Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
In fact, when we chant scriptures and incantations, practice seated meditation, and refine the elixir, we are also cultivating our habits. Where a person goes after death is decided by that person's habits. Buddhism says that one enters the next course of life according to one's power of concentration and one's karma; to make it clear to you, I will explain it in other words: where one goes is decided by the habits one had in life!
When you hear the word “habits,” do not take it to mean only bad things. Cultivating the Tao, compassion, and good deeds are also the cultivation of a kind of habit. If you do not build up the habit of cultivating the Tao, it is impossible to be born into the “Grand Canopy Heaven” (Daluo Tian)!
As I said before, our cultivation is like the process of launching a rocket. The body is the launch frame, the central channel is the rocket's launch passage, and our spirit-body—which may be called the original face or self-nature (and which ordinary people call the soul)—let us not debate its name here; in any case, all agree that there is something, and it is the rocket's head.
If you who study and cultivate the Tao want that thing to fly out, you must store up ample “gunpowder”—energy—below. Once the energy is sufficient, you must also learn to ignite it; only when burning produces tremendous heat can the rocket head be sent into the void. Once it enters outer space, the original energy is no longer needed, and there is no further need for gunpowder!
Because this “rocket head” itself came down from outer space, it naturally merges into one with the energy of outer space, locking tightly together and producing a force of attraction. So-called “cultivating” is cultivating the lower half; so-called “refining” is refining that thing which goes out from above, so that it can go out whenever you wish and come in whenever you wish, training it again and again every day until it succeeds every time!
If in your lifetime you can go out but cannot succeed every time, you must not stop yet. Even if you can succeed every time, at the moment of death, in a state of unconsciousness, can you be your own master? Some say they can sometimes go out and sometimes cannot. I can tell you that if your last breath at the end happens to come at a time when you cannot go out, then this whole life of practice has been in vain! So while you are alive you must train until you succeed every single time and can be your own master in going out and coming in at any moment!
Cultivating and attaining the Tao requires all-round qualities; only when every cause, condition, and requirement is in place is ascending as a feathered immortal—becoming an immortal—within your reach. Why is it that when I see you devout people I get angry and want to scold you? You always think devotion alone can free you from birth and death. I have said that devotion alone has nothing whatever to do with cultivating the Tao! Nor does courage, perseverance, spirit, bearing, or boldness alone have anything to do with cultivating the Tao; having a method alone still has nothing to do with it; and having a patriarch sitting in front of you alone is still no use. Only when you have all of these can you be freed from birth and death. It is like wanting a plant to sprout, flower, and bear fruit: having only the seed, only water, only sunlight, or only soil will not do; all these conditions must be present, and not one can be missing.
Every day during communal labor I see you Taoist priests, young men in your twenties and thirties—why don't you have a bit of a tiger's vigor? Where has that tigerish, imposing power gone? It has all leaked away! Why has it leaked away? If one's resolve to practice is strong, it can also intercept part of the body's energy. If you add the correct method, you will have both forces, of mind and of body, and from then on your strength will be ample. At that point, whether walking or working, you will have inexhaustible strength!
If you cannot subdue the body, you have no way to go deep into the mind; if you cannot go deep into the mind, you have no way to transform the mind thoroughly. For body and mind are one, like a person's two feet: relying on one foot alone, it is very hard to take a step.
In fact, it is very hard for an ordinary person's force to enter the central channel; it cannot even enter the Conception and Governing Vessels. In our practice, the first thing is to let the force enter the Conception and Governing Vessels; only when the force in the Conception and Governing Vessels is ample will it enter the central channel.
You have all seen an apple: it has a stem at the top and a hollow at the bottom, and the central axis joining these two points is like our central channel. This apple originally grew on the tree; why does it fall off? Everyone knows it is because it has ripened and autumn has come, but that is an outsider's answer and only partly right. Our practice now is about how to make this apple that has fallen to the ground return to the tree!
This tree is the universe, the “Tao”; each of us is a part of the universe, a part of the “Tao,” an apple that has fallen from the apple tree.
Why does it fall off? Because the earth has a pull: once the apple is ripe and leaves the apple tree, it is pulled to the ground. The earth has a pull, and the universe and outer space also have a pull, which is why treetops grow upward. Since the universe too has a force of attraction, there is no reason for the energy of our body to let the apple keep sinking; we should make it rise.
Since the force in the universe is always waiting for us to rise, we should use a method to make the energy below rise. In fact, when it rises to a certain stage, it means the apple that fell to the ground has returned to the tree of the universe and hangs swaying on the tree again!
For when an apple has grown on the tree to a certain point and the energy within—nutrients and sugars—is ample, it no longer needs the tree to keep supplying it, and the apple will inevitably drop from the tree to the ground.
If you do not want this apple to stay on the ground, you must now “return to the root and revert to the origin,” sending the energy the tree supplied to the apple back through this stem, delivering the nourishment back into the apple tree.
But if you do not know this wondrous method, do you think burning incense and bowing to the patriarchs is cultivating the Tao? Do you think chanting scriptures is cultivating the Tao? Do you think eating vegetarian food is cultivating the Tao? Do you think putting on a Taoist robe, drawing talismans, and chanting incantations is cultivating the Tao? None of these has anything to do with cultivating the Tao! It sounds harsh, but I have to tell you the truth: nothing you do has anything to do with cultivating the Tao!
In fact, each of us is an apple that has fallen from the apple tree of the universe. Because the energy within us is already sufficient and full, it no longer needs the tree to supply it, so the stem breaks off and it falls. If we want to return to this great tree, we must give the energy in the apple back through the stem to the apple tree, back to the universe, back to the void.