White Cloud taught Emptiness

Hi Max,

Thank you for the kind reply. Have you practiced Michael’s higher levels?

Metta and smiles,
Fajin

Bagua: It sounds like you are saying “intention is following the patterns consciously within your body, following wu xing and energy patterns”. To me this is just following what already exists with your Yi, you are not shaping anything, you are becoming aware of what already exists. Unless the two are the same, this is what I believe.

I will jump into this conversation just to point out the contradiction here, Bagua. You refer to “what exists” as if it were an absolute and/or predetermined fullness, when the chan position traditionally is that “what exists” is emptiness. This “what exists” is a hidden rigidity in your attempts to equalize everything, incuding dao alchemical process of cultivation, which only partially overlaps chan.

In a process oriented cosmology like Dao, there is no fixed “what exists”. What exists is always in a unique process of flow, it never repeats itself, the contents of the river are never the same even though the river has an apparent path.

The principles of yin-yang and five phases are not “what exists” in terms of experience, they are archetypal patterns or principles within the process/river.

What Fajin is correctly defending is the role of Humanity as one of the Three Treasures. That role includes Intention/Creativity in shaping the flow of Heaven and Earth. Humans are not inventing or creating Heaven and Earth, but they have no choice but to shape the impulses received from both (via their binary soul, as stepped out micro verison of heaven & earth).

Choiceless choice is a good way to describe wu wei, but it doesn’t imply lack of creativity, or following something else. Its following effortlessly your own nature, and that nature, defined by the triune dynamic tension of the life force, involves constant creativity.

It sounds like wu wei to you means surrendering to some pre-existing “what is” outside of yourself. What exists in humans is constant creativity that refreshes Humanity. If you want to speak more usefully of “what exists”, then I think its more fruitful to speak of the natural alchemical process of refinement that is occuring in life, and whether that can be useuflly accelerated or intensified. The alchemical tradition embodies the experience that it is useful for those able to grasp the essence of the process.

The chan tradition is not overtly alchemical, i.e. it is not trying to consciously accelerate the process as its goal, it is trying to bypass or shortcut the process by jumping straight to wu and skipping the jing-chi-shen-wu process.

What I’ve seen here is a lot of backpedalling by chan theorists to say that we are in fact cultivating jing chi shen by focusing on wu, and that we get the same result or better by doing it that way. But that’s not the traditional position taken in the literature I’ve read, the chan literature is NOT PROCESS ORIENTED with equal weighting to jing-chii-shen-wu, It is state oriented, i.e. state of emptiness. I think its great that practitioners here are moving beyond that position and integrating daoist alchemical principles into their practice CONSCIOUSLY. But as Fajin says, why not just practice the alchemy? The functional use of emptiness is already integrated.

The bypass straight to wu, while it may advance one’s personal evolution, may also fail to explore important lessons in the creative process. And may lead some adepts to confuse the empty/formless state with complete realizaation unless one is very careful NOT to make emptiness a fixed state. As the Dalai Lama points out, emptiness is merely the counter-point to individual states of existence and has NO INHERENT “WHAT EXISTS” to it.

Alchemy consciously explores the relation between individual states and their formless couinterpart, and the equilibrium crystallized between the two is the secret to the unique process of human immortality. Again, in humans that attainment of immortality DOES NOT PRE-EXIST, it is not part of the “what exists”. It is what is evolving from the POTENTIAL THAT EXISTS, since of course the ground of existence is eternal.

But the potential seed and its flower are two different things. If you don’t Water the seed and shine Fire/light on it in the right balance, the seed does not flower. That is why human choices are so important, and why process cannot be bypassed in the course of human evolution, physical, cultural, and spiritual. Emptiying the past of its resistant patterns is useful only to free up the space for making those choices.

alchemical smiles dissolving this endless talk,
Michael

ps I am starting my journey to west coast and then china shortly and may not be on board much in the next month, but will try to drop a line from China.

We probably agree on some level, max. But there may be a useful distinction.

I’m saying that you can never achieve a state of pure emptiness as a prerequsite to beginning the alchemical process. Because the emptiness is co-existing with multiple levels of polarized yin-yang levels of self.

So we are constantly “emptying” (moving towards neutral) while simultaneously constantly balancing the immediate flow of yin-yang patterns on ego, soul, and oversoul levels (even if unconscious of those distinctions). That’s why you can feel bliss internally, and have challenging shit happening all around you in your life.

That’s why I feel it can become a rigidity to presume that there is only one way to progress in cultivation. Some may find it easier to grasp the emptiness by first balancing the yin-yang forces, others may prefer to ignore yin yang patterns and focus on stillness. This depnds on innate constitution and chance, i..e. who you happen to learn from and imitate their Way.

The emptiness and yin-yang forces are constantly mutating into each other, because the yuan chi is always dividing into yin-yang and yin-yang are always exhausting their polarity and at the extremes becoming yuan chi.

I think we all agree this process is happening naturally and spontaneously without any human intervention to make it happen, i.e. humans don’t CAUSE Heaven and Earth.

But humans tend to almost universally to “interfere” with this process due to cultural or karmic conditioning, i.e. we can’t help but have an intention, even if it is an imbalanced/egoic/reactive intention.

I think the difference is that while both chan and dao tries to remove the ego interference in the natural process, the Daoist (alchemist) goes a step further.

AFTER achieving a greater level of ego balance (a relative state, which will include a greater awareness of “empty center between yin-yang”), such that the adept is then able to express a deeper level of “de”/virtue/soul essence that empowers the adept to shape the flow of the life force according to its individual needs.

This shaping of the life force by the adept’s “desire” or ” authentic need” is spirtually lawful expression of the soul, and not “attached” or “egoic”, but is rather an expression of the life force itself and in particular of Humanity’s role as mediator between heaven & earth.

So the distinction being made here is probably that there is no “emptiness” in linear time to “first” achieve before beginning alchemy. That emptiness is residing in an underlying counter-reality that forms a whole with the yin-yang flow of physical reality. So the emptiness is really in a sense in a parallel time zone, not in the physical present moment, even though it is linked to it.

That parallel dimesnion emptienss may be what bagua is perceiving as “pre-existing”, without having to shape it. But SOMETHING is going to shape how that emptiness becomes yin-yang manifest patterns, and alchemy makes that something conscious.

hopes this clarifies the difference I perceive.

peace,
michael

1.
bagua the daoist
bagua the chan

bagua insists on written scrolls
hence bagua the antinecroman

but bagua studies rumors
so what is next?
bagua the channeler

i welcome bagua the lao zi.

2.
you are right visualization is not a skill of babies

colours do start to connect
yet there are four and five gross element systems
two different cultures
a choice

releasing the clear focus to one system
is like learning two strange languages simultaneously
a strategy

any clear contact is good for greater allignment
starting introduction of finer aspects of elements from the beginning helps the focus on one cultural gravity center and offers practice ventures at due time

3.
emptiness can be shifting of polarities
and in so is not a practise, but a side results, a check;
and such process has principles, not empty

emptiness can also be attacment to such side result

you emphasize the first, yet shizm the process in two polarized threads: tao and chan
a rare position

>>”You say Shape, I say Attune; the differenece is you think you are creating something and I know we are merging or attuning to what already exists, so we can agree to disagree. Both require intention and effort.”<<

"To shape implies using intention and will to actively create yin-yang balance in relation to the life force, to merge or attune implies actively releasing will and intention to harmonize with whatever yin-yang imbalance is present in the life force."

I believe Singing Ocean is correct and that you and Michael are not in disagreement essentially but for some reason the terms keep getting in everybody's way throughout alot of these discussions.
It is true, we are definitely merging and attuning, but that, in itself, is a choice to shape their lives that some people won't make, hence resistance to what is and all the problems we experience.

“Words are limited, its more important to express the meaning and experience, which may take little or lots of explanation.
I could play the word game and do a “shock and Awe” attack on some posts, but prefer to just explore the actual meaning.”

As I see it: Exploring the meaning is important in so far as it allows us to deepen our perception of ourselves. But the problem with going for meaning is that it happens in the mind. We create meaning. That can go only so far before it actually takes away from cultivating Being which is not interested in anything thinking oriented.