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This essay was written by a young man who slept in “Plato’s Cave” on the 2004 China Dream Trip. The essay was not written for me, but for a job application where the question was asked to describe an unusual experience…. It was only sent recently to me. He focuses mostly on his relationship with the Taoist who lives in a hut next to the caves as a kind of hermit/caretaker. The same Taoist was also present on Plato’s trip and fed the cavers warm food due to the cold weather that challenged them.
These caves have been used by Taoist adepts for meditation since the Han Dynasty, over 2000 years.
I think it is relevant to point out that Plato’s 2002 trip was in October, and had very misty weather with a some damp penetrating cold. This type of weather is a challenge to anyone’s kidney’s fire and could easily bring out any underlying weakness that might have been interpreted as fox spirits or in fact created a vulnerability to attracting them. It is one reason I have since moved the trip to May-June, to ensure warmer weather for the cave meditators. My inital week spent in the caves was in late October.
I see there is a new question to Craig about his cave experience. I urge him to reply, and will ask some others on the trips to post their experience as well.
But based on the feedback I have received from both trips, and the fact that some people took the trip twice just to go back to the caves, it is obvious to me that most people did not share Plato’s experience.
The essay is really more of a testament to the power of the Inner Smile than his relationship with the cave/earth chi, but I think it opens a nice window into his cave-life reality:
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While studying high in the mountains in China this summer on a trip led by an American Tao teacher, I had the opportunity to meet a Taoist practitioner named Master Shu. His name roughly translates as the Stone of Eminent Perfection. I spent three nights in a cave on Hua Shan, or Flower Mountain. By day I was invited to cook, live and study meditation with Master Shu.To be accepted so quickly is a great honor as the Chinese are known to be very strict and proud people. Despite this by the second day I was helping gather the food for meals and even washing the dishes. Though he only knew the English words hello, hello and I knew only shi, shi in Chinese, which means thank you, it was no problem communicating. We read separately together, collected food and water, traversed the mountain several times, and enjoyed hugs at my departure that outranks the buzz in every category of casual sex the majority of people have in a lifetime.
The pinnacle was meditating in a way, still nameless, that has been the savior of an age old struggle in myself that has existed for generations on both sides of my family; as Dave Mathews said my head wont leave my head alone and finally the two sides of my bi-polar boxing match took a rest and let me enjoy, observe, read and rest all in the same day.
I will never be able to explain how another person was able to transmit to me the ideas, concepts and perspectives of a well known Taoist practice, known to me now as inner smile, through meditation with no means or mediums of communication except for kindness, expression, and practice but I will always understand. As a dancer floats on the floor of a club so this man walked around and because he moved from the center so efficiently his dance, that most would call walking, was the most mesmerizing sight I had ever seen.
Due to his lack of judgment, non bias and knowledge of the Tao and with the help of my experience in the listening arts, we were able to successfully communicate so that I left with a meditation practice that healed a condition, a well thought about but poorly known one that lithium never worked for and other drugs only stalled, and he took a smile, a laugh and the presence of me and as far as I am concerned, the me in this life will owe that man for thousands of years to come.
These are my first, last and only words to describe the man. These words are written on a black and white picture which I took while we were meditating through the rain: he listens always amazingly and he oft not speaks, wakes in the morning and has something to eat. Walks around the mountain thats no ones, hears the wind blow when
there is no one, single, solitary breeze, he is what it means to be of the
Way, to just simply be.
————————Almost every person staying at and around Bei Tou Ping confided in me that they had been “violated” sexually at least once if not twice. Men and women equally. All were ashamed and didn’t want to tell others, but since I was so vocal they started to come around and confess to me in private, one after another, that they shared the same experience and were so glad that they weren’t alone.
Since then I have had numerous experiences with not only foxes, but with all sorts of entities. They come around when you have good, clean chi as they have no interest in “shitty chi” no matter how much of it you may have. This is why red-faced martial artists and qi gong chi-spinners scoff at things like fox spirits–they never meet them. =^_^=
As far as dispatching foxes and demons, the only way to do it is to offer them teachings. The idea that you expose them to that “neutral core” is a big joke. Sure, I have produced this alchemical coupling you teach many, many times and ghosts do come around to have a look. I have done many stunts using your alchemical formulae, but they are what is called semblance dharma. People practice it and see this crazy stuff happen and so they think they know the way.
They are just deceiving themselves, as I did once as well. The Buddhist teachings make specific references to this type of “practice” that produces nearly identical results to what is expected on the cultivator’s path, yet is not the real thing. It is extremely deceptive and this issue is ignored by you because you are addicted to your idea of immortality and playing with your chi.
To think that you can fight off a fox that has lived for 100s of years with your brand of Neo-Taoist “internal alchemy” is a joke. They are at a much higher stage then you. If you teach them dharma or mantra, though, they tend to leave you alone.
For example, I was in a hotel in Miami last weekend and I lay down to sleep and immediately a ghost tried to have sex with me. I refused, and then went and offered it food and dharma every night. The harrassment stopped. I have done it time and again here and there. People can laugh all they want. It works. 🙂
Since I started “practicing correctly,” all sorts of things show up. They are either curious and offer help, or else they want to steal or stop me. That’s how I know I am doing things correctly. The cavalry shows up on both sides. Otherwise you are just a bag of wind chi playing games until one day you are taught a hard lesson–that “neutrality” is often a cop-out to avoid doing good deeds.
I will not talk about my personal relationship in detail with that hermit at Bei Tou Ping, but he was a dynamite human being who took equal care of ALL of us. It wasn’t just that guy who wrote that essay who walked away with a “present.” We all did. I will tell you this, though, it was him and my experience in that cave that pushed me over the edge and realize that internal alchemy the way you and the Neo-Taoist School teach it is all wrong. He also showed me the importance of virtue–especially when I compared him to you! If anyone stood out like someone who didn’t belong, it was you amongst all the Taoists we met. LOL!!!
Yes, your personal attacks on my respective cultivation remind me of all those Healing Tao women who lament my “bad energy” yet want to fuck me anyway.
From my point of view it may be preferable to fuck a fox shrouded in a human corpse. At least the fox doesn’t try to convince me my energy is bad in order to get me to give it up.
(BTW, the reason certain Zen masters smoke is to cover up the corpse-like smell of other human beings which becomes amplified due to their cultivation. Once again, if you don’t have their level of attainment their behavior seems strange.)
Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to do, but then it came to me one day and it went sort of like this: we don’t have to build a mirror, but rather simply remove the dirt from the one that is already there and look into it and see what is to be seen. Watch the mind, and see where it is sticking. Then do WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO to get it un-stuck!
Over time I came across the teachings of Nan Huai Chin and this gem of his:
It was in Master Nan’s teachings that I saw verification of the conclusion I arrived at on my own–after years of diligently practicing the “Kan and Li” formulas:
Just like you don’t need to do Fusion in order to do Kan and Li,
You don’t need to do Kan and Li to go into your mind.
Just go to your mind directly!
Just retain your sexual energy, do tons of good deeds and cultivate the mind. Sure, you can play with your the form and sensation skandhas when necessary, just don’t get “stuck” and think that such techniques are “where it is at.”
When you get high enough, does everything revolve around you? Is it that the ghosts and entities are banding about us and within us all the time and we don’t notice them?
Are their lives so boring that they need us. Can they only be seen by true believers and then they’re everywhere? Projections from another dimension or from a bored mind seeking drama?
In the end does it matter? Real or imagined we create our inner worlds.
I think it does matter. Lesson one in Zen and most meditation systems is when the ghoulies and creepies come to you when meditating you ignore them.. and they go away. Whether real or imaginary, you ARE feeding them.
Drama, drama drama. It seems more like ego fodder either way.
Your world is not mine. But there is a reality we share. Beyond philosophy, theories and speculation, I am typing on this computer right now at 6:42 and you’re really reading it right now.
Peace
Michael
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