Taoist inner alchemy (内丹, Neidan): its theory and terms, origins and schools, the stages of practice, and classic texts such as the Song of the Great Tao.
The complete Song of the Great Tao by the Northern Song Taoist nun Cao Wenyi (Immortal Maiden Cao). In heptasyllabic verse it expounds the teaching of nature and life—“spirit is nature, qi is life”—urging inner refinement through true breath and no-mind, rejecting breath-holding and counting, and calling readers to renounce fame and profit for great stillness.
More than twenty questions and answers on the basics of inner alchemy: what the inner elixir is, the principle of dual cultivation of nature and life, how to begin and how to sit in meditation, guarding the apertures and the living Zi hour, diet, the main schools, the location of the dantian, opening the Conception and Governing Vessels, methods of entering stillness, supporting exercises, and handling visions and deviations.
Master Li Yulin, head of the Taoist Medicine Clinic at the White Cloud Temple in Beijing, discusses health cultivation through inner alchemy: the difference between outer and inner alchemy, the views of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic and Laozi, emotions as the greatest barrier to health and to the Tao, and the essentials of Wang Chongyang's “Fifteen Discourses,” Patriarch Sa's Song of Refining Nature, and the Neijing Tu.
Qiu Zhengtang examines how inner alchemy strengthens the body and dispels illness. He argues that its essence is a reversal that transforms original essence into true qi to nourish the whole body, cites the “retracted member” and “non-leakage” as concrete proofs of refining essence into qi, and discusses what dual cultivation of nature and life means for harmony of body and mind.
This article traces the idea of “the return of the first yang”: from the Fu hexagram of the Zhouyi to three calendrical readings—the winter solstice, the start of the month, and the Zi hour—its role in timing outer-alchemy fire, the special place of the Zi hour on the fifteenth of the eighth month, and Xue Shi's inner-alchemy reinterpretation, “the body has its own first yang arising.”
Xu Ping shows how Taoist thunder rites rest on inner alchemy: the body, a small cosmos, returns from later heaven to prior heaven, and the principle that “the Tao gathers in emptiness” links heaven and earth, the body, the tranquil mind, and refining emptiness to merge with the Tao.
Hu Fuchen explains eight basic theories of inner alchemy: the Three Treasures of essence, qi, and spirit in prior and later heaven; following produces humans, reversing produces immortals; the Tao of emptiness and the one prior-heaven qi; three levels of consciousness; taking from Kan to fill Li; the black, red, and yellow paths; the Mysterious Pass; and the three essentials of medicine, cauldron and furnace, and fire timing.
Hu Fuchen traces the lineage of inner alchemy: from pre-Qin Laozi and Zhuangzi, the Jade Inscription on Circulating Qi, and the Cantong Qi, through the methods of Zhong and Lü and Chen Tuan, to the transmissions and methods of the main schools—Southern, Northern, Central, Eastern, Western, Wu-Liu, and Hidden Immortals.
Hu Fuchen outlines the stages of inner alchemy: for the school of pure solitary cultivation, the four phases and ten steps from laying the foundation through refining essence into qi, qi into spirit, and spirit back to emptiness; and, following Qiu Zhao'ao's Essentials of Awakening to Perfection and the Kunyuan Jing, the steps of the male and female methods of yin-yang dual cultivation.
Drawing on Ge Hong's Baopuzi Inner Chapters, this article examines the inner-alchemy ideas of health cultivation already present in the early era of outer alchemy—qi as the mechanism of all things, the Tao and the Three-One as the ultimate pursuit, and essence as the material basis—showing that the outer-alchemy era was also a hidden era of inner alchemy.