Taoist Inner Alchemy by Ge Guolong;Huang Yuanji; & Huang Yuanji

Author:Ge Guolong;Huang Yuanji; & Huang Yuanji [Guolong, Ge & Yuanji, Huang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

6

THE COUPLED CULTIVATION OF HSING AND MING

The study of coupled cultivation of hsing and ming is not unique to my path. No sage of any of the three teachings of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism could have taken any other path. One starts by using hsing to establish ming. Afterward, one uses ming to fully realize hsing. Finally, hsing and ming merge as one, in order to return to the essence of empty nothingness, which is completion.

The mind’s fundamental nature is empty and nonexistent. It is indistinct, absent of objects and phenomena. However, it must be an insubstantiality so absolute that it contains the utterly substantial; a nonexistence so ultimate that it contains the utterly extant. Knowing this from the start, a student will not fall into the sidetrack of insensate oblivion.

When students begin to practice, they must relinquish all concerns, until there is not a speck or a thread of stain. At the moment when emptiness is absolute and tranquility is profound, there is light without object, there is something without form; one is in limitless depths, where nothing can be perceived. But a numinous light shines upon entire vast world systems, meaning that the mind is limpid and silent—what Buddhism calls great bodhi and tathata, and what Taoism calls numinous knowing and real knowing.

As soon as a person has a physical body, the single spark of his or her truly numinous aspect is mired in dust and grime. Great cultivators must thus eliminate thinking and rid themselves of worldly concerns, instead nurturing the traces of this spark—this is the practice of illuminating the heart in order to see its essential nature. If you all probe deeply into what I am telling you, you will begin to realize that the basis of essential mind nature is never not present in your life. It does not exist only when you are tranquil. Yet, it is through tranquility that we nurture it.

When the heart becomes serene, much as ice and snow melt without the knowledge or sensation that they are melting, a ray of numinous light will suddenly appear. Not only do others not know when this happens, one has no sense of it oneself. At this moment, all things become utterly pellucid, no thoughts are born, and it seems as though there is nothing—from the heavens to the earth to the ten thousand things—that is not in one’s own embrace. And there is no time—from antiquity to the present to ten thousand years hence—that does not flow through one’s own being.

This is what Mencius called “nurturing vast qi.” It is the zenith of enormity and righteousness, filling all between the cosmos and the earth. Only by seeing the mind’s nature in this way does one truly see it. Only by nurturing the mind’s nature in this way does one begin to directly nurture it.

When this is accomplished, one’s shen skims over the surface of profundity, and one’s qi penetrates the heavens of great harmony. One is quiescent, limpid, pure, and coalesced.

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