still and moving, don't believe the hype.

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

I am extremely uncomfortable about certain new posters here propagandizing the methods of their respective ideologies by speaking out against other schools.  We need to talk openly and frankly about why specific schools practice differently from others or else new students will always be victim to the spiritual vampires and sheister business people in our midsts.

 

I don't want to name lineages here, but rather talk about an important distinction between two major ideas in Nei Dan and why they work the way they do.   I will refer mainly to Zhang Boduan, Wang Chongyang, and Li Daochun's ideas and explain the rationale for their ideas and how they affected later nei dan practices such as those of Wu Liu Zong, Huang Yuanji, Chen Yinging and so on.  I must assume that people practicing those lines will explain things from their unique perspective and I hope I don't make too many mistakes in my writing about the lines that other people practice, but whose practices I only know from textual interrogation.

 

Lets start with Zhang Boduan and why he held certain ideas about meditation that differed from earlier Dan fa and also from other popular practices of his day:

 

Zhang was particularly concerned with the cultivation of the Dao by using the mind.  This means that his school was largely focused on "Wu Qi Chao Yuan,"  (five energies rise to their origin), 修一物 Xiu yi wu (cultivate one being),  and the harmonization of pre and post heaven intention, water fire etc...

He took the language of external alchemy and combined it with the language which had been used to discuss the "Fu Qi" methods that were popular of his day.  his argument was that while Fu Qi used post heaven intention to move Qi to the five major organs, it was better to do it by cultivating spiritual oneness, which is expressed in his line "Alone, cultivating one being is the way to ensure victory. tiring the body by stretching and pushing is the false way.   Eating Qi (fu qi) and swallowing red clouds are all rash."   If anyone wants to read about what Fu Qi is, the texts are available online in "Xiao Dao Zang," under the sections "Zhu Jia qi fa" (there are five sections in total).   I believe that Zhang's practice accurately reflects Laozi's idea of following the reverse course and going back to the oneness of the Dao.   Probably my favourite phrase from Zhang's work is "returning to the root and going back to the origin is the king of medicine."   I think it is fair to make the assumption that Zhang's method would have principally been done seated, and there are many examples from other Southern school texts which have drawings of seated meditation practices.   One of the reasons for this is because seated meditation makes it much easier to access the pre natal state and cause the yuan jing, qi, and shen to collect together.

 

Now lets talk about Wang Chongyang:

Wang recognized that prolonged seated meditation could be injurious and so he promoted the idea of "walking, standing, seated, and lying down," which is a foundational idea in Quanzhen Daoism.  The benefit of this type of practice is that it limbers up the body and allows you to recover from long periods of specific types of practice.   It also means that it is harder to directly practice Ming gong, because at a beginner and intermediate level, you will have to come out of the "oneness" state in order to move your body from whatever you were doing to the next posture you choose to take up.  

Wang's concept is probably taken from Chan Buddhism, which does considerable practice off the meditation cushion.   He believed that first you should practice Xing and then Ming would happen naturally, and certainly the idea of combining consciousness with various types of activities is easier to do that practicing Ming gong while moving.  In any event, his type of practice results long term in the same benefits as Zhang's, it just approaches it from another direction.  It is extremely important to recognize that Wang also wrote a document called "Zuo wang lun" which does focus on seated meditation, so he did not encourage people not to sit as some poster's here recently impugned (doubtlessly to promote his or her sectarian ideas)

 

Li Daochun consolidated these two methods and influenced many people including the Neo Confucian Wang Yangming.   Li believed that the centre of consciousness must be kept empty and open, but after that had been accomplished, then all things emerging from it should be placed in harmony with the centre.   What this means has two aspects, the first is that he found a way to consolidate Xing and Ming gong together into a method that could easily cultivate both from the very start (Zhang Sanfeng did this before him, but Zhang's writings are considerably more archaic and less detailed than Li's). Secondly, it helped to create a rationale which would later deeply influence other schools of neidan and even gongfu and qi gong, the idea was that once the mind was set, then there would be nothing wrong with combining it with other practices.   Li Daochun was also very important in describing the relationship between xin and shen, the kun trigram and physical body, and otherwise brilliantly explaining the relationship between the bagua and the physical and energy bodies.

 

After Li, there was a huge development of Dan methods which went through the Ming and Qing eras all the way up to Ming Guo.    Most of these major schools focused on the dual cultivation method, except that some of them felt it was important to cultivate one or the other first.

Wu Liu Zong (in as much as I have read, and please practitioners of this style, correct me if i'm wrong) suggested that it was very important to quiet the mind before doing serious Dan cultivation.   On the opposite end of the spectrum,  Huang Yuanji focused immediately on sitting in total stillness, advocating the concept that the Kun trigram had to be entered completely before pre heaven Qi could revert to Yang energy.   Some schools such as Qian Feng pai focus first on actually moving energy with the post heaven intention, and meditating on the image of Tai Shang, only later moving to pre heaven xing and ming practices.

Chen Yingning gathered all Dan method documents including Wai dan, and composed his own 20th century method which also focused on xing and ming dual practice.

 

Each of these schools has its respective methods not because the teachers were trying to advertise, but because each of the major masters of these lines discovered a method of practice that worked for them and thus contributed to the overall understanding of Dan Fa in the canon.

Without having spent time either learning these practices with a teacher, or at least mastering the concepts left behind in the classics they left behind, we should be careful not to criticise them out of a sense of partisan loyalty.

Some people I have met suggest in one breath that we should share information and then that only what they have to present is the authentic or real practice.   These people are usually very problematic and have all kinds of methods to cheat their students.   In short, if someone has a problem with a specific teacher or group for a practice that they are currently doing which is negative, then it is fair to call them out into the light, but it if you want to criticize classical techniques, then you need to actually point out the fallacies that you find in their original documents, and certainly an interrogation of classical documents is always welcome, since it helps all us of build up our knowledge not only of our own schools, but others too.

 

Please feel free to share on this thread, and if you think I said something wrong, don't hesitate to correct me.

[Kar3n]

That was a lot to take in.

 

Thanks for the info.

[sillybearhappyhoneyeater]

That was a lot to take in.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Sorry for putting so much info, I just wanted to compile as much as possible to point out that each major school has its own theories which are all legitimate and that people ought not to criticize things that they aren't familiar with.  this principle applies to many things outside of Daoism too, but it is hard advice to take, since all of us want to get egotistical benefit in our respective fields.

[Kar3n]

Sorry for putting so much info, I just wanted to compile as much as possible to point out that each major school has its own theories which are all legitimate and that people ought not to criticize things that they aren't familiar with.  this principle applies to many things outside of Daoism too, but it is hard advice to take, since all of us want to get egotistical benefit in our respective fields.

 

Please, do not apologize.

 

It is a good thing to be thorough.

 

[Ormus]

I am interested to learn more about methods of Nanzong,Dong,Xi,Yin Xian Pai.Can you give us short presentation like OP?

 

 

Ormus

[Wayfarer]

I haven't read all of your post however you may wish to think of it like this...

 

One school's approach is the Dao expressing itself in that particular way, at that particular moment.

 

Another school's approach is the Dao manifesting itself in that specific way, at that specific moment.

 

Both are the Dao.

 

Therefore what appears right is the Dao and what appears wrong is also the Dao.

 

Don't worry about it.  You're not here to worry

[KuroShiro]

On 12/9/2016 at 7:58 AM, sillybearhappyhoneyeater said:

It is extremely important to recognize that Wang also wrote a document called "Zuo wang lun" which does focus on seated meditation, so he did not encourage people not to sit as some poster's here recently impugned (doubtlessly to promote his or her sectarian ideas)

 

Wasn´t Zuo Wang Lun written by Sima Chengzhen, 6th Patriarch from Shang Qing Pai?

[Jox]

On 12/9/2016 at 2:49 PM, Kar3n said:

That was a lot to take in.

 

Thanks for the info.

I agree ... a great thread and probably fine trigger to "disable" harmful ideas of some posters here ... 

[Taomeow]

On 12/8/2016 at 11:58 PM, sillybearhappyhoneyeater said:

 

Wang's concept is probably taken from Chan Buddhism

 

It most definitely isn't.  His teachers were taoists Zhongli Quan, Lu Dongbin, and Liu Haichan.   

 

 According to D.T. Suzuki, Chan was a "natural evolution of Buddhism under Taoist conditions."  Upon arriving in China, Buddhism was first identified to be "a barbarian variant of taoism," and taoist terminology was used to express Buddhist doctrines in the oldest translations of Buddhist texts, a practice termed "matching the concepts."  Buddha himself was regarded as one of the practitioners who managed to attain immortality -- nothing taoism hasn't seen before -- and the practice of mindfulness of the breath, e.g., as a version of qigong/neigong methods, taoism's perennial stomping ground.  The influences of Chan on Quanzhen were purely ideological -- the practices remained fully taoist and nothing was borrowed, only the "matching of the concepts" took place, so "nirvana" became "niwan," e.g., but it doesn't mean taoists waited five thousand years for Buddhists to come invent our dantiens for us.  

[Taoist Texts]

On 12/23/2017 at 3:43 AM, KuroShiro said:

 

Wasn´t Zuo Wang Lun written by Sima Chengzhen, 6th Patriarch from Shang Qing Pai?

Yes. However Wang chongyang wrote a poem which is also sometimes is titled ZWL but more properly, has an almost identical title of Zuo Wang Ming

 

http://www.daode.org/sxfy/04/0694.htm