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Introduction
To explain the roots of DYC Teaching we
should start with the first chapter of Laozi’s Daodejing,
a text that predates Chinese Daoism by 500 years. This chapter,
like many in this amazing text, describes the authors (the text
was collectively written) understanding of the spiritual wisdom
that informed the animism of China in the formative 4th century
BCE.
True Dao is not a way that can be conceptualized.
Its true name has no identity.
Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.
Name is the mother of the ten thousand.
We are told, at the very start of the Daodejing,
that Dao, as a model for life and the human spiritual path, is fundamentally
non-conceptual and/or non-dualistic. We are told implicitly that
we (the reader [de]) are inherently an inseparable part of true
Dao whose activity (wuwei) is ungraspable – names, concepts
and words fail to capture “it” (Dao) or “us”
(de) in an enduring way. We are invited to embrace the paradox that
unknowing is wisdom. Our path is natural and inherent - not something
we are mandated to search for, discover, struggle with or master.
The title of this text is the Daode classic. The fundamental teaching
of wuwei is that Nature (Dao) and self (nature: de) are arising
naturally and resolving naturally.
The True Dao (big “d” Dao) is not
a way (small “d” dao) that can be conceptualized. All
life paths and/or spiritual paths, based on concept (self-improvement,
morality, transcendence, clarity, transformation, healing), can
be given names, described easily and are, therefore, not Laozi’s
true Dao. In a very important sense, all philosophical and spiritual
teachings are constructs - vain conceptual exertions. Dao as an
immortal Other or de as an abiding Self are simply concepts - fantasies.
Daoist cultivation or wuweidao, according to Laozi, is, therefore,
a natural mode of expressing our true nature and not an investigation,
evaluation and improvement process. The spiritual life Laozi recommends
is a matter of naturalness not industry.
Expressing our true nature (de) is a moment-to-moment “naturalness”.
Effort, in all its forms, is useless in the maintenance of this
natural present. We are invited to simply stay with the situation
as-it-is. Wuwei is not “non-action” in the sense of
renouncing or controlling our actions. It is acknowledging the way
in which action arises of itself spontaneously – strictly
without compulsion. Any dao that is associated with the compulsion
to do is riddled with desire, pride, effort and construction. Such
strenuous action serves to uphold the false notion of an abiding
self and, is therefore, not the Dao of wuwei – what, in this
chapter, is called the true Dao.
Its true Name has no identity. Chang ming, translated
here as “true name” can also be translated as true nature
– each thing/being has its authentic nature – an authentic
name. But this authentic nature is not an individual identity. What
is true about the true nature of each being and thing is its commonality
with the true nature of all beings/things. This common nature could
be called their naturalness.
Here is the first of a series of cautions in the Laozi about the
use of words and names. According to Laozi, it is not that words
are “bad” or something to be renounced. Words must simply
not to be mistaken for hard, accurate assessments of reality. Laozi
suggests that we use words softly and names provisionally. Words
and names do not identify or ‘capture’ what is real.
If we call what is ungraspable, by the name Dao – we have
not truly grasped it or truly made a mistake. If we use words softly
and names provisionally, we allow language to float around and between
concept and non-concept. This sort of language is easy to “forget”.
Laozi’s Dao has no role to play or job to
do – it is not creative. Nameless (wu ming or nameless also
means non-conceptual and/or non-being) is the origin of Heaven and
Earth (also yang and yin). The nameless and non-conceptual (Dao)
appears in the world of words and perceptions, as Heaven and Earth.
Yet creation of particularity is not really the activity of Heaven
and Earth it is simply the appearance of the relationship between
Heaven and Earth (dualism: yang/yin). Here Laozi is saying that
Dao, in sense is the unknowable, non-interactive environment in
which the dualism called Heaven (yang) and Earth (yin) dance. Heaven
and Earth represent Dao as the limitless permissiveness of concept
at play with non-concept. It is the constant tendency towards creation,
arisal or appearance.
Name is the Mother of the ten thousand. All things
arise of themselves – if we give this tendency to appear a
name, it is called the Mother (name/being). Things arise, are nourished,
supported and completed by the Mother (the tendency in beings/things
to be [arise and resolve]). Self-arising is not an act of creation
or the act of a creator. In reality, neither creation nor creator
exists. Heshang Gong describes Heaven and Earth as the Mother by
saying: The Nameless spits out qi, and the ten thousand things swallow
it.
Constantly
Renewable Animism
The inspiration behind the various classes taught
at DYC is animism. For a long time the term animism exclusively
referred to what might be called aboriginal religions of the world
– religions found by European explorers in their “discovery”
of the “new” world in the last four centuries. The term
referred to a common belief that Christian Europeans found everywhere.
This common belief was the understanding that every being and every
thing was “animated” or alive. Animists also assume
that every thing and every being is interconnected by this “animation”,
that is, life itself is “shared”.
Up until quite recently the term animism was thought
to summarize the primitive “cults” that preceded the
world’s great civilizations and their religions and philosophies
or “isms”. What had been missed in this superficial
analysis was that “animism” was indeed a profound philosophy
and a universal religion that was everywhere without the need for
heroic missionaries and without the trappings of hegemony.
The teachings at DYC suggest that the tables have
turned. DYC teachings are part of a more mature worldview that is
emerging. This new or renewed vision suggests that not only is animism
the precedent for the world’s great religions it may also
be at the heart of all these religions. None of the great religions,
with their “unique” revelations, history and culture
can survive in the new “opened up” world. At the heart
of DYC teachings is the mandate of the cycles of time that indicate
that human beings are returning to their animist roots.
Imagine for a moment that the screen in front
of you is a fire surrounded by all our living and dead ancestors.
Feel the animating force of your ancestors and the animating force
of the flickering screen as one animating force. The fires, the
lights, the songs, the dreams and the people are all alive in this
moment. It is so easy. This is the great liberation, this is the
great awakening and this is immortality!
The Historical Roots of TCM in Northern and Central Asian Animistic Shamanism
The roots of TCM theory and practice lie deep in the archaic healing tradition of Northern and Central Asian shamanism. From ancient times (beginning in the Paleolithic Age [from 2.5 million years BCE to 10,000 BCE]) to the present the shaman has been the healer-diviner of human tribal society. They explored the natural world with the science of their time - controlled trance, botanical experiments, initiation and the maintenance of lineages (shaman were often bards, keepers of song-legends, historians). Their techniques eventually develop into the extended focal awareness associated with meditation and the practice of communal ritual (religion). Much has been made of the "difference" between this ancient tradition and the modern development of religion and biomedicine (both Chinese and modern) but the differences have been exaggerated out of ignorance and modern superstition (science is rational and religion true [LOL]).
Shamanic View of Harmony between Human Beings and Their World
Shamans have always viewed human beings as basically a natural phenomena arising in Space (Sky - a place between Heaven [yang] and Earth [yin]) and imbued with a nature that is basically healthy. For shaman our personal human nature and Nature itself are both part of a seamless substance/spirit - Life, without boundaries (no beginning, no end). Animism is the recognition and consistent honoring of the Life in everything. This Life is not Oneness, Monism or a God - it was just Life. (Though the Sky was later given the provisional name Dao, by Han Chinese, it (Dao, Sky, Space) was never meant to be understood as a God or Creator (in the Western sense). It is just the way-things-are-of-themselves. It is the inseparable quality of Being and Process - symbolized by a cloudless sky (or open Space). Later in TCM history the basis of the particular human substance/spirit embodiment will be called by various names. Some will call it hun (Sky, Heaven) and po (Earth, Underworld). Some will call it jing, qi and shen. Eventually TCM will adopt the theory of 5 elemental spirits with attributes related to 5 Element Naturalist cosmology. In all cases, these various names pointed to an unchanging attribute of Life. These spirit/substances never were ill, defective or poisoned - they simply escaped the human experience/body when a human being transgressed his/her own naturalness. Illness was the absence of a spirit or two and the symptoms were, what we would call today, "loss of spirit" - fragmentation, depression, listlessness - a general loss of interest in one's humanity. Though modern TCM, biomedicine and its companion psychology have come up with endless names for it illness is the same in all humans. For the shaman human beings were not spirits in a Lifeless world. The world itself was "alive" with countless types of beings among whom our dead ancestors were the best (beneficent) and (in the case of dying "unresolved" - ghosts), the worse of them. Shamans were inter-species, cross-realm interpreters and communicators. They viewed the patient as a temporary "condensation" of a long line of hereditary spirits and it was the shaman's job to find (or recall) these spirits and renegotiate the patient's ancestral covenant (genetic predisposition/constitution) back to health. In some shamanic traditions "ancestral harmony" was the definition of human health. In that tradition illnesses contained specific "messages" from the dead that needed to be deciphered and turned into actions that were release the patient to recover. These ancestral spirits, often called humors in the West, today make up what we call our "constitution". They are both specific (hun/po human) and common (gods/forces of Nature) and when balanced defined human health - excesses need to be exorcised or redeployed just as deficiencies call for nourishment and assistance.
Shaman also knew of spirits that inhabited places inhospitable to humans - external spirits that were reflections of various internal spirits of the human body. They recognized spirits of cold or hot places, damp or dry places that, when disturbed or absorbed, would dislodge internal human spirits and cause illness - these spirit images remain in TCM as external pathogenic "qi". These pathogenic or "lost" spirits possess us when our ancestral spirits have abandoned us (when we fail to maintain our constitutional harmony). Shaman always remember the wisdom of the ancestors and can by drumming and singing bring the disparate ancestors (living and dead) back into harmony and, by doing so return the "lost" spirits to their natural home (often trees, stones, streams [elemental aspects of the environment] or effigies).
The healing of a shaman's patient was both physical recovery and a matter of moral recalibration . Negative and obsessive thinking were seen as "ghost possession" - ghosts are naturally negative and obsessed (relative to humans). A complete healing in the world of animistic shamanism crosses the modern boundaries of physiology, genetics, psychology and morality. A shaman's patient is recovered/normalized when his/her compound nature is "complete" or recollected not necessarily given a "cure/antidote". It is misunderstanding to think that shaman simply purged evil or launched their patients into an eternal Oneness (the fantastically transcendent visions of Western saints [theism]). Shaman were the acceptable outsiders of their own group because they held the "secrets" of completion and continuity.
The shaman's vision and healing method is based on the maintenance of their patients' psyche. It is also the continuous recalibration of their tribe with its environment (ancestors and harvests [hunting, gathering] and eventually agriculture). They did so not by being "spiritual or philosophical" (in the modern sense) but by becoming familiar with the nature of human beings (de or the landscapes of consciousness) and Nature itself (including but not limited by the spectrum of the collective psyche - Dao).
The surprisingly universal view and methods of shaman throughout history and in countless cultures contain the roots of both science and religion. As "orthodoxies" emerge (called science, religion and governmental politics) all over the world many shaman become scientists, medical doctors, priests, ecclesiasticals (monks, nuns), rulers and politicians . Many remain simple shaman. Archaic forms of shamanism are still prevalent in the medical care of the "modern" world. Modern anthropologists tell us that the techniques of shaman as healers fall roughly into various categories. Though categories and specificity hardly matter, I offer these three categories for a general understanding of early healers.
1. The trance-medium is a shaman who "abandons" his/her own body/spirit so that it may become a medium for a (usually non-human) deity. This "deity" searches for the patient's loss spirit and retrieves it. The patient then recovers and the shaman "returns" to ordinary embodiment. This form of shamanism is archaic - has been practiced unchanged for countless millennia. At the center of this technique is an ecstatic trance or "shamanic flight".
2. The shamanic healer is a shaman who recognizes the overlapping worlds of spirits and accomplishes the retrieval without loss of embodiment. They are often "seers" or practitioners of some sort of trance/meditation that easily facilitates the patient's recovery. They have strong intent, powerful focal awareness and transformational power. The patient's recovery may also contain an enhanced view or clarity. Such shaman are often called magicians, sorcerers or medicine people. Their techniques often involve ritual, talisman, music, chanting (sound as energy) and dance. The shaman healer is present in nomadic tribes, agricultural villages and trade centers. Their uniquely personal methods set them apart from priests (ordained and educated religious people). This technique is strongly focused and intentional.
3. The spiritual healer is a shaman whose internal vision and/or spiritual accomplishment automatically rectify the spirits/energy around them. Their immediate presence heals those in contact and their existence itself pervades the environment (Space). They often live alone in remote wilderness areas. Their method is often described as "radiance". Their healing is largely unintentional or effortless (natural - wuweidao).
The true nature of Chinese medical culture is a continuous synthesis of healing data collected and held to a standard that began with the archaic views/methods of Central and North Asian shamanism and evolved into the burgeoning philosophies of its multi-cultural Middle Ages. We will see later how penitence as a means of healing became central to early Chinese Daoist rites (tianshidao) and the Confucian socio-political notions of health/medicine. The Daodejing, perhaps the most provocative book of ideas ever written, is the Chinese Classic of Dao and de.
Shaman become (bon) Tantric Buddhist Lamas in Tibet/Mongolia, (fangshi) Daoists in China, (Druids) Roman Catholic priests in Europe, (Rishis, Siddhas) Brahman in India, etc. etc.
Wuweidao
Wuweidao, in the truest sense, is not a religious
or spiritual tradition with a history and canon; it is not the transmission
of a god, prophet or philosopher. It has no fixed national, racial
or ethnic identity. It is the natural and spontaneous way in which
Dao (the unnamable cosmos) interacts with itself. It is also the
dynamic dance of substance (jing, space) and energy (qi, time) that
is found in all forms of animism. For human beings it is the continuous
and effortless expression of our true nature (de, shen) spontaneously
revealed by the way-things-actually-are.
Laozi (a name given to compiler of the text) refers
to wuwei as “cultivating Dao according to Dao”. Any
and all implied spiritual cultivation in this text points directly
to an appreciation of a non-dual reality – a continuity of
life referred to by Chinese Daoists as Qi. The heart of such cultivation
is found existing-of-itself (ziran) in non-conceptual meditation
(zuowang).
Laozi’s Daodejing suggests that all religious
history, all hagiographies, all the various traditions and their
many sects are expressions of a single human effort to make the
unknowable Dao, something knowable – a thing or idea ungraspable
by our narrow, human limitations (shen or de). This paradoxical
effort is a gateway to wisdom and the resolution of Fate (Daode).
It is also the shamanic journey.
Liu Ming adds: “As radical as this may sound,
in some very basic sense, of course, there is no intrinsic value
to religion, sermons, scriptures, prayers or meditation. Only when
the great religious systems inspire us to directly engage in overcoming
our limitations do we find their value. For Laozi, paradox is the
sublime teaching. What is profound about being human is that we
create AND overcome our dualistic limits. Wuweidao suggests that
we acknowledge and honor that profundity first and then use the
heritage of our chosen dao (system/path) to play with our remarkable
capacity to “uncreate” dogma and overcome our personal
and collective limits. This is classic white shamanism.”
Chinese Daoism
Chinese Daoism is the native religion of the river
valleys of what is today central northern China. In its very long
history it has culled the spiritual practices and cultural expressions
of innumerable “daos”.
It is the revelations of Zhang Daoling, the founder of the Han Daoist
movement called the Tianshidao (Way of the Celestial Masters [2nd
century CE]) that formed the basis of (Han) Chinese Daoism. In synthesizing
animism (teachings and practices of the fangshi “formula masters”
[black shaman]) and Wuweidao (white shaman), this formative movement
created a cosmology and formal education (ordination curriculum
of daoshi [Daoist priests]) that is still the basis of the orthodox
Chinese Daoist spiritual path.
Between the Han and the Tang dynasties Daoism played an important
role in the extraordinary cultural/spiritual synthesis that would
become the Golden Age of China (Tang/Song dynasties). During this
time Chinese Daoism inspired articulate and elaborate practices,
at once scientific, spiritual and artistic. These new expressions
reached a pinnacle in the inner alchemy (neidan) of Shangjingdao
or the Way of the Highest Clarity.
The Tianshidao and Shangjingdao eventually integrated into Zhengyidao
or orthodox Daoism. The successive generations of the Zhang family
have been the most prominent custodians of this tradition to the
present day.
The Practice of
Chinese Daoism
What makes orthodox Chinese Daoist practices unique
is the underlying notion that spiritual practice is not remedial
– we are not ‘lost’ or flawed by nature. “Cultivating
Dao” is not a matter of obliterating personal problems, transcending
the mundane or renouncing the world. True Daoist cultivation is
best thought of as the myriad ways we can express our true living
nature (Daode).
The central formal practice of Daoism is the non-conceptual
meditation called “zuowang”, sitting and forgetting.
A sublime expression of animism and wuwei, zuowang is the relaxed
posture of non-conceptual meditation. A conceptual practice, called
jindan (golden elixir), using “visualization” and the
analogy and vocabulary of alchemy has always been its counterpoint.
These two primary practices have inspired many other practices and
observances that inform a Daoist daily life – the selection
and preparation of food, a contemplative approach to sleep/dream,
breathing and sexual techniques. All these, in the case of ordained
daoshi (priests), inform the practice of elaborate calendar rituals.
These rituals, consistent with their animistic roots, continue to
be the main expression and transmission of Chinese Daoism.
In Northern Asia the influences of Daoism are
uncountable. Daoism informs the strokes of art and calligraphy,
the movements of taiji and the mechanism of shamanistic exorcism.
It has inspired China’s poetry tradition as well as the design
of its homes, irrigation channels and burial sites. It is in the
savory recipes of Chinese cuisine and in the balance and language
of its traditional medicine. Yet, despite its pervasive influence
on Chinese culture, science and religion, Daoism is not captured
or defined by any one of these expressions.
Chinese Daoism Today
Today, after innumerable encounters with Confucianism
and Buddhism and dozens of sectarian reforms, Chinese Daoism continues
to defy definition. Though sectarian differences can be found and
studied, the Chinese tradition of Daoism has always maintained its
inner vitality through the personal transmission of teachings between
individual teachers and their students.
Today, though much is owed to Chinese Daoist lineages,
they are neither the origin nor the only expression of Daoism. Scholars
and practitioners are now found all over the world continuing the
tradition of rewording and reevaluating its canon and practices.
This apparent pandemonium and confusion about legitimacy and continuity
only proves again that the true nature of Daoism is not a thing
to be mastered or defined.
THE FIVE PRACTICES OF THE LIU FAMILY
The Liudao (path teachings) are important not because they tell us what we ought to DO but because they reveal what we ARE. The practices are not just choices or spiritual options but a remarkable vision of life itself.
In routine disciplined practice it is assumed that the practitioner will "cross over" from one practice to the " great field of 5 practice". Those who enter this "great field" are called xian (adepts/immortals).
Several of the Liudao practices have parallels in the later developments of the Tantric forms of Buddhism found in Tibet.
ZUOWANG
"Sitting and Forgetting" is non-conceptual meditation. The View, taken from early sources (Laozi), is that all beings/things are fundamentally nameless, self-arising and resolving. This "nature" of things (de, shen) is none other than Dao. The formal practice is the direct experience of Reality that "appears" when the practitioner relaxes the de/Dao distinctions that foster the notion of separation (body [jing], energy [qi] and totality [shen]). This practice is independent of "teachings" as such.
Zuowang is the ancestor of the Chinese Buddhist Chan form of meditation called zuochan.
NEIDAN
"Inner Elixir" is the practice of Daoist alchemy based on the physiology/cosmology of Daoist yoga/science/medicine. The View is based on the resolution/sublimation of the bi-directionality of existence/becoming (chemistry) and non-existence (alchemy). The formal practice is the "backwards following" of an internal map of "becoming" (blood/flesh to jing to qi) that returns to the root of becoming (totality/shen/Daode). This practice is the ancestor of all "hygiene-macrobiotic" practices (medicine).
Neidan may be the called the "inner vision" of zuowang.
LING XU
"Spiritual Protocols" is the performance of orthodox ritual. It uses sound (music and voice), dance (internal/external movement) and a sense of empowered imagination (visualization) with a View to resolve the apparent "external" deities and spirits of Daoist iconography with the practitioners "internal" alchemy. The formal practice is the perfection of detailed orthodox performance that is transcendent mediumship. This practice pre-dates Chinese Daoism and has roots in all systems of "shamanism".
Ling Xu closely parallels the Tibetan Buddhist and Bon practice of Tantric sadhana.
DAO YIN
"Originating the Way" is the solitary practice of Daoist yoga (neigong). This practice directly stimulates and recalibrates the points, channels and convergences (dantian) of qi at the crux of our physical/spiritual existence (de), providing the direct and lucid experience of Daode. The practice is most commonly used in solitary retreat. It is the ancestor of all neigong, qigong and gongfu (external).
Dao Yin closely parallels the Tibetan Tantric Buddhist and Bon practice of tsa-long.
YUN GONG
"Dream Workings" is the practice of the Night and the "dream world". It works directly on the resolution of the dichotomy of waking and sleeping that mistakes the continuity of being (immortality). The formal practice normalizes sleep (medical/healing), empowers dreams (symbolic content) and opens up dreams (path dreaming) to reveal the parallel nature of sleep and "death".
Yun Gong arises in the Night and in the moment of "death" - it is therefore parallel to Dream Yoga in the Six Yogas of Naropa (including bardo experience [transition] and phowa or transference) in Tantric Buddhism.
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