The Golden Elixir Blog

Many Taoist lineages bestow "ordination names" or "lineage names" using the characters found in a specially-written poem. Each generation of disciples receives their names using in sequence one character of the poem. Thus the name of a first-generation master includes the first character; the name of a second-generation master includes the second character; and so forth. These poems are known in general as "lineage poems" ( paishi ). The most famous "lineage poem" in Taoism is the one of the Longmen (Dragon Gate) lineage. Known as the "Longmen Lineage Poem" ( Longmen paishi ), the "Hundred-Character Lineage of Ancestor Qiu" ( Qiuzu baizi pai ), or in other similar ways, it is made of 20 verses of 5 characters. The 100 different characters of the poem should suffice to assign lineage names for about two and a half millennia, and perhaps even longer. Below is a translation of the poem. Each word is translated with a diffe...

Golden Elixir Press is pleased to announce the publication of a new occasional paper: The Longmen Lineage: Historical Notes (PDF, 25 pp., free download) This essay contains a short history of the Longmen (Dragon Gate) lineage, to which many masters of Neidan (Taoist Internal Alchemy) claim affiliation. It presents the main stages of development of Longmen, and briefly describes its main branches and its main masters. The essay is translated from the chapter "Longmen pai" (The Longmen Lineage) in Zhongguo daojiao (Chinese Taoism), ed. by Qing Xitai (4 vols; Chengdu: Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1994), vol. 1. • Click the picture or here for the download page in the Golden Elixir website .

▶ Quoted from  Cultivating the Tao: Taoism and Internal Alchemy , by Liu Yiming, page 155 —  Read more about this book . . . Therefore being connected with companions who have the same mind is the most important thing in the cultivation of the Tao. However, companions who share the same mind are very difficult to discern. They have no form and no image, no sound and no color, no front and no back. Facing evil, they transform themselves into yakshas; facing goodness, they transform themselves into bodhisattvas. (1) Their transformations have no limit: they conceal or manifest themselves in unfathomable ways. Everyone has them in front of their eyes, but misses them. If you are unwilling to discern the true, day after day they increasingly separate from you. When all of a sudden an intimate friend appears, you become of one mind with him: walking, standing, sitting, or lying, neither of you separates from the other for a single instant. . . . Those who intend to cultiva...

The stage of "refining Breath to transmute it into Spirit" constitutes an advanced stage of the alchemical work, in which one's practice progresses from "doing" to "non-doing." The Great Medicine is called Embryo of Sainthood ( shengtai ) or Infant ( ying'er ). Both terms are actually metaphors for Spirit and Breath coagulating and coalescing with one another. Wu Shouyang explains the meaning of these terms saying: "Metaphorically it is called 'embryo,' as if there is truly an embryo. In fact, however, there is no embryo. Why is it so? Because according to the principle of giving birth, one generates the embryo of a child in the womb; and according to the principle of cultivating immortality, one generates an embryo of Spirit in the Heart. The worldly people hear the word 'embryo' and say that within the womb there is truly an embryo, which then leaves and becomes 'a body outside the body' ( shen wai shen ). This i...

▶ Quoted from  The Seal of the Unity of the Three: A Study and Translation of the Cantong qi, the Source of the Taoist Way of the Golden Elixir , by Fabrizio Pregadio, pages 78-79—  Read more on and from this book Qian ☰ the firm and Kun ☷ the yielding join and embrace one another; Yang endows, Yin receives, the masculine and the feminine attend         one to the other. Attending, they create and transform, unfolding their Essence and Breath. Kan ☵ and Li ☲ are at the fore: their radiance and glow come down         and spread out. Mysterious and obscure, this can hardly         be fathomed and cannot be pictured or charted. The sages gauged its depth; one with it, they set forth its foundation. These four, in indistinction, are right within Empty Non-Being. Sixty hexagrams revolve around them, outspread like a chariot. Harnessing a dragon and a mare, the bright noble man holds the rein...