Xu Ping
In films, television dramas, and novels alike, we often see scenes like this: “Heaven and earth without limit, Qian and Kun lend their power, the primordial spirit leaves the body, light of sun, moon, and stars, wind, fire, thunder, and lightning strike...” The ritual master forms hand seals, chants incantations, and summons thunder; then, with a shriek, the ghost or demon is annihilated body and soul...
Seeing this, some fellow practitioners may think of the thunder rites (leifa) of Taoism. So the question arises: in reality, are thunder rites really as films and television describe them? And how are they cultivated? Let us take these questions with us and together lift the veil of mystery from the thunder rites.
Thunder rites are an important part of Taoist ritual methods. Taking inner alchemy (neidan) cultivation as their root, they fuse talismans and registers with incantation and bring together many Taoist arts such as visualization, qi ingestion, and fasts and offerings (zhaijiao). They are a Taoist art used to summon wind and thunder, subdue demons and quell evil spirits, pray for rain or clear skies, and stop droughts and floods.
Thunder rites originated in the Eastern Han and Jin dynasties, developed in the late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Northern Song, and flourished in the Southern Song, Jin, and Yuan. Over the course of history they formed schools such as the Qingwei (Pure Subtlety), Donghua, Shenxiao (Divine Empyrean), and Tianxin. Like the traditional practice of the Golden Elixir school, they have a rigorous system of cultivation. Thunder rites drew on the ideas and absorbed the methods of inner alchemy, so inner-alchemy cultivation is the foundation for wielding “thunder.”
1. Thunder Rites Are the Outward Use of Inner Alchemy: In Stillness the Golden Elixir, in Movement the Thunderbolt
Thunder rites and inner alchemy share the same principles. Thunder rites, including those of the Shenxiao and Qingwei schools, all value inner-alchemy cultivation and hold that “inner refinement is the root and outward use the branch,” believing that only through arduous refinement of the inner elixir can one gain the ability to wield “thunder.” Both thunder rites and inner alchemy reflect the principle that the human body communicates with the Great Tao and returns from later heaven to prior heaven; both apply the principle that “the Tao gathers in emptiness,” value the function of emptiness and nothingness, and refine emptiness to merge with the Tao.
Taoist priests of the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) school drew on the ideas of inner alchemy to enrich their theory of ritual methods. For example, Xiao Yingsou of the Southern Song, a Master of the Three Luminaries of the Mysterious Capital of the Great Cavern of Highest Clarity, annotated the Scripture of Salvation (Duren Jing) with inner-alchemy ideas, holding that through inner-alchemy cultivation one can blend spirit, qi, and essence into one, return to the root and the origin, return to the root and restore life, gather the ten thousand spirits and transform them into the infant, “merge with the Tao in truth,” and obtain the true “treasure”; at that point one can perform all kinds of ritual arts.
The Northern Pole Tianxin school of the Northern Song, one of the branches of the Zhengyi method, took inner cultivation as the root of its ritual practice. Its method of inner cultivation centered on visualizing the three lights, and it has the Jade Book of the Inner Landscape of the High Flight, of the Orthodox Lineage of the Jade Hall of the Supreme Three Heavens, devoted to visualization methods derived from the Shangqing tradition.
2. The Human Body Communicates with the Great Tao and Returns from Later Heaven to Prior Heaven
Master Xue Mingde, a 22nd-generation lineage holder of the Qingwei school within the Celestial Masters' Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity) school, held in his Discourse on the Mysteries of Thunder Rites (Leifa Yixuan Pian) that among all ritual methods, the thunder rites are the most powerful. “Thunder is the pivot of heaven and earth.” “Therefore thunder is heaven's command, and its authority is the greatest; the Three Realms and the nine earths are all under the overall command of the thunder offices.” So most of its rites are carried out by summoning and commanding the marshals and generals of the Thunder Department.
“Whoever wishes to practice must first ingest the ancestral qi of prior heaven.” Only when the inner elixir is achieved can the surging fullness of the one qi of prior heaven appear, so that the qi of the organs is transformed into the spirits of thunder and blends with the spirits of empty space.
The intellectual basis of the thunder rites is the theory of the mutual response of heaven and humanity. It holds that the human body is a small heaven and earth, every part of which matches and corresponds to heaven and earth: the head resembles heaven, the feet the earth, the four limbs the four seasons, and the five zang organs the Five Phases, and its essence, qi, and spirit all communicate and resonate with heaven and earth. But this communication and resonance rest on the original qi of prior heaven. As soon as a person is born, he enters later heaven, and his essence, qi, and spirit gradually become stained by the dregs of all kinds of passions and desires and can no longer resonate with heaven and earth. Only by removing these dregs through cultivation and returning from later heaven to prior heaven, back to the pure prior-heaven state—that is, reaching the highest state of inner-alchemy cultivation—uniting one's own qi with the qi of heaven and earth and one's own spirit with the spirit of heaven and earth, can there be a response. Then one can call up wind and thunder, pray for rain and get rain, pray for sunshine and get sunshine, with nothing impossible.
Thunder rites take original qi as the root and yin and yang as the function. They hold that the human body is a small heaven and earth, sharing the same substance, the same laws of operation, and the same generative process as the great heaven and earth of the universe, and they build their theoretical foundation on a philosophy of human life modeled on cosmology. As the Yellow Emperor's Classic of the Hidden Talisman (Yinfu Jing) says: “The universe is in one's hands; all transformations arise within the body.” Wang Wenqing said: “This body is the outer and inner of heaven and earth; creation lies wholly in my palm.”
The body's inner qi dynamic is like a primordial treasure, present from birth and latent with boundless functions and energy. Without proper cultivation, this latent life energy will depart as one grows old, dies, and returns to matter—a great pity.
The human body is a small universe that can model itself on nature and learn from creation. Taoist inner-alchemy cultivation aims to develop the body's latent powers and achieve communication between the body and the Great Tao, so that the body models itself on heaven and earth, returns from later heaven to prior heaven, and unites with the Tao. We hold that two heavens and earths exist: the prior-heaven world and the later-heaven world. “Following the ordinary course produces human beings”: as soon as a person is born, he enters the later-heaven world, is steeped in the seven emotions and six desires, and in worldly life is gradually “diminished and diminished again,” so that people in the later-heaven world live only a few decades before their lives come to a bleak end.
For the human body to open the passage between the two worlds of prior and later heaven and return to the prior-heaven state and enter eternity, the necessary condition and vehicle is the actual existence of the body. Taoist inner alchemy speaks of four difficulties in the opportunity to cultivate: “a human body is hard to obtain, birth in the central land is hard to achieve, the true teaching is hard to encounter, and a true master is hard to meet”; one of these is “a human body is hard to obtain.”
In the Taoist system of inner alchemy, the human body is the object of cultivation, and its nervous system and reproductive system are the two important areas of cultivation. The body that inner alchemy attends to differs from that of Chinese medicine: inner alchemy, for example, attends to the whole region of the kidneys rather than to the kidney as an organ in the sense of Chinese medicine. The task of inner-alchemy cultivation is to use the mind as a medium to bring about interaction between the nervous system and the reproductive system, called “the communication of heart and kidneys” and “the communication of body and mind.” Terms such as “the communication of heart and kidneys” began to appear in the Sui and Tang. Zhongli Quan inherited and developed the alchemical method of the line of Wei Boyang's Zhouyi Cantong Qi, bringing inner alchemy gradually to maturity. Through “the communication of heart and kidneys” in which “yin and yang are turned upside down,” one gathers the prior-heaven medicine in preparation for cultivating union with the Tao. Inner-alchemy cultivation involves the body's passes and apertures, dantian (elixir fields), and channels, for example: the Yinqiao point, the Weilü point, the double pass of Jiaji, the Yuzhen point, the Niwan Palace, the Twelve-Storied Tower, the Danzhong point, the upper, middle, and lower dantian, the Yellow Court, the Twelve-Storied Tower, the Crimson Palace, Guanyuan, Qihai, the bottom of the sea, the Bright Hall (Mingtang), and the heavenly bridge and sea of qi. The body's channels are especially important in cultivation; they are divided into the Conception Vessel, the Governing Vessel, the Penetrating Vessel, the Belt Vessel, and others.
In performing thunder rites, one unites one's own qi with the qi of heaven and earth and one's own spirit with the spirit of heaven and earth. They emphasize the cultivation of one's own essence, qi, and spirit and attach the greatest importance to the cultivation and transformation of the body, holding that when the body is cultivated to a certain degree and returns from later heaven to prior heaven, the thunder rites can naturally be wielded at will.
Zhao Yizhen, a Qingwei Taoist priest of the late Yuan and early Ming, said: “The wonder of Qingwei prayer is that creation lies within my own body, not in the complicated procedures of mounting the altar. If in ordinary life one adds the work of cultivating virtue and resolving doubts, the creation within the body becomes clear, and the work of stillness is also achieved; then when one performs at the altar, issuing commands and orders, taking things upside down or picking them up crosswise, all is wondrous function.” The human body communicates with the Great Tao; when the small universe of the body unites with the great universe of the Tao, after the response the pivot of thunder will surely open. As soon as the primordial spirit and true intention stir, the spirits of the Thunder Department descend to the altar, and one can summon wind and rain.
The ancients long ago discovered the opportunity for thunder rites and inner alchemy to merge. From this we can see that both thunder rites and inner alchemy seek the union of the body with the Great Tao and the return from later heaven to prior heaven.
3. “The Tao Gathers in Emptiness”: Using Emptiness for Function
The Shenxiao school, the “thunder-rite school” that originated in the Beidi school of the Tang and took shape in the Song, is a ritual method combining inner alchemy with talismans and registers. It has its own pantheon and talismans and can summon thunder and call rain. It focuses on averting calamity and prayer—dispatching plagues, driving off locusts, summoning thunder, requesting rain, praying for clear skies, stopping wind, attacking evil, and summoning and interrogating ghosts and spirits—while also refining the inner elixir. In its theory of ritual method it holds that “the Tao is the substance and ritual method the function,” and that “refined within, it becomes the elixir; used without, it becomes ritual method”: that is, taking the achievement of the inner elixir and union with the Tao in truth as the foundation, it expresses this outwardly as all kinds of transformations and mysterious arts.
The Qingwei school, with its complete system and distinctive methods of cultivation, is as famous as the Shenxiao school, and it incorporates much inner alchemy. The Secret Principles of the Great Tao of Pure Subtlety (Qingwei Dadao Mizhi) also emphasizes the idea that inner refinement is the core of the thunder rites: “Handed down from primordial vastness to the present, continuous and unbroken, complete in every person, the same truth in ordinary people and sages, lacking nothing and with nothing extra, neither increasing nor decreasing. Cultivated within, it becomes the supreme treasure and one becomes a Perfect Person; applied without, it brings harmony and peace to heaven and earth and blessings to the state and prosperity to the people. As for breathing out the night mist, breathing in wind and clouds, commanding ghosts and spirits, and driving thunder and lightning—all are the wondrous function of this one truth, issuing from the governance of the square inch of the heart.”
The close connection between thunder rites and inner alchemy is also seen in the practice of thunder rites by inner-alchemy cultivators; some of them also practiced thunder rites. Bai Yuchan of the Southern Song, for instance, the fifth patriarch of the Southern School of the Golden Elixir, practiced thunder rites as well. Zhang Jixian, the 30th Celestial Master of the Song dynasty, who held the talismans, registers, and seals of the Zhengyi school, refined the Golden Elixir within and used thunder rites without, and enjoyed the favor of Emperor Huizong.
Inner-alchemy cultivation stresses “relying on being to cultivate nonbeing,” and the performance of thunder rites emphasizes stealing the function of emptiness and nothingness to set off “thunder.” Neither can do without the principle of emptiness and nothingness.
1. The Emptiness of Heaven and Earth
Merging with the Tao through emptiness. The study of the alchemical Way holds that heaven and earth, Qian and Kun, come from the Tao, and the Tao is empty and formless. The Collected Transmission of the Tao from Zhongli to Lü, “On the Great Tao,” says: “The Great Tao has no form, no name, no question, no answer. It is so great that nothing is outside it and so small that nothing is inside it. It cannot be known, and it cannot be practiced!”
The Seal of the Unity of the Three (Cantong Qi) says: “These four (Qian, Kun, Kan, and Li) are undifferentiated and pass straight into emptiness and nothingness.” The Great Tao is spread throughout heaven, earth, and humanity, so “the Tao is not far from people,” but because it is formless and nameless, ordinary people find it hard to know. The Zhong-Lü alchemical Way holds that the Tao of emptiness and nothingness neither comes into being nor is destroyed, and so it advocates refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, and refining spirit to return to emptiness, uniting one's own emptiness with the emptiness of the Tao and thereby knowing the Tao. The Baopuzi (Inner Chapters) says: “Holding to purity and guarding simplicity, without desire and without worry, keeping whole the true and empty vessel, dwelling in calm and savoring blandness; vast and boundless, equal in naturalness with the primal whole; broad and limitless, matching creation like the halves of a tally.” It holds that a person should empty himself so as to match the vast and boundless primal whole of creation like the halves of a tally.
Thunder rites also value the emptiness of heaven and earth. Wang Wenqing said: “With the spirit of my original life I summon the spirits of emptiness; with the qi of my own body I unite with the qi of emptiness; add to this pacing the Dipper and forming seals of the moon, secret incantations and numinous talismans; wield thunder in the palm and contain heaven and earth within the body—and so the response comes swift as shadow and echo.” When the body's prior-heaven spirit and qi unite with the spirits and qi of emptiness between heaven and earth, the efficacy of the thunder rites will emerge.
The function of emptiness and nothingness. As the Tao Te Ching says: “What is there provides the benefit; what is not there provides the use.” Emptiness and nothingness have great function; methods of deliberate action cannot match them. The Scripture of the Original Arising of Emptiness and Naturalness by Lord Lao the Most High (Laojun Taishang Xuwu Ziran Benqi Jing) says: “The Tao is at root empty and nothing; within the three powers and the six directions, there is nothing in which it is not numinous and nothing in which it is not holy.” Because the Tao is empty and nothing, it can be the ancestor of all things, containing all of time and space, with wondrous function without end. It also says: “Guarding the Great Emptiness means that people of high learning and merit understand the root and origin of the Tao and penetrate deeply into its subtleties. They know the transformations of the Three Primes and the Nine-One, the first ancestor of the mystery within the mystery, and the Tao of the ultimate of nothingness within nothingness; they know where it begins and see where it ends.” This shows that if a person can guard and use emptiness and nothingness, he can perceive subtleties, deeply understand the foundation of the Tao, discern transformations, and know the mystery within the mystery and the nothingness within nothingness. “The Tao gives rise to the one qi from emptiness and nothingness, and from the one qi produces yin and yang.” Because of “emptiness and nothingness,” the Tao produces the one qi of prior heaven and then all things; how great is the function of emptiness and nothingness! Thunder rites and inner alchemy both value the function of emptiness and nothingness, stealing its essence to achieve their effects.
2. Emptiness Communicates with the Great Tao; Returning to Prior Heaven, One Is Not Destroyed
The Scripture on Attaining the Tao and Liberating the Body Spoken by the Primordial Heavenly Worthy (Yuanshi Tianzun Shuo Dedao Liaoshen Jing) says: “When yin is exhausted and yang is pure, the sacred embryo is complete. Within the body there is a body; the spirit becomes a true sage. The true sage merges with the Great Void, the Great Void merges with true emptiness, true emptiness merges with emptiness, nothingness, and naturalness; emptiness, nothingness, and naturalness are the primordial True One, and the primordial True One is my true body. Born before heaven, born without form; growing before heaven, growing without substance. Who is without form or body? The Great Tao endures forever, through endless kalpas imperishable and indestructible. Dwelling together with the ten thousand sages, one gains sight of the inner landscape and sees the affairs of emptiness and nothingness.”
The nature of emptiness and nothingness accords with long life and immortality. Because it is empty and nothing, it neither comes into being nor is destroyed, and so can live forever, imperishable and indestructible. Taoism speaks of the union of life and the Tao—“Long life is the Tao”—and inner alchemy and thunder rites, at their highest state, unite with the Tao through emptiness and nothingness and attain eternity.
Empty and yet real. The Tao is not wholly empty; it is at once empty and real. The substance of the Tao is a formless and imageless objective existence transcending the material world; it can be the ancestor of all things and, in its cyclical movement, gives rise to heaven, earth, and humanity. So the Great Tao is the unity of the empty and the real.
The Complete Works of Zhang Sanfeng, “Treatise on the Great Tao”: The Great Tao “governs the Ultimate of Nothingness (Wuji) and gives rise to the Supreme Ultimate (Taiji). The Ultimate of Nothingness is the nameless; the nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The Supreme Ultimate is the named; the named is the mother of the myriad things. From the nameless comes the named, and then heaven is born, earth is born, humanity is born, and things are born.” Cultivation begins from what has form and substance and sets its mind on emptiness and nothingness, in order to return to the formless and empty Great Tao, taking “reversing it, one becomes an immortal” as the goal of cultivation.
The returned elixir obtained through cultivation is also at once empty and real. Emptiness and reality are one, a dialectical unity. The Wondrous Scripture of the Most High on Cultivating Perfection and Embodying the Origin (Taishang Xiuzhen Tiyuan Miaodao Jing), in the chapter “Transforming the Real from the Empty,” says: “Without emptiness one does not know the real; without the real one does not understand emptiness... Seeking the real through emptiness is easy; seeking emptiness through the real is hard. Transforming being from nothingness is the real of emptiness; transforming being into qi is the emptiness of the real. Beginning from what is stirred by the feelings and natures of father and mother, and ending in a form of awe-inspiring appearance—this is the real of emptiness... Seeking the real through emptiness is easy; seeking emptiness through the real is hard.” We can see that emptiness and the real cannot be separated for an instant, and since one can attain the Tao only by “seeking emptiness through the real,” students of the Tao should return from later heaven to prior heaven and refine emptiness to merge with the Tao.
3. The Emptiness of the Human Body
As soon as a person is born, the empty “one qi of prior heaven” enters the body, as the Zhouyi Cantong Qi says: “The body a person receives is at root one nothingness.” The cultivation of the alchemical Way is based on the actual existence of the body: in “pairing Kan and Li within the gourd,” one returns through cultivation to the prior-heaven state of emptiness and nothingness and enters eternity. In the cultivation of the alchemical Way, so-called laying the foundation and refining the self, refining essence into qi, refining qi into spirit, and so on are all steps and stages relying on emptiness and nothingness, with no actual form that can be grasped. The intercourse of Kan and Li, extracting lead to add mercury, the communication of heart and kidneys, and the like also speak of emptiness and nothingness, without being tied to actual bodily organs. At the beginning of practice, one must start from the “four gates of nothingness”—“no food, no breath, no thought, no body.” Learning grain avoidance (bigu), one has no food; learning embryonic breathing, one has no breath; not stirring the mind and entering empty stillness, one has no thought; when stillness reaches its extreme, one no longer feels one has a body and forgets it, and so has no body. Entering the realm of emptiness and nothingness in this way, the Mysterious Pass is sure to appear, and one communicates with the empty, numinous world.
One cultivates the alchemical Way using the empty “one qi of prior heaven” as the medicine, “the single aperture of the Mysterious Pass,” which is both within and not within the body, as the cauldron and furnace, and “the wondrous function of the primordial spirit” as the fire timing. All of this is work done within emptiness and nothingness. Yet this emptiness cannot do without the body either; we also call the body the “cavity” or the “gourd,” for “the body of Qian holds nothing; the vessel of Kun is at root empty.” Practitioners of thunder rites likewise cannot do without this body in performing the rites; they use the emptiness of this body to communicate with the Great Tao and so act upon the natural world.
4. The Tranquil Emptiness of the Human Mind
The Zhuangzi, “In the World of Men,” says: “Qi is empty and waits on things. The Tao gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” “Look at that empty space: the empty room gives birth to brightness; good fortune rests in stillness. If you do not rest there, this is called sitting while galloping. Let your ears and eyes communicate inward and put the knowing mind outside, and even ghosts and spirits will come to dwell with you—how much more so people!” In this passage, “the Tao gathers in emptiness” first requires “emptying the mind”; when the mind reaches a state of empty, numinous clarity, it unites with the Tao. Awakening to Perfection (Wuzhen Pian) says: “Emptying the mind and filling the belly—both are deep in meaning; emptying the mind is simply to know the mind.” Emptying the mind and filling the belly lead to the Tao. The Scripture of the Original Arising of Emptiness and Naturalness by Lord Lao the Most High says: “Therefore the sages wrote scriptures to admonish later worthies, wishing them to guard the Tao, empty their minds, close their ears and eyes, and have no more thoughts. Those who have thoughts and imaginings cannot attain the Tao of what is so of itself.” Only by emptying the mind, closing the ears and eyes, and sweeping away desires can one unite with the Tao.
The Scripture of the Pure and Tranquil Mind of Lord Lao the Most High (Taishang Laojun Qingjing Xin Jing) says: “For those who can dispel it: looking inward at the mind, the mind has no mind; looking outward at the body, the body has no body; looking afar at things, things have no things. When none of the three is grasped, one sees only emptiness. Contemplating emptiness, emptiness too is empty; emptiness has nothing to empty. When there is no nothing, the nothing of nothing is also no more. Limpid and constantly still, the stillness has no stillness; when there is no stillness, stillness is no more—all is utterly nothing; how could desire arise?” Only when nothingness is nothing and emptiness is empty can desire be dispelled, reaching suchness. Thunder rites take no-mind and no-thought as the true mind, and the true mind as the key to performing rites and moving the spirits. They declare: “With intent to move the spirits, the spirits are not responsive; moved without intent, they respond as the mind wishes.” With no deluded thought, a whole true mind without knowing or recognizing, the mind and the thunder spirits are merged as one: I am the thunder spirit and the thunder spirit is I; whatever I call for is answered, and there is nothing that cannot be answered.
Celestial Master Xujing (Zhang Jixian), the 30th Celestial Master of the Way of the Celestial Masters, wrote in a poem: “Where the true mind stirs, it accords with thunder's mechanism; spirit uniting with spirit—how wondrous and marvelous. Here there is no longer any difference at all; like a magnet drawing iron, they never part.” In the cultivation of thunder rites, the role of the true mind and true intention is crucial. True intention is the mental activity issuing from the primordial spirit, a transformation of the primordial spirit; true intention is the envoy of the Thunder Department, and the primordial spirit is the thunder spirit.
5. Refining Emptiness to Merge with the Tao
The cultivation of the alchemical Way takes refining emptiness as the final stage of refining the mind, and returning to emptiness as the final move in refining the elixir. Li Daochun said: “When the mind returns to empty stillness and the body enters non-action (wuwei), and movement and stillness are both forgotten, here essence transforms into qi of itself, qi naturally transforms into spirit, and spirit naturally returns to emptiness.” If the mind can be empty and still, the spirit can return to emptiness, and emptiness can merge with the Tao. He also wrote the Song of Refining Emptiness: “Whether becoming an immortal, a buddha, or a Confucian, the three teachings transmit singly one emptiness. Those who have transcended from ancient times to now did all their work within emptiness.” We can see that Li Daochun placed great importance on the work of “emptiness and nothingness,” regarding it as the crux of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. The True Words for Chanting the Tao holds that to refine emptiness one must obliterate self and things, make heaven and earth as nothing, forget the body and forget the mind, and have a heart broad and vast enough to contain all things and affairs; then one clear, empty qi arrives, and all is primal chaos and naturalness. Uniting the emptiness of the yang spirit with the emptiness of the Great Void, one penetrates without obstruction, body and spirit are both wondrous, and one merges with the Tao in truth.
In the sequence and stages of the cultivation of the alchemical Way, “emptiness” runs from beginning to end; it is the middle link between “refining spirit to return to emptiness” and “refining emptiness to merge with the Tao.” Without “emptiness” there is no way to merge with “the Tao,” so the work of “emptiness” is crucial. The performance of thunder rites likewise cannot do without the work of refining emptiness to merge with the Tao. For example, the method of raising and lowering water and fire in thunder rites includes seated meditation, visualization, transforming the spirit, penetrating illumination, circulation (zhoutian), refining the spirit, and returning to emptiness. Through the final stage of refining emptiness to merge with the Tao, one moves heaven, earth, and the ten directions.
(Selected from Xu Ping, “Refining Emptiness to Merge with the Tao: The Shared Principles of Thunder Rites and Inner Alchemy.” Xu Ping, female, born in 1980, holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and specializes in Taoist philosophy and Taoist religious culture.)