Round 5: What’s the Use of Emptiness in the Wheel of Life? (essay)

First, want to thank Wendy for reminding me about black holes throwing up.
Thank Tao they don’t eat garlic in those other dimensions. Solar Flares would take on a whole new meaning, as they ignited those garlic gamma rays…

Question: is a black hole throwing up an act of free will? I say yes.

It means we are particles of that vomited stardust, and ieach particle in our bodies carries the imprint of that original act of free will.

Is there any Freedom in dissolving into Oneness?

I know this is unpopular position to take, given the pervasive and HOLY use of Oneness in the New Age (mistakenly used to describe the desire for Harmony) – but the answer is that there is NO MANIFEST FREE WILL in the primordial oneness.

That is what makes it primordial – it hasn’t evolved out yet. Start by re-reading ch. 42, daodejing: Tao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, which births the 10,000. things.

If Oneness had manifest freewill, it would have generated the 10,000. direclty. Instead, it had to polarize itself before it could manifest. We will see in Round 6 how critical this is to idea of soul completion…but don’t want to give away that game yet.

So to cut to the quick here, I think Chan Buddhists try to find a shortcut, thinking that they will get back to Oneness by focusing on Emptiness, i.e. letting go of Manyness as it arises in their mind, letting go of all body movement by sitting in perfect stillness/zazen. It is a valid communication to the Life Force. Essentially, they are trying to evoke the yuan chi, by stopping all yin-yang. They call it Emptiness, but if you are energetically sophisticated and linguistically adept, you know the real purpose to access the primordial breath, yuan chi.

And I think that for SOME PEOPLE it is a good strategy, i.e. technique, to first empty out the aspects of Manyness that have gotten stuck somewhere in our system, and to do it persistently. As the Life Force pays ttention to persistence. Persistence is expression of free will – which has shifted from being in a potential state in Oneness to an active, manifest state in Manyness.

But useless to think that you will be able to attain some permanent or higher state of Emptiness – even if by Emptiness you really meant to say permanent Oneness. Linguisticaly, Oneness is pretty much opposite to Emptiness, but we are going to forgive the Buddhists for not saying what they really mean by Empty – something like “Empty of Many-ness”).

My understanding is that the flow of the Tao is to continously cycle between all the stages; as bagua put it, they are all simultaneous.

When jing chi shen wu are all simultaneous, there is no possible way to bypass any aspect. Because they are all instantly interactive. Nothing stays yin, nothing stays yang, and nothing stays yuan – which is the primordial breath that flows through all APPARENTLY EMPTY spaces.

Question: Is it possible to induce a state of EXCESS EMPTINESS?

Again, I say yes – if by forcing your consciousness to stay still until it becomes excessive/imbalanced in relation to yin-yang movement. And this is what I see in patients suffering from excess sitting Zen practice.
If Chan Emptiness truly led to spontaneous flow of yin-yang, they would allow folks to spontaneously jump up and begin dancing. But they don’t. Rigid discipline is needed to achieve stillness – but danger of rigid remaining along with the stillness….

My point here goes even deeper. We have to shift to Taoist language, since Chan language i find so inadequate. Let’s assume a chan sitter has pumped up a goodly amount of yuan chi, even from the pre-natal level, assume they got past stuckness of Emptiness in Post Natal (kong).

Will this yuan chi automatically produce balance and harmony in the post natal realm?

My experience says NO.

YUAN CHI NEEDS TO BE “COOKED” to become functional in the post-natal.

What does this mean? Yuan chi has to be digested. Otherwise it “floods” the consciousness, and overwhelms the jingi-chi-shen process, it drows yin-yang cycles that are delicately balanced in the human psyche.

Its my fundamental opposition to the assumption made not only by Channists, but by Dzogzhen practitioners as well. Their idea is that if Primordial Chi is the Origin, then the MORE you get of it, the better. Very all American in a way: bigger yuan chi is better.

In fact, it looks like they are promising a more direct path to enlightenment because they are directly focusing on stillness and implicitly hoping to extract yuan chi from that direct stillness process.

But I say it is faster and safer and more balanced to grasp yuan chi by first cultivating experience and skill with yin-yang flow. That is why I use simple qigong techniques like Ocean Breathing to open lower dantian first, and Inner Smile to embrace both movement, blockage, and still aspects of Body-Mind.

Reasons:
1. Revealed to be more effective thru my experience of teaching thousands of students.
If you cultivate movement first, resistance to stillness is lowered, and becomes part of natural cycle to rest after moving.

2. yin-yang is closer in vibration to ordinary mind, and thus easier, more comfortable to grasp for VAST majority of people.

3. Yuan chi needs to be integrated into yin-yang post natal patterns in any case, and if these are NOT CONSCIOUS, they can easily be manipulated or misused or misdirected. Excess bliss can be dysfunctional.
See the “masts” of India described by Meher Baba – the village idiots who are really in stae of divine bliss, but cannot function and must be taken care of by others.

I think we could classify this BLISSED OUT syndrome as EXCESS YUAN CHI. The general population is in state of DEFICIENT Yuan chi. So Yuan chi is not a good in itself – only when the negative ego doesn’t convert it into its own warped ends/needs. And yes, negative ego and yuan chi co-exist. Yuan chi is everywhere, it co exists with everything, and will permit it self to become any thing – it totally surrenders to our human free will!

So Emptiness in itself is not a virtue, but the absence of all virtue – and hence ultimately claiming to be not responsible for creation/birthing process, and here we are back to Getting Off the Wheel of Life instead of merging with it as the Tao’s process.

4. If you practice Inner Smile, there is no demand made to still the mind – only accept whatever pattern it takes. That gradually and inexorably leads to stillness, but one that embraces simultaneously and consciously all the yin-yang patterns of the body-mind.

5. You can use any starting point of the trinity – yin,, yang, or yuan as your entry into cultivation process, it doesn’t really matter. That ‘s why you have Yin Immortals, Yang Immortals – they took one aspect and developed it deeply. So none of the approaches is better than the others – but all still need to be integrated.

Question here becomes one of practical suitability for Westerners, and dangers of staying too long with any one strategy before integrating the others. I’ve seen many Chan/Zen practitioners err on the side of rigidity…

I could go on, but I think this sums up the main ponts as far as practicality of path goes – all paths are wonderful by definition, but the reason we have free will is to choose which amongst thm best suits us.

Fagin, Bagua, and myself will all study the same material and craft it into three separate paths….

Such a wonderful plane we live in!
Tiny little bodies, Infinite possibilities of expression of free will.

michael