Working diligently day and night, never wavering for a second, just extinguish the stirring mind, do not extinguish the shining mind; just stabilize the open mind, do not stabilize the dwelling mind. Do not rest on anything, yet have the mind always present.
Zhang San Feng (Chang San Feng),
Cleary Vitality, Energy, Spirit p. 201
Several readers have taken me to task for, they said, being too negative. Surely health is not just about avoidance? Surely what we do is more important than what we don’t do?
I can understand their point of view: doing exercises to nourish life is far more interesting than stopping up the leaks, as crucial as this is. It does put me in mind, though, of an old story told in the far west of China, in Chinese Turkestan, a tale of Afanti — the Effendi — who was either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no one could tell which.
It seems that one day Afanti was standing at the pump in the public square, pumping water into a pitcher in his hand. This went on for some time, until one of the gathering onlookers said to him: “Afanti! You will never fill that pitcher, for it has no bottom!” Afanti looked at him indignantly and said, “I am not interested in the bottom of the pitcher, I want to fill it to the top, and so I am looking at the top. Don’t distract me with irrelevancies about the bottom!”
Now that I have had my say, however, a useful technique is described in a number of traditions such as the Daoist and the Zen streams, and probably others of which I am unaware. The aim is to systematically melt away tensions in the body and mind.
The technique
Sit in a comfortable position. Standing is also possible, but is best done in the posture used at the beginning of a Tai Chi set, before any movement takes place. If you do not know what this means, better sit. Once practised with the technique, it can be done in any posture.
Now visualise a slow stream of comfortably warm and fragrant sesame oil flowing very slowly and gently down from the top of your head, dissolving any point of tension it may encounter. At first the warm fragrant liquid slowly covers every part of your head and face, melting away the tensions in your forehead, nose, eyes, ears and jaw, dissolving knots at the base of your skull and in your neck, and then pouring warmly down over your shoulders and back and chest, melting and dissolving as it goes. Its fragrant warmth then gathers briefly in the pelvis and hips before moving on into the buttocks, thighs and knees, down through the shins and calves, into the feet, where it pours into the ground.1
There are two important points: one is that you begin to gently dissolve from the surface of the body, and over time extend this into the interior so that the organs are washed with the gentle warm fragrance of the melting sesame oil. The second is that throughout the exercise you maintain a gently straightened back and do not slouch, so that while everything is melting and pouring downward, there is still an upright centre (this is particularly important if one has low blood pressure). The effect is very much like the Tai Chi ideal: utter relaxation and flexible movement around an upright but not rigid centre.
This is an excellent prelude to a period of meditation or Tai Chi, but balance is the key: no exercise should be overindulged. It has been said that a technique like this, which is very “opening”, is best done when and where the surrounding environment is natural, supportive and beneficial, in order to absorb only the best influences. Similarly, it should not be done just prior to sleeping, but an interval allowed for the everyday self to regroup its usual — but much more relaxed! — self-image.
Another outstanding aspect of Daoist yang sheng exercise is the slow, gentle and deliberate stretching of all the major tendons in the body. Important at any age, it becomes crucial as one gets older, as tendons stiffen and lead to imbalance throughout the structure of the body. Mindful breathing is often coupled with the slow and gentle stretching, which further relaxes the body in depth.
An excellent series of exercises for achieving this will be described in the following post about Ba Duan Jin.
Endnote
1. More on this technique can be found in the following two books: a detailed technical description in B. K. Frantzis’ Opening the Energy Gates of The Body (North Atlantic Press, 1993) and a more personal and warmer description in Wild Ivy: the spiritual autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin by Norman Waddell (Shambala, 2001).
A letter in answer to General Su
Yesterday at the provincial capital you honoured me with your elder presence and did not disdain the wilds of the mountains for our talk, and the [Daoist] mnemonic rhymes you passed on I have found very beneficial.
It is true when they say “when old friends meet, the warmth exceeds all class distinctions.”
When this patch-robed monk was young, I had no discernment of what was deviant or correct. I would ask anyone and study anything, one day with Wang, another day with Li, a little bit of one thing then a little bit of something else.
Nothing came of this.
Then I met a Daoist who taught stillness techniques and …
(translated by Xiaoyao, these letters have, as far as we know, not been previously translated into English)
Review: Thomas Cleary’s
Vitality, Energy and Spirit
and
Taoist Meditation
When I first noticed Thomas Cleary’s wide range of translations from Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and later Islam, I was dismissive: ‘Too many books,” I thought, vaguely, something along the lines of ‘jack of all trades, master of none.’ Furthermore, looking into these books, they did not have the detailed endnotes of the scholar, despite his PhD from Harvard: why this Chinese character was chosen for this sentence, instead of that; what other authorities thought and said.
“Shallow,” was my judgement.
After having it brought to my attention that such a judgement might be hasty, and over the intervening years having perhaps matured, to an extent, in my appreciation of some things, a revisiting of the Cleary books brought a very different conclusion. That conclusion, steadily reinforced with the passage of time, was that these translations are an accurate conveyance of the original practical intent of the texts he has chosen to translate; not simply translations of the words, but a conveyance of the heart of the text, the underlying meaning, done by someone who understands that meaning.
He recounts in the afterword to one of these books that this understanding came from
… my own introduction to the golden flower practice of “turning the light around,” long before I knew of the existence of this particular book [the Secret of the Golden Flower]. Finding this method of mindfulness extremely powerful and versatile, I subsequently spent many years studying its use in experience and looking for tested information pertaining to its objective application.
Cleary found that similar techniques of mindfulness played an important role in many if not all religions, although ‘dressed’, as it were, in very different costuming. Peeling away the packaging revealed a surprising identity of content within these religions, albeit expressed with characteristics determined by the culture: quiet, simple and practical for Chinese, for example, while the Indians might express the same core experience in colourful emotional ways.
In short, it seems to me there is a fair chance that Cleary knows what he is talking about, from experience. The texts are practical, that is, intended to be used. This is explicitly stated in his book Immortal Sisters: secret teachings of Taoist women:
The present volume addresses itself to individual pragmatic issues, and not to the sociology and politics of times gone by, for the simple reason that it is only by tackling practicalities on an individual level that the living element of Taoism can be brought out of past history and localized culture into the present reality of everyday life. This means seeking the essential rather than the incidental, the fundamentals rather than the outgrowths, that which applies to the human mind itself rather than to a specific mentality alone.
In other words, Cleary is of the opinion that it may be more valuable to learn to access the living flow which gives rise to Daoism and equivalent streams, a flow which is present now, rather than simply try to look like or act like a 12th century Daoist.
In the Taoist series, probably the best books to begin with are Vitality, Energy, Spirit: a Taoist Sourcebook, and Taoist Meditation. The former has selections spanning the whole history of Daoist thinking, in particular regarding Jing/essence (vitality), Qi (energy) and Shen (spirit), their appreciation, conservation, cultivation and ultimate unification.
In the much shorter Taoist Meditation, Cleary says:
Meditation is one element of Taoism that interests a broad spectrum of people, because the state of mind is central to the well-being and efficiency of the whole organism. Taoist meditation is for enhancement of both physical and mental health, as these two facets of well-being are intimately related to one another.
The practicality of these texts is shown in the clear directions provided for checking one’s own progress, and warning indications for when things are going wrong. An example is in this excerpt from the Tang dynasty Sima Chengzhen’s Treatise on Sitting Forgetting:
As long as the mind does not stick to things, and you can remain unmoved, this is the correct foundation for genuine stabilization. If you stabilize the mind by this means, your mood will become harmonious; the longer you do so, the lighter and fresher you feel. If you use this as a test, error and truth become evident.
If you extinguish the mind whenever it is aroused, without distinguishing right from wrong, then you will permanently cancel awareness and enter into blind trance.
If you just let your mind be aroused without collecting or controlling it at all, then you are after all no different from an ordinary mortal.
Then there are the “Sayings of Master Danyang”, from Ma Dan-Yang, whose “Song of the 12 Heavenly Star Points” is an acupuncture classic.
Here are two selections:
The energy in the body should not be scattered, the spirit in the mind should not be dimmed.
How do you avoid scattering energy?
By not acting compulsively.
How do you avoid dimming the spirit?
By not keeping things on your mind.If people can master the path of purity and serenity, that is most excellent. Therefore scripture says, “If people can always be pure and serene, heaven and earth will resort to them.”
This ‘heaven and earth’ does not mean the external sky and ground. It refers to the heaven and earth in the body.
Above the solar plexus is called heaven, below the solar plexus is called earth. If the energy of heaven descends and the vessel of earth opens, so that there is harmony above and below, then vitality and energy spontaneously stabilize.
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“Sword and Lute” under “At the Restaurant.”
“Submerged Dragon” under “At the Monastery.”
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“The Nine-Toothed Rake” under “At the Monastery.”
The Fat Monk 