The Golden Elixir Blog

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 ...

In the Western world, those who are interested in Neidan (Internal Alchemy) sometimes claim that the  Daode jing  (Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue) is a Neidan text. This view deserves attention, because it is in some respects similar to the traditional view held by Neidan masters and adepts in China. However, it also requires some comments. While Neidan needs the  Daode jing , the  Daode jing  does not need Neidan. The  Daode jing  is an integral statement of Taoist doctrine. Being complete and self-contained, it does not demand or await anything outside itself. Its doctrine, however, can be applied, to varying extents, to different practices, arts, and sciences. The  Daode jing  itself pays much attention to one particular application of its own doctrine: the art of government. Since some fundamental principles of Neidan are based on the doctrine of the  Daode jing , a Neidan practitioner might claim that the  Daode jing ...

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...