Home › Forum Online Discussion › Philosophy › Round 3: EGO/SELF & MEMORY IN LIFE FORCE PROCESS (long essay)
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March 11, 2006 at 12:23 pm #11317Michael WinnKeymaster
Thanks both to Bagua and Fajin for continuing an enlightened discussion in round 2. I was travelling.
My impression is that Bagua is really more a Daoist who prefers simplicity of early Taoist meditation techniques than he is interested in the underlying cosmological assumptions of Chan Buddhism.
He alludes to master Ni’s Five Clouds meditation. Ni studied in the Tientai school of mixed daoism-chan, but seems like he in the end favors the Taoist approach, and is a big advocate of all the complex spiritual sciences that bagua is questioning. I wonder if Bagua could comment on which school of Chan he favors, and if any of them do allow or encourage the study of astrology, feng shui, music, or medicine.
I think Bagua’s question to Fajin as to whether he has met any immortals is a clever debate tactic, and one I myself might use in reality-checking some else’s spiritual claims. But I also know that its a bit unfair in that the question doesn’t disprove Fajin’s clear resonance with the presence of immortals, or his possible soul remembrance of them. Youth has it own direct clarity and wisdom – that’s why we all hug babies, to get a fresh taste of pre-natal chi still flowing thru them, even if the baby can’t identify it as such or prove where it came from.
So I will supplement Fajin’s answer to that Question from Bagua – yes, I’ve had direct, uninvited experience of beings that shifted dimensions and entered my physical reality and demonstrated that they had the power to concentrate the life force and project that power into my body for purposes of accelerating my spiritual growth. It was central in shifting me from my kundalini yoga path into the Tao/Dao path. Numerous other experiences have confirmed my trust in their alchemical process and in the claims made by ancients about their existence.
I hope my essay below about Dao and Chan approach can be useful to illuminate the Daoist emphasis on life as PROCESS based on principles of the Life Force (chi field), that cultivates equally both outer life (destiny) and inner life (essence).
I identify potential problems of excess focus on inner essence only, or core without the arms and legs to support our outer destiny.
This excess focus on core could happen to any Dao or Chan practitioner, and I am in no way insinuating that Bagua’s personal practice is an illustration of this imbalance.
Rather I am using the discussion to posit the principle that 2 arms = 2 legs + core = five phases and yin-yang theory embodied = fundamental prinicple behind Dao science of inner alchemy. I think its a pretty simple and effective process, and safe the way I practice it. I also think its possibly risky and counter-productive to eliminate the arms and legs (whether physical limbs or as metaphor for the five senses) to prematurely dissolve into the core only.
Its premature to permanently seek to dissolve into the core if you haven’t learned how to extend your Energy Body’s limbs/senses in the inner planes, i.e. activated your inner will, in the inner planes.
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Preliminary note:How can I know my words below are illuminating the truth?
Because of an omen.
I went to sleep early last night, thinking about the question posed earlier on the forum Who is attuning to the Center? I had been traveling, and hadnt had time to post a further response. There was some new energy pressing on me, and dream practice seemed to be the correct response.
Early this morning, I awoke from unconscious sleep and entered in a lucid dream. I was interacting with two characters in that dream (details too lengthy to go into). The characters were strangers occupying my dream space, and wouldnt leave. Not malevolent, just insistent that they had the right to occupy that same dream space. I took them as some aspect of the collective consciousness that had bled into my personal/ego space but werent really adding much to my reality other than to awaken me to the fact that my boundaries had changed.
I realized, in the lucid dream, that I would have to re-dream that space if I wanted greater freedom. I was lying on my dream couch in the living room, with a cathedral ceiling overhead. Exactly at that moment of realization, about 4 am this morning stil pitch black, the lights came on literally. The over head light in the room, which can only be turned on by a remote control tucked in drawer and rarely used, was suddenly turned on, glaring over me at full brightness.
It took me a minute to realize that this light was not an event in the lucid dream, but a response, an omen, expressed in the physical plane. Only after I opened my eyes and saw the physical light was staying on did I get the joke that shifting my dream reality had shifted my physical reality, to a reality with greater illumination.
Note: I did chastise my shen for being so literal in their omens .
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It is my perception that most Chan schools are focused on reaching a STATE of enlightenment, in which the limited ego self of physical plane can now function as a virtuous bodhisattava or perhaps emulate the Buddha himself (although I still havent had any Buddhist explain to me if Buddha is a state or deity, if its human, trans-human or neither, or a code word for something else).
But from my understanding, the ultimate goal of all functioning in that Buddhist state of enlightenment is to help other human egos get off the wheel of incarnation, i.e. GET OUT OF THE PHYSICAL PROCESS OF INCARNATION. If there is a chan Buddhist group that does NOT adhere to this goal, I would like to hear about it and know what their goal is. We cannot discuss the merits of any path unless we lay our cards on the table as to its intentions.
This desire to get off the wheel of incarnation is why, in my view, Chan Buddhists have seized upon the early Taoist TECHNIQUE of Sitting in Forgetfulness or letting go or emptying the xin/heart-mind and employ it to reach their goal. Its simple to learn, thus can be taught to the masses (at that time, simple peasants). And its effective in relieving the stress of the post-natal mind. It s a kind of unpointed one-pointedness.
Its one-pointedness is analogous to the TM techniques that spread like wildfire to millions in the 60s and 70s just chant this one word, and you will transcend. Deepak Chopra left TM (why give maharishi the royalties?) and carried the baton to higher levels in the 80s and 90s and today. Its the lure of any one-pointed technique: get on this ONE horse and ride it all the way to the Transcendent End. Dont bother your mind with any other complication, you will end up lost in a side alley.
Of course, 40 years later, there are only a few thousand of hard core TM riding that One horse, and numerous other techniques (backup horses?) got added as it became the apparent that one mantra, assigned on basis of your birthdate, didnt do everything. And like Chan, TM largely avoids or glosses over or minimalizes the issue of sex (it is a temporary distraction that will fall away once you are living in the Primordial/neutral). But the sex issue often drives followers to hop off that one horse and try others. Ah, sex the fly in the ointment of all the religious paths.
The Chan position was perhaps best summed up by Ken Cohen, who in his Way of Qigong book quotes one of his teachers as saying in effect, If the transformations are jing to chi to shen to wu, why not take a shortcut and just skip the first three and focus on Emptiness only? (note: this is Buddhist translation of wu; I define it as not known rather than emptiness). Kens first Tao teacher, the famous and loquacious Alan Watts, was, by the way, really a Chan Buddhist he hated alchemical Taoism. I wonder if a little alchemical practice might have helped Watts alcoholism, which apparently contributed to his early death.
I believe this shortcut issue is the heart of the question in this debate between paths of Dao and Chan and the efficacy of their methods. It underlies the question of what is Ego in Daoism? In posing the question, we are westernizing the discussion, to make these paths relevant in our language.
Ego is the term Freud used to describe the individual self (to be distinguished from egotistical/neurotic, negative or dysfuncitonal behavior of the ego). We should also be asking, What is ego in Chan?, to balance out the question What is ego in Daoism?, but I leave that for Max
The Daoist viewpoint is NOT state-oriented, it is process oriented. There are not fixed states, the chi is always flowing and changing, even the yuan chi is constantly transforming itself back into yin-yang forces. Spiritual Immortality is the highest level of this process for a human. It means you have achieved a greater freedom to shift between jing-chi-shen-wu phases of creation in multiple dimensions as you embody the Life Forces process. And what exactly is that process?
I note two major attributes of the Life Force, which we will then examine relative to Ego.
1. Life Force is continuously CREATIVE. Just as Tao divides into Heaven and Eartth, Yuan chi divides into streams of yin-yang chi, which copulate to birth the 10,000 things. In linear time we humans witness this as birth-death-rebirth-death-rebirth-death-rebirth, etc.
2. Life Force REMEMBERS EVERY EXPERIENCE. It is the cosmic memory bank. In Indian tradition this function was popularized as the Akashic Record. This function of life force is often overlooked by cultivators and thus causes mis-understanding of the functioning of ego/self, which is essential to memory.
The Life Force process according to Daoism flows continuously between three major states, described historically using different terms.
Here I choose three terms derived from the Greek:1. Proto-cosmos (primordial/original unified nature)
2. Macro-cosmos (larger field of nature)
3. Micro-cosmos (any subset of Macro, such as a human being, that mirrors the larger process).So under this theory, ego/self is microcosm of the whole, containing inside it the essence of the protocosm and the macrocosm.
What happens if you let go of every experience of the ego-self? I.e. if you are successful at the method of forgetting the self, of letting go of every thought, feeling, and sensation, does the micro-cosmos disappear, is the memory of the ego self eventually erased? So that only the macro and eventually the proto reality become permanent? i.e. is this a sequential progression, so that will you eventually return to a continuous experience of proto reality only?
Is that what the Daoist phrase return to Origin means the erasure of the ego/micro self?
Or put another way, what happens if you let go of the jing-chi-shen process, and cultivate wu-only? Do the first three stages of the process stop?
Or from energetic viewpoint, if I focus on core channel only, and let go of any left-right or front-back channel orientation (or 8 extra channels at macro level), do they stop functioning?
Or at micro level of five shen, if I fuse the five shen into one, do the five shen cease to exist?
If you believe that you will use a one pointed meditation method of going direct to emptiness to get off the wheel of incarnation, i.e. use the continuous letting go or be neutral witness ONLY to stop the process of ego self and ultimately incarnation, I believe one of two things are likely to happen:
1. You initially may be successful in reducing or eliminating the reactive aspects of the ego self. But you may pay an unintended price: you risk the danger of falling into a different state of illusion. The illusion is that by resting in a neutral zone between yin-yang realities, that you have achieved either wuji (supreme mystery) or wu wei (state of grace, your life is now totally effortless).
You must ask yourself, have I achieved super-consciousness or is the cessation of all ego experience unconsciousness and destruction of memory?
The danger is you become stuck in a lesser neutral zone, because you dont have enough yin-yang tension in your spiritual process to shift to the next level of consciousness. The level of neutral youve achieved by letting everything go by may be vibrating at the frequency of the physical plane. As Master Ni Hua Ching put it, if you empty yourself without holding any intention, you simply become like a rock.
Neutral witness can become a dead zone, or in zen (Japanese pronunciation of chan) jargon, youve become a dead tree meditator. They developed this language because they noticed that some people using this Taoist technique fell into a stupor that clearly was not enlightened or clear mind.
This is why, according to one of my qigong students who spends half his year in Korean zen monasteries, they developed koans or sayings to puzzle the mind, keep it awake with paradoxes what is the sound of one hand clapping? And its why in other schools they also use mantra to give mind focus after emptying it.
Shifting to a higher level requires a much higher energy level to sustain higher spiritual function. Where is that high energy going to come from? Are koans and mantras the best way to get to them, once youve got past the preliminary clearing of ordinary mind fixations? Or are they merely engaging another level of mind?
This danger of illusory wuji attainment is why, I believe, the seven alchemy formulas passed down by One Cloud continuously identify the next set of polarities greater than the polarity you are consciously functioning from – Male-female, sun-moon, etc. thereby reducing the illusion that the process is complete or limited to quieting down your ordinary mind in your little human reality.
Neutral state of meditation, clear mind: does absence of ordinary ego-mind sensing define the state of wu-wei? Wu-wei is not about eliminating mind or ego-self this is obvious to me. Who is there to experience the grace if there is no self? It really means ego-self is in harmony and balance, neutral mind and yin-yang ego mind are functioning smoothly. Wu-wei requires ego-state-of-not-grace in order to experience its opposite, grace/no-effort.
You can play infinite language games here about self vs. no-self, but I find it linguistically more accurate to say that wu wei is a process in which the micro self has entered into resonance with the macro and proto selves. There is seamless and instantaneous communication between them using the medium of the Life Force.
Second Possible result:
2. You gain tremendous freedom by successfully identifying yourself as I am Neutral Witness Only an admirable advance over the masses of ordinary people stuck in a fixed polarity identity. But you may limit your development to a half-truth, based on an unconscious fear of becoming re-identified (attached) to polarity.
In simple terms, you may not develop your life-force given power of Creativity. The downside and fear of taking on Creative Power is that you must assume responsibility for what you create. And that brings up fear of failure and suffering: what if I create something and its bad? Or too much work to sustain? Or going to keep me trapped/attached to physicality?
The answer that Creativity will happen spontaneously once I am in neutral is, in my opinion, an attempt to avoid responsibility for your creative choices. Exercising creative power may include PAINFUL CONSEQUENCES as essential feedback.
That is one reason why I prefer the Daoist alchemical process. It continues on beyond the stage of letting go of the old fixed self: you are always refining and shaping a new level of balance and harmony in the present moment. It demands creativity. Present moment is not a passive witnessing state.
Daoist Alchemy seems like more work, but it more closely approximates the functioning of the Life Force. Once you get practiced or familiar with the Fusion or kan and li prccess, they also become as effortless as riding a bicycle or driving a car, which might look daunting at first. Even at the level of the Inner Smile, which dissolves any fixity of pattern, you are embracing and feeling. You are strengthening the depth of feeling of self, not eliminating it. The old fixed self gradually becomes a positive, smiling, loving, fluid self.
I feel that staying in neutral-only is a denial that the micro- ego-self, has the power of the life force to create. I noticed that sometimes after a really deep, blissful core channel meditation that I will be highly irritated by the smallest things in daily life. A reminder that my bliss in the core has not yet materialized and transformed my relation to the outer world of my destiny yet.
The desire to stay in neutral is essentially taking the religious position, I am one of Gods Children, and if I let go of my limited sinful ego-self stuck in desire, then God-Daddy-Creator-Tao will make all the right creative decisions FOR ME or THROUGH ME. Then I wont actually have any responsibility for the outcome.
What would happen if Gods Children grew up to become Gods Adults? Would life be different? I.e. Can we let ourselves evolve to not only cultivate our neutral witness aspect of proto-self, but cultivate our power to copulate yin-yang forces and thereby procreate many realities, both micro and macro, that are in harmony and balance?
To keep this really practical, lets bring in the consequences of having sexual power to create new realties/beings: If I get a woman pregnant (speaking as a man), and she gives birth to a child, can I just neutrally witness that child and expect that the Tao or Buddha will raise the kid? Or is the creative burden put on the level of micro-ego-self that created the kid, i.e. ME, to feed and clothe and love the kid and mature its new micro-ego reality?
(I wont digress too far here, but want to raise question of whether the male-dominated sky/heaven religions in which I include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity – in effect do this very thing, i.e. knock up the earth kid with unconscious lust while staring at heaven above for a solution. And while they are waiting for heaven to act. they expect the below/within/female/earth to raise the bastard kid/humankind and keep the show going )
———————————-All this comes back to the function of EGO or Micro-Self as miniature replay of the larger principles of the Life Force to:
1. create
2. Remember what it has created,
in order to take responsibility for keeping it in harmony and balance.Why is enlightenment so often referred to as re-membering who we really are?
I believe the members that are lost are contained in jing/essences/memories embedded in our different subtle bodies.THERE IS NO MEDITATION TECHNIQUE OR RELIGIOUS BELIEF THAT WILL END THE JING-CHI-SHEN-WU PROCESS of creation and memory of creation/experience. The Life Forces alchemical process of continuous transmutation between these states and the reverse process (wu-shen-chi-jing) as the spiral and counter-spiral of creation cannot be stopped by any meditation technique or religious belief in a state beyond this.
So my response to Ken Cohens Chan teacher: the shortcut could potentially reduce your connection to the Life Force process. It might intensify one part of the process, and thus be useful. But if not properly directed, It could become a long cut, you will be forced back into the creative process, and forced to embrace the steps that were skipped previously. The first shall be last .
You might object, how can I or anyone know this is true? How can we know there is not an absolute state of voidness/emptiness beyond all incarnation and suffering?
Only by direct perception of the unity of the process. i.e. I can only directly know my own truth, but it safe to assume that personal truth must be a reflection of the whole/universal truth, otherwise I could not experience it.
In religious language, lets play out the consequences:
Lets substitute God for Original Essence-Breath-Spirit = yuan jing/chi/shen
Once God divides its original nature of One into Many, it BECOMES the Many. The One no longer exists apart from the Many. The One has become a collective process, and IT CANNOT KILL ITSELF, i.e. end the process of creation, without the consensus of every aspect of the Many. Gods free will, i.e. its creativity, has been re-distributed to the Many. So I cannot personally stop my self from existing, because it belongs the collective/whole.
There is no pyramid, nobody on top who can issue the command to cease existing. No God or divine agent running the Tao. There is now a central meeting place, the hub of many spokes, the consensus point of the Many at the center of the multiple nested spheres of reality. This meeting point we can say is neutral, or empty of content controlled by any one individual being, but that space is not a void as long as it is collectively owned by the Many as their center.
This is why I am strongly opposed to the language and intention of any spiritual group promising people that if you follow their path , you will attain an absolute state, be it permanent Heaven or Emptiness absent the difficulty of physical incarnation. I believe that such an intention is a denial of full spectrum spiritual reality and is counter-productive to the creative process/free will of the Life Force. I think it slows down the conscious integration of the Many(macro or micro) with the One (proto).
(and yes, I havent forgotten the None or wu. But since humanity is not even close to collectively approaching the relationship between its Original Self and the Supreme Unknown, lets not pretend any path has that territory covered. I doubt much can happen on that front until humanity collectively has achieved some kind of critical mass in its consciousness).
You may choose to exercise your free will and for training purposes, temporarily focus on a different part of the jing-chi-shen-wu process. But dont fool yourself into believing that the process of physicality and its problems go away just because you choose to check out and take a spiritual vacation as you slip into a comfortable neutral state. If you die, someone else takes your place – same point. Nature abhors a vacuum, and will fill the space youve vacated with fresh creative polar energies.
Half-way houses/neutral zones between planes achieved through meditation may be great places to rehab and regroup before re-entering the fray from a higher or more integrated perspective. But all neutral spaces are simply nodal points in the collective yin-yang process. The foundational ground of neutrality is now permanently embedded in its creative yin-yang process. Its a functional trinity.
In my understanding of Daoist alchemy, spiritual immortals are just micro-ego-based humans who expanded their level of function to SIMULTANEOUSLY include their macro and proto selves. All three levels have self, i.e. they must have some kind of jing that keeps them in the game. You cannot shift levels unless you can concentrate enough jing to allow you to consciously function on a higher level of self.
Immortality implies REMEMBERING the experience of the micro, macro, and proto levels. That MEMORY is what allows them to function freely in all three spheres. Immortality implies the ability to use the greater field – the Life Forces cosmic memory bank – as your own memory bank. Without this super-memory faculty, all relationships, all love, and all wisdom is lost. Without memory, the cycle of incarnation and the lessons learned become pointless, and life loses all meaning.
It is the jing aspect of the Life Force that holds all form of the memory. Jing is like the RAM memory space in your computer. It gets input impressions, and creates a cache memory it remembers the old pages you have viewed in order to more quickly pull them up for you with minor changes once you click on it again, and interact with that old page/memory, notice what is new, create something with it, etc.
Until your micro-self learns how to better create and remember what it creates, i.e. manage to remember and shape its jing/essence, the collective field holds the higher levels of jing as your still unconscious future memory bank of potential realizations. Daoist Alchemy is just one process for concentrating that jing and shifting levels of shen awareness.
Neutral Witnessing is a stage in the process of observing the flow of jing-chii-shen, but unless you also learn to concentrate and shape what you observe, you havent completed the process, i.e. you havent refreshed the screen and lived/expressed yourself in the present moment. Youre just viewing other peoples web page creations, you havent created your own. So neutral witnessing can become like a kind of bardo waiting state of endless levels waiting to be viewed, if you dont start functioning from it and shaping it.
To sum up my point:
Human Ego-self is central to the evolution of the Life Force process. Human micro self is not an aberration that is meant to be eliminated, stopped, or escaped from. We are IINTENTIONALLY born incomplete, i.e. imperfect, fucked-up, confused, and ignorant so that we can integrate those incomplete/lost aspects floating about in the cosmic sea of the life force back into a conscious functioning whole.
The Life Forces gives birth to us so that we can express its process in the density of physicality. Central to that process is to clarify what is hidden within the polarity of sexuality,i.e. lost yuan chi from the splitting of the sexes that started a cycle of fragmentation.
OUR INDIVIDUAL (I..E. EGO) EXPERIENCE OF LIFE, EVEN IF BORN FROM FRAGMENTARY SEXUAL OR OTHER DESIRES, AND EVEN THE EXPERIENCE OF INCOMPLETION ITSELF, IS STILL AN ESSENTIAL FEEDBACK MECHANISM OF THE LIFE FORCE AND ITS ORIGINAL DESIRE TO PROCREATE.
The five jingshen (vital organ spirits) that govern the xin/heart mind are just a micro expression of the cosmic jing-chi-shen process. The five shen/heart-mind holds the shape of our experience, i.e. our MEMORY OF SELF, so that it can be evolved, refined, integrated by ourselves. If we fail to integrate it enough to remember it after death, then after death the process of integration may continue via other entities who may re- incarnate with our non-integrated ego fragments.
Simply put, we have to complete what our ancestors could not. It gets handed down through our gene code (biological lineage) and our soul code (spiritual lineage of soul/astrological patterns).
So, to answer my own question: WHO IS FOCUSING ON THE CENTER?
It is the common underlying desire of the five shen to be IN RELATION to their original spirit/proto-self/center that causes them to reverse their outer focus on the macro world and look within.This impulse to meditate, i.e. focus on the center within, is natural. This return to origin described by the ancient Daoists (in my view) is actually bringing the Original Self to function in the physical plane. FOCUSING ON THE CENTER NOT A SUICIDAL ATTEMPT BY THE FIVE SHEN TO KILL THEIR EGO/SELF- FUNCTIONING IN THE PHYSICAL PLANE, and to thus get out of the responsibility of creating further realities. It is an attempt by the periphery (outer sensory awareness of five shen) to get guidance, strength and clarity from the center, in order to continue with the process of completing their destiny (ming).
In historical debates between chan Buddhists and daoists, the chan have focused on the overriding importance of the xing, the inner essence. If your goal is to get off the wheel of incarnation, then whats the point of spending any time on the wheel completing ones destiny? Just jump right back to the wu, dont bother with the spinning yin-yang spokes of life. Thats why astrology, medicine (= long life), music and literature are useless, unless they are a scripture or a poem reminding you to get off the wheel and back into empty mind.
The Daoists focus on both ming and xing, and different Dao schools focus on different methods and sequences of cultivating them. The offshoot of their approach has produced an outpouring of human creativity in many fields, ranging from science (outer alchemy) to medicine, astronomy & astrology, poetry, martial arts/ enlightened body movement. I think some Chan schools have embraced the wider aspects of Daoist theory have also been very creative but usually by ignoring the underlying cosmology of getting off the wheel and deciding to spin it faster instead.
Whenever you practice any method, you must ask how it supports your intention to cultivate both worldly destiny and inner essence. That is the test I use otherwise I find myself going too far in one direction and getting out of balance.
Anyway, I hope these meanderings set off at least one light bulb in your reality as you grapple with the frustrating limitations of human ego and its relation to the life force.
Enjoying fond future memories of meeting you as an immortal,
michaelMarch 11, 2006 at 1:35 pm #11318baguaParticipantHello Michael:
Wonderful Post.
Im going to offer some feedback to the intro, and maybe over time other aspects of the rest. All my comments are based on personal experience and understanding, not just theoryMy impression is that Bagua is really more a Daoist who prefers simplicity of early Taoist meditation techniques than he is interested in the underlying cosmological assumptions of Chan Buddhism.
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Ba Gua’s experience is from the following view “Tao, though being of infinite emptiness in contents, endlessly gives rise to all myriad things in the universe.” tao te ching, chpt 4I do not limit myself to this or that system or model, a model is useful to a point, then one must free themselves from it. I talk from the viewpoint of when one frees themselves, not the steps in between.
I have a great interest in the underlying principles of cosmology, but learning them is not enough and can limit oneself if they can not transcend the model. It has great value, but a menu is not the meal.
He alludes to master Ni’s Five Clouds meditation. Ni studied in the Tientai school of mixed daoism-chan, but seems like he in the end favors the Taoist approach, and is a big advocate of all the complex spiritual sciences that bagua is questioning. I wonder if Bagua could comment on which school of Chan he favors, and if any of them do allow or encourage the study of astrology, feng shui, music, or medicine.
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Im not questioning any of the sciences, the question is what is the purpose of those models and what are the limitiations. Lets not mistake the finger for the moon, Chan is interested in the Moon.I think Bagua’s question to Fajin as to whether he has met any immortals is a clever debate tactic, and one I myself might use in reality-checking some else’s spiritual claims. But I also know that its a bit unfair in that the question doesn’t disprove Fajin’s clear resonance with the presence of immortals, or his possible soul remembrance of them. Youth has it own direct clarity and wisdom – that’s why we all hug babies, to get a fresh taste of pre-natal chi still flowing thru them, even if the baby can’t identify it as such or prove where it came from.
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Very interesting. What does the baby do? Does it trigger something that already exists in ourselves and we just need to learn how to tap into that ourselves? Remember the baby is as intrigued and excited with us as we with them. We have that fresh flow, its about learning how to allow it to manifest again. What is it that prevents us from being in the fresh flow? Well this is what tao practice and in my view Chan is about.I hope my essay below about Dao and Chan approach can be useful to illuminate the Daoist emphasis on life as PROCESS based on principles of the Life Force (chi field), that cultivates equally both outer life (destiny) and inner life (essence). I identify potential problems of excess focus on inner essence only, or core without the arms and legs to support our outer destiny. This excess focus on core could happen to any Dao or Chan practitioner, and I am in no way insinuating that Bagua’s personal practice is an illustration of this imbalance.
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I beleive your interpretations of Chan is not my view of it and not the Masters i have met, this is where we part, like the duality that separartes one from the Dao.
This is my view, your understanding of the result or higher refinement of the formulars is the Chan view, that is the awareness they prmirarly focus on. I agree with you in one main way, many Chan do not take care of the body well, this is their mistake.Rather I am using the discussion to posit the principle that 2 arms = 2 legs + core = five phases and yin-yang theory embodied = fundamental prinicple behind Dao science of inner alchemy. I think its a pretty simple and effective process, and safe the way I practice it. I also think its possibly risky and counter-productive to eliminate the arms and legs (whether physical limbs or as metaphor for the five senses) to prematurely dissolve into the core only.
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You do have a safe way to practice, I applaud you for that.Its premature to permanently seek to dissolve into the core if you haven’t learned how to extend your Energy Body’s limbs/senses in the inner planes, i.e. activated your inner will, in the inner planes.
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This is a massive misunderstanding of my view.
Chan has a process, its just not the taoist process or their terminology, just like chinese medicine and indian medicine, differnt models, different terms, but similiar in reality.VERY IMPORTANT
The fundamental difference to me seems to be that your view states each person is not complete, they are lacking and need to “create” something new, something you do not have right now. Chan view and my experience is each person is complete, they have it all, its just a matter of changing their angle of awarenes or consiousness, then being able to live from this space. Add some healthy Qi Gong to that and its a complete mind/body/spirit practice.If your alchemy brings one to the same awareness, I support it. I do practice this alchemy too, there is no guarantee the destination it states will occur, and I have never met any person that has those levels of acheivement, especially when it comes to applying it in their everyday life.
I feel this alchemy is a poewrful medical Qi Gong, one reason I do it.
And Most importantly, it is my experience, that this alchemy is really about cultivating the ability to focus the mind or awareness on ONESS, one thing, this is the integration/harmony, whether it be the sun, moon, stars, earth, etc., it si Yuan.
In a way, the formulas are a massive extension of the Inner Smile, oh those taoists and their universal/cosmological correspondences, Magnificent it is. This is the oneness of life the Chan talk about and it is magical.
Smiling in the Tao my friend,
bagua
March 11, 2006 at 1:59 pm #11320Michael WinnKeymasterVERY IMPORTANT
The fundamental difference to me seems to be that your view states each person is not complete, they are lacking and need to “create” something new, something you do not have right now. Chan view and my experience is each person is complete, they have it all, its just a matter of changing their angle of awarenes or consiousness, then being able to live from this space. Add some healthy Qi Gong to that and its a complete mind/body/spirit practice.
————————-So, Bagua, we agree on what we disagree.
I will post later as to why the reality of incompletion is so central to explaining human life.
And why if you over look it, you miss something very fundamental in your soul development, even on the most basic levels of practice.
And why immortality is something new and unique and rare – that while it can be said to exist as a potential in everyone, and is pulling unconsciously on all spiritual seekers, it does not really exist until soul completion is achieved.
blessings,
MichaelMarch 11, 2006 at 2:46 pm #11322baguaParticipantHllo Michael:
I look forward to your post on this.
Ihave a few requests if you will be kind of enough to include in the post.
1. Is there something in the Tao Te Ching that says is person is incomplete? That the Wu Ji creates incomplete humans?
2. Can you let us know Taoist Texts that support your specific theories on the soul? I find atlantic and channelling interesting, but would love to have taoist texts we can allow review to confirm these things.
Thank You, glowing in the light of the western stars, can ya feel me?
bagua
March 11, 2006 at 2:48 pm #11324TrunkParticipantBagua,
I really enjoy reading your posts, but find your method of quoting previous posts’ to be confusing. Its not clear what parts are the quotes, and what parts are your replies.
A more clear way to quote is to put the author’s initials prior to the quote and bracket the quote with characters of your choice. And one’s own text of the current post, obviously, in-the-raw. for example:
mw> Thanks both to Bagua and Fajin for continuing.. >
b> Wonderful Post. >
Glad to read good conversation.
🙂
TrunkMarch 11, 2006 at 9:17 pm #11326baguaParticipantWill do,
bagua
March 12, 2006 at 1:31 am #11328Golden SunParticipantMichael,
Lots of interesting stuff there. I’ll check it over again when I have time. I think it’s interesting that Ken studied qigong and Taoism deeply and wrote an excellent book about it but then studied native Indian practices for decades. I asked Ken about his two major works, one on qigong the other on indigenous healing and he said he liked the Native Indian stuff better.
It is really a masterpiece(Honoring The Medicine) and does talk a bit more about interacting with nature as a process rather than just a giant sea of voidness or whatever.
I think the teachings on learning from Great spirit, animals, spirit guides(maybe you translate as ‘5 shen’)add another dimension to the just abide in void practice .I have had a few experiences recently that point to the emptiness or void concept as being really false .I think it is more about quieting the mind so you can wake up to that something that is always there. Sort of like the sun is always shining but gets blocked by clouds. The clouds in this case are concepts, judgements, emotions that cover up your original nature.
At this point I feel there are years of study ahead and I am not trying to control the process too much. I connected with a group here in Scottsdale with Dennis Lewis through your website(thanks) and it has been very enjoyable. Dennis has a nice approach of sort of blending qigong with quiet meditation.
Good luck on your path,
Cameron
March 12, 2006 at 2:20 am #11330baguaParticipantHi Cameron:
I think you bring up an important point, this is crucial. Being in the void or emptiness does not mean no process, does not mean you do not deal/transform/etc with emotions, it means you see things as they are and deal with them, if you need healing sounds, or tai chi or zazen, whatever one feels they need, even fise shen gong or kan and li or heaven in earth, if one does these practices with a clear mind/beginners mind/, in my view will progress faster, it is the underlying guide in all these practices. Does this make sense????
thanks,
baguaMarch 12, 2006 at 2:40 am #11332Golden SunParticipantThis is the main teaching of Adyashanti’s school or Adveta Vedanta. It’s not about manipulating or judging. You might do a practice that is so called will based or ego based but it’s no longer done from any ego.
This is a huge misunderstadning of the teaching. I think some people just can’t function without holding there life together in conceptual thought forms. Letting everything be as it is doesn’t neccissarily mean you only do zazen or whatever.
There is something much more sublt going on..I don’t think you can quite get to it on a discussion board or through words and concepts but something else is present that includes everything else. And everything functions perfectly.
Hard to intellectualize it since it’s not intellectual.
March 12, 2006 at 8:16 am #11334Michael WinnKeymaster>You might do a practice that is so called will based or ego based but it’s no longer done from any ego.
My point is that this type of language is self-contradictory, and hence meaningless to me. I don’t blame your for being confused.Ego as I am using it just means personal self in psychological jargon (not egotistical). Egotistical actions would imply one aspect of the self asserting itself. But many writers blur these important distinctions.
If you are DOING or EXPERIENCING any type of spiritual practice, the self is involved, and thus your will, either active or passive, is involved. By definition.
Denial of this personal self involvement in one’s languaging points to one of two things to me:
1. the language is just clumsy. That the speaker really meant to say that they refer to “self” as something very limited, perhaps limited to sensory consciousness, and the agent they are seeking to invoke in their practice is a Greater level of Self that is operating through the lesser sensory self. This is much clearer language and incidentally, consistent with One Cloud’s seven formulas as a progressive training to expand one’s experience of self to include the whole of Nature and Tao.
2. the language used suggests the speaker does not understand the function of the body-centered consciousness and is attempting to suppress it due to their lack of understanding. Usually they blame the body-mind for having desires, without ever explaining how such a limited body-mind could come into being without the EXPRESS INTENTION OF THAT GREATER SELF they are promoting.
In sum, attacking the lesser sensory self for causing its own spiritual problems is either blind to the true cause of the problem, or is admitting that IF the lesser self can cause the problem, then it also has the will/skill to solve the problem that it created.
michael
March 12, 2006 at 8:31 am #11336Michael WinnKeymasterDon’t worry Bagua,
I am not relying on a channelled atlantean to observe that humans are incomplete.
Or that the soul is incomplete.But please do me (and all the community) a favor, and clarify what the Chan Buddhist cosmology is, including the cause of Un-clear mind that is being cured by zazen or whatever technique you are advocating.
I have presented my views of the Taoist cosmology and the functioning of the chi field as central to shaping the intention in any given practice, and I think we should apply the same standard to Chan practices. Otherwise we are talking past each other.
Also please clarify who or what Buddha is, or if you don’t believe in Buddha, but just like the chan technique and not the package of beliefs that the Chan community holds. This is still not clear to me. I have read of many different chan lineages in China, so I think it would also be helpful if you started naming names – it would dispel the cloud of vagueness about “Chan” since, like Taoism, it doesn’t easily lend itself to generalizations. mainly because so many chan sects have absorbed different Tao practices and beliefs (and the same is true of some Tao sects, such as Complete Perfection, whose founder was clearly influenced by Chan schools).
And yes, I am feeling your star chi. Arriving from quadrant 8888 of the constellation Bagua.
hmmm. “Bagua” is a very Taoist “handle”, btw. Do any of the Chan schools use the bagua?
🙂
MichaelMarch 12, 2006 at 9:00 am #11338Hoo HaParticipant“I still havent had any Buddhist explain to me if Buddha is a state or deity, if its human, trans-human or neither, or a code word for something else”
Crikey Michael and you received teachings and initiations from the Dalai Lama and studied Dzogchen!
Best,
RexMarch 12, 2006 at 3:17 pm #11340baguaParticipantHello Michael:
Buddha means “enlightened one”. In my view it is the enlightned space of awarenss, your enlighten space is the same as mine, is that beautiful!
According to legend (I dont know if all this history is true, just passing on what I have researched), Da Mo is the founder of Chan, he came from India in the Liang Dynasty and he was in the direct lineage of the Buddha. Hui Neng, the 6th in the lineage from Da Mo may have been the most influential of all teachers in China, this is the lineage and teachingI like most.
Its interesting to me, Da Mo went to the Shao Lin temple and saw the monks were in poor physical condition, so taught physical exercises/Qi Gong to generate physical health and vitality, while at the same time cultivate spiritual (in taoist terms, the Qi Gong circulates Qi in the channels and body and slide into Wu Wei.
You are quite good at debate strategies, one is you frame questions to direct the way a discussion will go to fit your model, this won’t work with me.
We live in the 21st century and benefit from the knowledge of our ancestors, we can use their experience to benefit our life. You have done this in your presentation of Tao, Tao Cosmology and Alchemy, wonderful job you have done, I congradulate you on this.
I take chapter one of Tao Te Ching as my central guidance:
“The path of sutble truth,
cannot be conveyed with words.
That which can be conveyed with words
is merely a relative conception.
Although names have been applied to it,
the subtle truth is indescribable.It does not mean we dont use words, its just that they can not give us the experience, they can inspire our shen and guide us.
Chan is about the collective experience, when our awareness is in the present, this “Buddha” awareness is the collective/unity/wu wei, this is the magical awareness of our true nature, one unity, this is the collective awareness of Chan.
What blocks this awareness?
I offer my view, may not be classic buddhist view.
As humans, we are comprised of many aspects, you use the five shen to explain some of these aspects. One aspect is the Ego, I will define as:1. The accumulated experience of our life, which is influenced by family, friends, teachers, classmates, culture, marketing, etc. I do like your presentation of the formation of ego as a child, very good, I agree with it.
2. As one unified life, relatively sane humans never loose unity, they can loose balance or harmony, Ego is one aspect of our being, it nevers leaves our unity, but can become out of balance. Because it never is really seperate from the whole, the shen can influence and direct it.
3. A major purpose of Ego is to allow us to function in life, make choices and decisions to smoothly navigate thru life.
4.Thru society and unfavorable pressures, listed in point 1, the Ego, which includes self-survival mechansims, can be distorted, braught out of balance and becomes automatic conditions and reactions.
5. As the Ego, driven by conditioning reacts automaticaly to past events/conditioning, it becomes out of balance and is the place we too often experience life. This conditioning becomes the predominant personality of Ego and takes us out of experiencing life in the present moment. Chan cultivation brings awareness to this place. It does not deny our past, the cultivation allows an insight to see the past as it is, the Ego as it is; no more, no less.
Each person has Spiritual energies, Mental energies/Ego and Physical energy, with cultivation, whether Chan or Alchemy, the spirit will eventually influence and direct the Ego to function in its harmonous way, this is an objective of meditation/alchemy.
The objective of Chan is one that is also part of the Toaist experience, in my view. The experience of empty mind/void mind/wu wei are all the same, cultivation is the method to assist in allowing this awareness to manifest. When we have empty mind, void mind, wu wei, we are enlightened by all things, no more no less.
For complex, intellectual Ego’s, this is hard to grasp, they need more explanation, more detail; only if I knew more, only if I learned the next method. This brings us back to chapter 1 or Tao Te Ching. Tao and Chan is more about practice; while sitting, standing, laying down, stillness and movement, practice brings us into this enligthened space/awareness, it is beyond words, in the sense words can not give the experience.
I am a Taoist (I have finally accepted this), but the Tao is wider than wide and deeper than deep, it includes Chan experience, it must to be the Tao.
Smiling in the Tao,
bagua
March 12, 2006 at 4:16 pm #11342FajinParticipantHi Michael and Bagua,
I thought I’d enter this discussion and attend round 3 again, now seems a good time. I must applaud you Michael, very good essay. You certainly have a way with words. We share the same view but your knowledge of Daoist cosmology and way with words surpasses me.
I see that Bagua views “Buddhahood” to be nothing more than a constant state of self-awareness by seeing things from your neutral space. However, Michael said that you fall into the illusion of thinking this is wu-wei if you are aware from your neutral space only. Refer back to this Bagua.
Another thing is that Bagua sees that wuji created us complete and all we need to do is be aware. But then I ask, why did you come back into this body again, just to be aware from your neutral space and see things as they are and react sponaneously (wu-hsin) by allowing nature to take it’s course. This is the whole dualistic separation between Michael and Bagua because Bagua just doesn’t believe in a light body capable of travelling between dimensions because he thinks we are already complete from birth but through living here, we have lost balance and harmony and we must restore it.
So if we are already complete, all we need to do is be aware from our neutral space and practice helps us do this. However, if spiritual immortality is a possible reality, and we can have a golden light body capable of traversing between this dimension and the next, then we are not complete at the present and to be complete we need to reach wu. But you need to reach wu with jing, qi, and shen, not go staight to wu. This is the whole point of Daoist alchemy, to do this.
So, I think that it is up to Michael to prove to Bagua that attaining a golden light body is possible. If we know that such a level exists, then we cannot just act from the neutral space only, because we have to create this golden light body and this doesn’t spontaneously happen (wu-hsin) from acting through our neural space. And where do we get the powers of self-creativity from, OUR EGO. Only with transformation of the ego structure can we then have a creative role in allowing for this completion to occur.
Not just Michael’s Atleantean channeling, I have also had dreams and out-of-body experiences to talk to aliens about this and this is where I confirm that there are more dimensions higher than this and we must create a golden light body capable of proceeding to higher dimensions, meaning that we are presently not complete, not because the wuji created us incomplete. Other reasons. Why? I don’t know why we are incomplete, but I do know that there are higher goals and it is my inner desire to create these goals by transformation of the ego structure first via fusion of the five elements.
I await your answer to Bagua, Michael. To confirm these higher goals and why we are incomplete. This would then settle the whole debate about what role we should give to the ego. I’m with you a 100% on this one.
Regards,
Fajin
March 12, 2006 at 5:16 pm #11344baguaParticipantHi Fajin:
Faj:
I see that Bagua views “Buddhahood” to be nothing more than a constant state of self-awareness by seeing things from your neutral space. However, Michael said that you fall into the illusion of thinking this is wu-wei if you are aware from your neutral space only. Refer back to this Bagua.
************************************
You constistently misundertand and misintepret my view. You dont know your true nature and limit it to “nothing more that constant state of self-awareness” summs my view in a narrow and ignorant way.I suggest you speak from personal experience, not theory or ideas.
You have already acknowldged you do not practice the advance formulas, so wait until you have for a few years and get back to us.
Faj:
Another thing is that Bagua sees that wuji created us complete and all we need to do is be aware. But then I ask, why did you come back into this body again, just to be aware from your neutral space and see things as they are and react sponaneously (wu-hsin) by allowing nature to take it’s course. This is the whole dualistic separation between Michael and Bagua because Bagua just doesn’t believe in a light body capable of travelling between dimensions because he thinks we are already complete from birth but through living here, we have lost balance and harmony and we must restore it.
**********************************************
You are full of assumptions, full of beliefs; who told you the following “why did you come back into this body again” why do you beleive this, is this a taoist view?Faj:
So if we are already complete, all we need to do is be aware from our neutral space and practice helps us do this. However, if spiritual immortality is a possible reality, and we can have a golden light body capable of traversing between this dimension and the next, then we are not complete at the present and to be complete we need to reach wu. But you need to reach wu with jing, qi, and shen, not go staight to wu. This is the whole point of Daoist alchemy, to do this.
*****************************Lots of ideas, lots of beliefs. AS long as you believe you are not complete, you will always be in this field. Complete does not mean you know everything. Complete to me means you have eveything you need now, not later, not somewhere else.
We are Jing/Qi/Shen now, now, now, now, got it.Faj:
So, I think that it is up to Michael to prove to Bagua that attaining a golden light body is possible. If we know that such a level exists, then we cannot just act from the neutral space only, because we have to create this golden light body and this doesn’t spontaneously happen (wu-hsin) from acting through our neural space. And where do we get the powers of self-creativity from, OUR EGO. Only with transformation of the ego structure can we then have a creative role in allowing for this completion to occur.
******************************************
You do not understand your nature, living in the middle path, yuan space, empty mind, allows one to experience our life, other lives in variety, beauty and spontaniety; it allows profund expeience of the magic of this thing we call life, it a dynamic way. Its clear to me you may have not experienced this wu wei in your daily life.Not just Michael’s Atleantean channeling, I have also had dreams and out-of-body experiences to talk to aliens about this and this is where I confirm that there are more dimensions higher than this and we must create a golden light body capable of proceeding to higher dimensions, meaning that we are presently not complete, not because the wuji created us incomplete. Other reasons. Why? I don’t know why we are incomplete, but I do know that there are higher goals and it is my inner desire to create these goals by transformation of the ego structure first via fusion of the five elements.
**************************
Keep my updated as you progress in your journey. May the earth ground you my friend.Smiling in the Tao,
bagua
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