L: Neutral center of this Yin-Yang symbol holds a key to the Tao deep “meaning of life”.
R: Plasma spiral of galaxy mirrors Yin-Yang symbol. Both express flow of Nature as two equal polar forces spiraling around a neutral third center – the same principle as DNA double helix. Two strands spiral around an invisble central axis.
How does this relate to our search for the Meaning of Life? Read essay below.
What’s the “Meaning of Life” for a Taoist?
by Michael Winn
Chuang Tzu, a central figure of classical Taoism, argued that language could not completely express meaning, thus a linguistic “meaning” could not fully attain Tao. – Jana Rosker, Semantic Development… in Chinese Thought (paraphrased)
In my Taoist view, “meaning” is a culturally or linguistically constructed CONCEPT. Both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu saw language as a limited reality created in our mind, but not to be confused with the deeper underlying reality of the Way.
We must look beyond conceptual meaning. “Life” is the most important word in the question, as it’s more tangible. The implied question is really: “what does it mean to be fully alive?”.
Your life IS your path, your Way. Chuang Tzu says our Way arises with each step we take.
That is why it is useless to follow someone else. You can learn from others without following them.
LIFE is the direct, lived experience of our personal Way. Our Tao (Dao) is whatever spontaneously arises on our path. We either accept it or resist it. We love it or we struggle with it. But our response does not define nor limit LIFE itself. It simply becomes our co-creative contribution to the “lived meaning” of that moment.
The totality of our our conscious and unconscious EXPERIENCE of Life in any given moment is the “meaning” itself. Life cannot be reduced to a concept, our “thought” about life. Nor can it be reduced to a memory of one especially intense moment. LIFE is too vast.
In my self-cultivation process, I’ve come to understand that memory is not stored in our physical body. Rather its held in the layers of our subtle Energy Body, which is vibrating in deep resonance with the greater Qi field. This field pulses and changes, a multi-dimensional dance of spontaneous equilibrium in an eternal Present Moment. The speed at which our human life pulses to these Yin-Yang rhythms we call Time.
The cosmic pulsation is not linear. Its a yang spiral expanding out from a neutral Source into physical form, then a yin spiral back into its original formless energy. It’s our cosmos’ learning process, and each pulsation happens in nano-moments too fast for human senses to grasp.
Past (including past lives) and future are illusory stories our mind creates to contain and explain the mysterious, multi-dimensional Yin-Yang Qi pulsations. These vibrate, organize, and record the evolution of everything, from tiny atoms to hhumans to vast galaxies. Lao Tzu calls this process the “spontaneous self-arising” (ziran) of Tao. LIFE arises from WiTHIN, it does not descend by fiat from ABOVE.
Our “life memories” are one tiny stream of personal Energy Body patterns dancing in the flowing Qi River of the Cosmos. Our mental explanations are just a surface description. Spoken language cannot fathom the vast depths of life’s ultimate “meaning”.
What is the Meaning of Qi?
Calligraphy for Qi.
Because Qi infuses and shapes all life, we could just as well ask, “what is the Meaning of Qi?”
This a more fruitful question, but needs to be focused. I consider Qi to be the language of Nature. Insects, animals, plants, and planets all “speak Qi” effortlessly. Children are taught to UN-learn it. We re-learn to “speak Qi” through qigong and any modality that relies on Qi – energy healing, TCM, martial arts, etc. “Gong” means “skill”, but its more than a fighting or healing or enlightenment skill.
At root, all Qi skills are language skills that enable us to communicate with and activate the Qi field. Nature’s Qi language will take us much deeper than human language and mental concepts. Direct conscious connection to the Qi field is like sucking milk from Mother Nature’s breast.
If we track Qi back to its Origin, we encounter the notion of Yuan Qi, literally the “original subtle breath” of the cosmos. Yuan Qi arises from the Great Oneness (taiyi), what Lao Tzu calls the Mother of All Things. Moderns might call it the “heart of the cosmos” or its “central sun”, medieval astrologers the Primum Mobile, philosophers the First Mover. Religions call it Most High God or Goddess.
Why did the One breathe itself into the Many, into our perplexing human existence? Would not its Original Intent define the ultimate “meaning” of all life?
Taoists believe this question cannot be answered. Taiyi arises from wuji, the Supreme Mystery, which by definition is the UN-knowable. They do not say wuji is an Absolute Emptiness (unlike Chan Buddhists). Wuji is rather a dark mysterious portal holding the function of Pure Openness, a meta-cosmic womb whose impulse is to unceasingly nourish the Great Oneness.
Thus the Taoist cosmos is inherently mysterious. We cannot know the “meaning” of why Supreme Mystery birthed Great Oneness, or why in turn the One births the Many of the 10,000 things, including our personal life.
In this sense the “meaning of life” can be known only by our playing and dancing with the Qi field, loving its Great Mysterious Beauty, even if at times it is a Terrible Beauty filled with suffering.
Love the Meaning Hidden in Our Inner Body Space
There is one solace. We don’t need to get on a rocket ship to Outer Space to explore this mystery. The meaning we seek is in our Inner Body Space. If the Origin of this cosmos is a mystery, then our human body is a fractal pattern containing that same mystery. We carry the Great Mystery within our personal body-mind-soul as a Small Mystery.
Can we love the beauty of life’s mystery within our body? The very act of loving the scary unknown and its infinite Pure Openness within our own body can give us the meaning we seek. It is practical, and can empower us to transcend our fear of living our life fully. The FEAR of truly opening our hearts to LOVE all forms of embodiment may be far greater than our fear of Death. Life is the expanding spiral of Yang, Death is the return journey, a Yin spiral back to our formless neutral Origin.
The “meaningful life” we humans seek is really about our ability to love embodiment. Can we love our body, the body of lovers, family and society, the body of the planet, the body of the sun, moon, stars, the body of Space itself? That love will merge our Energy Body into the multi-dimensional Yin-Yang pulsations of the Qi field. It will inspire us with awe, and dwarf our petty concerns about the lack of meaning in our social Little Life.
Loving all the subtle Qi levels of embodiment, and living and co-creating in harmony with the Qi field as per our unique destiny — this is the very purpose of Qi arts and sciences. Qigong grounds us and opens awareness of post-natal Qi flow in the 12 organ meridians and in Nature all around us. Neigong (‘inner skill”) quiets our mind and activates pre-natal Qi flow in the Eight Extraordinary Vessels.
Neidan gong (inner alchemy) allows us to sexually couple volatile forces in ourc ore channel “the cauldron”. This couples our soul level inner male and female, matter and spirit, pleasure and pain, good and evil, cosmic water and fire, and any pair of polar essences within Heaven and Earth. This sexual coupling in our Inner Body Space grows an Elixir of True Yin-Yang-Yuan Qi, thereby restoringour original immoral human nature.
These “Loving Energy Sciences” are a spiritual tool kit for quickening our evolution. When we grow Yuan Qi in our core, it matures into an Inner Sage with neutral detachment to the suffering caused by dark forces (as seen in this pandemic). Yet it simultaneously radiates Pure Love from Origin to all beings, animate and inanimate. Experience of this inexhaustible Pure Love is the hidden “meaning” I believe everyone is seeking while they navigate their highest worldly destiny.
This is no easy shortcut or escape path. We still have to love the pandemic profit-driven Fear drama, in order to heal it. But we don’t have to let it define the meaning of our life, which rests safe and secure deep in our Inner Body Space.
Loving Energy Science has has added more “meaning” to my life than anything else I’ve experienced in my short sixty-nine years on planet Earth. I look forwad to sharing it with you.
