fan (as in wu xing, Rochat de la Vallee), and further elaborated on in The seven emotions by the same author. This is more or less what you can feel while doing five element based qigong. The five elements are between Heaven and Earth. Di and Tu both translates as earth, but are totally different in (action).

I have seen the Heaven-metal being equalized, but at least in my tradition they are on totally different levels.

Also in our meditative practice kan and li are not even close to water and fire in the five elements.

 

Could you write a bit about how they denote the same thing in you practice?

That would be really interesting!

[Daeluin]

It is usually around here I get lost, when I Ching comes in.

The action of the five elements are described in the Hong Fan (as in wu xing, Rochat de la Vallee), and further elaborated on in The seven emotions by the same author. This is more or less what you can feel while doing five element based qigong. The five elements are between Heaven and Earth. Di and Tu both translates as earth, but are totally different in (action).

I have seen the Heaven-metal being equalized, but at least in my tradition they are on totally different levels.

Also in our meditative practice kan and li are not even close to water and fire in the five elements.

 

Could you write a bit about how they denote the same thing in you practice?

That would be really interesting!

 

K'an means cavity.

Li means separation.

These names describe their nature, as Liu Yiming describes in Cultivating the Tao (tl: Pregadio):

 

What we call true Kan ☵ and true Li ☲ can be explained in terms of Water and Fire. Kan is Water and Li is Fire. Within Water there is the True Yang, and within Fire there is the True Yin. True Yin and True Yang are the central and correct Breaths of Qian ☰ and Kun ☷, which respectively are strong and compliant. Therefore it is said that Kan and Li are the "inherited bodies" of Qian and Kun.

 

The primal One Breath contains both Yin and Yang, which come forth because of the division of the precelestial Great Ultimate (taiji). After Yin and Yang have come forth, Qian and Kun join to one another; the Yang within Qian moves to the Palace of Kun, and the Yin within Kun enters the Palace of Qian. Qian ☰ becomes empty and forms Li ☲; Kun ☷ becomes full and forms Kan ☵. It is then that the precelestial Qian and Kun transform themselves into the postcelestial Kan and Li. Li has this name because it has separated itself from its own Yang; Kan has this name because it has trapped the reality of Li.

 

The Li ☲ trigram is Yang outside and Yin inside; since the Yang has lost its fullness, the Yang outside is necessarily false. The Kan ☵ trigram is Yin outside and Yang inside; since the Yin has trapped the reality of Li, the Yin outside is necessarily false. Neither is the Yang pure, nor is the Yin true: these are the postcelestial Kan and Li.

 

However, while the external Yin and Yang are not true, the Yin stored within the Yang (☲)is the True Yin, and the Yang stored within the Yin (☵) is the True Yang. The True Yin is stored within the false Yang, the True Yang is stored within the false Yin: these are Kan and Li storing the precelestial within the postcelestial.

 

Here Liu Yiming says Kan is Water and Li is Fire, but doesn't really explain. The daodejing speaks of water in terms of how soft and yielding it is, always flowing to the lowest places, yet always able to overcome the strong. So too, in our bodies, this "true yang" sinks like water into the cavity of Kan, and always seeks to flow where opportunity presents a lower place. When the false yin that surrounds the true yang in Kan is still and quiet, this true yang has a solid foundation and becomes stable, like when water reaches the lowest point and then begins to pool, filling up from that lowest point. Wisdom grows as this true yang naturally builds without being spent. But the false yin surrounding it often draws or tempts it into other ventures, as a pool that is growing, only to spill over the edge and run into a new path, finding a new low point. Thus water is also known as danger, the safe abode in the center always being tempted to leak out and lose its home.

 

Fire on the other hand, is associated with clarity and illumination when the true yin at the center is still. This true yin wishes to be receptive and accommodating, and so is constantly receiving the energy of the false yang that surrounds it, and so the heart-mind is often led into feeling emotions and thoughts. And thus fire becomes loses its grace, becoming impatient, easily scattered and unpredictable, so wild and caught up in navigating the many thoughts and emotions that it loses its original receptive, patient, clear quality and becomes selfish.

 

Fire is the mother of Earth,

Earth easily shapes and controls water,

Water easily shapes and controls fire.

 

And here perhaps we can understand how Earth is both the child of Fire and the ever-present center. Often when visiting a new place we lack a bearing, a proper sense of the center, until we've at least traveled to the opposite side of it, and then the way back to our starting point gives us enough perspective to relate to the whole and its center. Thus fire is ever the demarcation of how far we have come from our origin, and thereby orients us to the center. When we are able to recognize the center as our origin, then we have truly harmonized the five phases. Too, perhaps this is the importance of studying principle - to truly return, we must truly understand where we are.

 

 

Only those who practice the great cultivation know the precelestial Kan and Li, and discern the postcelestial Kan and Li. They return to the precelestial within the postcelestial, and set in motion the Tao of immortality within the constant Tao. They take the Breath of the precelestial True Yang within Kan and use it to fill Li ☲, and take the Breath of the precelestial True Yin within Li and use it to return it to Kan ☵. Thus the postcelestial breaths of Yin and Yang are transformed and return to their reality. Then Qian and Kun join to one another, Yin and Yang become the One Breath, and the Great Ultimate becomes whole and complete:

 

Precelestial Breath,

postcelestial Breath.

Those who obtain them

always seem to be drunk.

 

An ancient immortal said:

The one particle of Yang Essence is concealed in the mountain of form. It is not found in the heart or the kidneys, but in the One Opening of the Mysterious Barrier.

 

Thus those who cultivate the Xing (spiritual-nature) but neglect the Ming (energy-form) are neglecting part of the whole.

 

The Yijing (Book of Changes) says:

 

Inquire into the principles and achieve your Xing, and thereby accomplish your Ming.

 

An ancient immortal said:

 

If you cultivate Xing and do not cultivate Existence,

for ten thousand kalpas your Yin Ling will hardly enter sainthood.

If you cultivate Ming and do not cultivate Xing,

it is like having a property without an owner.

 

Both passages refer to the "joint cultivation of Xing and Ming." However, Xing has its own principles, and Ming too has its own principles. Unless you inquire into their principles and practice them, you cannot know them.

 

I highly recommend acquiring this book if one is seriously researching the principles of neidan.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Daeluin

[Mudfoot]

I got the book just this week, got to one of the initial chapters so far. I have other books on the subjekt, most are beyond my level of understanding. Your comments to the quotes were useful. Thanks.

Still unsure If you readily can say that wuxing and bagwa speak of the same things, but hey, I'll leave that to you neidan guys and gals. The similarities between what you just wrote and what I do are probably coincidental anyway, as I practice a tradition of shaolin origin.

[Daeluin]

Yes, wuxing and bagua are different layers. At this early level we are dealing with primal elemental forces, and each have their own operation. However, each new layer contains the previous layers. Exactly how is just a bit mysterious. We can easily identify polarity, yin and yang in everything, and the change, or qi, between yin and yang.

 

I like to think of these three, yin, yang, and qi, as operating before spacial dimension exists. As we add a new layer, be it the duality of the three, or the crystalization of three into four, perhaps the spacial dimension unfolds (ever study a caltrop?). Even as this spaciality exists, too it finds a center, the fifth, pointing back to the origin that is everywhere and nowhere - that place before this spacial dimension unfolded. Then we can study the yin-yang symbol to understand how at first yin and yang revolve around a common center, (lesser/greater yin/yang + center = 5), but then the two dots of bright yang and terminal yin appear, as greater yang and lesser yin begin to revolve around each other instead of the common center, creating the terminal yin within greater yang - and the same for greater yin and lesser yang revolving around bright yang - this isn't quite how it works, but is the gist of it, I think.

 

With the five there is space, yet still no distinction between self and other, inside and outside. The transformations are spontaneous without objection. But as the center is lost, the 5 crystalize into the six, brining us material reality - the distinction between self and other, inside and outside. And yet the six also come from the duality of the original 3, and so I don't know if we can really say that heaven came before earth, though heaven is contained within earth. And here too we have zhuangzi's six directions of energy. Ever study a jack? Up down left right front back - an interesting structure centered around three poles, similar to a cube with six faces.

 

Ni Hua Ching goes into some of this line of thought in The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth, but a lot of it I've had to put together myself. I don't know if others teach of it this way (so please take this with a grain of salt), but this is what resonates with me. Still musing out seven, eight, nine - after that it all repeats.

[Daeluin]

And here perhaps we can understand how Earth is both the child of Fire and the ever-present center. Often when visiting a new place we lack a bearing, a proper sense of the center, until we've at least traveled to the opposite side of it, and then the way back to our starting point gives us enough perspective to relate to the whole and its center. Thus fire is ever the demarcation of how far we have come from our origin, and thereby orients us to the center. When we are able to recognize the center as our origin, then we have truly harmonized the five phases. Too, perhaps this is the importance of studying principle - to truly return, we must truly understand where we are.

 

This was somewhat of a breakthrough for me.

 

When we are beginning something new, we take our potential (water), expand and grow it (wood) into something that culminates (fire). This culmination can be a creative transformation of expression, like a wildfire, or simply a point marking when the expansion turns to a contraction.

 

When we are beginning something new, this turning point marks the outer extreme, and from an inner and outer extreme we create the center, earth.

 

But when we are not beginning something new, earth, the center, has already been created, and we are in a constant dance with the center. Each "new" project we begin creates it's own boundaries and center even as it works within the boundaries of the pre-existing center(s).

 

So in neidan, where we are trying to bring things back into harmony with the pre-existing center(s), perhaps this is related to the advice of never daring to be ahead of anything else. When we put ourselves ahead, or attribute any value to our progress, it is a form of "looking back," and a turning point that creates new parameters and can inhibit our progress of harmonization within the whole. Without giving ourselves labels or attributing any value to our progress, always humble and acting as though we are nothing, nothing arises to contend with our progress.

Edited July 6, 2015 by Daeluin

[Mudfoot]

Fabrizio Pregadio writes in The way of the Golden Elixir: "Water and Fire are the Yin and Yang of the postcelestial state, and Wood and Metal are the True Yin and True Yang of the precelestial state."

This would separate neidan wuxing from TCM wuxing.