Chiyang Daoren, Eastern Taoism
The purpose of celibacy is to store energy. Once enough has been stored, it is burned through “vase breathing” and “inner-fire absorption” (tummo), and that prior-heaven thing without form or appearance (or one could say with form and appearance, since it cannot be seen but can be felt) is sent out. Once it has been sent out, you no longer need celibacy, because it has already been up and is in accord with the force above.
Why still the mind? Why close the six sense faculties? In order to condense energy. The problem we face now is how to make our energy full, yet usually once it is full we let it leak away again! If you do not want it to leak away, you must use a method to bring it into the track of prior heaven.
The Conception and Governing Vessels are the prior-heaven track. Tantric Buddhism speaks of left, central, and right channels, and Taoism of front (Conception), center, and back (Governing), but both acknowledge and value the central channel. The most important thing is this central channel; it is the pivot. It is like an apple, with a hollow at the front and a stem at the back, and the core in the middle joining the two, like a person's central channel.
Why do so many religions of a high level have practitioners sit cross-legged in meditation? Because when you sit cross-legged, hands and feet are still, and the calves and thighs are pressed down so they consume no energy. When the legs grow numb and hot, the energy moves upward and the energy in the body does not sink; it is sent upward, and the body opens easily.
Once you have completed the four dhyanas and eight samadhis, you no longer need to cling to seated meditation; you can go out every day, wandering at leisure and touring the mountains and scenery, but you still need to keep the mind still. Since it is a matter of stilling the mind, sitting cross-legged is not the only thing that counts as stilling the mind. Whatever you do, as long as the mind is still and the six faculties are closed, energy will keep being sent upward!
Those of you who have not understood, ask quickly; these questions cannot all be covered at once! Hearing such a strange and unusual topic all of a sudden, one you have never heard before, I fear you may not understand. Even if you understand, you may still not accept it, because in the past we have rarely heard anyone in Buddhism speak this way.
“Contemplative observation” means placing your attention on one spot. Why practice contemplative observation? To concentrate the mind. Once the mind is concentrated, the energy in the body is concentrated and does not easily leak out. For example, if you place your attention at the crown of the head, the body's energy naturally rises from below to the crown; if you place your attention on the dantian, the energy goes to the dantian.
When Taoists cultivate the elixir field, they cultivate the lower dantian for 100 days and then must not cultivate it further, but move to the middle dantian; after cultivating the middle dantian for 100 days, they move to the upper dantian; after cultivating the upper dantian for 100 days, it breaks through the shell (the crown) and goes out!
But people today do not understand this at all, so they guard the lower dantian their whole lives. A few know that the upper dantian is important, and they guard the upper dantian their whole lives. In fact, each dantian is cultivated for only 100 days; once that is complete, one moves at once from the lower dantian to the middle, and from the middle to the upper.
In Taoism, one guards the lower dantian to condense energy. Once the foundational qi is ample, one lets it rise and moves it up to the second step; when the second step is full, one moves to the third. Three periods of 100 days come to roughly a year, and in a year one can go out. “The spirit goes out and enters the painting”: the spirit can go out and “enter the painting”—enter the void; the void is a painting, the universe is a painting.
In the second year one trains entirely at going out and coming in, going out and coming in; in the third year one puts it to use. So for someone who has truly received the genuine transmission, three years are enough to succeed! A somewhat slower person can go through a second three years. If you do not know the method, thirty years will do no good! Hence the saying: “Having obtained the method, return and cultivate the Tao well.” If you have not obtained the method, returning is of no use! “Having obtained the method, return and cultivate the Tao well”—if there were no such thing as a “method,” there would never have been talk in the past of “seeking the method, transmitting the method, obtaining the method, and realizing the method”!
The so-called “taking no method as the method, taking no gate as the gate” refers to those who have succeeded, for whom there is no longer any method or gate! They enter absorption whenever they wish and go away whenever they wish, without relying on any method. They have already reached the point of taking no method as the method and no gate as the gate! But we beginners cannot practice well even with a method, let alone without one! Every day all we can do is chant a few scriptures, bow to the patriarchs, and sit in meditation for a while. We are even too lazy to chant scriptures and bow to the Buddha, and want to sleep!
When did the morning and evening liturgy appear? In the late Tang and early Song. Everyone thinks the morning and evening liturgy is the fundamental method of practice, but in fact it is only the outer skin: it is ritual form, a need and a means of spreading the teaching. Precisely because the skin was taken for the root, the fundamental method of ending birth and escaping death was forgotten!
The more a person does in outward form, the more the inner core is lost; the more a person attends to the core, the less attention they pay to outward things. But how many people can see our core? They can only judge from our outward appearance. To meet the needs of spreading the Taoist teaching, we have to do these outward things; however high your inner practice, others do not know it.
The physiological structure of men and women (meaning the main channels and vessels) is exactly the same, without the slightest difference! Whether people today or people of ancient times, there is not the slightest difference! That is to say, everyone's Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, and central channel (or left, central, and right channels) are formed exactly alike.
Why did I say a few days ago, when I explained the method for dealing with drowsiness, that you should press your chin down to your chest? To exercise this central pivot, the central channel. Once you stimulate it and open it, energy is sent to the brain. Once energy is sent up, the brain is no longer short of oxygen and no longer drowsy. There is also a method for controlling wandering thoughts: you take control of this central channel, like a water pipe—bend it, and the mind enters absorption at once and is no longer scattered. That is the principle.
But all of this requires certain methods. If I tell you now, before you have reached a certain level, and you go home and try things blindly, it will be hard to deal with if something goes wrong! You may end up dull-witted, with the brain starved of oxygen for a long time, leading to brain atrophy or cerebral thrombosis, and I cannot take responsibility for that!
Why do Buddhists sleep in the “auspicious lying posture”? Men in particular benefit from it without limit and feel its effects most. When a person lies in the auspicious posture, the meeting point of the three channels—the “Three-River Mouth”—is folded up; once it is folded, a person has no desire and does not leak easily. Moreover, in the auspicious posture, once it is folded, the energy goes up to the head.
Question: Is the auspicious lying posture on the left side or the right side?
Master: On the right side. The correct posture is to pillow the head on the hand, with the thumb behind the ear and the other four fingers at the temple. The hand serves as a pillow, but the ear is not covered. When you have practiced to a certain level, you no longer do it this way; you change to another way and sleep with the thumb plugging the ear. But few people reach this state.
Question: Where does the left hand go?
Master: The left hand rests naturally on the body. But the left hand has its own use; both left and right hands have their uses. Right now we are at the stage of “the body transforming the mind”: if you have the will but not the strength—the spirit is willing but the strength is lacking—your will is of no use, and the energy cannot come up.
Taoist practice places more emphasis on the body; in fact Buddhist practice also cultivates the body, and Taoist cultivation in the end also comes back to cultivating the state of mind. But because many people cannot complete the stage of cultivating the body, they often mistakenly think that Taoism only ever cultivates the body and never cultivates the state of mind at all.
Buddhism is centered on cultivating the state of mind, with cultivation of the body as secondary, because from the Buddhist point of view our body is not ultimate: it is a shell, a temporary combination of the four great elements, which must be cast off within a hundred years. Taoism leans more toward cultivating longevity, so it puts more effort than Buddhism into cultivating the body.
Today let us speak about the relationship between the body's essence, qi, and spirit and cultivating the Tao. Tibetan Buddhism also places considerable emphasis on cultivating the body, and discusses essence, qi, and spirit in particular at some length. When people hear “essence, qi, and spirit,” they often mistakenly take them to be later-heaven essence, qi, and spirit—especially people who practice qigong. In fact the essence, qi, and spirit spoken of in Tantric Buddhism and Taoism refer to prior-heaven essence, qi, and spirit, not the later-heaven sperm that can produce offspring, nor “the qi of breathing.” Later-heaven essence, qi, and spirit are of little help in cultivating the Tao. Even to strengthen the body, what is cultivated is prior-heaven essence, qi, and spirit.
If the essence, qi, and spirit in a person's body are full, their hands and feet are ordinarily (especially in winter) warm and cozy. In summer, the hands and feet feel cool—and never sweaty! Many people do find their hands and feet sweating when they reach a certain stage of practice; this too is actually a good sign, as the dampness in the body is being expelled.
Once the qi channels in a person's body are open, the hands and feet become very supple! Even if you are elderly, you can perform difficult movements. It is generally thought that the elderly have stiff limbs because their bones have hardened, but in fact that is only the outward appearance. The root cause is that essence, qi, and spirit are gone—too much has been lost—so the sinews and bones in the body lack vitality, the kidney water is insufficient and cannot moisten the sinews and bones, and so they age and become rather stiff.
Buddhism has a saying: “Skin wraps blood and flesh, sinews bind the bones.” When a person's physiological functions have aged, the sinews binding the bones shrink, so difficult movements can no longer be done. After a fall, the body still hurts months later, and one may even be easily injured. And a small child? Falls every day, jumps up and runs off, with no trouble at all!
That is because a small child has not lost the slightest bit of essence, qi, and spirit; that is, the child keeps the prior-heaven, most original essence, qi, and spirit. When our practice reaches a certain level and we have returned from old age to youth, we too will be like small children when we fall to the ground: we get up and walk on as before, not easily hurt.
Why do some people so easily sprain their joints, neck, or back, or dislocate them? Because the essence, qi, and spirit in the body are insufficient. The sinews binding the bones are like a slack spring that has lost its elasticity. So at the slightest thing they twist their neck, “crick their neck in their sleep,” or strain their back.
Why does this not happen to small children? Because a child's sinews and bones are like springs, very elastic. When through practice the essence, qi, and spirit in our body become full, the first thing is that a warm current naturally arises in the body. Once this warm current arises and spreads through the whole body, the body is nourished, and the springs of our body—the sinews connecting muscle and bone—are nourished and regain their elasticity.
If you practice well, even at eighty the body's primordial qi—essence, qi, and spirit—remains like that of a youth! Why did the great practitioners of the past have extraordinary vigor that never ran out? One of them could do the work of ten or even a hundred people, and they never knew fatigue! Because their own essence, qi, and spirit were ample, and in addition they were devoted to their work, all the body's energy went into their work and was not consumed by the body's desires.