is reserving jing even necessary?

[Taiji Bum]

Is reserving jing even necessary? Yes, in my opinion.

[Stigweard]

Moderation and a natural approach is best in my view.

 

Your Jing Qi stored in the kidneys is the foundation of physical health. So it must be cared for and nourished correctly. When it is depleted disease and death are invited.

 

Once again one must also take into account where the individual is on their path. Consideration must also be given to seasonal influences.

 

The decision for abstinance must come as a natural progression and not one of intellectual enforcement. If and when the individual feels it is right to stop then just stop. If you still feel the desire for sexual activity then that is OK, just pay attention to natural cycles and the principles of conservation and moderation.

 

Your Jing is the currency of your vitality. It is your choice whether to spend it needlessly to transitory impulses or to conserve and invest it ways that will bring greater returns over the long term.

[Smile]

Every year we have the same topic and the same arguments.

So I just repeat myself from the last year.

The acquired Jing splits into Yin (semen,blood, saliva) and Yang (hormones). This is the stuff that you need to protect at all cost if you want to be serious about spiritual cultivation. I'm not talking about just sexual activities either. Your thoughts, speech, food you eat, stuff you watch... they all can affect your acquired Jing and deplete it.

The congenital Jing comes from your parents, emptiness, God etc. From the minute you are conceived in your mother's womb, it's there and after you are born it's in the kidney area. Through sexual and other activities you gradually deplete it, and there is no way to replenish congenital Jing by doing cultivation practices or obstinence.

 

So... if you just want to enjoy life and be happy, having sex in moderation is perfectly fine. If you want to reach high stages of cultivation, it's not. Celebacy is effective only when you put real time in meditation and other practices. If you think sitting on a cushion an hour a day while thinking about the wonders of free porn on the internet is cultivation, it's not. You have to put some time into practice and devote your mind to it, and then celibacy is easy- no wet dreams, sexual desires, etc.

But... there is a lot of good advice from people... Just be realistic what you want to accomplish in life and go for it. There is a saying: "Everybody wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die". It permiates this culture on every level. Something for nothing. Only in movies.

[growant]

Smile,

 

You wrote there is no way to replace congenital jing with cultivation practices or abstinence- what about by other means? Are there any you are aware of?

 

I understand that there are certain practices associated with some of the internal martial arts, specifically bagua, that are said to replenish congenital/preheaven jing. I also had a conversation with an ayurvedic doctor once who told me that taking ghee replenishes ojas, which I believe is equivalent to congenital jing.

[Smile]

Smile,

 

You wrote there is no way to replace congenital jing with cultivation practices or abstinence- what about by other means? Are there any you are aware of?

 

I understand that there are certain practices associated with some of the internal martial arts, specifically bagua, that are said to replenish congenital/preheaven jing. I also had a conversation with an ayurvedic doctor once who told me that taking ghee replenishes ojas, which I believe is equivalent to congenital jing.

Interesting... There are a lot of claims from many practices or products. It takes many years of actual immersion into a practice to realize what it has to offer/its potential. I can't comment on bagua but I don't think ghee would replenish congenital jing. Ojas, maybe. But those two are not the same.

Edited August 16, 2008 by Smile

[growant]

ARe you sure congenital jing and ojas are not the same thing? I think the ayurvedic doctor told me they were. Are there any other means you've heard of to replace congenital jing?

[xenolith]

My spiritual accomplishments are not possible without seminal retention and the distillation of accumulated jing into chi that said facilitates.

[Zeus]

Hi guys,

 

That's a very intreresting topic. I think that obssesing your sexuality, might only cause you trouble. Of course if you follow the path of internal alchemy, you need some time to be in celibacy. I think that the key words here is "take your time"

 

By this I mean that there is time for having fun, and time for cultivating. Listen to your body. Listen to your surrounding. Here in the Mediterannean it's summer time. Warm weather, less clothes for women, libido is high up. Enjoy life. After that you can control your self and meditate. All things require their time.We are not monks. We live in the city. Your body knows.

 

All great masters have families, and enjoying life. You have the time for everything. Don't force your body with celibacy too much. After all wet dreams are always there!!

 

Just my humble opinion,

 

Z

[Patrick Brown]

how do you know as men get older they produce less sperm? is the same applicable for people who didn't ejaculate as much in their earlier years? if you're worried about your testicles becoming atrophied massage them once a day in the shower.

I thought it was a known fact that men produce less sperm as they get older. Obviously as our bodies age energies are redirected in an attempt to repair joints tissues and organs so it seems pretty obvious that sperm production would lessen. I think it's also obvious that if sperm are not used the production of them would lessen meaning the testicles would atrophy.

 

The congenital Jing comes from your parents, emptiness, God etc. From the minute you are conceived in your mother's womb, it's there and after you are born it's in the kidney area. Through sexual and other activities you gradually deplete it, and there is no way to replenish congenital Jing by doing cultivation practices or obstinence.

Hmm not sure I buy that. I suppose it depends on whether you believe people can live for hundreds of years. It might also depend on whether you believe there's such a thing as enlightenment.

[Smile]

Hmm not sure I buy that. I suppose it depends on whether you believe people can live for hundreds of years. It might also depend on whether you believe there's such a thing as enlightenment.

If they could replace congenital Jing, they would probably live a very, very, very long time. Eating raw milk, almonds, honey or even ghee would not replace the type of energy that your mother, father and "the Holy spirit"/emptiness gave a couple of cells that were first "you" in the moment of your conception. So if anyone wants to make a baby with a very interesting future, try having sex during the Summer solstice close to the top of an active volcano.

Is enlightenment real? We don't really want to start an argument on this topic...lol

[markern]

As the examples in my previous post shows, there are and has been many enlightened people who had very active sex lives and families with children before and after enlightenment. Hence, there is no way reserving Jing through sexual abstinence is necessary. It might speed up the prosess, but wether it is absolutely necesary is not realy worth discussing since the evidence of it not being so is overwhelming and easily accessible. The only thing worth discussing is wether abstinence speeds up the process or not.

 

Compared to normal sexual activity it obviously speeds things up as this is the experience of almost everyone who tries and has tried. Compared to preorgasmic sex it apears to me to be quite a bit slower as far as I can see from the experience of AYP people and others.

 

By the way I cannot realy understand peoples rush for enlightenment. I don`t see it as very worth while to sit on top of a mountain meditating in stead of living amongst people and actualy helping them while meditating less and getting there slower. I think it`s selfish. To make you a very compassionate and functional member of society some sort of cultivation and meditation combined with a lot of loving kindness practice and some good psychological work will achieve most of what can be done to make you an unusaly goodherated and psychologicaly healthy person and takes a lot less time. There isen`t realy that much more gained by actualy getting enlightened in terms of what you will do for other people.

 

I am also often surprised how little emphasis many people put on more conventional psychological work. As Kornfield has written extensively about this does not take care of it self at all. For a few lucky people the spiritual work is more or less all they need but for almost anyone else psychological work of various kinds is eesential. Despite enlightenment, your ego won`t go away. It will only be a lot more subordinated to your true nature, the Dao or whatever one likes to call it. For reference to what many respected masters say about wether the ego is destroyed or subordinated, read the book halfway up the mountain. It has interviews with a bunch of people about this and they are pretty much in agreement that your ego remains, is necesarry and needs to be made healthy and functional. Spiritual practice often helps with this but more often is not sufficient (depending on what you call spiritual practice). There is a Zen saying that "the enlightenment does not make the person but the person makes the enlightenment". There is also a not too often expressed opinion in many tradtions that enlightenment is more like a start on a never ending path of spiritual work than it`s begining. Hence, it is an illusion to think problems will just disapear. A good idea would be to adress them right away so not to let ones neurosis` make you mess up other peoples lives too much. Much of the saintly behaviour of enlightened people is not the result primarily of enlightenment, but the systematic training in a monastic lifestyle or a Sanyasin lifestyle. It is more about how this has built up a personality and how this personality is held in place by a system of rules and social pressure. It is howver deconstructable as aparent when highly realised masters go astray when they are taken out of the context that supports their saintly personality. Enlightenment helps a lot but it is not any sort of guaranty.

[宁]

Listen people, it all depends on the individual, if the guy has the sexual strength of a bull, it's one thing.

If he's to tired even to masturbate, it's another thing.

 

Jing related practices work with levels beyound just reserving jing.

They generally work with the integration between jing, qi and shen.

 

There is a lot of Chinese-type strategy involved, and they usually don't make general assumptions.

 

Think in much larger terms when reffering to these matters, or you will just get stuck. It's like in the '80's when everybody was a karate expert... LOLZ Remember the teenage karate movies - how far they were from the original spirit of martial arts.

[growant]

Markern-

 

I disagree with you that people running towards enlightenment is selfish. In my experience, people in pursuit of enlightenment are intensely suffering, more than the average person. The average person will sit on a couch and watch TV, not on a pillow watching their breath. They're not interested.

 

We did not ask to be born (that we remember) and we have a right to be free of pain, if not happy, and this is not selfishness.

 

In regards to helping other people, yes it is good, but more often than not it seems that, fundamentally, people can only help themselves and they are often unwilling to (for various reasons).

[exorcist_1699]

Post-Heaven status of jing-qi-shen is split , but linked. The lost of any one will affect the others .

 

The pre-Heaven status of them is concentrated and united. in a Trinity ,the lost of it is always fatal . Anyone who practice Taoist cultivation with any slight evil idea will likely bring disaster to himself .

Edited August 19, 2008 by exorcist_1699

[Spectrum]

now pass the buffalo wings

[h.uriahr]

After an orgasm I think that typically you feel very drained. Is it necessary? Probably not. Maybe. Depending on your specific practice. It's much more than semen however. Although semen is def included.

[WhiteTiger]

Lets not get confused with a very light feeling you might have in your legs or other parts of your body after having sex. This light feeling is just blood not in those areas.

 

Through personal experience I've felt my dan tien temporarily drained... changing or sometimes being extremely bring to work back energy immediately back up to full power (if you know what I mean, if you don't just call me crazy then )

 

Smile, I think most people don't really totally understand what congenital Jing is. I was taught that you can practically never replenish it and food does not repenish congenital Jing. If I'm not mistaken though, there is acquired Jing though. Correct me if i'm wrong but it comes from acquired Qi that is transmuted into Jing this is to some how reconnect with whatever we have left of congenital Jing. Through this we can sustain ourselves through the cosmos.

 

I find it very interesting that most Taoism has a whole big set of ways to follow of processes that have to be followed that brings about some ability (this ability is normal because it occurs normally... just through rare set of processes)

 

I know in martial arts, at least Chinese martial arts there is a really big importance put on practice. This has to do with experiencing things. This is important because you can understand it all you want analytically or intellectually... even going so far as to read books and learn from there. But its important to practice also to have a personalized reference to what your trying to analyze, or intellectualize. So even if you mind is not made up on this subject or what people are talking about i think people should continue to practice.

[h.uriahr]

Lack of blood? I have never ever in my active life ever felt the same way from working out, running, swimming, kickboxing, mountain climbing, kayaking, skydiving, paintballing, etc., as compared to an orgasm. Nor through meditation

[三江源]

 

 

Kornfield did a survey, published in Yogajournal, where he interviewed 54 highly

regarded spiritual masters (eastern and western) and top students of spiritual

masters about their sex lives.

None of them seemed particualry enlightened in their sex lives.

 

 

 

I also would very much like to read this article.

 

 

Having an enlightened sex life is much more important to me than anything else about sex, and this would be the same if I were a guy who loses sperm. Why worry about losing sperm when you have an unevolved sexuality to deal with first?

[yogabonheur]

How about the spiritual evolution of women? How do you think an active sex life affects that? How do you think having a child would affect the spiritual evolution of a woman?

[Yoda]

There is a saying: "Everybody wants to go to Heaven but nobody wants to die".

 

Cool saying! From Russia?

[Spectrum]

Lack of blood? I have never ever in my active life ever felt the same way from working out, running, swimming, kickboxing, mountain climbing, kayaking, skydiving, paintballing, etc., as compared to an orgasm. Nor through meditation

 

Even after drinking the blood of a virgin?

Edited September 12, 2008 by Spectrum

[Smile]

Smile, I think most people don't really totally understand what congenital Jing is. I was taught that you can practically never replenish it and food does not repenish congenital Jing. If I'm not mistaken though, there is acquired Jing though. Correct me if i'm wrong but it comes from acquired Qi that is transmuted into Jing this is to some how reconnect with whatever we have left of congenital Jing. Through this we can sustain ourselves through the cosmos.

Yes, you are correct, and that's what I believe I said before.

 

 

Cool saying! From Russia?

No, I read it somewhere.

 

 

Having an enlightened sex life is much more important to me than anything else about sex, and this would be the same if I were a guy who loses sperm. Why worry about losing sperm when you have an unevolved sexuality to deal with first?

I wonder... What is evolved sexuality to you, cat?

[Kundaolinyi]

From my perspective, yes conserving Jing is necessary to accomplish ____.

 

That being said, whether conserving jing is realistic or wise for the individual practice at the moment is entirely another matter. Each individual has a genetic predisposition for a specific alchemy and body structure. If not, we would all be more identicle than identicle twins at birth.

 

There are body structures that are actually harmed by an over abundance of jing/qi/shen, and thus the body searches for an outlet. In practice, we tend to relieve these symptoms by getting the right energy in the right places (alchemy), getting the energy to flow through the safest paths, and storing the energy in the correct spots. Then all that's required is making sure we have a better 'path of least resistance' for the energy to flow, rather than flowing out. Unfortunately, unless a person can change his/her genetics permenantly, the body has a tendacy to sorta just 'slip' back into it's original inherited form eventually. For a person who has a poor body structre, it can actually be dangerous to build up great amounts of energy, even if the energy is regulated through proper alchemy, and the structure is temporarily altered by qigong... eventually, the energy required to sustain the desired form, (contrary to the genetic memory), will exceed the benefits of retaining other forms of energy, and the body will fall apart into its inherited form, while having a ton of leftover energy from the practice that can now not be regulated. Then comes the side effects. Like this, even someone who knows a ton about how to regulate thier jing-qi-shen can still end up with side effects that a noob getting in too deep would experience.

 

Masters often talk about qi 'blockages' from stored 'memories' from past injuries, or bad habbits. I never come across anyone who talks about blockages that stem from genetic memories though, and yet it's true. 'Average' people usally don't have to face such a thing, and if you're wondering what I'm talking about, you're probably one of the lucky ones.

 

The real question is, even if Jing retention is necesary, (which I believe it is), how do I change my genetics into a form that can actually do what is required of me? I have, on many occasions, transformed my body through qigong, and used the temporary new form to practice alchemy... but getting it perfect, and making it stick.... Do you know how to learn internal skills on a genetic level? It is literally impossible to transmute jing-->---qi---> shen in my inherited form. I cannot change my inherited form for more than a few seconds before the contradiction between 'proper form' and my genetic form changes me back. Solutions? Anyone?

[Pranaman]

losing the ego does not require Jing reservation. Although true love is a love that doesn't turn into pain even if your mate cheats on you. Sex makes this a difficult feat, but possible, maybe even easy.