Bruce Frantzis at Bai Yuan Guan Temple in Beijing

From an insider’s view, Bai Yuan Guan, or the White Cloud Temple, is considered the meeting point for Taoists to connect from all over North China.  The complex is the main Taoist temple in Beijing.

Over 25 years ago, from 1985-6, my Taoist master used to send me to White Cloud once or twice a week.  He gave me meditation practices, which I did at two spots here.  At the time I lived only a 15 minute walk away.

The Eight Immortals

Upon arriving at the temple with my family, we bought two small statues of Liu Dong Bin and Lao Tse for a future retreat center.  We looked around and saw a small temple of the 8 Immortals upon whom the martial art called 8 Drunken Immortals is named.  For those who don’t know, the eight immortals are He Xiangu (Immortal Woman), Cao Guojiu, Tieguai Li, Lan Caihe, Liu Dong Bin, Han Xiang Zi, Zhang Guo Lao, and Zhongli Quan.

Next to the temple of the 8 Immortals is the Liu Dong Bin temple.  Liu Dong Bin was the leader of the 8 Immortals.  It was his methods that I followed when studying to be a Taoist priest in the 1970s.  During the 1980s I used to come to the Liu Dong Bin temple to sit, practice, and leave, rarely talking to anyone, except on rare occasions.

Back then sat on a small bench inside the shrine room, but today there was no seat inside, only a new bench outside.  So I sat there and began to meditate.

Immortal Lu Dong Bin Statue at Bai Yun Guan

Meeting with a Taoist Monk

After a while, an old Taoist monk sat next to me.  I felt him, opened my eyes and we began chatting.  We hit it off immediately.  He asked if I had been here before.  I told him a bit of my history and the conversation got lively.  My wife and son came over, and he took a shine to them. When she asked for a photograph we took a bunch.

It is highly unusual for an old Taoist pries to talk to people so freely, virtually unheard of in the 80s. The Monk was 69 years old.  As is common with traditional elders in China, he asked exactly what the difference was between the temple then and now. In China age is traditionally associated with wisdom.  I let him know my reflections of Beijing and the temple.

After a while of talking, he invited me over to a tree (“White Tree”) that he said was over a hundred years old.  We took a series of pictures with every combination of him and us next to this tree.  We promised to get him the pictures later after printing them out.  He really took a shine to my son and repeated over and over that he would live to be 100 years as well as his parents.

This is what most would call a rare and mystical meeting.  The old man came from Hunan and I could only half understand him, as his accent often was almost impossible for me to understand.  We chatted for almost an hour.

My wife then remembered she had a tasty power bar she had brought from the U.S. and, like all good moms who want people to be happy and well-fed, gave it to him.  He smiled, talked a bit more and then went inside the Liu Dong Bin shrine.  From the alter he brought out a load of tangerines which he gave us – again something Taoist priests rarely, if ever, do.  He wanted to continue chatting, but I had made previous appointments.

Karmic Connection or Yuen Fen

I returned the next day and could not find the Elder Taoist Monk.  After about half an hour of going all over the place, I found his small room and he invited me inside.

It was an extremely tight space, with a television set, clock, two water bottles, a bed, two chairs and a desk.  There were a few pictures on the wall, including him in his youth with a giant tiger from somewhere in Yunnan province.

Yesterday’s power bar was still unopened.  I gave him a bag of Hawaiian macadamia nuts.  He was still in feeding people mode and kept filling my bag with a load of peanuts.
After some time of talking he brought out his pictures from his desk.  He gave me several of them and said he only did so because I was a teacher.  He then said we had a karmic connection, which the Chinese call “yuen fen.”

After some time, a young Chinese man also came.  He said he was a friend but not a student.  A conversation ensued and the thing was getting the young man a pair of warm shoes for the arriving freezing winter.  After they worked out the details and how much it would cost, I offered the money to pay for the shoes but the old Taoist monk took the money back and said we had yuen fen and refused the money.

He then out of his minimal money gave to the young man, who had to stop him from giving too much. I was glad the young university graduate came, because he could understand the old man’s provincial accent which I couldn’t half the time, just as the old man couldn’t fully understand me.  With a middle man who spoke some English to boot, it all worked out.

It turns out the Elder Taoist monk was from the Quan Zhen (fire) sect.  He made a major point that they were celibates and never married (in this context married implies having sex).  He was ordained a Taoist monk/priest around 1980 in Hunan province and came to the White Cloud temple in 2008.

I asked him about the inner practices of his sect of Taoism.  He bemoaned that the young monks didn’t practice much and often slept rather than practiced.  In general, they were not very spiritually awake.  He said they wanted the fruits of practice without putting in the internal work.  I responded by saying what they said when I was learning in Taiwan, “No practice no good” and he smiled and put his thumb in the air.

Taoist Meditation Practices

After some time he expressed that unless you practice sufficiently and go deep enough into your heart, the light inside the brain won’t awaken.  I then mentioned that one of my practices in the Liu Dong Bin shrine in the 1980s, I experienced for the first time that light, not only in my brain, but the entire inside of my body.  He closed his eyes, contemplated, and when he opened them smiled and gain gave an thumbs up in affirmation.

Later I asked if the minds of practitioners in his sect went outside their bodies to other dimensions and outward towards the stars.  This again elicited another lament about the young monks’ lack of practice.  Slowly, however, he came about and said if you go deep inside your heart sufficiently, this practice can also be accomplished.

After the young man left, we chatted for a while and he asked if I would be returning to Beijing, and six or seven times we went back and forth with me saying I don’t know and him repeating it.  He said it would be nice to also see my family again.  After we did more a bit more talk, I said I had to go and would practice at the Liu Dong Bin shrine before I left.  We then did a traditional Taoist bow reserved for good friends.  Palms over palms, thumb touching the palm of one hand, we bowed down, so our hands went between our legs and then came up, bowed, crossed palms moving toward each other.

I meditated at the Liu Dong Bin shrine for an hour or so.  Since I had meditated often here it was easy to reconnect to the energy of the shrine.

San Xin Deities of Taoism

Next I sought out the San Xin, where I also used to sit and do meditation homework assignments for hours on end.  On the second floor of another temple within the White Cloud Temple complex, the San Xin are what you could call the three big deities of Taoism that are responsible for the turning of the seasons on the earth and, by extension, the universe.

There was no bench or chair as there always was in the 1980s.  I talked to the priest in charge to see if I could sit and meditate there and he asked why.  Then we had a confusing conversation that eventually got cleared up.  I told him I had became a Taoist priest in Taiwan in the 1970s and used to practice in the San Xin temple in the 1980s.  He got confused because the Bai Yun Guan was closed to the public in the 1970s.  He asked me this in English and said he was the only one around who understood English.

Anyway, after explaining I practiced there 1984-6 it made sense as the temple was open then and he said okay.  He left me in peace and I preceded to meditate until leaving.

The White Cloud Temple is an amazing spiritual treasure. If you ever come to Beijing and are interested in Taoism it is one place you don’t want to miss.

Until the next post… Bruce

Fried Scorpions and Seahorses on a Stick

Walking through the streets of Bejing after twenty-five years is quite a trip!

One astonishing sight is the pollution.  Yesterday the sky was a nasty shade of grey, and you could barely see the sun through the soup.  Yet I was told that it wasn’t that bad.   Apparently there is “bad”, “very bad” and then there is “crazy bad”.   The U.S. Embassy issues a pollution alert only when the worst is “crazy bad”.  All I know is that last night I began coughing, found black in my nostrils, and got a vicious headache.  Normally to relieve headaches there are points you can press in the eyes and forehead bones just above the eye sockets.  I have never experienced such pain from pressing these points, nor had my entire eye socket bone hurt so bad.  Went to bed early, thankfully the headache was gone by morning. Check out this from the US consulate in Beijing:

The pollution today (http://www.toranacleanair.com/BeijingAirQualityFeed.html) is at 351 and the highest negative rating is the following:

201-300 Very Unhealthy (People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors. Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion)

Another mind-blower is the hyper construction and modernization around the city, a result of increasing wealth and a population that has doubled since I left.  Many of the buildings that used to be four or five stories tall have now been replaced by those that are fifteen to twenty stories tall.

Some of the more weird things available for tourists to try in Wangfujing area of Beijing are bugs, seahorses,starfish and still-wriggling scorpions available on a stick that they will deep fry for your gastronomic pleasure. My wife felt sorry for the seahorses but not for the scorpions or bugs. Is this a form of animal racism?

I went to hang out with my son, who is doing a college year abroad at a University in Beijing.   The campus used to be cold, grey, and built from Communist-style block architecture.  It is now completely modernized.

Another difference between Beijing of the 1980s and Beijing of today is that today people seem freer.  Although they cannot speak freely in public, most can say what they want to say in private.

A Shop Sign in Beijing

In the 80s everyone was so terrified of the local KGB (called the public security bureau) they would not talk at all.  The KBG had ears everywhere.  Some of the fear was a hangover from the Cultural Revolution of the 70s, when some children turned their parents in, as happened in Germany with the Gestapo in the last World War.

Today people commonly smile and laugh on the streets and restaurants.  Back in the 80s most seemed distinctly shut down.  People on the subways do look exhausted and downtrodden, for which the severe pollution definitely doesn’t help.  Before the reforms to the old communist iron rice-bowl economy, few worked enough hours to be exhausted.

For Thanksgiving, we went to a restaurant to eat duck.  We got a private room with seven seats.  Every time the door was opened, a young Chinese group was having a good old time laughing, smiling, and definitely drinking.  I walked back and forth from the dining room to outside, passing one table numerous times.

Then the woman at the table asked out loud, “Wonder if he understands what we said.”

I replied, “I can understand, however I wasn’t particularly listening.”

Surprised I spoke Chinese, they asked me to sit down and have a drink.  I refused the booze but had some tea which they assured me they had brought so there was no poison in it.  We chatted for ten minutes.  They were from Shanghai to do some business in Beijing.  Chinese are pretty friendly, but this is something that never would have happened 25 years ago.

Times have changed and from this level of freedom of easy communication it is night and day for the better.

From the road,

Bruce

P.S. In the next post I’ll talk about my visit to the White Cloud Temple in Beijing – one of the main centers for Taoism in China

Photo Shoot for China Radio International

Today in Bejing I met a friendly 17-year-old kid. He had heard of Lao Tse, but like his peers, knew little about Taoism except the simplified book of Lao Tse (the Chinese translated the Tao Te Jing from the classical Chinese characters to the simplified ones of mainland China). The Cultural Revolution, which aimed to destroy old Chinese culture, keeps continuing and going strong.

The young man mentioned that it seemed as if foreigners are more interested and knowledgeable about old Chinese culture than most Chinese. He commented that nowadays, many of the youth are driven by money and consumerism, leaving behind culture and human values.

The conversation made me reflect on an interview I had just finished with China Radio International (CRI). On air, I spoke of the relevance of Chi work to modern Chinese life, where everything currently is just about money. I expressed that regardless of economic status or social position, if a person’s inner life was not in good shape, life in general can easily be unhappy and unfulfilling.

Money alone is not life. Rich or not, a person whose insides and outsides are in balance will get the most out of life. At the end of my time on the air, I encouraged Chinese youth to find legitimate masters, learn from them, and keep the traditions alive for future generations.

From the road,

Bruce

Black Hole Simulation – CRON

I can speak from my experience about what the traditional approach is and the eclectic way I went about it, and the essential difference between an eclectic traditional approach and the approach of the dabbler, who just knows a bit of this and a bit of that.

The first issue is: why become eclectic? In some sense you become eclectic so that you can gain a really specific perspective on something.

You may want to do tai chi, but as an eclectic, you may want to do a tai chi specifically for fighting. For example, I did Praying Mantis and 8 Drunken Immortals. Doing these showed me some martial aspects of tai chi I needed to pay attention to rather than ignore. But I went deeply into them. I didn’t just skim the surface with them.

Digging Your Well

There is a very old phrase from India about the desert: if you want to strike water don’t dig 20 wells ten feet deep, dig one well 200 feet deep. That sums up the approach that I’ve taken.

My principle was that if I was eclectic in several different things, in each one of them I dug a well 200 feet deep.

Many people say, “Well, you know, I’ll do this for a month or two, and I’ll kind of just do that for a workshop.” That approach only helps you get some idea of what each thing is. You still haven’t really done a particular thing until you start to get what its special point is, after several years. So, you really need to go deep to know something and that is generally not the approach of most New Age practitioners.

My experience has been that the traditional ways were all about getting right to the central issue of your practice. By going deep, I don’t mean reading about it. I mean doing your practice until it’s in your blood and in your bones.

Now, in purely intellectual terms, you want to read as widely as possible and apply the methods you would use for any form of research. However, the great trouble with a lot of information is that you may not be able to sort out what is the wheat and what is the chafe, what is relevant and what is minimally tangential.

Grounding the Knowledge in Direct Experience

This is a problem with the masses of information available: often much is not actually grounded in anything substantial.

Another example of this is my experience with Hatha Yoga. Originally, as background for qigong, I did the 300 postures of Hatha Yoga and a lot of Pranayama. But even before that I did the Yoga postures simply to become very flexible so I could kick in martial arts better, do judo better, do ground work and what not better. In one sense, learning the 300 hatha yoga postures can be seen as the traditional approach. From the eclectic view of wanting to know the whole subject of chi, this study was only a piece; it was not the whole thing.

Also, as a Taoist Priest, we went through a great number of subjects. Each one was leading to the other and we went deeper and deeper and deeper. It wasn’t that we just got a little information on each piece. We really went deep and that is the eclectic traditional approach.

Sometimes to understand something in its entirety, you have to come at it from many angles until you can see both what is and what is not so. But again I want to say that the eclectic approach of real traditionalists is not surface knowledge in each of the approaches. It is an incredible in-depth knowledge in each of the approaches, so that even if you work and study ten things, you become a “mini-master” in each of those ten things.

You are not just a beginning or intermediate student, you go down your path picking up whatever possible from wherever available until you really clearly get the essential point of the particular piece you are studying until you get it, unambiguously and with no nonsense.

Different Approaches in China

It was very main stream in all of China for some people to do only one thing for their entire life. Others even if they specialize in one thing, want to know what tangentially or directly connects to and enhances that one thing, or whatever number of things they really are focusing on. This approach can be very difficult.

So, the traditional eclectic approach in China is that in each and every part of your approach, whatever its inclusive different components, you would be virtually at the Master level, not a casual level. The purpose of all this was to become a super master a Grand Master or what in China they simply would call a real Master of the subject.

Photo by aspearing

Wu wei , or effortlessness, is the very heart of the Taoist Water Method and Taoist Meditation. This concept of “doing without doing,” is very tricky to understand from a purely mental point of view.

Wholly understood, wu wei is not “non-action”, but action that operates by simply following the natural course of universal energy as it manifests without strain or ego involvement.

How Can One Act without the Deliberate Effort of Acting?

Ultimately, wu wei boils down to recognizing what exists at the absolute depth of your heart and mind. Rather than allowing your ego to get involved, you find relaxation and letting go of any need to do. When the ego is active, strain and stress follow.

If we look closely, the Taoist Water Meditation Method is really teaching practitioners to use their full effort without strain. If you can remove the strain, then any action becomes relatively effortless by definition.

In this light, “not doing” doesn’t mean you don’t do anything. You can raise your hand, which is an action, but it’s a fairly effortless action if you’re a healthy human being.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Can you remain relaxed enough that you don’t tense, force, apply your mental will or project your energy outward to accomplish a task?
• Can you allow action to naturally and spontaneously emerge from within you?

Encountering Internal Resistance

Taoist meditation teaches practitioners how to put forth as much effort as possible without strain. We start by defining the line of effort and strain with simple qigong exercises.

Through practice, you discover that if you cross the line— if you go past a certain point in body or mind—an internal fight arises, you hit internal resistance. The trick is to figure out how far you can go forward without encountering resistance of any kind.

When you play the line without overdoing it, you can achieve more and progress faster. However, as soon as you strain, internal resistance begins to build.

Keep in mind that this line of effort and strain is constantly changing. Where you find yourself today is not necessarily where you will be tomorrow or six months from now. So it’s not as simple as identifying the line once and staying behind it.

Allow Time for Integration

Over the years, I’ve observed many students try to go around the line. The ones that are successful at advancing their qigong, bagua or tai chi practice (and life in general), know that when they hit any internal resistance, they’ve just got to switch to something else for a while.

They take a rest and allow time for integration. Once whatever is causing the resistance is integrated, they can once again move forward.

If you can observe yourself and see how much you can do while remaining relaxed and open, you might find that you can’t do as much at first.

Back off—whether in your practice or your daily life—and maintain a level of output that doesn’t cause tension. Then, as you begin to do more, tasks will become easier without the necessity of activating your force of will or the drama that has become common to the modern man.

In modern life, we’re constantly chasing after things in the external world. But you will never find peace in any external object. Any external object you get will eventually become boring and lose its appeal.

Practicing the principle of wu wei, of effortlessness, will allow you time for integration.

The Ultimate Goal

In the internal arts, you learn form in order to master a technique, then you forget the form, and eventually experience the formlessness of wu wei. This formlessness is the ultimate goal of all the internal martial arts.

This fundamental Taoist concept of action arising from an empty mind without preconception or agenda will help you discover the joy and happiness inside yourself.

Stay good.

Bruce

If you are interested in learning authentic Taoist Meditation find out more here:  Taoist Meditation Circle

Photo: Put Your Heart Out There–Cassandra Kinaviaq Rae

When you start learning qigong (chi gung) you have the intent for your chi to move. However, this is not the same thing as becoming directly aware of the chi itself, where it’s a felt living quality.

It’s not that you have the idea, the imagination or the ability to think about chi but that you actually feel it. It’s the difference between the idea of eating and actually eating-having the juices in your mouth and tasting the food. The idea will produce some facsimile of the real thing and you might go so far as to salivate, but when the real deal is present the taste and sustenance of the food is either there or it’s not.

There’s little thought involved. The same can be said for many states of meditation.

How to Feel Chi

Similarly, in order to actually feel chi directly you have to go through the Heart-Mind. You have to have a direct experience of moving chi in the body. To do this the body requires that the Heart-Mind be opened, if only to the tiniest degree.

Gods Playing in the Clouds is a bridge between qigong and mediation since it starts from awakening the Heart-Mind and working with directly feeling and consciously moving chi. I’m emphasizing this aspect more and more in all of my courses. Gods is different from other qigong sets.

The beginning level of Dragon and Tiger Qigong, for example, can be done without actually feeling chi; you could visualize or have the idea of the chi moving. But, at some point, when to get to the next level, you are no longer dealing with the idea of it, you’re dealing with the reality-you’re tasting the chi, the juices and the food is going into your stomach. All qigong and meditation starts at the level of intent and arrives at the Heart-Mind.

The Heart-Mind and Inner Dissolving Meditation

Take the idea of inner dissolving. You want a release, you have the intent for a release, but then it goes past a certain point where you start awakening the Heart-Mind. It sits there with the willingness for something to happen, but then it shifts into something that becomes very real.

This is where Lao Tse’s water tradition of Taoism and the fire traditions part company. Many of the Taoist fire methods are very strongly based only upon ordinary intent.

To enter the real world of qigong you have to access the Heart-Mind. At the level of intent, only a small percentage of your being is involved. To the degree to which you attach the Heart-Mind-surface-level or deep involvement-is the degree to which your being is involved. If you want to awaken the latent parts of the brain, it can only be done after the Heart-Mind is functioning really well.

Whether you’re using only intent or you’re accessing the Heart-Mind, normally you’ll be doing the same things, the same transactions or techniques. The only difference being that once you awaken the Heart-Mind, there are specific methods and practices down stream that you can attempt, that without the active use of the Heart-Mind simply aren’t possible to accomplish otherwise.

Going Beyond Basic Intent

You can get great benefits from intent. But that said you’re going to find that people with intent alone are not normally resolving their deepest psychological and emotional issues, their sense of being connected to life. You’re not going to find that genuine satisfaction arises solely out of intent. This is where the path of meditation arises.

If human beings truly want to tap into something bigger than them, they cannot do it without tapping into the Heart-Mind.

I knew that at some point in my second phase of my 10-year-teaching program that the Heart-Mind was going to really start coming up. I just didn’t know when. My first 10-year program was much more about teaching people how to use intent. If you can’t crawl you can’t walk. The Heart-Mind will henceforth be emphasized in my teachings as a result.

Heart-Mind Benefits

You can make energy move through your body to gain certain benefits, but if you add the Heart-Mind into it there’s more that comes out of it:

A) You perform functions dramatically better; metaphorically 100 vs. 1,000 horsepower.

B) The Heart-Mind is really what allows humans to integrate their experiences, and become smooth with them during practice and our daily lives.

Ordinary intent doesn’t do that. Ordinary intent can give you high performance in external tasks, but no more. What you will never get-no matter how much intent you use-is feeling whole inside. Ordinary intent will not make you smooth inside yourself. By its nature intent breeds the next intent because no intent can be complete. It always leaves you with what’s missing. Integration occurs where everything comes together and where it truly is “all good.”

Something has to create continuity in your life, and basically that is what happens through the Heart-Mind.

The simplest definition-albeit partial-of the Heart-Mind is: Where your emotions and your rational mind come together.

From an Eastern perspective it’s not only to do with the mind. It’s to do with the spiritual consciousness and emotions that reside in the heart and your rational capacity to figure out what’s going around you. For example, you can be completely cool inside if your heart is open, but conversely you might not be able to walk down the street without getting lost if your intellectual mind functions poorly.

You don’t have to have a Heart-Mind that’s completely open to be more integrated inside. It’s the same as the difference between being stark-raving mad, to being kind of okay, to being mostly okay, to being absolutely okay.

Remember be easy on yourself life exists along a continuum.

Good Chi,
Bruce

Click here to check out the launch of my new online meditation commmunity:  Taoist Meditation Circle

Heart-Mind – Photo by AlicePopkorn

We’ve been talking about the place from which intent and thoughts come from, the Heart-Mind. How do you get there? What is the method?

Let’s take the process of Inner Dissolving, Lao Tse’s 2,500-year-old tradition of ice to water, water to inner space. When you go from ice to water that’s a yin-yang relationship; tension to relaxation is a yin-yang relationship. Now, if you want to go to the place where both of these energies originate, you effectively will move through two levels.

If you’re talking about the level of human perception to arrive at relaxation (or water) you will move through the subconscious whether you realize it or not. But that in and of itself has more to do with the transparency of recognizing the deeper implications of what’s involved with a specific yin and yang.

It’s much more about becoming aware of the subtle nuances associated with that yin and yang, which aren’t normally terribly obvious.

Now, if you go one step further into what really allows the subconscious to generate yin and yang then you hit the Heart-Mind. You hit what can be called spirit.

So you’re playing around with words to a certain degree when you say the Heart-Mind is the subconscious. Well, it isn’t really, but given the fact that the West uses the conscious and subconscious dichotomy you could say the subconscious is the Heart-Mind. It’s more accurately that which allows the thought that ends up in the subconscious to arise to begin with.

The Heart-Mind has no qualities, or you could say it has every quality. It’s not yin and yang, or you could say that it has every possible yin and yang that could ever exist.

This place is then where you start going ice to water, water to inner space (Inner Dissolving). The process of going to inner space is the process of going to emptiness. Emptiness only arises once the Heart-Mind is activated to a strong enough degree.

How strong is the emptiness? To what degree is the emptiness? When you start looking at emptiness to a finite enough degree, then you find that there are stages of emptiness and qualities of emptiness. The point is each of those stages-when they finally arrive-comes from the Heart-Mind. If the Heart-Mind isn’t activated sufficiently you can’t go to the various degrees of emptiness.

In the Western frame of thought there are only two things: the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In Eastern thought there is a very distinct continuum that goes from gross yin-yang to subtle yin-yang to no yin-yang. The subtle is where the subconscious comes in.

There’s obvious intent and then there’s the Heart-Mind, which is the place where intent ultimately comes from. Awakening and engaging the Heart-Mind ultimately is a keystone of all higher level chi gung/qigong and Taoist meditation.

Click here to learn more about the launch of the Taoist Meditation Circle.

Graphic by T Herington

The Heart-Mind is an important concept in both Taoism and in Buddhism. To understand the Heart-Mind, we must first understand the nature of intent in relation to Taoism.

There are two levels of intent in everything you do in Taoism and Chinese chi work. The first level is ordinary intent. The second level is the place from which intent arises originally. That is, the place where intent is born.

Any level of intent has both a yin and yang component. If you want to walk across the street, that’s a yang action because you have to go and do something. If you want something to come toward you, that’s a yin form of intent. Here, the question arises about where the intent comes from to begin with.

Where do all your thoughts come from? Where do all your emotions come from? Where is the birthing room of yin and yang?

Classic Chinese philosophy says that in the beginning there was the undifferentiated void called wu chi (wu ji). Wu chi held within itself all possibilities but was beyond needing to take form.

However, in order for creation to come into existence, there needed to be a creative force. This force was called tai chi (taiji).

Tai chi gives birth to yin and yang. It has no qualities of its own, but it allows any yin and yang quality to take form. In and of itself, tai chi is neutral. It is a level of emptiness that produces manifestation. The interplay of yin and yang is called liang i by the ancient Chinese.

So, where does any thought, any emotion, any phenomena come from? If you have a psychic perception, where does it come from? When a thought comes into your mind, or an emotion comes into your body, where does it originate?

The thought, the emotion, the psychic perception, or even the way karma occurs, you could say always has a yin or a yang quality. It could be more yin and less yang or more yang and less yin, but one or both are always involved. You can break anything down from the most finite things that exist in quantum physics to the biggest things in the universe.

The subconscious–a place that has thought–is still yin and yang. The place in the subconscious from where it is born, that’s the Heart-Mind.

The Heart-Mind is not the subconscious itself, rather it is the place that gives birth to the subconscious.

Buddhism and Taoism both speak of the Heart-Mind.

Taoism sometimes doesn’t use the word Heart-Mind and sometimes uses the word spirit (shen). Buddhism uses Heart-Mind, Taoism sometimes uses Heart-Mind and sometimes uses spirit, but the fact is that they’re interchangeable. I tend to use the term Heart-Mind because Buddhism is better known in the West, and I prefer to use common terms.

A good way to begin to experience the Heart-Mind directly is through meditation.

In my hopes of encouraging you in this practice, I have launched the Taoist Meditation Circle - you can click here to find out more: Taoist Meditation Circle.

Stay Good,

Bruce

Artist Photo of Soft Gamma Repeater (SGR) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The word Tao has many meanings. First, there is the Tao of doing anything, which is the same as the ideal way of doing something. You must travel on a particular path in order to wind up where that path leads. Going a little deeper, the word Tao considers the question: What connects everything and yet has no specific quality of its own? That’s the center of the I Ching. It has no quality and yet everything is connected to it, everything comes out of it, everything flows through it.

The word Ziran embodies a very important concept in Taoism and has a number of large meanings. If we go from the deepest to the most superficial meaning, it essentially has the same meaning as Tao. The Chinese actually call it Tao Ziran, which means “the great natural.”

Ziran means naturalness. In one sense, it is about the natural way of the Universe, so you could also refer to this natural way as the Tao. Very often Taoists do not use the term Tao and instead use Ziran, albeit making the translation Chinese texts even more difficult.

The next level of Ziran embodies a major Taoist premise that balance is a possibility. Once you become reasonably balanced the ability to tap into the ultimate source from which all the balance derives, whether regarded as Emptiness or the Tao, also becomes a possibility. So the implication of Ziran is the ultimate goal of behaving, acting and thinking naturally in both your internal practices and your external behaviors in order to arrive at Emptiness, which Taoists refer to as the Body of the Tao.

Ziran is very important in terms of the energetics of the body—yin and yang must become balanced on ever-more refined levels. The only way that balance can be maintained is if yin and yang are configured to flow freely inside of you as well as in the natural environment. Once you lose naturalness, the Taoists say you will go off into the mind of man. You get stuck on what you are thinking about. The human mind can create billions of thoughts that do not lead to any resolution or balance. The Taoists believe anything that is unnatural is ultimately unsustainable.

When practicing tai chi or qigong (chi gung), all movement should be natural. Nothing in the human body is linear. Even your bones are slightly curved because the gravity field creates a rounding effect. Thus all movements, including the way chi moves in the body, should have the quality of circularity and spiraling. This is the natural way of working with the force affecting everything on this planet. From the Taoist perspective, you do that which requires the least amount of energy and strain to be consistent with natural forces.

You can look at any small aspect of human life and consider what may be natural about it. Maybe it is no longer natural when you subsequently connect it with larger aspects of the fabric of life. For something to be ultimately natural, it must not be in conflict with anything else. It must somehow flow smoothly both in temporary and long-term circumstances.

For example, human beings often abuse and even kill other human beings. It is natural for animals to engage in these behaviors too. So, the question then arises: Is the natural state of a human being to be an animal or to move somewhere beyond animal instincts? As long as we remain purely animalistic, there is no way in which we will ever be completely in sync or in rhythm with the entire Universe because polarization to one very tiny, specific quality takes place and conflict emerges.

As you go through the eight energy bodies of human beings, you may find that what is natural to one energy body may not necessarily be completely natural to another. Eventually you must find the ways in which the higher bodies can be integrated so that each is in harmony with all others. In Taoism there is tremendous emphasis on individuality.

Buddhists say there are 84,000 passes of the Buddha. This means that there are 84,000 different ways human beings can practice.The Taoists had a similar phrase long before Buddha was born: There are 36 million passes of the Tao.

Thus it’s true that some things are relatively natural to all beings and some things are more natural to one individual. However, this is not necessarily true at each stage of our evolutionary development because what is natural at one stage may not be natural at the next. There is relative and absolute understanding, but the Tao is the absolute. Until you consider the trillions of connections of all and everything, you are working on a purely relative basis. This is where the Taoists differ from most other traditions that have very clear rules about how to act. Taoists focus more on arriving at a natural state.

Eventually you want to have synchronicity between chi and virtuous action. However, having more chi or more virtue will not create balance if the subparts that lie between them are not in harmony with one another. Many people keep on repeating the same negative habits.

On an evolutionary scale, we need to work out the glitches that cause conflict until we find the natural connection, an integration point for our existence. How do you find it in yourself? How do you end up there? Recognizing where you’re at and being ticked off about it is not enough. Once a natural connection emerges, you realize that there is no “I should” or “I shouldn’t.”

There is only the question of integration. What is it that gives you more of a sense of being whole?

Bruce

Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The phrase “bones of the all” in the Tao Te Ching is sometimes referred to as meaning something old or ancient, but the true meaning is that all and everything is in the earth.

Taoists hold the position that the earth is a living entity with a consciousness of its own. Just as you have a consciousness, so does the earth. And just as what is most active in your body changes from day to day, the earth also changes.

You have the choice to link with any living being. But what is meant by “linking”? When you go internally, it’s your consciousness that feels inside your body. The way in which anyone can clearly feel inside their brains or bone marrow, for example, is through their consciousness.

Now your consciousness has many interesting qualities. You can feel inside your body by linking with your body, by somehow focusing on, joining with and becoming one with it. Eventually you become aware, in tandem with your body and do whatever it is you’re trying to do. Likewise you can link with an animal, a tree, a human—even the earth.

The earth is a funny creature, but it’s no different than a human being or an animal. If you pay attention to and put your energy into one particular human being, that person will respond.

Likewise, if that human being does not get attention from any other human beings, he/she will not respond and very often becomes ill or goes crazy. The strongest example of this is babies who are never touched and die of crib death. They die from not having any real human contact.

Now if you consider very powerful relationships, there’s always one thing about them—regardless of sex or even the nature of the relationship itself. It’s the ability to just sit together and somehow fulfill each other.

For many marriages the biggest single factor that holds it together is that when the partners lie together they are fulfilled. What happens is that each person settles into the energy of the other—each person’s energy flows into the other’s energy. Women are usually aware of this more than men. Making love is not just in the action, it is in the energy flow. And, at the end of the day, that is what people really remember, or at least that’s what holds people together for long periods of time.

The earth is no different. Equally, the earth responds to the tension of human beings. The earth doesn’t need us, we need it. All the people on the earth could die, but our relationship with the earth intrinsically has to do with the fact that we pay attention to it.

If you use the earth’s energy to rejuvenate you and while you do that, you somehow have the feeling of what is coming into you, then this is a mutually beneficial relationship. I recommend people do this for a simple reason: otherwise the earth might decide to get rid of us just as a dog doesn’t need fleas, but tolerates them.

Some people can make contact with the earth and dissolve the energy inside themselves. To a certain degree you will not be able to know if what you are dissolving is yours or if it’s some pain the earth is having. And, it actually doesn’t matter because as one goes the other will go too.

It will not be one, it will not be the other; it will be both. It is like when two people sit in a room or when your cat or dog sits next to you and it’s just quiet. You’re just being. You can do the same with the earth. You can use its energy. And, if you care about the earth, you can also help the earth by what you’re doing with your awareness and intent.

To start you have to link to the energy in the earth. The mountains are the easiest place to link with the energy of the earth, much more than flatlands. For example, in China many people practice in front of trees so they can link with them. The energies of the different layers of the tree activate the energy layers in their body.

All you have to do is simply stand, sit or lie down in nature, close your eyes for about 20 minutes and let your mind go very, very quiet. Then, when your mind is finally still, do your best to link with the earth. Leave your own body out of it and go into the layers of the earth. A little appreciation for the bones of the all truly can go a long way.