The Golden Elixir Blog

The Japanese alchemical chart of the body reproduced above is entitled Shūshin kyūten tandō zu 修真九轉丹道圖, or Chart of the Way of the Elixir in Nine Cycles for the Cultivation of Reality (the Chinese reading of the title is Xiuzhen jiuzhuan dandao tu ). Although no precisely corresponding picture seems to be found in Chinese texts, it is likely that this chart is either copied from, or based on, an earlier Chinese exemplar that may now be lost. The Chart , which is undated, is now kept in the library of Tenri University in Japan. It is reproduced here from the book by Katō Chie 加藤千恵, Furō fushi no shintai: Dōkyō to “tai” no shisō 不老不死の身体 — 道教と「胎」の思想 (The Ageless and Deathless Body: Taoism and the Idea of the “Embryo”; Tokyo: Taishūkan shoten, 2002), p. 121. Dr. Katō is one the main Japanese scholars of Taoist Internal Alchemy. She has published extensively in particular on the Wuzhen pian (Awakening to Reality) and on the Taoist views of the “embryo.” From top to bottom a...

Of old, those who excelled in doing the Dao were subtle, marvelous, mysterious, and penetrating: their depth cannot be understood. It is only because it cannot be understood that, if I am forced, I would describe them as — hesitant, like one fording a stream in winter; tentative, like one concerned by the four neighborhoods; respectful, like a guest; dispersed, like melting ice; genuine, like an uncarved block; vast, like a valley; murky, like muddy water. ( Daode jing , 25) In generating and feeding things generate but do not own, do but do not be dependent, let grow but to not manage. This is called Mysterious Virtue. ( Daode jing , 10, part.) Those who intend to take over the world and do something to it— I see that they will never succeed. The world is a divine vessel: you cannot do anything to it, you cannot hold it. If you do something to it, you damage it; if you hold it, you lose it. Thus the Saint does not do, ...