Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
Let me explain again here why we borrow from the Buddhist tradition its great emphasis on the auspicious lying posture. In the auspicious lying posture, the mouth of this pipe—the “Three-River Mouth”—is folded and blocked, so energy easily rises from the tailbone to the spine, and may even rise through the central channel.
If you do not use the auspicious lying posture, the energy will not rise; it will not easily come up through the middle or up the back, but will stay in the lower body and easily leak out below. So the auspicious lying posture folds and blocks the outlet pipe of the “Three-River Mouth.”
This is especially evident in men: if you do not want seminal emission, the only way is to use the auspicious lying posture! But if your energy has become full to a certain degree and has not yet been transformed, this method is not very effective either. You must turn the ice into water and the water into vapor and let it disperse from above. Otherwise it will certainly go out through its later-heaven passage.
The true passage of prior heaven goes out from above. So once a person's top has opened, they no longer take in energy only from food; they can absorb it from above, entering through the head. The movement of the first section of the moving exercises, “Guanyin Invites the Sages,” serves this purpose.
When the energy is full but the lower outlet still cannot be closed, “The Crane Spreads Its Wings” serves to balance yin and yang in the energy that has entered the body, first closing off the lower outlet. But once the energy is full, it will still go out through the later-heaven channel below, and so one must use “The River Stops and the Great River Turns Back”!
With “The River Stops and the Great River Turns Back,” the energy becomes full, but yin and yang are still not in harmony. Left and right are unbalanced and uncoordinated, so one uses “Heaven and Earth Revolve” and “The Rhinoceros Gazes at the Moon,” letting the energy of the left go to the right and the energy of the right go to the left, uniting with each other. Once they unite, yin and yang are balanced and begin to spiral in the body. When the spiraling reaches a certain point, the energy begins to rise level by level. It is like water in a bottle—30 milliliters, 40 milliliters, 50 milliliters… once it is full, the mouth of the bottle opens and the water goes out.
But in the process of gradually filling up, there are still gaps in some places, just as there are air bubbles in a syringe after drawing up medicine. Before the injection, the bubbles must be expelled. Do you know why? Because air entering a blood vessel is very dangerous. With an intravenous drip too, the air in the tube must be completely expelled; otherwise the air enters the body, travels with the blood circulation, and blocks some part, causing problems. So whether it is an intramuscular or an intravenous injection, the air must be expelled.
The swaying, the “whoosh, whoosh…” of “The Lotus Sways” and “Stand on Earth, Soar to Heaven” in the moving exercises are for expelling the air. Both ancient and scientific! But you have no idea what they are for; when you are told to practice them, some of you simply will not—it pains you more than a beating! Just as some parents tell their child to study, and the child would rather die than study: “Why should I study for you? I just won't!”
In “Stand on Earth, Soar to Heaven,” you stamp your heels down and breathe out as you stamp; it works only if coordinated with the breath. Even if I explain it to you today, you will not feel it, so you will not believe it without doubt, but only half believe and half doubt. Since you have not felt it, how could you believe without doubt? Only after you have felt it personally will you believe without doubt!
Last time I spoke about the physiological Conception and Governing Vessels and central channel, and about the relationship between essence, qi, and spirit in the body and cultivating the Tao. Afterward several people raised questions with me, saying they still did not quite understand and hoped I would explain again.
The essence, qi, and spirit in the body and the Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, and central channel are closely related to cultivating the Tao. Since ancient times it has been said: “Cultivating the Tao is not apart from body and mind”; apart from body and mind there is no cultivating the Tao. Spiritual practice, at the beginning, is always cultivation of the body! Only after the body has been cultivated to health can one cultivate the mind. That is to say, the “Tao” is made up of the union of body and mind.
Many people cultivating the Tao in Buddhist circles feel that practice has nothing to do with this “stinking skin-bag” and pay no attention to the body. As a result, after several years of practice the body collapses, and in the end they turn back to cultivating the body all over again, which is not truly cultivating the mind. If they had not neglected the body when they began cultivating the Tao, there would be no need to go back and cultivate the body after ruining it.
Many people end up after all their practice with a body full of illness! If the body has not been cultivated well, how can one cultivate the state of mind? Because for an ordinary person (that is, a common mortal), the mind is always led by the body. Buddhism speaks of “the mind being able to transform things,” but which of us here can transform the body with the mind? According to the stages of Buddhist practice, unless you are a bodhisattva of the ninth or tenth bhumi, you cannot transform things with the mind. That is, before the ninth and tenth bhumis, things transform the mind, and the mind is controlled by the body.
Look at the patriarchs and Taoist masters of the past and you will understand. Which of those patriarchs of old, even at over 100 years of age, was not imposing, able to shake the earth and mountains with a single shout? Which of our Taoist priests and Taoist nuns today has such spirit and bearing? They all speak without strength and walk without strength; every one of them is sallow and thin!
Can it be that our nutrition today cannot match life in Taoist monasteries a thousand years ago? Why were practitioners of the past so full of vigor? The vigor of practitioners today leaks away day and night through the six sense faculties! It never enters the Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, or central channel at all, and since it never enters them, there can be no talk of cultivating the body. If the body cannot even be cultivated, how can the nature of the mind be cultivated? Every bit of energy in the body has leaked away, and one has truly become an empty shell!
Why is the body's essence, qi, and spirit so rarely discussed in meditation halls today? Because the ancients had long since subdued the body in their practice, so this lesson on the body was never taught in the meditation hall. For among practitioners of the past, anyone able to enter the meditation hall was already the equivalent of a “graduate student.” Let me ask you: would a graduate course still teach basics like the “horizontal, vertical, left-falling, and right-falling strokes” of writing?
In the past, unlike today, not just anyone could enter the meditation hall for seated meditation! People today are all just going through the motions, with no real attainment. Even people sitting in meditation in the meditation hall are few and far between. The temples have opened wide the gate of convenience, and anyone can enter the meditation hall to sit, which in fact has its good side, but you may also mistakenly think that this is all the Taoist method is—cross your legs, sit a while, and that is cultivating the Tao. In fact, sitting in the meditation hall, the six faculties are fighting all the time and have never stopped!
If the force in a person's body is not intercepted and subdued, the body quickly declines. Moreover, sitting here in meditation, the mind cannot become still either, because the body is empty inside, with nothing there! Only after the primordial qi of the body has been cultivated and is in a state of stillness will the mind not give rise to wicked thoughts. The reason the mind has wicked thoughts is that the space in the body is too empty. It is like a cup with very little water in it: there is plenty of room for the water to slosh back and forth. If the cup is full of water, there is no room for it to slosh.
People whose essence, qi, and spirit are ample are quick in their reactions and their thinking. The reason practitioners are slow and cannot react is that the circuits of the body are not open. The circuits of the body are not open because essence, qi, and spirit are not full. It is like a water pipe with little water in it: there are air bubbles inside, the flow is intermittent, and sometimes it breaks off. If the pipe is completely full of water, there are no bubbles in it. If the six faculties are not closed, however you practice, the energy in the body cannot become full.
When the energy in the body is not full, essence, qi, and spirit can hardly rise, and if they do not rise, the lotus at the crown can never open! You have all seen lotuses open; it is precisely because the energy below is continually sent through the lotus stalk to the bud that it is made to open. If the lotus stalk supplied no energy to the bud, how could it open?
This lotus bud corresponds to our head. We open the crown, attain enlightenment, and open the channels because the energy stored in the body is continually sent upward through the central pivot of our central channel; only then can we attain enlightenment, open the crown, and open the channels. If the energy cannot be condensed but leaks away below, it cannot be sent upward.
“Leaking” refers first to frequent sexual relations between husband and wife, which leak it away; second to the various desires people have, which also leak it away; and third to overusing our six sense faculties, which is also a kind of leak. It all leaks away below, and there is no surplus energy at all to send up through the central channel, so the lotus cannot possibly open!