| Taoism, Musings, I Ching Studies, Blog
 Hallo, I am Richard Bertschinger, an acupuncturist, translator and teacher in Somerset and this is my Tao world. It tells of what I have gleaned from the Chinese world of Taoism. Please do contact me to let me know your Tao world, that we might create a dialogue to celebrate our common humanity, our world in all its fragilities and strengths.
July 28th And if you can not get enough of me, then both Webinar's are available now as FREE viewing, at http://medigogy.com//product/acu-points-and-their-message
http://medigogy.com/product/flavor-i-ching-heaven-and-earth-and-change-between
Happy Viewing! I'm now preparing for the British Acupuncture Conference in September. Link here. Also my biography here. July 14th Thanks to all of you who watched the Webinar. I think it was well received. They commentaries to the Tao-te Ching are available opposite as an ebook, as I promised. Happy reading. And send me your questions! July 13th Life streams on...talking of stream, Healthstream TV is producing another weblecture, or webinar, if you prefer tomorrow. Around 1pm Pacific Time, which is in the evening if you are in Europe. This time I am introducing the use of the I CHing in the treatment room - A Flavour of the I Ching. It is free to watch! And you simply have to log in 20 mins early to make sure you machine is fast enough to stream my lecture. Here is the link: http://www.healthstream.tv/tv/flavor-i-ching-heaven-and-earth-and-change-between Look forward to seeing you there. Another picture on the sensorium page... May 28th Just a note to say thank you to those who watched my webinar on Wednesday night/midday, on healthstream.tv An interesting thing talking to the web - but many kind comments were made, texted in by students, listening and watching. Much wisdom lies in the point-names, the trigram/hexagram symbolism - we can dig and dig and never come to an end. And this is just how it was intended! Apologies that the Saying of the Day opposite, has rather become the saying of the month! Will update as soon as I get organised. Lovely summer days here in UK, and we have a sport filled month, cricket and such like..so I'll see what time I got. But thanks again all of you who watched. 
And before I go, someone asked about 'fire' and its attributes. Fire is warmth, colour, desire and light, burning and transformative - strangely beautiful and attractive. It is the middle daughter and the pheasant. It is also the mouth, talking, chatting and weapons. So handle it carefully! Good luck. May 26th Here is the link to the promised Confucian text.....River Hawk! River Hawk! Free to download for the moment. A River Hawk, A River Hawk!.doc Print it out two-sided, landscape if you can, or read on line. Also another booklet free here, The Eighteen Therapies. It is a new translation of the larger part of The Constant Pivot, a scripture of the Confucian school. Dated perhaps 500 B.C.E. (Confucius was born 551 B.C.E.) Full of pithy sayings, these were the first texts I studied. The Constant Pivot supplied any young people, aspiring to the role of government; the moral rule against which they were to be measured, that of ‘integrity’ (cheng); also it supplied that which was not meant to exist - a Confucian metaphysic - the ‘realms beyond’, or the numinous. Confucius also embraced the Taoist idea of a ‘primal energy’ (yuanqi): untamed, unborn, unnamed and unarmed. But I’ll leave discussion of Taoist and Confucian merging to another time! I commend this tiny scripture. It was the first Chinese text I ever worked on. May 24th This stunning sun has knocked out all my plans! Confucius on hold until after weblecture on Wednesday. Link: http://healthstream.tv/tv/nestling-heaven-within-body-acu-points-and-their-message-us-all As it says on heaven nestling within the body...here's some poetry for you: SIX AT THE FOURTH:
Fluttering, fluttering.
Not using your wealth to woo your neighbours.
Do not feel threatened, have faith.
In a position of power, you act as among a flock of birds fluttering down to roost. The three Yin lines flutter down, to return back within. This is to disregard any influence you might have over others and to come down and mingle with the Yang beneath. Not using your acquired wealth,
Is to ignore rank and position.
Seeking friendship, with an empty heart,
Will certainly bring aid and assistance.
So do not feel threatened or doubtful. But use openness to establish faith with others and there will come mutual trust.
Where there is mutual trust, there is mutual forgetting. Therefore, at a time of change, how valuable is faith!
This is from the Hexagram Peace/Flourishing (11) in the I Ching. The technical stuff is as follows: The three Yin lines ignore their influential position to come down and mingle with the Yang beneath. Through mutual faith you forget your differences. When the fourth and fifth lines in Cultivating the Small (9) find mutual faith, their cultivation is complete. When the third and fourth in Flourishing find mutual faith, the state of flourishing is attained. This is why The Book of Changes values faith. This actually is the script to the Summer Brocade Qigong I teach at Nine Springs, 9.30 Monday morning. See about clinic on this page.
May 20th A walk yesterday: beooootiful.....bluebells....come back tomorrow, should be Confucius to download...free for a couple of days 
May 19th Here is the link to my weblecture, next Wednesday. http://healthstream.tv/tv/nestling-heaven-within-body-acu-points-and-their-message-us-all May 9th The news now is that I have arranged a webcast lecture with West Tcm TV. Here is link http://westtcm.com/content/healthstreamtv-tcm-tv. They will be presenting my lecture some time in May, a Wednesday, so clear your diaries. More news, discussion are underway to reprint my earlier translation of the Candong Qi (the foundation text of Qigong). More news on this soon. Also while you are at it check out http://www.chinesemedicinetimes.com/product/675/1/treasures_of_the_tao_ebook where my Heshang Gong and Wangbi commentaries are up as an ebook. This is the extensive translation with commentary on the Lao Tzu (Laozi) classic. Phew! Been a busy few months. I'm going to lie down and cool my forehead...under our appleblossom here in somerset. New pictures on the sensorium, now! See link Sensory World, Awareness, Sensation, Taoist Fun. I have to apologies, with this all on, for the lapse on online translation. But great things are afoot. Thunder in the air! We have to ....pause....in awe, and not drop the sacrificial spoon. Best wishes to all my readers! Tues Feb 9th There is that tiny rustle in the air, which betokens spring. But cold winds still haunt us, snow in the air..witness the combat of the heated and cooling masses of air which make up our climate and, ultimately, our seasons. What else is there for a Taoist to think/talk about? Answers please on a postcard - or by contacting me here. Thanks. Mon Jan 18th A great morning's class at Nine Springs Natural Health Center were I work. Getting back into The Winter Brocade, twenty move exercise. To day we rested after to let the qi bubble down - found our space/place/position/posture on the carpeted floor. Truly, just wher nothing seems to be happening...great things are going one...The Day is a Wood day (Zhen and Sun in the I Jing, that is 'stirring seeds and small things to you', mister..). Hope to continue the Great Appendix when I find the book. My study in a 'bit of a mess' to say the least! ...what is greatness, when endures, what is virtue and what is wisdom...wow! Jan 17th 2010 The wheel moves, heaven turns. We are in January again, I have held back from my weblog so many days....promoting other stuff. A wet day, but finally the snow has gone. Fed the bees, gentle thin syrup. When there is warming they come out to look for food...and stores where a bit thin this autumn. Now we hang on Feb and March to see what will out...our uncertain Spring, as usual. I have another web prescence today. Check out http://www.chinesemedicinetimes.com/section/247/1/ebooks
NOW BACK FROM HOLIDAY!
Fir Oct 16th
A wonderful ballon flight yesterday, in the greying dawn over Ilminster and south Somerset. Pictures to follow!
I interuppt this commentary on the Wu Chien Pian to insert the opening passage to the commentary on the Book of Change. The sky above and the earth beneath. Yesterday I floated 2,000 feet up into the sky. For a Taoist this is something quite joyful! One with the air, one the vapours and elements. Nuff said!
Tue Oct 13th
Hi Folks! I have returned! One day later than the Westminster MP's anyway. What a summer we had here in UK, and I tiny ridge of high pressure now lingering with a last taste of warm sun and slight winds.
The big news is that I am set for a balloon flight to celebrate my 60th (Idon't believe it!) birthday. The take off is planned for Thursday 6 am, weather permitting. Will keep you informed.
'Within the body is felt a substance moving, as sweet as toffee'. With the words we finished last July. Now we can begin again. Qi-flow is the most fundamental concept in traditional Chinese medicine. We need to take it fully on board. Not quite spiritual, not quite material. Infused with both of these. One without the other...leads to problems!
Other news, I will soon have my books on another site, full of informative stuff , and an ejournal on Chinese medicine and philosophy. News next week.
More tomorrow.
Mon 27th July
Sorry, I've been absent, involved. So, missing that feeling
'as sweet as toffee'.
In these next three stanzas Chang Potuan quite clearly gifts us these few alchemical terms - ideas we could spend a life with. Perhaps the most important idea in today's is this felt body feeling - as sweet as toffee. Well, did they have toffee in China? I'll have to look into this, but the implication is a sense of comfort, in the very cells, in every pore. Viz. the sensorium.
What a blast of rain we have today! Next week is my official holiday, so it explains the tentative entries the last few days....I'll be back when I can.
Sat 18th July
The Path proceeds out of the Unified Field. The merging of modern physics and Taoism.
Carrying on with the Wu Chen P'ien today. From nothing comes something. Indeed ultimate being is a teeming void...in Chinese science, a paradoxical state indeed. So King Lear was wrong to say 'nothing shall come of nothing'...and Shakespeare (and Cordilia) was right!
Fri 17th July
It is now two hundred days since I started this diary or blog, what y'will. So we HAVE to celebrate. We interrupt Chang Potuan's poem to bring you an important announcement:
Here are the opening lines to a brilliant little number - Ch'u Huaku's commentary on the Ts'an Tung Chi. I make no apology for abstruseness. You gotta dig at these trigrams! (My comments are in brackets. I hope they help.)
This is the first chapter of the text said to be put together by Xu Congshi, disciple of Wei Boyang, It illustrates how the method of refining an Elixir possesses a definate form, with its own constituent markers, or 'tokens' - the hexagrams, (or trigrams). Managing to refine an Elixir is like managing 'a team of horses' - phenomena in the natural world echo phenomena in the human world.
Master Ch'u comments: Change is made by the united bodies of Qian and Kun (father and mother), coming and going, opening and closing. Thus the text speaks of them as the 'door and gateway to Change'. Their various lines then give birth to the sixty-four hexagrams. This is why they are 'father and mother'. Kan is contained in Kun (his mother) and Li contained in Qian (her father). Thus they are 'greatly assisting' (as children help their parents). Kan and Li are found at home with Qian and Kun. Their central lines rotate about like a hub turning on its axis. (A nice image).
More tomorrow.
Only Wood pigeons singing today, early am. Such a restful sound. Damp morning.
Thu 16th July
Dropped in on Moish Sokal's wondrous exhibition, at East Lambrook yesterday, following the Parrett Trail. The light of India blessed by a Somerset long barn ceiling - you have two days to catch this exhibition. Don't miss it.
Chang Potuan clearly tells us in the stanza opposite about the revelation which led to him writing the Wu Chen Pien.
Lead and mercury, Yin and Yang, hard and soft, dialogue, nesting, linking, communication, give and take, this and another, sky and heaven, earth and ground...and so it goes on.
In the next few stanzas Master Change wil explain the way into these Hidden Writings. Three things are needed for a whole understanding: the initial principles (I can give you), instruction by a teacher (I leave this to you, it should be personal) and lastly many months of practice (this involves YOU). Good luck.
Wed 15th July
Today a walk to East Lambrook.
Now the verse from the Wu Chen Pien opposite concerns our true nature, being manifest in an 'empty heart'. Empty Mind implies the same - being without plans, schemes or desires. Again quietitude is to be preserved.
Lao Tzu's maxim occurs in Chapter 3 of the Taote Ching on Bringing the People Peace:
Do not value the wise, and the people will not dispute. Do not praise objects which are hard to get, and the people will not thieve them. Do not look on desirable things, and the heart will not be thrown into disarray.
Therefore the sages governed, by emptying the people's minds and filling their bellies. They weakened ambitions and strengthened bones. Always keep the people ignorant and content, and the clever will not dare to act.
Acting through non-action, the people are always at peace.
Wangbi comments: The mind harbors cleverness; the belly harbors food. An empty heart encourages wisdom while fullness implies ignorance. Here Wangbi is despising all clever scheming, planning and desiring. Truly he honours an empty mind (= One Mind).
Trully it simply means simplicity and openness with people. So difficult to achieve.
Tue 14th July
The chapter from the Taote Ching (29) on Non-action goes:
Do you want to take the Empire and change it? I do not believe it can be done.
The Empire is a sacred vessel, you cannot change it. If you try to change it, you will destroy it; if you try and grasp it, you will lose it.
Thus everything is either leading or following, blowing hardly or softly, either strengthening or weakening, welcoming or rejecting.
So the sage turns away from excesses, from extremes and extravagances.
Truly the task of the Taoist alchemist is to embrace non-action. Quiet, stillness - in which is found light and verisimilitude. This is the True Lead. It has a solidity and certain inertia. But is in no way dead! Roll on the Tao!.
How to contain and maintain the Lead? We will soon be told, in the next few stanzas.
Mon 13th July
Smile, breath and bend your knees!
Smile, breath and bend your knees!
People say I'm so busy, etc. etc. But get up a little early, find a sunny spot and stand quite a moment. Take a breath, smile and open out your arms to the sunshine. Feel its warmth on your face and body...stretch, gently.
For us, of Northern climes, the benefit of the sun, morn and even, when it is not too strong is well-known.
Then take that warmth into your heart, break it into a smile, bend your knees to return your qi to the earth and go on with your daily chores of life.
After all, the True Lead is (dark), inert - and heavy, and out of it appears the Yellow Shoot .,..where Water and Fire entwine. f(rom the first poem in the Wu Chen Pien)
Tomorrow we talk about non-action...using lead is not to use it...
Sun 12 July
Quieter morn. outside, the rain recedes.
In this stanza we have the message of the Ts'an Tung Chi, which can be loosely translated as 'combining similars gtogether' - combining (ts'an) ,similars (tung) together (qi). Now this is a subtle idea - again close to the motto of 'closeness without disrespect' that we mentioned before. Just look at man and woman, similar and disimilar at the same time! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
In other words you need something akin to an inner  wisdom in order to prolong your life and reach eternity...yes? Well something like that. It is not easy to gloss - except that the True Lead, the Sunken Silver - the single central line of Kan - is involved.
We are off to the Ashes today, at Cardiff. A tricky finish to an frastrating match.
Sat 11th July
We continue our poem. Chang Potuan makes it quite clear it is alchemy he is concerned with. To subdue the dragon and harness the tiger....crouching tiger, hidden dragon.
It is a common exhortation of the internal alchemist that your own home and garden contain the Magical Elixir.
If you missed the blog, with the site being down, it is now restored below. Read on.
Fri 10th July
Tentatively I begin my blog again. The last two days I have lost my home page. Virtual life is fragile indeed! Indeed all life. This is a teaching of Taoism, the shimmering reality.
Witness the Taote Ching (Ch.29)
29 : Non-action
If you want to take the empire and change it,
I do not believe it can be done.
The empire is a sacred vessel.
You cannot change it.
If you try to change it you will destroy it,
If you try to grasp it you will lose it.
Hence everything is either leading or following,
Either blowing hard or softly,
Either strengthening or weakening,
Either welcoming or rejecting.
The sage avoids excess, extremes, and
extravagances.
On this chapter Wangbi comments: The ten-thousand things have an inborn ability to follow their nature. Therefore this should be relied upon, one should not try to change it. One should try to merge with them, not grasp hold of them. Things have an eternal aspect to their nature, if we tamper with them we will destroy them. They come into being and pass away - if we try to grasp hold of them, we lose them.
And also Chapter 40. Famous chapter! Most translations give 'returning' for 'homeward'. But it is much more alchemical to say 'homeward'.
40 : The Function of Detachment
Homeward is the movement of the Tao,
Gentle is the power of her rule.
All creatures under Heaven are born from being,
And being born from non-being.
As I have stressed before I have not made this titles up., They are from Heshang Gong's commentary, woefully neglected.
On Ch.40 Wangbi comments: Being functions as non-being. This is it turning homeward. In movement, if all recognise their own nothingness, they are identical. Hence homeward is the movement of the Way.
Truly he embraces the nothingness at the heart of the Tao and the emptiness fundamental to Buddhism here! Empty out and empty out again! It says in the alchemical Wu Chen Pien. More tomorrow. (IF Microsoft love me)Wed 8th July
Hate to say it, but Microsoft f***ed up again! And I lost my home page so here you have a restored version. Witness the differnet typography.
The Saying of the Day is to accompany the verse from the Wu Chen Pien which I appended yesterday. I repeat it here:
Blend as one the Lead and Mercury,
If you want to form an Elixir -
"When neither great nor small suffer,
Both kingdoms stay entire".
If you ask me, "What is this thing,
The True Lead?"
I reply - "Like moonlight...
At the end of the day on Western River".
If you want to form the Elixir simply blend together as one the Lead and Mercury. To blend together is the secret. When neither great nor small suffer, there is mutual respect; and mutual respect creates the condition for life.
If you ask me, “What is this thing, the True Lead?” I can only reply - “Silver Moonlight ... shining at the end of the day on Western River”. This is the True Gold, the Sunken Silver, immersed deep within the watery Pool of Kan.
The ...'as moonlight in western river'...is the shimmering truth of all Buddhist and Taoist practice.
The verse opposite is from the Taote Ching (Ch.61). It exalts the feminine principle.
From Wu Chen Pien
Tue 7th July
As you come to the west of the Sichuan plain, about forty miles from the provincial capital of Chengdu, where the Himalayas tumble down into China, you reach 'Green-City Mountain'. I w as working on this translation in 1985 and then in the autumn of 1986, I got the chance to study at Chengdu Colege of Traditional Chinese Medicine . I had no idea at that time I would be barely 60 mls from the area which supposedly was where Chang Potuan received his instruction in internal alchemy. Some synchronicity! Chang Po-tuan says he met his teacher when he entered the town of Chengdu, accom-panying the General Lu in 1069 AD.
Much surrounding Po-tuan's life is legend - and perhaps must remain so, even after the scholars have brought their skills to bear upon the records of that era - but all biographies agree that it was in a chance encounter of Po-tuan's, when he was well over eighty years old, that the seed for writing the Essay on Awakening to the Truth (Wu Chen P'ien) was born.
In his own (reputed) introduction Po-tuan records their meeting:
"...for the first time my true intent, perhaps or even more likely my reverential attitude towards him, influenced this Realised Fellow to impart to me the Medicine of the Golden Elixir and the secret of Timing its Firing.
His words, they could be said to 'point to the current, so I understood the source.'
He hinted at one thing and I understand a hundred! The fogs opened up, the sun shone through! The dust wiped clean off the mirror! It was as if all alchemical books I had ever read suddenly agreed together!"
We now know that this magnificent 'Old Fellow' came from Green-City Mountain - Po-tuan's very first commentator Weng Pao-kuang says as much. But whether he really was the famous Liu Hai-ch'an - celebrated Taoist of former times, founder of the 'Southern School' and disciple in the Art of Immortality - we cannot say for sure. Po-tuan never alludes to him by name.
Another interesting point raises itself here. If the accepted date of Po-tuan's birth (984 AD.) is taken as correct this would make him around eighty-five at the meeting, and over ninety when he wrote Awakening to the Truth. Even with a lee-way of ten years this is still a magnificent achievement! I am inclined to doubt the chronologies1.
Mon 6th July
To the sea yesterday. Lyme Bay resplendent in the glittering sunlight, beach full of holiday-makers, ho-hum...water and sun, the delight of Perfection (Hexagram 63, compare Imperfection, Hexagram 64).
I've put out the whole of the four stanzas of this passage from Chang Potuan, introducing two new ones today. They finish with his famous phrase ' moonlight on western river'. We'll deconstruct this tomorrow. Suffice to say that he stands decidedly in the philosophical psychological tradition here - he has no truck with Yogic or chemical practice.
In this regard there is much Ch'an (Zen) influence.
A new diagram on The Arts of Health page. Still needs tidying up.
Sat 4th July
Continuing on from yesterday, when Chang Potuan eschews all outer, chemical means of creating immortality, we here are introduced to the 'princely pistil' and 'yellow shoot' They are the ripening Yang. The central Yang line within Kan trigram.
The Silvery Water is the Yin within the Yang (the Yang must still retain softness and fluidity, not be rigid). It may be shown in the central Yin line of Li trigram. Ok. Got it?Tomorrow Chang Potuan will turn against Yogic practices.
Fri 3rd July
July rolls on. A glorious out pouring of Yang, with blended Yin soft warmth, Franka asked me about seasonal aspects of acupuncture treatment yesterday. I replied as best I could - but feel I only scratched the surface. The whole is a vast mechanism - heavenly clockwork - of inter-relating and reflecting sources and actions, hubs and peripheries. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it! (As Confucius said: I give the student one corner of the square, and expect him to bring back the other three.)
Today in the Wu Chien Pien we start four stanzas in which the point is to delinate exactly the point of Chang P otuan's approach. He is decidedly speaking about internal alchemy - not outer chemical means of brewing a Elixial Potion. The Crescent-Shaped Furnance stands for the new moon, which, at many latitudes in Chna appears on its back, like a fine crucible.
Wed.1st July
Sat 30 mins this morn. Soft, warm dawn. Much bird life. Still the furnace and position the cauldron...yes, that just about sums it up.
The still warm shrouds of life..as we awake each morn.
Tue 30th Jun
The last day of June. We begin the sixty-four verses of Chang Potuan's long poem from the Wu Chien Pien. This is a tour-de-force, in two parts, summarising the creation of the Golden Elixir of life. A transformative process occuring within the world of sense, partial sense, words, trigrams and meaning, inner and outer.
The first lines of the poem identify the markers - Ch' ien and Kun, Heaven above and the earth beneath our feet. Within this cauldron are placed the Sun and moon, crow and rabbit. They are balanced within the Earth-soil element.
The only way to grasp the meaning here is to let it all wash over you. It is poetic after all.
The diagram to the right is the inner-world diagram. Heaven all Yang above and Earth all Yin beneath. Fire and Water lie side by side. More tomorrow.
Mon 29th Jun
Great weekend away, meeting family. But my mind so full this morning. Getting up with a thick head, and tired in the afternoons. This is a full (shi) situation. As we might say medically. This tiredness is not relieved by rest or sleep.
Midsummer. The Yang at its peak; and a heatwave in the offing...the hottest weather, we've had for some years. So the Yang rises and, also, the head fills...
But seriously folks, its time for meditation. Found myself sitting again...sitting, listening, to the stringless lyre... But why stringless? It is obvious. Because the music plays itself...can you see the universe as a dance, a melody, a harmony of spheres (Pythagoras et al). There is much also in the opening phrases of the Ts'an Tung Chi (see below in my blog) about the sounds of the pitch pipes (pipes of different lengths) and how they correspond to the different seasons and weathers. Now hang on, this is quite a big subject...!... What the ancient Chinese (and this is probably about 100. C.E.) were saying is that the sounds of the musical octave, the natural resonances when an open pipe is blown also correspond to the tenor/feel/experience of the seasons...,obviously a blend/mix of Yin and Yang, heat and cold, above and below... Yin and Yang, correspondances and a weak sense of difference (the phrase is from Martin Jacques, listen to him talking here on Andrew Marr's Start the Week) imbue the whole of the traditional Chinese world view... So...I sat again this morning, and I will do now for a few weeks. To empty my head. Legs complained...and then the pain turned in and cleared my head.. .indeed the breath returned, and the Elixir itself wasformed - in a pot, matching Li and Kan! See opposite. We'll get back to the Wu Chien Pien soon.
Sat 27th Jun
What can we say about such phrases....white clouds encircle the mountain peak...sweet dew-wine filled to overflowing...well to the cognescenti they are clear. When you read enough of Chinese poetry and literature you begin to see a common thread. But it is not usually made terribly specific...many ideas are alluded to, terms change and interchange. They almost seem to delight in being non-specific...because the Chinese were almost too ready to admit the difficulty in retaining the essence of communicate person to person. How to get the true meaning over.... This is why Richard Goodman's site here is so interesting. His view is that Chinese medicine could well be rooted more in Legalism (as a philosophy) than Daoism (Taoism). At least he's opening up the debate... I might say, yes, rooted in Legalism which is pretty wildly fraying at the edges....the whole tradition being so nebulous and fragmentary when you consider the voluminous literature (another good point he makes) which somehow defies all gravity to hold together as a coherent system. Well, look fo rexample at the pulse quality system; although terms such as slippery, rapid, deep can be given nice poetic scans and technical glosses, there is much dispute about what the qualities really are... But actually they hold together in practice! That is the wonderful thing. To come back to .....white clouds encircle the mountain peak...sweet dew-wine filled to overflowing.....the' white clouds' are pretty close to Buddhist enlightenment (the phrase much occurs in Wang Wei's poetry (?699-?761 C.E.), the 'sweet dew-wine' is probably a variant on the 'jade fluid' of the Taoists - the outpouring of saliva which occurs, often, during Taoist meditation, as the autonomic nervous system is brought into tune. It is no mystery that Taoist were/are well able to change the chemical composition of their bodies on a long-term basis. Thus Meditation for Health.I sometimes think all complementary medicine works purely through the relaxation response. See this classic by Benson noted here from the seventies.
Fri 26th Jun
As the Changes says: Storm-clouds and thunder fill the air. We had dark clouds and thunderstorms last night - as often interrupts an early English summer...I sat by the door, sitting, listening, to the stringless lyre, touching upon the seed of all creation...
Summer rain falls constantly and almost noiselessly out of a stubborn grey sky ; there is little wind, and the leaves just bob gently to the drop, dropping drops ..
In Hexagr am 3, The Hesitant, the text says.. not useful to take action, favourable to establish feudal-lords....this, indeed is a time for sitting still and waiting...
The lines speak of...rocks and pillars...this is to imply the firmness of holding-back and devotion. It says...hunting a deer without a guide,y ou only get lost in the forest....meaning to be aware. It goes on to say...a junzi spies the seeds, it is better to give up, going ahead, regret.
Certainly it is a time for watchful waiting. Wilhelm calls the hexagram Difficulty at the Beginning. No wonder we need to subdue the mind through non-action. I have changed the second line in the Hundred Character Stone Tablet now to subdue the mind through watchful waiting.
Thur 25th Jun
Before we proceed with the Wu Chien Pien here is a translation of the Hundred-Character Stone-Tablet inscription. I made this in the summer of 1992, from a contemporary Qigong magazine from China. They have a complete set of this magazine, going back to 1987, in the British Library. The text is in Qi Gong (1989:12).
It is a famous verse, probably over a thousand years old. Cleary has a translation in Vitality, Energy, Spirit: A Taoist Sourcebook (Shambhala 1991). It is most usually presented as authored by the legendary Taoist Lu Dong Bin with the commentary by Zhang San Feng (supposed originator of Tai-chi Chuan).
I hope I have given the text vibrancy and life. I have put 'breath' for qi. Instead of 'source progenitor' (!) I have put 'ancestor'. And substituted 'here and now' for Cleary's 'people'. Both these actually are good. I am very tempted to put 'crown of creation' for 'seed of all creation' - Cleary has 'mechanism of creation'. Actually, it is very certainly not 'crown of creation'. 'Seed' is actually the same as 'trigger' in my former translation of the Yinfu Ching. See download on Archive.
There are some telling criticisms of Cleary's approach here. I'll talk more about this verse tomorrow.
I got half the stump out. Next week to finish the remainder of the roots...
Wed 24th Jun
Lovely warm day. I discovered three wasp's nests at the week-end in the garden, one hidden under an old Walnut stump. Disposed off carefully. So now I am left with the old stump. That will be my task today. The whole corner of the garden faces east-northeast and would be a famous site for a morning meditation hall. I am thinking of a hut to be build there.
There is a good site of Qi Gong texts here. It shows the range of early work, especially. But we must remember that Taoists can be disgustingly prolific in their writings - it makes me spit! How something so simple could be rendered so worthless. Unbelievable. This is the struggle we all have with communication. It has to be face-to-face. Oral. And then, we have all the problems of authenticity and power. Perhaps simpliest to say, take it slowly and don't try too much in a single day!
Well, we swim in a media sea - as we do in the sensorium.
By the way, I have a new picture in the sensorium, celebrating our family, yesterday evening, winning the cup at the village rounders! 2009 champions!
Good luck.
Tue 23rd Jan
Here follows the commentary. The process of the Golden Elixir can happen anywhere, nowhere, here and there, willy-nilly; in the space of the inner-world of spirit and seed.For inner and outer worlds see diagrams below. The merging of Yin and Yang, in closeness, without disrespect - it ain't much more than that... now, if you find it difficult to understand, and work out, you are not the only one. Take it step by step, ken the diagrams and trigrams, they are only stating one small truth...
Lovely small ridge of high pressure building - July is on our doorstep, the fullness of an English Summer.
Mon 22nd Jun
The year begins its slow slide winterwards. But the heat increases - this is the Yang within the Yin, the lagging torsion of the round of Yin and Yang.
Here is Single Stanza from the Wu Chien Pien. Good luck! Tomorrow I'll 'explain' it. At least give you access to the code book. Any attempts email me here.
As you can see I have retained yesterday's quote from Taote Ching 1. Unbelievable that now the whole reads as a tractatus on sexual yoga - on the importance of restraint. Without doubt the encounter of Yin and Yang, the Girldchild and Young Lord is seen as romantic (in the narrow sense) and sexual (in a broad sense). The Ts'an Tung Chi is frank in its references to the mating of animals. This intertwining of sexual and spiritual is difficult for the West to appreciate, where sex has become such a trumpeted force, at least in the visual media.
Sun 21st Jun
Midsummer's day. Here is a piece of Heshang Gong: his passages commentating on the central two lines of the opening chapter to the Taote ching. They point to a very clear asceticism. He believes in curbing desire and reining in the passions.
Here is the whole of the tricky verse:
The Tao which can be told
Is not the constant Tao,
The name which can be named
Is not the constant name.
Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and earth,
Named is the Mother to the ten thousand things.
Ever without desire, we gaze into the mysteries,
Ever desiring, we gaze at the manifestations.
These two came from the same source
But appear having different names.
Having the same source implies darkness.
Darkness within darkness,
The gate to all mysteries.
It simply confirms the Yin-yang aspect of our existence. The dialogue between internal and external, outer sensation and inner mind. They come from the same source - the born and unborn. Now work that one out! Without desire we see into the very heart of the Tao. The oneness of all things. I suppose Buddhism might talk of the illusory nature of all existence, the samsara. Allowing desire, caught in the sensorium, we motor on into the world...caught in our habitual responses. Heshang lacked the subtle logics of Wangpi (the later commentaor on the Taote Ching). For him it was a very clear divide. We curb our desire, rein in the passions and thereby live long. Viz. Getting Older, getter Stronger.
Fri 19th Jun
A taster from the Taote Ching, Heshang Gong's commentary.
This is Chapter Thirty-Four which speaks of trusting in the Way to succeed. As the Way spreads freely throughout the universe, there is nothing so small it does not contain it, nor anything so large to exceed it. All things depend upon he Way for life, yet it works without making any claim. It never acts as master . In fact it never seems to do much at all. In emulating the Way the sage remains anonymous and in the background.
Never considering himself great, he can be truly great.
When Heshang speaks of the sages considering their own selves to be their own teachers, he actually is speaking of the body. The character sheng literally means 'physical body'. Your own body is your teacher.
In the extract the original text is marked in italics, Heshang's commentary in normal case.
Thur 18th Jun
I have a Qi Gong Manual (qigong has its roots in Taoism) from Jiangxi province, published in 1988 which identifies four books as classics of the genre: the Ts'an Tung Chi (Kinship of the Three, see note of my translation here), the Wu Chien Pien, which we are currently following, the Yellow Courtyard Classic (Huangting Jing) and the Heshang gong commentary on the Tao-te Ching. I have presented some of the Taote Ching previously and will soon have a link to my translation of this valuable commentary on the booklets page. The Yellow Courtyard I would disregard - as being of a particular lineage which has not been widely followed up, as far as I know. But I may be wrong. They may be teachers of this tradition in China, at the present.
They authors also include the Yinfu Ching which I presented last month, as an appendix. Just as well! I believe it is of overwhelming importance. And of course I would put in the I Ching, as a grand repository of the Han and pre-Han wisdom.
In time, I will present all these works on this website. It just so happens (!) that they are now ready for publication with my running commentary.
As regards the completion of the alchemical task, Chang Potuan states:
Just as, from the Western Peaks,
The White Tiger tears down,
Over the Eastern Ocean
The Green Dragon will not stay in place!
With both hands grapple them,
Fighting to the death!
Moulding both into
A solid lump of Violet Gold.
Indeed, with these books, it feels as if I hold in my hands a lump, hardly formed as yet, of Violet Gold.
Wed 17th Jun
So we reach the end of the first poem in Chang Potuan's Wu Chien Pien. Chang (983-1082 is considered the second patriarch of the Southern School of Internal Alchemy, or Taoist meditation n-as distinct from the Northern School, sometimes called the Complete Reality (Quanzhen) school founded by Wang Chongyang (1112-1170).
He is said to have written the book in his late eighties - and apparantly lived nearly to one-hundred. Paul Crowe, acedemician, has written on Chang Potuan here.
A brief pause for a few days and we will carry on with the book. Next - the single verse poem....
Tue 16th Jun
Summer rolls on. We have a whole week of temperatures forecast to top 20 C. And the ground is dry. However the swifts and house-martins are busy in our village; their first batch must just be hatching - now begins the frantic business of feeding. Numbers of swifts are definitely in the 7-8 region now. Formerly I had questioned whether the seven birds I had seen in May were on migration - but it seems they have settled and nested here. Swifts, unfailingly, leave the first week of August, giving them barely 100 days in UK - to pair up, mate, lay, incubate, hatch, rear their young and then for the young to feed ready to fly their 3000 miles back to Aftrica. Some job!
In the stanza opposite Chang Potuan clearly identifies the 'instant illumination', 'sudden awakening' aspect of his Internal Alchemical Taoism - the Golden Opportunity (see 10th Jun. below). 悟 - wu - is the character for 'awakening';
Yang - Ch'ien - Heaven :
and Yin - Kun - Earth:
Perhaps indeed it lies in friendshop and warm affection. As Yin and Yang, apparent opposites, join. This can constitute awakening.
The power of the imagery and symbolism is that it allows the easy integration of the psyche - rather than the hair-splitting and devisive exclulsivity of Western Aristotelian logic.
Sad England lost to West Indies in the Twenty20 World Cup (cricket, that is). Plus ca change,.......
Mon 15th Jun
Yesterday the Green Fayre! A celebration of all things environmentally friendly, gentle and green - including scything a field of hay. Really an amalgam of a scything competition and a village fayre.
Here is a picture of the brazier and furnace, from Montacute House gates, second only to the cauldron in alchemy. I ndeed Heaven and Earth are seen as Furnace and Cauldron, the action of sunlight on inert matter, producing life. You know, really, these Chinese had something. It was quiet evident to them that all life was one, and we were in there as well, like it or not. So what's the problem!
As the Yinfu Ching says: naturally born, naturally extinguished
the ratiocination of all... we cannot escept the Tao for an instant, if we could it would not be the Tao. This idea comes from the beginning of the Zhongyong (the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean).
Another verse tomorrow.
Sat 13th Jun
Midsummer approaches! The time of festivals - the triumph of the Yang! Over the gates to Montacute House, in the village where we live, on the two gate columns are a pair of braziers - burning fires, in cast-iron boxes. The power of fire was dear to the alchemists of Elizabethan times - but they did not know they where following a tradition, stretching back to Han times. The Chiense were the first to actually believe in the idea of an elixir - a substance which when imbibed, or else created within (as later Taoists believed), could perpetuate life; and even, in some rare cases, prolong indefinately our corporeal life.
Interesting.
Here, in today's stanaz, Chang Potuan has a sideways swipe at all meditative practices, breath exercises, fasting, sexual abstinence, etc. They are detract from the business of the Golden Elixir....which (as he explained earlier) is to do with the 'sunken silver under the surface of the white-jade pond'.
Fri 12th Jun
The Three Fives are 1+4 (water and gold), 2+3 (fire and wood), and 5 alone as the earth. Got that!? Together they form 'a little child'. We have to meditate on this for s ome time - viz. the ten moons...eventually something dawns...
The oldest Chinese references to this is in the so-called Yellow River Diagram. It is very old, probably from the Sung editors
Good luck on this one!
 
Thur 11th Jun
A nice little nub of high pressure pushes up and the wind pushes to the west. Better. Someone pointed out that if India and England are to meet, it must be in the semi-final. Quite right, I mistook the two groups. India look very powerful, but Twenty20 is such a fickle master. We'll see.
To guard against being cheated check on the Timing of the Firing says the poem. This refers back to our judgment. To our scrutiny of each situation. And as this is a non-verbal thing, it cannot be written, hardly taught...but it can be demonstrated, viz. the apprenticeship, the observing student, who makes the tea for the first three-months and just watches it all going on...then you learn through your skin!
Do what I do, not what I say.
Later on the Wu Chien Pien states, quite plainly: what is useful can not be seen, what can be seen, cannot be used.
Paradise, now! This what is meant by to 'spring open the Bamboo-cage to live 10,000 years!'
New stanza tomorrow.
Wed 10th Jun
I see West Indies do not want to bat today. Expect Chris Gayle is preparing himself (?) for the Super Eights (cricket that is!). I tip India against England for the final next Saturday...lets see.
As to this topsy-turviness...
Western River Moon is Chang Potuan's last poem in the Wu Chien Pien book and it is a masterpiece. Much imitated - the 'rhyme' scheme being used to compose later works, even appearing in the 1601 Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxubustion (Book Two of which I translated as The Golden Needle see here).
Here is the passage In Western River Moon which applies to topsy-turviness....
Heaven and Earth in such manner
Pass through Decline and Flourishing,
Dawn and Dusk it is well to recall
Emergence and Innocence.
The Spokes of the Wheel run together at the Hub,
waters returning to the sea,
The Mystery consists in
Dividing-Up their workings.
Heaven and Earth, Yin and Yang, invert and turn topsy-turvy into each other, passing within and without, creating Decline (12) and Flourishing (11), the two hexagrams of discord and concord. Dawn and Dusk, Day and Night, the workings of the day, subsume each other, stimulating Sprouting (3) and Innocence (4), and sixty more hexagrams in all, distributed over the day and night. All run together at the Hub, the One, as waters returning to the sea. The Mystery consists in Dividing-Up their workings.
The poem continues... gain the one and all things draw to a close. Do not discriminate anything; nothing precious, nothing worthless. Destroy them all, again destroy them! Fear all previous achievements and remain completely open. It is not fitting to dally with Life’s Jewel!The aim of course is to embrace the topsy-turvy chaos, to wait for the Golden Opportunity, the single hair on the head of Lady Fortune...but did the Chinese have a way with the fates? Did they perhaps just have a science of ....that is what the I Ching and alchemy purport to be. The Ts'an Tung Chi has this to say on the matter of topsy-turviness.... As the cycling-five alternately rule,
They interlock in order to stay alive;
So fire will naturally fuse metal,
And a metal axe will fell a tree.This is straight Five Element stuff. But then... At midnight, to the right they turn,
At midday, then revolving to the east,
While dawn and dusk act as limits between,
And as host and guest divide up the two.
The dragon blows out at the tiger,
The tiger sucks in the dragon's seed,
Both drink and devour each other,
Totally greedy to succeed -
Each bites and gulps the other down,
Each bolts and sucks the other down.
Shimmering Mars guards the west,
Constant Venus is clear in the sky;
When baleful forces strike
Who may not be overthrown!
The dog will catch the rat,
Small birds fear the hawk;
Each of them acts as it can,
How dare they lay claim to greatness!In other words the whole tangled bundle of things, of life is a patterning of interactiions and reflections...does one claim to be greater than the other? How ridiculous.. .the dragon blows out at the tiger, the tiger sucks in the dragon's seed...the sexual inference is intended...all the universe is an interchange of Yin and Yang, of natural forces...governed by the patterning ( li). And it continues on... If you cannot see this patterning,
Then difficulties create wild ideas,
You squander your family's possessions,
And impoverish your wife and children.
From olden times to the present
Many, many have been devoted;
But they have ended their lives unfulfilled,
For very few may complete this work,
Searching wide outside for the famous medicine
They have turned from the path and gone astray.
In other words, take care! In your own home and garden, grows the medicine. Stay quite and look into your heart when alone. (aka: The Confucian Daxue or Great Learning, vi., 2. For more Confucian Ethics see here.) Many swifts flying today and house martins. The young must be greedy for food - as ever they are! We hope we get some good warmth now. Last year many broods died in the wet. Would help the cricket not to be rained off too! ..................
Tue 9th Jun
Anyone following England's cricket team on their way to the Super Eights? Cricket is such a subtle game, close to the Tao. The weather, also, plays a part and, like all sport, it draws in human qualities of strength and weakness, and, of course, chance....It is this pitting of chance against human endoveur than makes sport so fascinating.
Today's stanza is packed full of imagery. I will take it slowly! For today let's just focus on the Lotus born blazing within the Fire...The is the flower of enlightenment in Buddhism. The Fire is the fire of desire. Good Luck!
There is much on this topsy-turviness in the Ts'an Tung Chi; more tomorrow.
Mon 8th Jun
Some nice sarcasm here in Master Chang's poem. Many folks profess to be 'studying the Way', but many are misdirected.
In fact the main thrust of the Tao-te Chng can be seen to be about sincerity. Quite simply those who don't trust will not be trusted (Ch.17).
And the Chapters 17 Genuine Behaviour, 18 Wearing Down Custom, 19 Returning to Genuineness,and 20 Different from the Crowd are all to do with being oneself, resonating with one's simple inner nature and being true to the Tao. The titles here are direct from Heshang Gong, one of the earliest commentators on this book. His dates are around 2nd century C.E (at a guess, see Needham Vol II for excerpts).
My translation with his chapter titles is available here.
Sat 6th Jun
Just been reading a friend's blog. Link on Archive page. Struck by the conservative style of my approach...but then perhaps, that what I'm trying to say one Tao, two Symbols, three Powers, four Images, five Elements...there ain't much more to say. And within these bounds we are free, free as free..
I'm struck by this cloudy, damp weather this morn. Struck out at 5.30 for a long walk and met the rain coming back...the words sense and essence resonating in my brain...and I encouraged this dialogue.
One way of putting it is to say the sense is all around us, we swim in the sensory sea - the sensorium; but then there is more, and this is the essence: this is the Tao, the Images, the Powers, the Elements - they are both in the world and at a remove from the world. So don't take yourself too seriously folks! The world of dreams, ideas and images we all inhabit - in our passing thoughts is the reality; and the world out there, the real world, is a dream, our life a bubble bourne brielfly on the water... Remember the first stanaz of the Wu Chien Pien.
A Hundred Years - an Eternity -
All but sparks struck off a stone!
Your whole life a bubble,
Borne briefly on the water!
This is why, again, the elixir is pure magic in matter (I'm reminded of J.K.Rowling's felix felicis.) Every day, in every way we can taste it. Luverly!!
Fri 5th Jun
Welcome to you all who are reading this blog for the first time. If you read down through my diary you will see I am translating and commentating on a very old Chinese classical poem, purporting to be entry-level instruction for internal alchemy - the development of an inner elixir of immortality (neidan). This Taoist school has many affinities with the Ch'an (Zen) school - not the least a belief in 'sudden illumination' - but it also weaves in a respect for the division of 'medicinal ingrediants' and the 'timing of the firing' of the elixir. These images are taken, obviously, from external chemical alchemy.
Today we meet the Yellow Sprout, the nascent Fire, and the White Snow, the emergent Water. It is pure magic in matter - the blend of substance and spirit, material and spiritual which is so very Chinese. No body mind split for them!
Again Chang Potuan comments how he has never met a single person who properly knew its true refrain. As earlier he stated that I alone am different to other people. Cf. Tao-te Ching (20) Different to the Crowd.
Keep reading! and reading! Don't think too much! Good luck.
Thu 4th Jun
Self-knowledge is life eternal, equal to that of the universe. In poetic imagery the poet presents the tast - to seize the Red Mercury with the hun, or earthly soul; and to control the Water and Gold with the po, or celestial spirit. The Heart one and the Kidneys two.
Does it all come down to self-control? Maybe so, Certainly it seems British politicians could do with that today - polling day. We had something like 17 parties on the voting paper for the EU elections. It might be a bad system - but it is the system. Giafu once said to me the greatest problem is 'knowing how much to push...'
Wed 3rd Jun
How much can go wrong with the alchemical process of refining the gold, of taking the materials, timing the firing and plucking the medicine. Chang Potuan has no time for Taoist gymnastics or breath meditation.
The Yang lined with Yin is the fleshly body, is the trigram Li, and more besides. To humble the Dragon and Tiger is to preserve the Li-fire.
Return to the Root! Revert to the primal, before-Heaven qi. This the elemental world before it enters into time...now this is something quite wonderful and mysterious (miao 妙 )
Tue 2nd Jun
Good ol' Microsoft. Crashed my site again today! so we lost yesterday's diary entry! Lucky i backed up Sat. pm
Today...we return again to the Poem Wu Chien Pien. The next stanza advises us to turn our back upon the 'external' path - the path of brewed up chemical and herbal elixirs. To join the spiritual path - not necessary the physiological/medical, but more philosophical. Remember True Lead and True Mercury, they have nothing to do with common stones...the lead and mercury we will become better acquainted with later...enought to say that they have been greatly discussed and commented upon in all the alchemical classics...
The locus classicus for mercury is in the Cangongqi. In my translation (see here) it goes...
On the river lives the mild-mannered maiden,
Marvellous she is and spiritually fine,
But as she bursts into flame, she flits away,
Not to be for this dusty world.
Just as ghosts and dragons, she lies concealed,
Where might she be hidden?
If you would control her
The yellow shoot is your basis.
I hope this is not too confusing. The mercury is akin to the quick-silver mind...the yellow shoot is the basis in controlling her...the yellow shoot being the first stirring of the wood-vegetation element, the first inklings of ideas...'first thought, best thought'...as we say..
In other words you have to be so delicate and careful in your thought and behaviour.
Sat 30th May
And today we are off to the agricultural show at the Bath and West Showground. More on this later. The heavens are bright {sunny} and the earth yielding. An interchange of water and fire. What more could you ask!
The next verse to the Wu Chien Pien states: When Yin and Yang find each other, they renew their warm friendship - the Two Eights in proper accord, Self joining with Self. This is dialogue at the contact boundary - and if by chance we find each other, its beautiful - so goes Fritz Perls' Gestalt prayer.
Fri 29th May
Deep haze envelops the countryside. We are steaming towards a four-day high at least, with tropical air coming up to bath our green ilse...such is the poetic turn of phrase..
In the poem accompanying this text it says...only in the south-west, lies such a neighbourhood...so also does the hexagram The Receptive (No.2) contain the phrase 'the southwest furthers...'. The reference is usually made to the Outer World Diagram, also called the King Wen diagram or the After-Heaven Sequence. But all these names simply obscure a more obvious truth - change has its patterning, divine the patterning and you may find the path...
For the Outer World Diagram see below on 16th May.
The outer world is the world of the senses - and the southwest is the region of the more yielding trigram's forces....such is the Receptive. The I Ching says the three daughters follow their mother to the southwest - if you study the trigrams you will see that this implies that wind, fire and the marsh (wetlands) accompany their mother to the southwest (upper rh corner of the diagram).
Don't forget the Chinese put south at the top, unlike us in the West.
So there you have it. Oh, one final thing - the Unstable Pearl is the mind. No question about that!
Thur 28th May
OK. Here we are folks, this is the densest verse of the poem so far. It could do with a month's study (or a life-time) not a day. I will begin.
The central aspect is the occurance of the metal/gold/lead within the water. Later in the same book, Chang Potuan revels in an exquisite poem Western River Moon. My explanations I have to say, here, are inadequate. What use is it to dally with concepts over the web.....but here goes. The Moon is the unconscious, is the pathway into the Tao, is the ultimate reality - as opposed to the Sun, it is the Yin aspect of life, hidden, secret and cool. Taoists always gave the Yang a hard time (although secretely the Yang was all they were concerned with!, the life force! which is why they gave it a hard time, it had to be just right.....any imbalance, perposterousness, arrogance, over-weightiness would lead to the toppling over of the Yang. In face preserving the Yang was so important, we give most consideration to the Yin. Have you got that?!) because Yang could so easily tend to excess. This is very Oriental and subtle. The West just goes on and on about the positive, yang peaceful, active......being a print-based culture, it can easily lose the fluid subtly of an oral tradition.
Enough! So water is important...fluids, streams and springs. And once the Gold has been plucked out the water - ! - there you have it..but you have to be so infinitely careful about this moment. This is what the poet is stressing. Once gazed upon, it is gone. This is why the Earth element is now introduced. The Earthernware pot supplies the support necessary to perpetuate the process - that it may be complete. After all if the little fox dips his tail in the water before he is across.....he is lost...(see Hexagram 64 Not Yet Overcome) in the I Ching. Available as e book here.
Wed 27th May
Sorry about yesterday. Just kinda of fell out of synch. Woke this morning debating Yin and yang - well actually some more sensory stuff going on but...
...I could not help exclaiming at the delight I felt in this Yin and Yang business - NOT the cerebral stuff, foisted on us, but just Yin and Yang as dialogue, as meeting, subtly and the best of things. Yin and Yang, up and down, body and mind, right and wrong, plus and minus, male and female, night and day, left and right, dawn and dusk - they permeate our world. Can you understand this? They make up the natural Tao, which underlines and 'determines' them all - like red, but not red - is a Chinese motto. It is also said - like red, becomes red. And all Tai-chi students know the mottos - like hard, but not hard - like soft, but not soft - hard, but also soft, soft, but also hard.
Well it goes round and round, indeed what goes around comes around - so the saying goes. And were they talking about the circulating the sky. Do you remember the opening lines to the Yinfu Ching - observe the Tao of nature, grasp its circuit in the Sky, that is all - 天之道，執天之行，盡矣.
And so it goes on. Summer and winter, arm and leg, in and out, sometimes we are up, sometimes down. These are nothing but Yin and Yang.
Look at the Taote Ching: being there and not being there generate each other, the difficult and easy complement each other,the long and short fit into each other, above and below oppose each other, tone and voice harmonise each other,
forward and backward follow one another...
So it must be that the Well-frog denies there exists a Dragon's lair...And so it goes on, the stupid and the saintly....
More Wu Chien Pien tomorrow.
Mon 25th May
All people possess this wisdom inside them. As the saying goes, all the people in this world follow the Tao, without knowing it...
But the well-frog and wattled quail see no further than the end of their own nose! Chang Potuan is poking fun at the small-minded - the original source is Chuang Tzu (Ch.1)
He stresses the naturalness of the whole art. And has a swipe at the herbologists in the mean time...no need to brew up magical elixirs! But later we will see that he has no time either for Yogic practices - his is a practice which embraces greater depth. Akin to Ch'an (Chinese Zen)
Sun 24th May
There are two ideas at work in Chiense internal Alchemy. The one is the materials - lead and mercury, true water and true fire - the other timing the firing - which is where the cycling hexagrams and trigrams, north to south, dusk and dawn, etc. come in.
The main idea behind Chang Potuan's writings is awakening our true nature, ie. 'Life’s precious jewel'. Later commentators were to distinguish between Nature (hsing) and Destiny (ming).
Our true nature, that which is uncovered by reading the I Ching is something uncomplicated, near at hand, to be discovered in every breath we take, who we really are, something going on all the time, to be grasped in an instant - akin to the Zen Buddhist wu (or Japanese satori), It can be found anywhere. So why the need to protect it there in the Hills!
Thunder and rain blow up from the north today. Such is Somerset weather in the spring.. Yet seven swifts seen last night, in the hot evening we had (26C in the shade, in our back yard).
Sat 23rd May
We are following a seminal work here of the Southern School of Inner Alchemy. This is a study of nei-dan; really the practice of Yoga, brewing the 'elixir of immortality' - both in a poetic sense and physiological sense, that it could perhaps make us live longer. And importantly in a philosophical sense, allowing us to glimpse, perhaps, of a world beyond space and time. Really these are all mashed up together in the Chinese world-view; although difference Masters emphasised different aspects at differing times.
Enjoy the poem for what it is! A tour-de-force of Chiense poetry. I have tried to keep the inner rhythm of the Chinese scansion in my translation.
Fri 22nd May
That nub of warm air has finally pushed the cold air into touch. We have a warm swathe of air finally - to touch our cold bodies and souls. Do us northerners crave the sun? We do! Just like the bees. I split my hive two weeks ago - and what do you know, I now have one healthy queened hive and one building queen cells. And the rape (charlock) flow is full on. A great time of year for bees, especially with the moisture around as well. Water and fire, Yin and Yang - you are never far from my mind.
Another link here on bird decline, this time in Ontario, Northern America. It especilly highlights the insect-eaters.
To see the weather patterns I talk about follow here - and just shade your eyes a little, lean back and look at the colours.
Thur 21st May
A nose of warmer air pushes north into the cold block, that cold sink, remnant of winter which is torturing us poor British mortals. Result: southern Britain begins to feel a slight taste of summer - especially in Summerset (Somerset) which is predominantly low-lying pastures, draining in the summer months to provide lush grass for cattle - and rich pickings. Three swifts career above me on my early am work. Only three. The Guardian Satruday reports that woodpecker and nightingale numbers have halved in the last thirteen years. See here for 2007 report on European crashes in bird numbers..
But dear reader. Remember that these flickering lights - viz. the internet - contain very little reality. If 'what you are thinking, that is just not it...' (see 18th May), then what you are speaking, what you write, print - put up on screen, is so much further away from what is happening.
Watch your breath! Now you are getting closer! As today's poem says...the Golden Elixir itself is quite evidently real...
Wed 20th May
The stillpoint testifies to the immutability of the world. If we depart from the stillpoint, we have change. No wonder Giafu was fascinated by the Book of Change. The lines of Yeats come to mind - turning and turning in the widening gyre
the falcon cannot hear the falconer, things fall apart, the centre cannot hold (The Second Coming) - but Yeats was not possessed of the same happiness in his personal life as Eliot, he was not always faithful in his marriages and his love of the occult seems almost manic in A Vision. Both however were trying to make sense of Christianity in a destructive and fragmenting world.
So we return to the redemptive philosophy of the Tao. When Death wins you over what do you have then? This was the conclusion of the first verse yesterday. The Wu Chien Pien continues there is nothing for it but to search for the Great Medicine. This is of course the elixir of immortality, the 'pearl of great price' - that which lifts us out of time and gives us everlasting life. But it is also in this moment. As Eliot also says:
...quick, now, here, now, always...(Burnt Norton).
I wish this cold wind would go. We need sun...
Tue 18th May
Beginning Chang Potuan's poem on alchemy today. There are sixteen verses. Sixteen echoes the 'two eights' - code words for the two powers, Yin and Yang. As we begin our discussion of Internal Alchemy it is important not to get bogged down in the terms, words, phrases, etc. Just let it all wash over you. As Giafu said: 'what you are thinking, that is just not it!'
We might call it emotional intelligence in this day and age. But beware! All my attempts at explanation are fraught with danger. Once you have the term, word, phrase you are in danger of losing the essence - meaning hovers somewhat within, behind the written, printed term, word, phrase - so easy it is to lose, it is, As Yoda would say.
Wang Pi (famous editor of the Tao-te Ching and Neo-Taoist) tells the tale of the fish when pulled out of water, how they smear each other with spit and spittal. Just as when we are pulled out of the Tao, we smear each other with terms, words and phrases, trying to find our way back to the Tao, to create an environment we can swim in again.
With this caveat - we will now enter the beginning of Chang Potuan's Wu Chien Pien. The title translates as Written Upon Awakening to Reality. The commentary is my own, based upon traditional sources.
Sun 17th May
Began writing on Giafu's biography. See link on Archive page. Also follow up Carol Ann's own site here.
Moe tomorrow.
Sat 16th May
Two diagrams for you today:
Hope this keeps you thinking. If you wanted the classical Chinese view on the structure of the universe - and the Yin'Yang symbol was not enough - then, here you have it. More on I Ching page.
Oh yes, and again today... I am the womb of every holt. It is pure shamanism - an ecstatic blend with the world around us, people. weather, environment and food. Think about it!
Fri 15th May
The wind and grey clouds swirl, and showers pop and an uncertain May staggers on. A mass of cold air is trapped over Britain, see here, It gives an uncertain, questing advance and retreat of minor weather fronts.....
This is the sensorium, we bathe in it - the physicality of our existence. Basically the sensorium can embrace three things: immediate people, weather and environment, and food. We won't mention food/diet/cookery - too much already on the web; as to people - they are the great unknown, in the meeting of bodies and minds we have that formidable thingy (encounter) in which social, moral and sexual worlds are born - which leaves us with weather and the environment.
People - Weather and Environment - Food
A poem of the sensory world today, from the Celtic tradition. The source I have found is Robert Graves The White Goddess. Now he was a man who knew the Tao, albeit in another form. Poetry is the form by which we merge with the sensorium, it 'makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up...'
Thur 14th May
Just to update you on the bird arrivals. We know have at least 3-4 swifts, Around a handful of house martins and 2 perhaps more swallows. This is much less than twenty years ago and one can only ponder why. But this whole earth is groaning under the weight of our technology...and wasteful practices.
I have an interesting take on this. When I was living in London in the 70's I divided this degradation into three categories: pollution, irritation and residue. Pollution is the global term - which basically comes from TOO MUCH of anything - Yin and Yang out of balance. The personal aspect turns into irritation, now this must be the causes of so many cancers, the MS's, MND's and much arthritis, etc. Then we have residue - which may dear cousin Peter calls 'clearing up your tail'. We certain, as individuals and companies, have a moral duty to clear up after us.
Enough preaching!
Be a lert! Gia-fu Feng used to say - Be Attentive! That is the whole meaning of Zen.
Be Alive! (Know that might be what Gestalt is about - the clear contact boundary).
(I am I and you are you
And if we find each other its beautiful
And if we don't it can't be helped.)
Wed 13th May
They began the filming of the last Harry Potter film yesterday in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Link here. I cannot but be a fan, having four boys from 8 to 17, at present! We have grown up with J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, for better or worse. How could we not be fascinated by story of Magic and Trans-formation, of the defeat of death - and eternal life, being all Taoists at heart.
There is lots to be written here about Harry and the power of another world, so close to our own. But for the moment lets just stay with a mother's love, which defeated Voldemort at the end of the first book. Can you remember that far back? That was why evil could not countenance Harry, because he was possessed of something much deeper and older than anything Voldemort could summon up. Seems J.K.Rowling is coming down on the side of the family. She certainly is a team player. You can read all about her real family here. Then there is all the stuff about the Weasley's and the Godfather Sirius, etc. etc.
I do think The Goblet of Fire was the best movie so far. I'd be interested in what you, out there, think? 'Goblet of Fire' - well that sounds like a Taoist Trait, and philosopher's stone - I wonder if they really know that they are following a well-worn path here.
Here is a poem by George Herbert for you all to enjoy . For God just read Tao. And of course we all, as taoists, embrace a little more darkness. It is the rigidity, misogyny and need to fight we cannot take in Christendom.
We settle at the stillpoint.
Tue 12th May
Time present, time past and time future...and T.S. Eliot talks of echoes. Undoubtedly Chinese thought talks about the inbetweens - not so much the individual. Get this into your head and you may be someway there.
One sixtieth birthday (a total surprise party and barn dance!) and one funeral (my father-in-law's in Cambridge). This weekend has had perhaps a little too much happening. But its 'nowt but the joining together of our common human nature with simple sincerity (chunyi).
Got to clean up today. More tomorrow.
Saturday May 9th
In my edition of the Yin fu Ching the Yinfu ('hidden match') is explained 'our human nature joining together with simple sincerity'. The phrase 'simple sincerity' is literally 'the Tao of the Pure One' (shunyi ji dao). But we cannot put that. Mathews dictionary glosses shunyi as 'unmixed, simple, sincere' and, of course, the radical to shun is the silk radical. Literally then it means unbleached, undyed, plain. This is a very positive scripture - because it explains how change and time rule our world and how we can bind ourselves to it and thus be free (in a spiritual sense).
This is why the author states I use the rough and ready as a model to be wise. The sensory world robs us with its ceaseless stimulation and movement. But uniquely the Taoist is not just a hermit, retreating far away from the sounds and sights of the world. He is also immersed in the world of the senses - viz. the hedonist and Taoist Yang Zhu (see link) - living life to the full. Its not that simple, you see. Perhaps we could say, in a medical sense, the quest is to avoid damage. Thus the rich corpus of yang sheng scriptures - nearly all their work has a yogic element (but Taoist).
Fri May 8th
Gently, gently. we are nearly at the end of the Yin fu Ching. I am dissatisfied with my translation of these two lines. So read the commentary quickly. Much is rather dense.
However the general gist is that saintly and 'stupid' are separate and that the difference is in the way they interact with the natural world. Others see the spiritual path as somehow 'out there' - but I use the 'rough and ready' in other words anything and anybody and anytime and anyplace as a model to be wise. The spiritual and material are one. The rule in the Yinfu Ching is somehow to 'extract and add on' to my life. To combat the Five Robbers (the 'five elements'). More tomorrow.
Thur May 7th
And today is the day after yesterday and the day before tomorrow. But some-how it just feels the same day...so. The Chinese had somethinghere...in that they thought that time is cyclical...not linear. We are more steady-state than big-bang (tho' actually I would say its more a big phwlooperan-gashinglyteri........)...'bang' is a projection out onto the universe of the 20th Century's pathologically violent history!
Enough!
It was sixty years ago today
That Sergent Pepper told the Band to play.
They've been going in and out of style
But they're ready to raise a smile.
So let me introduce to you
They band you've known for all these years.
Sergent Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band.
Is that it then? Bring on the Band! Actually its also 100 days of this diary today. Well that is an achievement in itself! We move in ten's and three's. So 10 x 10 is significant! Believe me! First Archive of the Diary Feb- May downloadable here.For clinical acupuncture and other visits contact the this link.
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NEW BOOK - TREASURIES OF THE TAO Newly Translated - The Wangbi and Heshang Gong commentaries To purchase as an e-book. Simply click on the link below .
T R E A S U R I E S O F T H E T A O The TAO-TE CHING with the original Commentaries revealing a relevance to TAOIST YOGA and its PHILOSOPHIES
 This is a new translation of Laozi's Tao-te Ching (The Book of the Way and its Power) the foundation text of Taoism, along with two original commentaries, one popular and the other scholarly. The earliest was penned by the 'Old Man who Lived up the River' and represents the folk tradition of the book; the second is by the early philosopher Wangbi. The first is a guide to qigong or Taoist yoga, while the second is the earliest exposition of the Tao-te Ching's philosophy of 'being' and 'non-being'. These gentle philosophies of turning away from the world's troubles and deepening an inner life crystallise all that is best in the Chinese mind. They reveal an message of harmony, and naturalness in action, rejection of pretence and artificiality, and a simple life with regard to the environment. Both are newly rendered into English and placed directly after the original text in the traditional manner. There is a short note to each chapter describing its content and textual variations.
Price £16.99  Past Sayings of the Day in Archive here.
NewsFor clinical acupuncture and other visits contact the this link.  Tai-chi classes now weekly at Nine Springs, Monday 9.30 am. Drop in as and when See address for these classes on this page.The I Ching with my commentary is ready to download on the Tao Booklets page. | |