Looking for the Characters

[Emera]

Perhaps some of you might recognize these concepts and point me towards sources and the chinese characters and pronunciation for them.

Three currents of will: 

1. Yi (Discipline) 意
2. Wu (Theurgic Will) 無
3. Jing (Sexual Will). 精

Edited November 2, 2017 by Emera
Complete

[Wu Ming Jen]

Jing is vitality, life force that allows us to reproduce our action as well as bring in a new life form. Many get on the wrong path considering jing to be sexual. Literally in a sentence jing can mean seman but in the classics it refers to the true non physical energy of vitality a combo of our parents pre natal and post natal food, drink and life style.  

 

Maybe look into intent for will.

[Emera]

I dont think Jing is sexual until it is ignited in that direction. Using breath to ignite the jing non-sexually and transmuting it into qi (vitality) in the xia dantian is part of the microcosmic orbit. But I wrote sexual will in that it is Creative Will. Perhaps you could draw cognates between Jing and Kundalini.

 

This is my understanding.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Emera

[Wu Ming Jen]

That is cool, I no nothing of kundalini besides the general sameness of Nei Gung.

 

Vitality makes the body, chi animates the body and spirit commands chi. When spirit does not direct chi ego does, when chi is of poor quality the body suffers.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

2 hours ago, Emera said:

Perhaps some of you might recognize these concepts and point me towards sources and the chinese characters and pronunciation for them.

Three currents of will: 

1. Yi (Discipline)
2. Wu (Theurgic Will)
3. Jing (Sexual Will).

Jen - Accumulation of Merit.

 

You have two big things working against you here, one from the Chinese side and one from the English, then there are the small ones.  First of all for your Chinese you are giving what looks like unaccented Pinyin and they could mean many things, second of all from the English, you are talking about concepts which in some senses do not translate well, theurgic being one of them.  Here is a place where you can play around with these ideas:

 

MDBG online Chinese-English dictionary

 

I use it all of the time, but I usually have a better idea of what I am looking for than you seem to do.  For example "wu", this is usually shamanism or witchcraft, at best sorcery, and would have nothing to do with anything theurgic.  If you enter magic you get a lot of words that include the character for "mo", which can mean devil or magic, and is more used for sorcery and "black" magic than for theurgy.  The Chinese "shengong" can be translated as "god cultivation", and could be used to mean "white magic" and might do as a translation for Theurgy, but the closest thing to a Theurgists in practice would be a Daoshi, or Daoist Priest, such as Daoist Master Chuang, about whom you say you are reading in your introductory post.  When you mention Jen as "accumulation of Merit", it seems like you may be using the old school Cantonese for the Pinyin "Ren", usually translated as humaneness or benevolence, but "accumulation of merit" also sounds more Buddhist, and "Jen" could mean any one of several things.  I am just posting to let you know that answering your question may not be easy, even for someone fluent in Chinese.

 

Just as background, I have a long term familiarity with the theory and practice, of the Western esoteric tradition, and a fair to good knowledge of Chinese Esoteric traditions, but my Chinese language is nearly nonexistent.

 

I don't have much time to post today which is why I haven't posted characters for any of the words I mentioned above, but if you are interested in more information about what is available in English I can give you some advice.

 

ZYD

[Emera]

9 minutes ago, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

You have two big things working against you here, one from the Chinese side and one from the English, then there are the small ones.  First of all for your Chinese you are giving what looks like unaccented Pinyin and they could mean many things, second of all from the English, you are talking about concepts which in some senses do not translate well, theurgic being one of them.  Here is a place where you can play around with these ideas:

 

Yes, this is a huge problem. I'm basically scrambling in the dark for words :P. And I did use that dictionary too before going here which is funny and ironic.

 

It depends if you define theurgic based on the old or new definitions. And some meanings are not written down or used in different contexts, which is why I am asking here to see if any practitioners initiated would know and would be kind to share.

Edited October 19, 2017 by Emera

[Wu Ming Jen]

I read yi as intention or mind, Wu as in no,  jing as vitality jen as humanity.But I have poor english chinese conversions. English tends to only mean one thing negating the other half of the whole.

 

Once I mentioned keeping the mind still and someone remarked that the mind is never still so I added to still being calm, tranquil, peaceful, nothing on the mind then explaining when mind attaches it is like having something in your eye that needs to be flushed out before one can become comfortable.

 

Thanks for the dictionary Zhong.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

2 hours ago, Wu Ming Jen said:

I read yi as intention or mind, Wu as in no,  jing as vitality jen as humanity.But I have poor english chinese conversions. English tends to only mean one thing negating the other half of the whole.

 

Once I mentioned keeping the mind still and someone remarked that the mind is never still so I added to still being calm, tranquil, peaceful, nothing on the mind then explaining when mind attaches it is like having something in your eye that needs to be flushed out before one can become comfortable.

 

Thanks for the dictionary Zhong.

 

You're welcome for the dictionary reference Ming Jen, use it in good health.

 

As for the problem being with English, it is not so much with English as with English speakers who don't understand the basics of Chinese, and that Chinese Characters often function not as single words, but more like, but not exactly like, syllables in English.  There are some monosyllabic words in English and there are some characters in Chinese function as single words, but most of the time they are combined to form words with complex meanings that are hard to decipher, and also Chinese is very context and pronunciation sensitive, which is why something like "wu", no, negation, is not the same thing as "wu", witchcraft, sorcery, they have different characters and they have different pronunciations, so that  无, meaning no or nothing, should be printed as wú, and 巫 as witch or shaman, should be written as wū, otherwise you can't tell your wu from your wu, which is a wu-full situation.  When I first started using MDBG, I would get autobahn for 道德, dào dé, because dào was street or road and dé was the abbreviation for Deutschland, Germany, and the autobahn is the most famous German road, and 气法, breathing method or technique, used to be translated as the airline, Air France, because 气, qi, was air and 法, fǎ, was the abbreviation for France, as well as method, technique or law.  Fortunately things have improved over the years.

 

So the real problem is with carrying single concepts over with Chinese characters, and also writing them without the accent markers that allow you to tell the difference.  People tend to use words like jing, qi, shen, dao, etc., as if one could use geo when one means geometry, or geology, or writing as if you could leave out vowels and somehow avoid misunderstandings, and things like that.  At least that is how I understand some of the problems of going back and forth between English and Chinese.

 

Here is a fun experiment to try, copy this character 道, go to:

 

Character dictionary - MDBG English to Chinese dictionary

 

Which is MDBG's character dictionary, and paste it into the first box, then when the dictionary pulls up the definition of Dao, first look at the definition of Dao as "path, road, street; method, way", then click on the little box like this and choose the option that looks like this *道*, which will pull up a whole list of Chinese Character combinations that include Dao, and then see how many on the list have anything to do with how Dao is used here on the Dao Bums.  You can of course do this with any character you like such as qi, 气, and see how differently qi functions in real Chinese, and then start to think about how silly it is to ask questions like what is qi?  Chinese medicine and Chinese breathing exercises and, as some may have noticed, Chinese mechanical engineering all have their own specialized terminology that use "qi" as a character in it somewhere, so there is not simple answer, it all depends on the context.

 

Now this little experiment can also be used to learn things, for example if you go through the list you can find character combinations that might be of interest to you, kind of like fishing, you may throw out the fish that don't interest you, but you may find something interesting to explore.  So, happy fishing.

[Emera]

Found the wu 無 I was looking for. It's emptiness.

Yi 意, probably intention.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Emera