The Golden Elixir Blog

[ Click to enlarge the picture ] In his  Zhonghe ji (The Harmony of the Center: An Anthology), Li Daochun (late 13th century) makes an important distinction between two Elixirs, which correspond to different degrees of realization. The first Elixir is the Internal Medicine ( neiyao ), and the second one is the External Medicine ( waiyao ). Li Daochun says: The External Medicine allows you to cure illnesses, and to prolong life and have lasting presence. The Internal Medicine allows you to transcend the world, and to exit from Being and enter Non-Being. The chart reproduced above contains a graphic summary of the two Medicines. Reading from right to left, the first lines of the chart show the ingredients of the Internal Medicine : Precelestial Perfect Essence, Void Breath (Qi) of Empty Non-Being, and Indestructible Original Spirit. These are the precelestial Essence, Breath, and Spirit, which are already perfected of their own. The next lines show the ...

Fig. 1. Entrance to the Baiyun guan ( Click to enlarge this and the other pictures ) The Baiyun guan (Abbey of the White Clouds, fig. 1) in Beijing is one of the most important Taoist monasteries in China. A Taoist temple already existed here in the mid-8th century, but the present site originally dates from around 1200. From the 17th century, the abbey has been the seat of Quanzhen (Complete Reality) , the main Taoist lineage in northern China. Fig. 2. The Neijing tu stele While Quanzhen allows for different forms of individual practice — especially meditation — and also includes forms of Taoist communal ritual, its methods incorporate a brand of Neidan (Internal Alchemy) that emphasizes the cultivation of one’s inner nature. The Neidan view of the human body  has often been represented in charts and other illustrations. The  Neijing tu , or  Chart of the Inner Warp , is the most famous of these charts. It depicts the body as a landscape and shows...

Fig. 1. Entrance to Mount Qiyun Liu Yiming 劉一明 (1734-1821) was one of the greatest masters of Neidan (Internal Alchemy) . Born in Quwo (present-day Shanxi province), he spent the first half of his life traveling extensively to various towns and mountains in northwestern China and to Beijing, in order to search for teachings. His main teachers were a master whom he calls Kangu laoren (Old Man of the Kan Valley, first met around 1755), who gave him teachings on the Book of Changes , cosmology, and Neidan; and another master whom he calls Xianliu zhangren (Great Man Resting in Immortality, first met in 1768), who gave him further teachings on Neidan. Fig. 2. First level of the Zizai wo In 1779, Liu Yiming visited Qiyun shan (Mount Resting on the Clouds). He decided to settle there and built his residence, called Zizai wo (meaning Nest of Being by Oneself, but also Nest of Freedom, as well as Comfortable Nest...). Since then, his main activities were teaching, writing, and ...

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...

Two more versions of the same picture (see the previous post ), taken from different editions of the Xingming guizhi (Teachings on the Joint Cultivation of Nature and Life).   (Click to enlarge)

The Elixir as Embryo The picture shown here is very well known. It was first made popular in the West, I believe, by Richard Wilhelm's translation of the Jinhua zongzhi , or Secret of the Golden Flower . (The picture itself comes, however, from another text, the Xingming guizhi , or Teachings on the Joint Cultivation of Nature and Life .) This picture gives a different representation of the Elixir compared to the one given by Liu Yiming (see the  previous post ). Here the Elixir is shown as an embryo. One of the interesting points about this and similar pictures concerns the "actuality" of the embryo. With regard to this, Wu Shouyang (1574-1644) says in his  Tianxian zhengli zhilun  (Straightforward Discourses on the Correct Principles of Celestial Immortality — I have italicized a few sentences): The Embryo is nothing but Spirit and Breath. It does not mean that there is truly an infant ; it does not mean that it is something provided with a form and an ima...